Frontier

“ Our frontier-men, although brave in council and action, and possessing an intelligence that quickens in the face of danger, are apt to feel shy of the pen. They shun the atmosphere of the student's closet; their sphere is in the free and open wilderness. ”

“ The frontier was the place and the time of the strong man, of the self-sufficient but restless individual. It was the home of the rebel, the protestant, the unreconciled, the intolerant, the ardent—and the resolute. ”

“ In this advance, the frontier is the outer edge of the wave—the meeting point between savagery and civilization. Much has been written about the frontier from the point of view of border warfare and the chase, but as a field for the serious study of the economist and the historian it has been neglected.
The American frontier is sharply distinguished from the European frontier—a fortified boundary line running through dense populations. The most significant thing about the American frontier is, that it lies at the hither edge of free land. ”

“ What the Mediterranean Sea was to the Greeks, breaking the bond of custom, offering new experiences, calling out new institutions and activities, that, and more, the ever retreating frontier has been to the United States directly, and to the nations of Europe more remotely. And now, four centuries from the discovery of America, at the end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution, the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history. ”

“ It is the spirit of the frontier which is described, and one can by it, perhaps, the better understand why men, and women, too, willingly braved every privation and danger that the westward progress of the star of empire might be the more certain and rapid. ”

“ Always in America we have occupied the land as fast as it was feasible to do so. We have survived incredible hardships on the mining frontier, have lived through desperate social conditions in the cow country, have fought many of our bravest battles in the Indian country. Always it has been the frontier which has allured many of our boldest souls. ”

“ Encumbered with their arms, accoutrements, baggage, and provisions, at the very outskirts of a wild and untravelled forest, two hundred miles of the rockiest and sternest country imaginable stretching between them and the French settlements on the frontier, with fierce river currents and precipitous torrents offering their obstacles to their daily progress, it would not have been very much to be wondered at, if many of them had given out at the first appearance of such astounding difficulties and dangers. ”

“ CHAPTER XI OLD FORT DEARBORN It makes my old head dizzy to recall the events of that hour across the years that have intervened. Possibly I, as I write these words, am the only person living who has looked upon that old stockade and taken part in its tragic history. What a marvellous change has less than a century witnessed! Once the outermost guard of our western frontier, it is now the site of one of the great cities of two continents. ”

“ Moving westward, the frontier became more and more American. As successive terminal moraines result from successive glaciations, so each frontier leaves its traces behind it, and when it becomes a settled area the region still partakes of the frontier characteristics. Thus the advance of the frontier has meant a steady movement away from the influence of Europe, a steady growth of independence on American lines. And to study this advance, the men who grew up under these conditions, and the political, economic, and social results of it, is to study the really American part of our history. ”

“ We had arrived at Landrecies, near enough the Frontier to excite us.
I wonder if you realise at home what the Frontier meant to us at first? We conceived it as a thing guarded everywhere by intermittent patrols of men staring carefully towards Germany and Belgium in the darkness, a thing to be defended at all costs, at all times, to be crossed with triumph and recrossed with shame. ”

“ From the conditions of frontier life came intellectual traits of profound importance. The works of travelers along each frontier from colonial days onward describe certain common traits, and these traits have, while softening down, still persisted as survivals in the place of their origin, even when a higher social organization succeeded. The result is that to the frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics. ”

“ That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; [37:1] that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom—these are traits of the frontier, or traits called out elsewhere because of the existence of the frontier. ”

“ But he knew from long experience that on the frontier—the ragged edge of civilization—where life is wild and strenuous, only strong men could succeed; men sound in limb, keen in intellect, and thoroughly consecrated to the Master's cause. ”

“ For without again touching on the question—do they, or do they not, vary from each other in point of time by twenty-three and by thirty years—it will be admitted by everybody that, at any rate, the three events stand equally upon the frontier line of authentic history. A frontier or debateable land is always of some breadth. ”

“ The fall line marked the frontier of the seventeenth century; the Alleghanies that of the eighteenth; the Mississippi that of the first quarter of the nineteenth; the Missouri that of the middle of this century (omitting the California movement) ; and the belt of the Rocky Mountains and the arid tract, the present frontier. Each was won by a series of Indian wars.
At the Atlantic frontier one can study the germs of processes repeated at each successive frontier. We have the complex European life sharply precipitated by the wilderness into the simplicity of primitive conditions. ”

“ In this connection it is interesting to note that in the wilds of our north one may still see the following stages of frontier life as they exist side by side, sometimes overlapping and crosscutting one another. ”

“ Location on a frontier involves remoteness from the center of national, cultural, and political activities; these reach their greatest intensity in the core of the nation and exercise only an attenuated influence on the far-away borders, unless excellent means of communication keep up a circulation of men, commodities, and ideas between center and periphery. ”

