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Popular Culture Icons: Myth of the American Frontier RICHARD SLOTKIN

The Myth of the Frontier is the oldest and most durable of American national myths. Like all nation-state mythologies, its function is to pro- vide a historical account and an ideological justification of national development, and a repertoire of exemplary fables – based on his- torical events – which offer plausible precedents for dealing with contemporary crises. The myth recognizes that the US developed as a settler state, which grew geographically and increased in political and economic power by advancing European settlements into the territory of Native Americans and the “wilderness.” It builds upon that historical basis a set of historical fables which explain and justify the development of Ameri- can nationality as the product of this perennial advance into the wilderness, or the “virgin land.” The Frontier Myth addresses simultaneously

two central and persistent problems of American development: the problem of nationality (which subsumes the concepts of race and culture), and the problem of capitalist development. The Myth answers the perennial question, “What is an American?” by creating a virtual geneal- ogy – Americans are the descendents (by blood or acculturation) of those heroes who discovered, conquered, and settled the virgin land of the wild frontier. Only a small minority of Americans ever had actual experience of frontier life; but through history texts and the media of mass culture, generations of Americans who had no ancestral tie to the West nonetheless came to see the frontier as the symbol of their collective past, the source of such “American” characteristics as individualism, informality, pragmatism, and egalitarianism. The Myth also asserts that Ameri- can capitalist development has been exceptional

(part of a unique nationality), especially in its successful combination of economic growth with liberal democracy; and finds the material basis of that unique developmental history in America’s continual expansion to new “natural” or “wilderness” frontiers. The Myth combines two ideological themes

into a single powerful fable: the themes of “bo- nanza economics” and “savage war.” The first is an economic mythology, implicitly a theory of economic development; the second is a political and social myth, which defines the rights, pow- ers, and roles of different classes and races in the making of American society. “Bonanza economics” holds that the key to

American development is the continual dis- covery and exploitation of cheap and abundant resources outside the metropolitan center of society. It is critical to the myth that the New World, the virgin lands of the West and their wealth, come to Americans as if out of nowhere: unlooked-for, a windfall. Nature, not labor, gives such resources their value, and hence they come to Americans free of the social costs that burden development in metropolitan Europe. In the Old World (so the story goes), persons or classes could only better their conditions by undergoing the deprivations of primitive accumulation, by exploiting scarcity and need, or by engaging in social warfare against more established classes. In the New World, on the Frontier, resources are so superabundant that prosperity can be enjoyed by all, without prejudice to the interests of any – except the natives who, as savages, are outside the limits of civil society and public concern. It is important to note that although illusion and

falsification figured prominently in the economic myth of the frontier, the myth remained credible because it had some basis in reality. For most of US colonial and national history, geographical expansion went hand in hand with economic development. In the century following the Rev- olution, the 13 coastal colonies expanded across the continent and beyond to Alaska and the Pacific basin, while at the same time the country grew from an agrarian adjunct of the European

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economic system to a leading industrial and financial world power. It was perhaps inevitable that these two dramatic expansions be linked in American historical mythology. But it took mythopoetic imagination to see the westward movement of population as a cause – rather than a consequence – of American economic development. Over the course of 300 years, from 1600

to 1900, through the myth-making labor of preachers, novelists, publicists, and promoters, westering became a metaphor – or rather, the objective correlative – of the motives that drive economic behavior in capitalist societies. Pio- neering presents the profit motive in its most appealing form, as the basis for heroic action and the creation of a unique new nation that somehow manages to be both arcadia and imperium. As the national economy developed, and American ter- ritory incorporated new regions, the specific form of the frontier bonanza changed. Agriculture and land speculation gave way to “bonanzas” based on agricultural commodities (cotton, wheat, cattle-ranching), mining (gold, silver, iron, coal), and railroad-building (especially after 1865). But according to the Myth, the American

bonanza can only be achieved through “savage war”: the violent conquest, displacement, or subjugation of non-white races or peoples of “primitive” cultural development. Like the virgin land and bonanza myth, the myth of savage war is also rooted in historical fact. Every stage of westward expansion, from Jamestown on, was marked by Indian wars. Moreover, to exploit the cheap land frontier to the West, Americans exploited cheap labor frontiers to the East and South: at least half of the land seized from the Indians before 1850 was exploited by means of African slave labor; and the railroad frontier of the Gilded Age was built on cheap immigrant labor from Europe and Asia. Crucial to the creation of a national myth is the

