I'm not real familiar with "blogging", so I wasn't sure how to approach this, I guess I will just point out a few things I found to be quite interesting. The first thing is that Turner writes "The Frontier is the line of most rapid an effectiveness Americanization. The wilderness masters the colonists." I think this is very true, and worded well. What I took from this part of the reading is that Turner was describing how all the somewhat industrialized colonists from the east had to work hard to adapt to new lives in the west. This new frontier was probably like moving to an entirely new country. Everything would have been different. They would have had to learn how to hunt and farm just to survive. In Turner's words describing the frontier, "He must accept the conditions which it furnishes, or perish, and so he fits himself into Indian clearings and follows Indian trails".
I think this reading assignment was very informational, but I would like to know more about how the new settlers adapted. I'm assuming that the new westerners had a hard time learning from the Indians. If I were an Indian I wouldn't be too happy about these people invading my land. Turner states that the U.S Army had fought a series of Indian wars in Minnesota, Dakota, and other Indian territory, and by 1880 the settlers had moved as far north as Michigan and Wisconsin. Ten years later, settlement of the west was so scattered, there was no longer an actual frontier line.
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The blogging thing is definitely new to me too, but in a way it's kind of fun. Well, who ever says writing an essay is fun haha, but it feels more relaxed and a little less stressful. And at first I felt strange knowing the whole class could read whatever I wrote, but now I’m really glad because by reading what everyone else wrote and talking about it, I can understand and get into the subject so much more.
ReplyDeleteI liked what you pointed out in the first paragraph, the quote from Turner- "The frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization. The wilderness masters the colonist." Though I read the essay many times trying to understand and stay focused, I think I must have totally not thought much about that part. It's so interesting to think of it that way though. You did a great job in pointing that out, it that gave me a whole new perspective. In my response I wrote that I wished Turner would have included more about the Native Americans and how they helped shape what the world has become today, not just about the land itself. At first thinking and reading so much about a frontier didn't sound very interesting to me, but it's so much more then I thought. I know how hard it can be to adapt to a new place, and how you "must accept the conditions which it furnishes, or perish" so to say.
Great post it really gave me something to think about!
Mike you are right in that the frontier had to have been like going to another country. People in America had done it once when they came over to the new world and they were doing it again when they started to expand the America west ward. Not all people that went west had to learn to hunt and fish most people knew that stuff before they left their homes. What most people needed to learn was what new foods there were in the west. What berries were poisonous and which ones were eatable. What animals were easier to hunt. Not all people had a hard time living with the Indians. Most Indians were not the waring type they showed white people how to farm the land and how to live in harmony
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