Frontier myth

The frontier myth or frontier tall tales is a term given to the popular romanticization of the Wild West frontier.

Origins

In the United States, the frontier was the term applied to the zone of unsettled land outside the region of existing settlements of Americans. In a broad sense, the notion of the frontier was the edge of the settled country where unlimited free land was available and thus unlimited opportunity.

Being a frontiersman in the so-called Wild West, a cowboy, rancher or gold miner were idealized within American mystery. Mark Twain colorfully related that accounts gold strikes in the popular press had supported the feverish expansion of the mining frontier and provoked mining “stampedes” during the 1860s and 1870s: “Every few days news would come of the discovery of a brand-new mining region: immediately the papers would teem with accounts of its richness, and away the surplus population would scamper to take possession…” ^[1]

Similarly the life of the hardy cowboy driving dusty herds of longhorns northward from Texas to the cattle markets Abilene and Dodge City, Kansas, was romanticized by the eastern press. This transformed the cattle industry until the late 1870s. The former image of cowboys as ne’er-do-well and drifter changed significantly. They were now glorified as men of rough-hewn integrity and self-reliant strength. ^[2]

There were two ‘Wests’ – the real West in which farmers, ranchers, miners and prostitutes and criminals pursued their happiness and the legendary West that took deep root in the American imagination. ^[3] Western novels, or cowboy novels, portrayed the west as both a barren landscape and a romanticized idealistic way of living.

Enduring myths

Today’s legends like Wild Bill and Calamity Jane, Jesse James' gang, Buffalo Bill, famous gunfighters such as Isom Dart are still present myth of this era, e.g. in books of Theodore Roosevelt, Frederic Remington and Owen Wister, or in comics like Lucky Luke. Needless to say, the western myth was far removed from reality of the West. Often movies, comics and American literature neglect to show the hard physical labor of cattle range. Silence was kept about the brutalities of Indian warfare, racism towards Mexican-Americans (Mexicans were not accepted as free Whites) and Blacks and the boom-and-bust mentality rooted in the selfish exploitation of natural resources. ^[4]

But, by the turn of the century, thriving farms, ranches, mines and cities of the Wild West would help the U. S. into one of the world’s most prosperous nations. This describes the American myth regarding the frontiersmen of the late 19th century.

References

1. ^ Twain, Mark. Roughing It. 1872
2. ^ The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People. Fifth Edition. Ed. Boyer;Clark, Jr.; Kett; Salisbury; Sitkoff; Woloch. Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004, p. 533.
3. ^ The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People. Fifth Edition. Ed. Boyer;Clark, Jr.; Kett; Salisbury; Sitkoff; Woloch. Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004., p. 536.
4. ^ The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People. Fifth Edition. Ed. Boyer;Clark, Jr.; Kett; Salisbury; Sitkoff; Woloch. Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004., p. 537.

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