COUNTRY LIFE IN THE WEST 29 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER IN 

 AMERICAN HISTORY 1 



FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER 



THE Atlantic frontier was compounded of fisherman, fur 

 trader, miner, cattle raiser, and farmer. Excepting the fisher- 

 man, each type of industry was on the march toward the West, 

 impelled by an irresistible attraction. Each passed in succes- 

 sive waves across the continent. Stand at the Cumberland Gap 

 and watch the procession of civilization, marching single file 

 the buffalo following the trail to the salt springs, the Indian, the 

 fur trader and hunter, the cattle-raiser, the pioneer farmer and 

 the frontier has passed by. Stand at the South Pass in the 

 Rockies a century later and see the same procession with wider 

 intervals between. The unequal rate of advance compels us to 

 distinguish the frontier into the trader's frontier, the rancher's 

 frontier, or the miner's frontier, and the farmer's frontier. 

 When the mines and the cow pens were still near the fall line, 

 the trader's pack trains were tinkling across the Alleghanies, 

 and the French on the Great Lakes were fortifying their posts, 

 alarmed by the British trader's birch canoe. When the trappers 

 scaled the Rockies the farmer was still near the mouth of the 

 Missouri. 



And yet, in spite of the opposition of the interests of the 

 trader and the farmer, the Indian trade pioneered the way for 

 civilization. The buffalo trail became the Indian trail, and 

 this became the trader's " trace"; the trails widened into roads, 

 and the roads into turnpikes, and these in turn were transformed 

 into railroads. The same origin can be shown for the railroads 

 of the South, the Far West, and the Dominion of Canada. The 

 trading posts reached by these trails were on the sites of Indian 

 villages which had been placed in positions suggested by nature ; 

 and these trading posts, situated so as to command the water 

 systems of the country, have grown into such cities as Albany, 

 Pittsburg, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Council Bluffs, and Kan- 

 sas City. 



i Adapted from American Historical Association Report, pp. 199-227, 

 Boston, 1893. 