“ No one who has ever known the joy of hunting impressions of strange peoples and strange lands in the out-of-the-way corners of the world can ever feel quite free again, for he hears always a compelling voice that "calls him night and day" to go forth on the chase once more. Years ago, for a beginning, I pursued impressions and experiences in the Far West on the frontier,—there was a frontier then. ”

“ All the stages of social development went on under the eye of the traveler as he passed from the frontier towards the east. Such were the forces which were steadily pushing their way into the American wilderness, as they had pushed for generations. ”

“ Oh, the frontier is only the difference between two ways of looking at things. ”

“ I think it will be useless for us to try and reach the frontier by land. At every town and village they will be on the look-out for fugitives, and whatever disguise you might adopt you could not escape observation. I think, then, that we must make for the sea and hire a fishing-boat to take us across to England. ”

“ These frontier folk, the people of the up-country, or back-country, who lived near and among the forest-clad mountains, far away from the long-settled districts of flat coast plain and sluggish tidal river, were known to themselves and to others as backwoodsmen. ”

“ In short, at the frontier the environment is at first too strong for the man. ”

“ The rough and crude form of frontier life reacted upon the entire people, and left an imprint which many generations will not entirely eradicate. As long as the frontier remained there was continual contact with the new and primitive. ”

“ Again and again he breaks his narrative to tell of the seemingly impossible stretches of forest, stream, and mountains. At the frontier, he is charmed by the contrast between society of the fort and that of the surrounding country. He says,
Three social periods could not have been traversed more quickly. ”

“ The foregoing volumes are of course but a few among the many scores or hundreds which will have been read avidly by every man concerned with frontier life or with the expansion of the American people to the West. ”

“ Sitting in our little island, we are apt to forget what it means to possess a purely artificial frontier of 400 miles, and to see just beyond it a neighbour numbering 171,000,000 inhabitants, in an earlier stage of civilisation and capable of being set in motion by causes which no longer operate in the western world. ”

“ These are some of the movements of individuals and groups which contribute to the blending of races along every frontier, and make of the boundary a variable zone, as opposed to the rigid artificial line in terms of which we speak. ”

“ The significance of our frontier has not been recognized except in social science. Fortunately its advance is well marked. The movement of the military frontier is preserved in monuments and military post buildings throughout the west. Court-house corner stones record the advance of law and order, we may say, the legal frontier—its earliest landmarks in the far west in the form of prominent trees, high bridges, 292and projecting beams, being pointed out with modest pride by the early inhabitants as memorials of Judge Lynch and the Vigilantes. ”

“ The term frontier today would be a misnomer. There is no frontier. The immense areas of wild and waste country that then existed has vanished before the tide of civilization and settlement. The present generation can never realize the vast changes. ”

“ It is the purpose of this paper to present a sketch of the life and people of this frontier region as the writer has become familiar with them, depicting the types and manners of mankind, and leaving for more profound narrators the matters of statistical detail.
Social estimation and intercourse on the frontier are based upon a very short acquaintance. A large and catholic charity presumes every man to be that which he desires to appear. ”

“ They reach out toward every mountain pass leading to some choice ultramontane highway. Bulges or projecting angles of their frontier indicate the path they plan to follow, and always include or aim at some natural feature which will facilitate their territorial growth. ”

“ The frontier line is necessarily arbitrary and artificial. Friends and kinsmen find themselves separated one from another; villages divided from their natural markets by the barrier of a French customs system. ”

“ As the country was growing by the expansive drive of which the frontier was the cutting edge, it was also growing up, both behind and on the frontier. The process of maturing is as significant as that of expanding. ”

“ She is separated from every other foreign country and joined to every other part of the British Empire by the sea alone. Her land frontier is long and has given cause for much dispute in times of crisis. ”

“ He will find the roads almost everywhere to cease or to be made impassable by native pig-fences, bridges to be quite unknown, and houses of the whites to become at once a rare exception. Set aside the German plantations, and the frontier is sharp. ”

“ As illustrations of the picturesque nomadic life of the frontiersman, these works are unique and unrivaled. They represent vividly the wild romance of the prairies, enchanting barbarism of hunter and trapper life, and the glowing scenery with which the West abounds. ”

“ Defence of the frontier.—The missionaries were highly useful likewise as explorers and as diplomatic agents amongst the tribes. As defenders of the frontier they held the allegiance of the neophytes and secured their aid against savages and foreign intruders. ”

“ Fortunately 3000 miles of undefended frontier in North America constitute a fact of good omen, though, to be quite frank, it would signify more if the countries which that frontier has separated had been less unequal ”

“ The arrangements that may be necessary for those angles and fractions of our territory which lie on our northwestern frontier, must be left to those whom further discoveries and experience will render more equal to the task. ”

“ I followed his advice in regard to these stories, and, after brushing away the cobwebs from many a forgotten volume, have been able to give you the accurate histories of several important frontiersmen and heroes of the border. These tales are all true and are vouched for by early historians. All that I hope is that I have served them up to you in a manner that is interesting and is not dull. ”