Frederick Jackson Turner 
Keren Wallace
Mr. Dement
US History
January 21, 2015
The Significance of the Frontier in American History
1. How does Frederick Jackson Turner define “frontier”? He gives a definition of the frontier: “it lies at the hither edge of free land”, meaning that he considers the Indian territory to be free land. According to him the frontier is the “meeting point between savagery and civilization”, “the most rapid and effective Americanization”.
2. What does Turner mean when he says that American development has “exhibited advanced along a single line, but a return to primitive conditions on a continually advancing frontier line”? “It finds him a European in dress, industries, tools, modes of travel, and thought. It takes him from the railroad car and puts him in the birch canoe. It strips off the garments of civilization and arrays him in the hunting shirt and the moccasin. It puts him in the log cabin of the Cherokee and Iroquois and runs an Indian palisade around him, Before long he has gone to planting Indian corn and plowing with a sharp stick; he shouts the war cry and takes the scalp in orthodox Indian fashion. In short, at the frontier the environment is at first too strong for the man. He must accept the conditions which it furnishes, or perish, and so he fits himself into the Indian clearings and follows the Indian trials. Little by little he transforms the wilderness, but the outcome is not the old Europe.... The fact is, that here is a new product that is American.”
3. In what sense does the United States lie “like a huge page in the history of society”? Turner inscribed his version of history, marking out his concept of the West as the key to American development. He believed that the nation needed a coherent, integrated story of its beginnings and its development. “It begins with the Indian and the hunter; it goes on to tell of the disintegration of savagery by the entrance of the trader, the pathfinder of civilization”
4. How has the frontier
Mr. Dement
US History
January 21, 2015
The Significance of the Frontier in American History
1. How does Frederick Jackson Turner define “frontier”? He gives a definition of the frontier: “it lies at the hither edge of free land”, meaning that he considers the Indian territory to be free land. According to him the frontier is the “meeting point between savagery and civilization”, “the most rapid and effective Americanization”.
2. What does Turner mean when he says that American development has “exhibited advanced along a single line, but a return to primitive conditions on a continually advancing frontier line”? “It finds him a European in dress, industries, tools, modes of travel, and thought. It takes him from the railroad car and puts him in the birch canoe. It strips off the garments of civilization and arrays him in the hunting shirt and the moccasin. It puts him in the log cabin of the Cherokee and Iroquois and runs an Indian palisade around him, Before long he has gone to planting Indian corn and plowing with a sharp stick; he shouts the war cry and takes the scalp in orthodox Indian fashion. In short, at the frontier the environment is at first too strong for the man. He must accept the conditions which it furnishes, or perish, and so he fits himself into the Indian clearings and follows the Indian trials. Little by little he transforms the wilderness, but the outcome is not the old Europe.... The fact is, that here is a new product that is American.”
3. In what sense does the United States lie “like a huge page in the history of society”? Turner inscribed his version of history, marking out his concept of the West as the key to American development. He believed that the nation needed a coherent, integrated story of its beginnings and its development. “It begins with the Indian and the hunter; it goes on to tell of the disintegration of savagery by the entrance of the trader, the pathfinder of civilization”
4. How has the frontier