WORDPLAY
- the border between two countries
- that part of a settled, civilized country which lies next to an unexplored or undeveloped region
- the developing, often still uncivilized or lawless, region of a country
- any new field of learning, thought, etc. or any part of a field that is still incompletely investigated: often used in plural [the frontiers of medicine]
FAST FACTS
Bear Flag Revolt (1846), uprising against Mexican government by U.S. immigrants in California; so called from flag with grizzly declaring California a republic
Northwest Ordinance (or Ordinance of 1787), United States, governing Northwest Territory; one of the most significant laws passed under Articles of Confederation
Pony Express, a system of transporting mail by horses in relays, used in the United States
Ranch, an establishment for raising and grazing cattle, sheep, or horses, or for wild animals for their pelts; from the Spanish rancho, meaning “a meeting place for meals”; also a large farm
Santa Fe Trail, early overland trade route to Santa Fe, N.M., part of modern Old Trails Road
South Africa (formerly Union of South Africa), nation, area (excluding Ciskei, Bophuthatswana, Transkei, and Venda) 435,868 sq mi (1,123,226 sq km); caps. Bloemfontein (judicial), Cape Town (legislative), and Pretoria (executive); pop. 32,063,000
Stephen Harriman Long, (1784-1864), U.S. Army surveyor and engineer, born in Hopkinton, N.H.; led exploring expedition to Rocky Mountains 1819-20; explored and named Longs Peak; authority on railroads
Tombstone, Ariz., city in s.e. part of state, 21 mi (34 km) n.w. of Bisbee; health and tourist resort; formerly notable for mining of silver, gold, lead; named in 1877 by prospector Ed Schieffelin, who discovered silver in locality after he had been warned that all he would find here would be his tombstone; pop. 1,220
Transvaal, province of South Africa; 110,450 sq mi (286,100 sq km); cap. Pretoria; pop. 10,971,521 (including part of Bophuthatswana)
‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea’, novel by Jules Verne (1870); highly imaginative and at time of its writing seemingly impossible, but convincingly told, story of adventures in a seagoing vessel similar to the modern submarine
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (commonly called Soviet Union, formerly Russia), from 1917 to 1991 country of e. Europe and of w.-central and n. Asia; cap. Moscow
It is where civilization advances upon the wilderness; it is that thin geographical line where the old and the new, the tried and the untried, meet and reshape each other; it is often dangerous, always exciting. It is called the frontier.
The frontier is never stationary; it is always the moving, cutting edge of the civilization behind it into the wilderness ahead. Once it is settled, it is no longer frontier. But the frontier is not the wilderness: Vast stretches of open land, forest, and mountains provide the opportunity for a frontier to come into existence. And opportunity is what frontiers are all about. They represent a getting away from the old, with its limits and traditions, and a moving to a place where people can prosper on their own terms.
Frontiers come into existence in stages. First there is discovery. In the ancient world, Phoenicians sailed west from Palestine and founded colonies, of which Carthage is the most famous. Greeks from Athens and other city-states planted colonies in Sicily and southern Italy. But the greatest discovery was that made by Columbus at the end of the Middle Ages, when he arrived (unknown to himself) in the Western Hemisphere.
After discovery there is exploration. When the nations of Europe were presented with a New World of unknown extent, they sent explorers to investigate it, to search out its wealth, and in some cases to conquer it. Their names are legendary: Balboa, Cabeza de Vaca, Ponce de Leon, De Soto, Cortez, Pizarro, Coronado, Cabot, John Smith, Drake, Raleigh, Cartier, Hudson, La Salle, and many others.
Neither discoverers nor explorers create a frontier, however; pioneers do. They are the ones who forge ahead into the unknown with the intention of staying. Pioneers are the farmers, ranchers, and miners the creators of towns that grow into cities. Once these pioneers have established a frontier, and once the permanent buildings, schools, churches, businesses, and newspapers have been created, the frontier is gone. For the frontier has no future except to move on to somewhere else. Once all the “some where’s” are used up, the days of the frontier are over. Wilderness areas remain, but they are surrounded by and permeated with civilization.
Types of Frontiers
The word frontier has been used in such terms as “the frontiers of science” or “the frontiers of medicine.” Such expressions are colourful, and branches of knowledge do press on from the known to the unknown, but true frontiers are physical places to which portions of humankind have gone or hope to go.
This article in particular distinguishes three kinds of frontier: land, ocean, and space. Land is the most commonly understood type of frontier because it provides places that anyone with the means can reach on his or her own. Reaching frontiers in the oceans and in space requires sophisticated technology not available to everyone. But as the technological hurdles are overcome, even these frontiers now in the stages of discovery and exploration may become open to human habitation and enterprise. Then they will become real frontiers, rather than the trackless wilderness they now represent.
LAND FRONTIERS
In the past three centuries, several nations have had frontiers to settle, or at least to exploit for natural resources. Known the world over, the westward movement that took the United States from a string of East Coast settlements to the Pacific Ocean is certainly the most famous. But Canada, Australia, Russia, and South Africa, among other countries, have also had their frontiers.
The United States
Few events in history have had the impact upon the world that the opening of the New World did. It was seen by millions as the brightest hope for a humankind long stuck in restricted, unhappy societies, where opportunities for personal advancement seemed to dwindle with the passage of time. The American frontier was an escape and a place of hope for those willing and able to take their futures into their own hands.
Celebrated then and ever since in poetry, short stories, novels, drama, films, music, and paintings, the epic westward movement in the United States has never failed to excite the imaginations of people everywhere. Some arrived with eyes open and were happy with what they found. Many did not expect the real frontier. The real frontier was a hard place to live. Most of the normal expectations of life were missing. One made do with what was available, and normally that was very little. Grinding poverty was the living standard, at least until the frontier began to give way to civilization.
