Question

Frontier Thesis By Frederick Jackson Turner

1. Explain Turner’s comment that the frontier was a “meeting point between savagery and civilization”? Do you agree with his statement? Why or why not?

2. What did Turner mean by “European germs”? Hint: it does not have to do with spreading disease amongst the Indians.

3. Turner claimed that American Democracy changed as it ventured West. In fact, he saw American Democracy as wholly different from European Democracy thanks to the influence of the West. What do you think he meant by this?

4. Turner mentioned that the closing of the frontier was also the closing of the “first period of American history.” What do you think he meant by that and what period of America do you think came next?

Answer 1

• 1.Turner really dates himself in how he defines the frontier. By saying it is the boundary between civilization and savagery, he is implying that anything untouched by white men cannot possibly be civilized. In his section about Lewis and Clark, he seems to regard their notes on the Indian tribes to be nothing more than data to be lumped together with their botanical and geographical survey data.
  
• Turner means that the frontier is the border between the land that the settlers already knew and the land that they had yet to discover. He defines the frontier as "the meeting point between savagery and civilization"
• This meaning of frontier relates to what it means to be American in that it references westward expansion and civilization that made America the land and country that it is. It references the people who risked their lives and livelihoods and who came out west to make a better life for themselves and their families.
• Unfortunately, Turner's view of the frontier fits precisely with what it means to be an American. We fear and diminish that which we do not understand, and we expand to conquer people of a different skin color.
• Like it or not, that is what it means to be an American. Especially in the 1800s, our expansionist ideals were taken to the extreme, and to justify our conquest, we had to paint those on the other side of the frontier as savages.
• Sadly enough, Turner's piece fits pretty well with my existing notions about the American west. I always imagined it as one of the darker parts of being american, up there with the internment camps in WW2, and Turner's piece plays exactly into that perception. We as americans are so blinded by our expansionism in the 1800s that we lose sight of our humanity.
• Due to time limit,remaining questions can be asked as another question,they will be answered,thankyou for your cooperation