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assertions that frontier peoples were self-sufficient and their
democratic institutions vital.
Richard White (1991) insisted that the West, more so
than any other region, had been “historically a depen-
dency of the federal government.” Donald Worster (1992)
contended that its predominant economy—cattle-raising
and irrigation agriculture—was developed mostly by
large corporations.
During the past two decades, moreover, many schol-
ars have asked the following question: How can anyone
claim that the frontier promoted democratic sensibilities if
it came at the cost of dispossessing the Indians—missing
from the photograph—who had previously ranged over
this land?Source: Donald Worster, Under Western Skies(1992); Richard White, It’s Your
Misfortune and None of My Own(1991); Peggy Pascoe, Relations of Rescue: The
Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West, 1874–1939(1990); Patricia
Limerick,Legacy of Conquest(1988); and Elliot West, The Contested Plains(1998).T
his 1887 photograph depicts a family in Custer County,
Nebraska. They have begun to build a house (center),
which suggests some optimism, yet their isolation and the
rude dugout (upper left) illustrates their vulnerability. Were
such people self-reliant individualists or needy dependents?
In 1893 historian Frederick Jackson Turner argued that
the boundless expanses of the frontier gave rise to democ-
racy, individualism, and “withal that buoyancy and exuber-
ance which comes with freedom.” Insofar as the frontier was
then receding before the advance of urbanization and
industrialization, Turner’s readers had cause for alarm.
Historians adopting the Turnerian analysis—and there were
many—were generally pessimistic about the prospects for
American democracy.
Philosopher John Dewey (1922) was among those who
dissented. He argued that rather than promoting democracy,
the frontier had a “depressing effect upon the free life of
inquiry and criticism.” Some historians insisted that democ-
racy flourished not in the West but in urban and industrial
areas. In recent decades scholars have challenged Turner’s
DEBATING THE PAST
Did the Frontier Promote
Individualism and Democracy?