“ . . . [In 1893] Frederick Jackson Turner presented to the American Historical Association his essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” The essay’s thesis was startlingly simple: ‘The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development. . . . The frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization.’”

Davy Crockett

It is possible to admire someone for some of their actions, and revile them for others. Many people today want to make simple judgments of historical figures and events. Thomas Jefferson was either a hero because he wrote the Declaration of Independence or a villain because he held slaves. In reality, he was a complex figure with both good and bad traits that must be understood in the context of his life and times.

Similarly, the history of America’s Westward Expansion has been both idealized and vilified. It should be possible to admire the courage and curiosity of the explorers and settlers of the west, while at the same time criticizing the massacres of Native Americans that occurred as a result of the same westward push.

In the context of what it means to be an American today, we must examine the values that we inherit from the pioneers and frontiersmen, and how they relate to the future of our nation in the world.

In 1607, the colony of Jamestown was founded in Virginia. In 1620, the Mayflower carrying the Pilgrims landed in what is now Massachusetts. These two colonies set three important precedents that would affect the future of America for the next several hundred years: the Mayflower Compact, signed by the Pilgrims, was an early document establishing religious freedom and self-determination; interaction with the Native Americans, both peaceful and violent, and the transmission of deadly Old World diseases like smallpox.

The first travelers also brought with them a unique mindset. The journey to the New World carried tremendous risks, and life in the early colonies was harsh. Still, these settlers were willing to risk their lives for freedom (or gold, in the case of Jamestown).

In 1784, John Filson published “The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boon” as part of a book on the settlement of Kentucky. Daniel Boone soon became one of America’s earliest folk heroes. In 1776, Boone rescued his daughter and two other kidnapped teenage girls from and Indian war party, an event that was later fictionalized in 1826 in the Last of the Mohicans by James Fenmore Cooper.

Boone truly lived a life of exploration and adventure, and his deeds were exaggerated into legends within his lifetime. He became an icon for the frontier man, a rugged individualist who lives beyond the yoke of civilization. The newly formed nation had one of its first heroes.

After the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, a new generation of explorers trekked into the West. Louis and Clark were the first Americans to travel overland to the Pacific Coast. Zebulon Pike traveled through the Midwest and Southwest. Jedediah Smith explored the Southwest and made contact with the Spanish authorities in California (who threw him in jail). He was released on the condition that he leave the area. He ignored the authorities and continued exploring until he was killed by Comanches near modern day Ulysses, Kansas. [Read about these guys. Some of these dudes were serious badasses. - Ed. ]

The next figure to capture the American imagination was Davy Crockett. He was a woodsman for much of his young life after running away from home and school at age 12. He served in the Tennessee militia against the Creek Indians. He served in the US House of Representatives, and opposed the powerful Andrew Jackson on Indian Removal. He died in Texas in the famous last stand at the Alamo in 1836. The legend of Davy Crockett faded in the early 1900s before it was revived by a Disney mini-series (which I watched as a kid).

Just as with Daniel Boone, the exploits of Davy Crockett were exaggerated in popular culture. The influence of both figures lies less in what they did, and more in how their legends influenced American identity.

Both men enjoyed good relationships with most of the Native Americans they encountered, but that did not stop others from using their myths, Boone’s in particular to justify violence against native populations. As Wikipedia notes:

In John A. McClung’s Sketches of Western Adventure (1832), for example, Boone was portrayed as longing for the “thrilling excitement of savage warfare.” Boone was transformed in the popular imagination into someone who regarded Indians with contempt and had killed scores of the ‘savages’.

The remainder of the 1800s, particularly after the Civil War, was filled with the rugged figures that brought American into the West. Mountain men, prospectors, lawmen, outlaws and cowboys all lived legendary lives, and instilled generations of Americans with a strong individualism, a love of freedom, and a distrust of authority.

In the early 1900s, President Teddy Roosevelt emodied the American spirit. He was a prominent conservationist, began construction of the Panama Canal, and won a Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating and end to the Russo-Japanese war in 1906. After serving as President, he went on an African safari in 1909, at the age of 51. In 1912, he ran as a third party candidate and received 27% of the vote- more than the incumbent Taft. He was shot while on the campaign trail . . .

. . .but the bullet lodged in his chest only after penetrating both his steel eyeglass case and passing through a thick (50 pages) single-folded copy of the speech he was carrying in his jacket. Roosevelt, as an experienced hunter and anatomist, correctly concluded that since he wasn’t coughing blood the bullet had not completely penetrated the chest wall to his lung, and so declined suggestions he go to the hospital immediately. Instead, he delivered his scheduled speech with blood seeping into his shirt.

In 1913, he went on an expedition through the Amazon, where he contracted malaria and nearly died. He died in 1919 after losing a son in WWI.

Roosevelt was far from perfect. His ideas on race were not exactly progressive, and he believed too much in the glory of war. Still, he had many traits to be admired.

Even though the frontier was mostly gone by the turn of the century, America had not seen the last of its explorer heroes. The next generation of frontiersmen would travel the skies.

In 1947, Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier. He had broken his ribs two days before, but refused to tell his commanders because he was afraid they would pull him from the mission. Instead, he and a friend rigged a mechanism with a broom handle that allowed him to close the door and complete the flight.

John Glenn flew in WWII and Korea (where he flew with baseball star Ted Williams). When he returned to the US, he served as a military test pilot before joining NASA in 1959.

In 1962, Glenn became a national hero when he became the first American to orbit the Earth as part of the Mercury space program.

In 1969, Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin trumped them all by landing on the moon as part of the Apollo program.

That was 40 years ago. Where have all the frontiersmen gone?

Other countries have explorers, but America is the only one to make exploration part of its national mythos. Our heroes were men and women who went into the unknown. Not content to accept a stereotypical life, they were willing to die in order to see what lay beyond the next hill, over the next rise, or on the next world.

Nearly all the frontiers on earth are gone now. The generation of potential explorers born to the twenty first century have little left to explore. There will come a time, hopefully soon, when our technology opens the final frontier of space to human exploration and eventually, habitation. Will the blood of the pioneers and cowboys that flowed through our national veins still run in those explorers of the future? Or will we let wanderlust and daring die out, dusty relics of a bygone age?