Comparison of Two Authors and Their Views of the American Frontier

Comparison of Two Authors and Their Views of the American Frontier:

Before I begin to give my personal opinion of the stories written by the authors Fredrick Jackson Turner and Patricia Limerick, I think I would only be fair if we did a little research on each author. This will be able to give us a general idea of what type of people they really were and why their writings show conflicted interest.

First lets take a look at Fredrick J. Turner the author of “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”. Site www.bgsu.edu, created by Jeffrey B. Flagg states, ”Frederick Jackson Turner was born in Portage, Wisconsin, on November 14, 1861, the oldest of three children born to a family whose lineage could be traced back to English Puritans from the seventeenth century. After early work as a newspaper editor, Turner entered the University of Wisconsin in 1880” http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/acs/1890s/turner/turner.html

During this time period technology that provided communication, transportation, and photographic imagery was very limited. These tools would have possibly given the people around this time period a different perspective of how to accept those of other cultures. For instance, in the third paragraph of Turners passage he writes, “In this advance, the frontier is the outer edge of the wave—the meeting point between savagery and civilization”(Turner pg#1). It seems as though the author is relating the unknown boundaries of the frontier territory to an area that should be feared by those whom have accepted and exercised the American standards of living.

Next lets observe the background of Patricia Nelson author of “Adventures of the Frontier in the Twentieth Century”. www.centerwest.org posts “Limerick was born and raised in Banning, California, and graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1972. She received her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University in 1980, and from 1980 to 1984 she was an Assistant Professor of History at Harvard.” http://www.centerwest.org/about/patty/index.php#

Taking a stance against Fredrick J. Turners views of the American frontier nearly one hundred years later may have been a aspect that has greatly working in her favor. During this time period technology was available that could help close that gap of “ignorance”, and help to bring people from different backgrounds and cultures closer together. Bringing a different point of view which not only focuses on “White Americans” advancing towards the west and “Indian tribes” that stood in their way, but other races of people that inhabited these territories as well. For example Limerick writes, “the idea of the frontier runs almost entirely on an east-to-west track. Indeed, to most of it’s users, the term “frontier” has been a synonym for the American nation’s westward movement. Can such a term do justice to the prior presence of the Indian people, to the northward movement of Spanish-speaking people, or the eastward movement of Asians? The east-to-west movement of Anglo Americans and African Americans is enormously important, but so are these movements of other people.”(Limerick pg#495). The suggestion that the expansion of the American frontier not only took place amongst the “White Americans” opens a whole new avenue for discussion and history that needed to be exposed to the public during Turners time period.