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Frederic L. Paxson - The Last American Frontier

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Frederic L. Paxson The Last American Frontier

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E-text prepared by Melissa McDaniel, Charlie Howard,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive
(https://archive.org)
Note:Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/fronlastamerican00paxsrich

STORIES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY

The Last American Frontier - image 1

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO
ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO

THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER BY FREDERIC LOGAN PAXSON JUNIOR PROFESSOR OF - photo 2

THE
LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER

BY
FREDERIC LOGAN PAXSON
JUNIOR PROFESSOR OF AMERICAN HISTORY
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

ILLUSTRATED

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1910
All rights reserved


Copyright, 1910,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1910.

Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.


PREFACE

I have told here the story of the last frontier within the United States, trying at once to preserve the picturesque atmosphere which has given to the Far West a definite and well-understood meaning, and to indicate those forces which have shaped the history of the country beyond the Mississippi. In doing it I have had to rely largely upon my own investigations among sources little used and relatively inaccessible. The exact citations of authority, with which I might have crowded my pages, would have been out of place in a book not primarily intended for the use of scholars. But I hope, before many years, to exploit in a larger and more elaborate form the mass of detailed information upon which this sketch is based.

My greatest debts are to the owners of the originals from which the illustrations for this book have been made; to Claude H. Van Tyne, who has repeatedly aided me with his friendly criticism; and to my wife, whose careful readings have saved me from many blunders in my text.

FREDERIC L. PAXSON.

Ann Arbor , August 7, 1909.


CONTENTS
PAGE
The Westward Movement
The Indian Frontier
Iowa and the New Northwest
The Santa F Trail
The Oregon Trail
Overland with the Mormons
California and the Forty-niners
Kansas and the Indian Frontier
Pikes Peak or Bust!
From Arizona to Montana
The Overland Mail
The Engineers Frontier
The Union Pacific Railroad
The Plains in the Civil War
The Cheyenne War
The Sioux War
The Peace Commission and the Open Way
Black Kettles Last Raid
The First of the Railways
The New Indian Policy
The Last Stand: Chief Joseph and Sitting Bull
Letting in the Population
Bibliographical Note

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The Prairie Schooner
PAGE
Map: Indian Country and Agricultural Frontier, 18401841
Chief Keokukfacing
Iowa Sod Plow. (From a Cut belonging to the Historical Department of Iowa.)
Map: Overland Trails
Fort Laramie, 1842facing
Map: The West in 1849
Map: The West in 1854
Ho for the Yellow Stonefacing
The Mining Camp
Fort Snelling
Red Cloud and Professor Marsh
Map: The West in 1863
Position of Reno on the Little Big Hornfacing
Map: The Pacific Railroads, 1884

THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER

CHAPTER I
THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT

The story of the United States is that of a series of frontiers which the hand of man has reclaimed from nature and the savage, and which courage and foresight have gradually transformed from desert waste to virile commonwealth. It is the story of one long struggle, fought over different lands and by different generations, yet ever repeating the conditions and episodes of the last period in the next. The winning of the first frontier established in America its first white settlements. Later struggles added the frontiers of the Alleghanies and the Ohio, of the Mississippi and the Missouri. The winning of the last frontier completed the conquest of the continent.

The greatest of American problems has been the problem of the West. For four centuries after the discovery there existed here vast areas of fertile lands which beckoned to the colonist and invited him to migration. On the boundary between the settlements and the wilderness stretched an indefinite line that advanced westward from year to year. Hardy pioneers were ever to be found ahead of it, blazing the trails and clearing in the valleys. The advance line of the farmsteads was never far behind it. And out of this shifting frontier between man and nature have come the problems that have occupied and directed American governments since their beginning, as well as the men who have solved them. The portion of the population residing in the frontier has always been insignificant in number, yet it has well-nigh controlled the nation. The dominant problems in politics and morals, in economic development and social organization, have in most instances originated near the frontier or been precipitated by some shifting of the frontier interest.

The controlling influence of the frontier in shaping American problems has been possible because of the construction of civilized governments in a new area, unhampered by institutions of the past or conservative prejudices of the present. Each commonwealth has built from the foundation. An institution, to exist, has had to justify itself again and again. No force of tradition has kept the outlawed fact alive. The settled lands behind have in each generation been forced to remodel their older selves upon the newer growths beyond.

Individuals as well as problems have emerged from the line of the frontier as it has advanced across a continent. In the conflict with the wilderness, birth, education, wealth, and social standing have counted for little in comparison with strength, vigor, and aggressive courage. The life there has always been hard, killing off the weaklings or driving them back to the settlements, and leaving as a result a picked population not noteworthy for its culture or its refinements, but eminent in qualities of positive force for good or bad. The bad man has been quite as typical of the frontier as the hero, but both have possessed its dominant virtues of self-confidence, vigor, and initiative. Thus it has been that the men of the frontiers have exerted an influence upon national affairs far out of proportion to their strength in numbers.

The influence of the frontier has been the strongest single factor in American history, exerting its power from the first days of the earliest settlements down to the last years of the nineteenth century, when the frontier left the map. No other force has been continuous in its influence throughout four centuries. Men still live whose characters have developed under its pressure. The colonists of New England were not too early for its shaping.

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