Wild West

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The American frontier, also known as the Old West, popularly known as the Wild West, encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of American expansion in mainland North America that began with European colonial settlements in the early 17th century and ended with the admission of the last few contiguous western territories as states in 1912. This era of massive migration and settlement was particularly encouraged by President Thomas Jefferson following the Louisiana Purchase, giving rise to the expansionist attitude known as "manifest destiny" and historians' "Frontier Thesis". The legends, historical events and folklore of the American frontier have embedded themselves into United States culture so much so that the Old West, and the Western genre of media specifically, has become one of the defining features of American national identity.

Wild West

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In 1890, the Census Bureau released a bulletin stating: "Up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement, but at present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line. In the discussion of its extent, its westward movement, etc., it can not, therefore, any longer have a place in the census reports."[12] Despite this, the later 1900 U.S. census continued to show the westward frontier line. By the 1910 U.S. census though, the frontier had shrunk into divided areas without a singular westward line of settlement.[13] An influx of agricultural homesteaders in the first two decades of the 20th century, taking up more acreage than homestead grants in the entirety of the 19th century, is cited to have significantly reduced open land.[14]

A frontier is a zone of contact at the edge of a line of settlement. Leading theorist Frederick Jackson Turner went deeper, arguing that the frontier was the scene of a defining process of American civilization: "The frontier," he asserted, "promoted the formation of a composite nationality for the American people." He theorized it was a process of development: "This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward...furnish[es] the forces dominating American character."[15] Turner's ideas since 1893 have inspired generations of historians (and critics) to explore multiple individual American frontiers, but the popular folk frontier concentrates on the conquest and settlement of Native American lands west of the Mississippi River, in what is now the Midwest, Texas, the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the Southwest, and the West Coast.

Enormous popular attention was focused on the Western United States (especially the Southwest) in the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century, from the 1850s to the 1910s. Such media typically exaggerated the romance, anarchy, and chaotic violence of the period for greater dramatic effect. This inspired the Western genre of film, along with television shows, novels, comic books, video games, children's toys, and costumes.

As defined by Hine and Faragher, "frontier history tells the story of the creation and defense of communities, the use of the land, the development of crops and hotels, and the formation of states." They explain, "It is a tale of conquest, but also one of survival, persistence, and the merging of peoples and cultures that gave birth and continuing life to America."[16] Turner himself repeatedly emphasized how the availability of "free land" to start new farms attracted pioneering Americans: "The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development."[17] Through treaties with foreign nations and native tribes, political compromise, military conquest, the establishment of law and order, the building of farms, ranches, and towns, the marking of trails and digging of mines, and the pulling in of great migrations of foreigners, the United States expanded from coast to coast, fulfilling the ideology of Manifest Destiny. In his "Frontier Thesis" (1893), Turner theorized that the frontier was a process that transformed Europeans into a new people, the Americans, whose values focused on equality, democracy, and optimism, as well as individualism, self-reliance, and even violence.

The frontier is the margin of undeveloped territory that would comprise the United States beyond the established frontier line.[18][19] The U.S. Census Bureau designated frontier territory as generally unoccupied land with a population density of fewer than 2 people per square mile (0.77 people per square kilometer). The frontier line was the outer boundary of European-American settlement into this land.[20][21] Beginning with the first permanent European settlements on the East Coast, it has moved steadily westward from the 1600s to the 1900s (decades) with occasional movements north into Maine and New Hampshire, south into Florida, and east from California into Nevada. Pockets of settlements would also appear far past the established frontier line, particularly on the West Coast and the deep interior with settlements such as Los Angeles and Salt Lake City respectively. The "West" was the recently settled area near that boundary.[22] Thus, parts of the Midwest and American South, though no longer considered "western", have a frontier heritage along with the modern western states.[23][24] Richard W. Slatta, in his view of the frontier, writes that "historians sometimes define the American West as lands west of the 98th meridian or 98 west longitude," and that other definitions of the region "include all lands west of the Mississippi or Missouri rivers."[25]

In the colonial era, before 1776, the west was of high priority for settlers and politicians. The American frontier began when Jamestown, Virginia, was settled by the English in 1607. In the earliest days of European settlement on the Atlantic coast, until about 1680, the frontier was essentially any part of the interior of the continent beyond the fringe of existing settlements along the Atlantic coast.[26] English, French, Spanish, and Dutch patterns of expansion and settlement were quite different. Only a few thousand French migrated to Canada; these habitants settled in villages along the St. Lawrence River, building communities that remained stable for long stretches. Although French fur traders ranged widely through the Great Lakes and midwest region, they seldom settled down. French settlement was limited to a few very small villages such as Kaskaskia, Illinois[27] as well as a larger settlement around New Orleans. In what is now New York state the Dutch set up fur trading posts in the Hudson River valley, followed by large grants of land to rich landowning patroons who brought in tenant farmers who created compact, permanent villages. They created a dense rural settlement in upstate New York, but they did not push westward.[28]

The seaboard colonial settlements gave priority to land ownership for individual farmers, and as the population grew they pushed westward for fresh farmland.[31] Unlike Britain, where a small number of landlords owned most of the land, ownership in America was cheap, easy and widespread. Land ownership brought a degree of independence as well as a vote for local and provincial offices. The typical New England settlements were quite compact and small, under a square mile. Conflict with the Native Americans arose out of political issues, namely who would rule.[32] Early frontier areas east of the Appalachian Mountains included the Connecticut River valley,[33] and northern New England (which was a move to the north, not the west).[34]

Most of the frontiers experienced numerous conflicts.[36] The French and Indian War broke out between Britain and France, with the French making up for their small colonial population base by enlisting Native war parties as allies. The series of large wars spilling over from European wars ended in a complete victory for the British in the worldwide Seven Years' War. In the peace treaty of 1763, France ceded practically everything, as the lands west of the Mississippi River, in addition to Florida and New Orleans, went to Spain. Otherwise, lands east of the Mississippi River and what is now Canada went to Britain.[citation needed]

Regardless of wars, Americans were moving across the Appalachians into western Pennsylvania, what is now West Virginia, and areas of the Ohio Country, Kentucky, and Tennessee. In the southern settlements via the Cumberland Gap, their most famous leader was Daniel Boone.[37] Young George Washington promoted settlements in West Virginia on lands awarded to him and his soldiers by the Royal government in payment for their wartime service in Virginia's militia. Settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains were curtailed briefly by the Royal Proclamation of 1763, forbidding settlement in this area. The Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1768) re-opened most of the western lands for frontiersmen to settle.[38]

The nation was at peace after 1783. The states gave Congress control of the western lands and an effective system for population expansion was developed. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 abolished slavery in the area north of the Ohio River and promised statehood when a territory reached a threshold population, as Ohio did in 1803.[39][40]

The first major movement west of the Appalachian mountains originated in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina as soon as the Revolutionary War ended in 1781. Pioneers housed themselves in a rough lean-to or at most a one-room log cabin. The main food supply at first came from hunting deer, turkeys, and other abundant game.

In a few years, the pioneer added hogs, sheep, and cattle, and perhaps acquired a horse. Homespun clothing replaced the animal skins. The more restless pioneers grew dissatisfied with over civilized life and uprooted themselves again to move 50 or a hundred miles (80 or 160 km) further west. 17dc91bb1f