conception of an Enemy. Because the US devel- oped as a settler state, it has always defined itself against two kinds of enemy: the Native Ameri- can to the West, who is seen as savage, close to nature, non-Christian, non-white, anarchically free in lifestyle; and the European to the East, excessively civilized, rigidly hierarchical, bound by custom and ideological creed – the triumph of the letter over the spirit. The American hero, the

frontiersman or “The Man Who Knows Indians,” holds a moral balance between these ideological extremes, defining and defending an American nation which blends the best of both extremes. However, according to the myth, that balance can only be achieved through the violence of warfare. The “savage war” theme mystifies politics in

a way that complements the mystification of economics in the virgin land/bonanza myth. In the Old World (so the story goes), social violence is directed inward, deployed by one class to subjugate or overthrow another in the struggle for scarce resources, with the result that Europe is both unstable and resistant to genuine democracy. But in America, the social costs of development are externalized – in effect, sym- bolically exorcized. Social violence is projected outward against “them that are not a People” (as the Puritans liked to say) – against tribes of alien race and culture, living beyond the geographical borders of civilization (in the case of Indians and Africans) or beyond the margins of civil society (in the case of domestic slaves and other, non-naturalized immigrants). As the virgin land/bonanza myth sanctifies

the territorial boundaries of national society, the savage war myth defines and sanctifies a concept of national identity and character. In each stage of its development, the Myth of the Frontier repre- sents progress as achieved through a scenario of regeneration through violence: a heroic departure from the limits of existing society; purification through a regression to a more primitive or “natural” state; and redemption, through triumph over the wilderness and its native people, which makes the West safe for civilization (symbolized by white women). The hero of the myth is a figure, “The Man Who Knows Indians,” modeled on historical figures like Washington (who began as an Indian-fighter), Boone, Crockett, Buffalo Bill, and Custer and fictional heroes like Hawkeye and The Virginian. The hero embodies, and so is able to deal with, the central conflict of values that marks the frontier. He knows both savagery and civilization, is at home in both; and what he knows is that (with noble exceptions) “Indians” as a race cannot be trusted or lived with. The savage enemy kills and terrorizes without limit or discrimination, in order to exterminate or drive out the civilized race. To achieve victory in such a war, Americans are entitled and indeed

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required to use any and all means, including massacre, terrorism, and torture. This logic has found explicit expression in certain characteristic forms of American social violence, including vigilantism and lynching. Any class which can be likened to the mythic savage as an enemy to civilization and progress becomes eligible for treatment according to the savage war scenario: becomes a candidate for subjugation, segregation, or even extermination; becomes the legitimate object of violent, perhaps military, coercion, rather than a fellow subject and citizen of the democratic polity. At the end of the nineteenth century, as the US

was making the transition to a modern indus- trialized nation-state, two versions of the Myth were formally codified as major interpretations of national history. Frederick Jackson Turner’s “Frontier Hypothesis” held that America’s demo- cratic culture and politics had been shaped by the existence of a cheap land frontier, which provided a social safety valve for class conflict and a reservoir of unappropriated wealth avail- able for the fulfillment of the American Dream. Turner thought that the closing of the Frontier deprived American democracy of its material basis, and threatened the US with Europe’s fate of concentrated wealth and class conflict. Theodore Roosevelt offered a contrary hypothesis: that the Frontier had been a Darwinian laboratory in which a new class or “race” of masterful execu- tives and entrepreneurs had emerged triumphant; and that a corporate America could now under- take the conquest of an imperial frontier in Asia and Latin America. Both versions of the Myth

still influence both popular culture and political thinking in the US: the Turnerian (or “Populist”) strain speaks in our nostalgia for the free, inno- cent, and abundant past that we have “lost”; the Rooseveltian (or “Progressive”) strain, for our determination to find or fabricate “new frontiers” (new natural resources, new technologies, outer space, etc.) to replace the ones that have closed.