American frontier
, in
United States
history, the advancing border that marked those lands that had been settled by Europeans. It is
characterized
by the
westward movement
of European settlers from their original settlements on the Atlantic coast (17th century) to the
Far West
(19th century).
The term
frontier
has been defined in various ways.
Webster’s International Dictionary
, in 1890, described it as “that part of a country which fronts or faces another country or an unsettled region;…extreme part of a country.” In the 19th century it was statistically classified as an area having no fewer than two but no more than six European inhabitants per square mile (fewer than one to just over two Europeans per square kilometre). The
United States Census Bureau
defined areas with lower population densities as “unsettled” and on this basis marked the frontier line on a series of maps for each decade. Thus, areas on the frontier were no longer the
exclusive
domain of explorers, missionaries, and trappers, but settled homesteads were relatively rare and widely dispersed.
The historian
Frederick Jackson Turner
noted that, “especially in the United States,”
the term
referred to that “belt of territory sparsely occupied by Indian traders, hunters, miners, ranchmen, backwoodsmen and adventurers of all sorts” which formed “the temporary boundary of an expanding society at the edge of substantially free lands.” Others have thought of it as “a form of society,” “a state of mind,” “the edge of the unused,” “the first stage in the process of transforming the
simplicity
of the wilderness into modern social complexity.” Some have used the terms
frontier
and
West
interchangeably as referring to an area having geographical location only in relation to a particular period of time and changing constantly as population had advanced.
Amid the uncertainty in the use of terms, there remains the simple fact that the history of the United States, up to the beginning of the 20th century, was that of a people moving steadily toward the occupation of a vast continent. This involved not only recurring physical advances into new geographic
basins
where life had to be lived on simple elemental levels for a time but also constant social evolution from a simple hunting-trading stage to varying degrees of urban complexity and interdependence.
For three centuries, some Americans were leaving the older settlements and beginning over again on the frontier. For the same length of time, those who lived in what had become old and established centres were conscious of the fact that there remained an open door to lands that were ostensibly unclaimed, where place and fortune were yet to be won. As a reality for some and as a symbol for others, the frontier became a vital factor in shaping American life and American character.
The first frontier
Thus understood, the
American colonies
along the Atlantic coast were Europe’s frontier, and their gradual drift away from European patterns was the first
manifestation
of frontier influence. They began the conquest of the wilderness; they took the first steps in crossing the continent; they became Americans. This, however, was only the beginning. Scarcely had the colonies themselves become firmly established before the
western
push began anew. Out from old centres, the dissatisfied, the restless, the adventurous made their way into the backcountry. There they encountered long-established
Native American
populations, sometimes coexisting with them, sometimes forcing them into open resistance but ultimate retreat. Sometimes they moved to secure more room for themselves and their
cattle
; sometimes, as
John Winthrop
described it, they simply possessed a “strong bent of their spirits to remove thither.”
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Northwest Territory 1785?87
The Northwest Territory, created by the Northwest Ordinances of 1785 and 1787, with the Ohio Company of Associates' purchase (c. 1787) and township schemes.
Well before the
American Revolution
they had brought a new west into being: in upper
New England
, in the
Mohawk River
valley, in the great valley of
Pennsylvania
and above the
fall line
and out into the ridges and valleys of the south. In
spite
of the limitations placed on expansion by the
Proclamation of 1763
, already a few settlers had crossed the mountains and opened the way for an even greater west. With the
Peace of Paris
(1783), Britain ceded the lands east of the
Mississippi
to the newly independent United States, but it maintained a system of strategic forts throughout the region. The issuance of the
Northwest Ordinances
(1784, 1785, and 1787) fueled a wave of migration to the
Midwest
.
Treaty of Greenville
Gen. Anthony Wayne, representing U.S. forces, and Miami chief Little Turtle, representing the Northwest Indian Confederation, signing the Treaty of Greenville, August 3, 1795.
Native American
tribes, seeing their hunting grounds reduced by the encroachment of white settlers in the
Northwest Territory
, gathered under the banner of the
Northwest Indian Confederation
. In 1791 they delivered a
stunning defeat
to an American military
expedition
that had been sent to pacify the region. U.S. Pres.
George Washington
dispatched Gen.
Anthony Wayne
and a much larger force to the region, and the Americans effectively crushed the confederation at the
Battle of Fallen Timbers
(1794). With the subsequent
Treaty of Greenville
(1795), the confederation ceded a large swath of the
Great Lakes
region to the Americans. Nevertheless, native peoples had demonstrated that they would not submit passively to the expansion of the frontier into their lands.
This first west differed sharply from the original colonies, which had already begun to reproduce the Old World social and economic patterns, along with their class distinctions. It was, as Turner called it, a “democratic, self-sufficing,
primitive
agricultural society in which slavery and indentured servants played little part” and in which poverty and toil went along with a scarcity of social accumulations. As population spread and increased, differences between coast and interior became increasingly apparent, and strife often developed over taxes, representation, internal improvements, and religious matters.
Whiskey Rebellion
Citizens capturing tax collectors during the Whiskey Rebellion; hand-coloured woodcut.
Bacon’s Rebellion
, the
Regulator movement
, and soon
Shays’s Rebellion
and the
Whiskey Rebellion
were all expressions of an east-west conflict produced by expansion.