In the United States the frontier moved in stages, beginning with the Eastern settlements, the original 13 colonies. After the American Revolution, the pioneers gradually crossed the Appalachians and went into the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys, then, in the mid-19th century, across the Mississippi. Settlement did not proceed directly across the continent, however. Most of the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountain regions were temporarily bypassed in the rush to get to California. The rush was for gold, and the Mexican War had given California, along with the whole Southwest, to the United States. By the end of the 19th century the frontier had passed.
Manifest destiny. In July 1845, amidst all the agitation over getting Texas into the Union, editor John L. O’Sullivan of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review wrote an editorial in which he denounced other nations who had “the avowed object of thwarting our policy and hampering our power, limiting our greatness and checking the fulfilment of our manifest destiny to overspread the Continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.” This was probably the first use of the phrase “manifest destiny,” but the idea implied in the term was current long before 1845.
One of the grievances that led to the American Revolution was the attempt by Britain, as stated in the “Proclamation of 1763,” to prevent colonists from settling beyond the Appalachians. As soon as the Revolution had been won, the new government of the United States under the Articles of Confederation started making plans for the addition of new states. The demand for a well-defined policy over the western territories led to the passing of the Northwest Ordinance of July 13, 1787, which organized the northern portion of the Ohio Valley as dependent territories and made provision for the formation of new states.
This ordinance, along with preceding statutes that had been passed in 1784 and 1785, initiated a policy of land acquisition and organization that the United States followed until it reached the Pacific Coast. It was a policy that would breed virtually countless frontiers until 35 more states were added to the Union. In the mid-20th century, two more states Hawaii and Alaska were added.
Jefferson buys Louisiana. The first official exploration of the Far West began in 1803. In that year President Thomas Jefferson ordered Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to find the source of the Missouri River. Before their expedition began, word came that the United States had bought the enormous western territory called Louisiana from France.
In 1804 and 1805 Lewis and Clark led their party up to the source of the Missouri. They crossed the Rockies the western boundary of the Louisiana territory and went down the Columbia River to the Pacific coast.
In the winter of 1805 Zebulon Pike was sent up the Mississippi from St. Louis to find the river’s source. He did not discover the real source. It is in a district of lakes and swamps that was then under thick ice and snow. He did, however, bring back much information about the country above the mouth of the St. Peter’s, or Minnesota, River.
In the summer of 1806 Pike was sent out again, this time to find the sources of the Red River and the Arkansas River. Again he found neither, but he saw the great peak which has come to be known as Pikes Peak. He also visited the place where the Rio Grande rises in southern Colorado. Here he was arrested by Spanish soldiers for trespassing on Spanish territory. Nothing west of the Rio Grande could upon any claim be treated as a part of Louisiana. Pike was escorted half prisoner, half guest through New Mexico, the northern provinces of Mexico, and Texas. In 1807 he was returned unharmed to the American army post at Natchitoches. He published a book a little later that aroused the ambition of traders on the Missouri border to visit Santa Fe and capture the markets of the Spanish settlers.
Limits of the desert. The general area of the Far West was now known, but there was no rush of settlers to occupy it. Louisiana became a state in 1812, and Missouri did so in 1821. Three more states along the Mississippi Arkansas (1836), Iowa (1846), and Minnesota (1858) were admitted in time. West of Missouri there was no serious move for a new state until after 1850.
Meanwhile the United States accepted the verdict of the early explorers and of Stephen H. Long, who crossed the Great Plains in 1819 and 1820. Their opinion was that farmers could not make settlements in the country west of the states along the Mississippi. There were few trees to use in building homes. Rainfall was too scanty to grow crops. In some places the land was rocky and mountainous. Elsewhere there were bare rock and sand, bunch grass, and sagebrush. Schoolbooks called it the Great American Desert. It teemed with wild game. Buffalo herds grazed their way up the Plains each spring and down again each autumn. There were other animals whose numbers amazed those who visited the region. Indians followed the roving herds with fleet ponies descended from the animals the Spanish explorers had turned loose or had lost. The farming frontier developed east of the Mississippi and in the new states west of it. The Far West remained for several decades a land of Indians and wild game.
Continuing … ‘FRONTIER (Part 2 of 4)’
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Related articles: FEATURED ARTICLES, FRONTIER, CARTHAGE, ANCIENT GREECE, Christopher COLUMBUS, DISCOVERY AND COLONIZATION OF AMERICA, AMERICAN REVOLUTION, LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION, LOUISIANA PURCHASE, HISTORY OF THE FUR TRADE, AMERICAN INDIANS or NATIVE AMERICANS, Marcus WHITMAN, Kit CARSON, MEXICAN WAR, John Charles FREMONT, CALIFORNIA, EXPRESS, BUFFALO BILL, AUSTRALIA, SOUTH AFRICA, KAFFIR WARS, Paul KRUGER, APARTHEID, EXPLORATION, OCEAN, OCEANOGRAPHY, INTERNATIONAL LAW, SPACE TRAVEL
Tags: religious insight, frontier, ancient greece, discovery and colonization of america, ocean, express, exploration, space travel, california, history of the fur trade, john charles fremont, paul kruger, oceanography, buffalo bill, kaffir wars, australia, carthage, south africa, marcus whitman, international law, lewis and clark expedition, louisiana purchase, christopher columbus, kit carson, mexican war, american indians or native americans, apartheid, american revolution
