Research Center

Introduction

Beginning in the 1830s and continuing into the 1890s, the United States Army acted as the federal government's principal agent of expansion into the western frontier. One historian writes, "At any given time during this period, fewer than 12,000 soldiers occupied the region exceeding 2 million square miles and occupied some 200,000 Native Americans. Except during major campaigns, the troops remained scattered in units of 50-200 men at more than 100 posts, forts, and cantonments across the frontier."

"The frontier is the outer edge of the wave," writes historian Frederick Jackson Turner, "the meeting-point between savagery and civilization...the line of most rapid and effective Americanization." It was the U.S. Army's role to facilitate this Americanization and expansion into the western frontier. In the quarter century following the Civil War, the Army's operational experience came to be known as the Indian Wars era.

In the years preceding the Civil War, expressions of the urge to expand into the Western frontier can be found in publications of the day. John Louis O'Sullivan wrote in the July-August 1845 issue of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, "Our manifest destiny is to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions." One day in 1851 John Babsone Lane Soule coined the slogan "Go West, young man and grow with the country" in a rather obscure Indiana newspaper called the Terre Haute Express. Horace Greeley, editor of the nationally distributed New York Tribune, popularized the slogan beginning with an 1865 editorial. This phrase became a mantra for manifest destineers and expansionists into the western frontier.

As increasing numbers heeded the call to "Go West," conflicts with Native Americans escalated. Prior to the Civil War, these conflicts were limited in scope and occurred at a time when the Native American could withdraw or be forced into the frontier. But, by 1865 this "safety valve" was being compromised by multiple travel routes and settlements across the frontier. Inevitably a guerrilla war, characterized by skirmishes, pursuits, massacres, raids, expeditions, battles and campaigns, ensued.

When the eleventh Census was taken June 1, 1890, the population of United States was calculated to be 62,622,250. The U.S. Census Bureau's Bulletin No. 12 of April 1891 stated that the frontier line of settlement was "so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line.... It cannot, therefore, any longer have a place in the census reports." In effect the frontier of the United States no longer existed and, therefore, the tracking of westward migration would no longer be tabulated in the census.

This trend prompted Frederick Jackson Turner to develop his milestone Frontier Thesis which he presented at the World Columbian Exposition in 1893. One historian characterizes this thesis, "For Turner, continental expansion, symbolized by the ever moving frontier creating more free land, was the driving, dynamic factor of American progress. It had been since Christopher Columbus, and remained so until the Census Bureau erased the frontier with the keystroke of a typewriter. Without the economic energy created by expanding the frontier, he warned, America's political and social institutions would stagnate. If one adhered to this way of thinking, America must expand or die."

This exhibit conveys social and cultural facets of military life in the frontier west through images, quotations, and texts derived from the resources of the Dickinson Research Center. While not a balanced accounting of life due to a focus on the military and a lack of a Native American perspective, the exhibit does explicate the political context for the "Indian Question" issue, the consequent jurisdictional problem faced by the executive and legislative branches of the federal government, and its effect on the lives of both soldiers and Indians on the frontier.

With the closing of the United States frontier, one could pose rhetorical questions about other frontiers and who might be involved in their exploration. Can you think of other geographic frontiers that will be and are being explored? The oceans? Though the oceans cover 70% of the Earth's surface, scientists estimate that only 5% has been explored so far.

Space, "the final [and ultimate] frontier," is another obvious answer. One commentator writes "The exploration of Space creates unlimited opportunities for turning billions of people's dreams into realities. To make space exploration possible, our leaders need the public's acceptance of the dangers & opportunities: The major elements for space exploration are antimatter energy, space facilities, spacecraft, science & technology, and economic goals."

What role, if any, will the military have in space exploration? Do you think colonies will be established on the moon? on Mars? Will the military provide the security for their colonization? In what ways are the exploration and permanent human settlement of the space frontier comparable to the exploration, "taming", and settlement of the West? If encountered, how would extraterrestrials and their worlds be treated?

In today's world do you see any parallels and/or dissimilarities between the soldiers' lives in the Army of the West and those deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan? Do you think both their lives were and are dedicated to providing and defending "Homeland Security?"