FRONTIERS^305chinery does not perform the greater part of the labor."^29 So agricul
ture became an industry too, with economies of scale, division of labor,
attention to labor productivity. And to land productivity as well,
though to a smaller degree: the accident of geography, the character of
the new land to the west—virgin prairie, deep topsoil, water for farm
ing, open range for animals—all ensured abundant return and meant
that every movement of the frontier added substantially to the national
income. Holdings were family-size, and the system of land grants and
concessionary sales was designed to promote family farming. But fam
ily size could be very large and grew with the machinery; also with the
appearance of specialized, itinerant teams of machine operators.
All of this meant that the indigenous population was uprooted re
peatedly to make way for land-hungry newcomers. The Indians fought
back, the more so as settler expansion entailed repeated violations of
ostensibly sacred and eternal agreements—as long as the sun would
shine and the waters run. The white man broke faith at will, while the
natives were slandered as "Indian givers." Here, too, technology made
the difference. Repeating weapons, batch- or mass-produced with
roughly interchangeable parts, multiplied the firepower of even small
numbers and made Indian resistance hopeless.
Of course, many Americans are sorry now, while Europeans invite
Indian chiefs to Paris and Zurich to recount the litany of white wrong
doing. Hollywood films, once cowboy-and-Indian clichés, now re
mind us and others of the misdeeds of the invaders. Meanwhile the
American government has fitfully tried to recompense the descendants
of the dispossessed, hiring economic historians to calculate the value of
native land at the time it was taken; and well-meaning people offer help
with the preservation and reinvention of "Native American" culture.
Some of these compensations have proved astonishingly lucrative: thus
newfound Indian rights to engage in gambling operations, often in
partnership with white businessmen. Casino revenge.
The Indian tragedy illustrates the larger dilemma of modernization:
change or lose; change and lose. What is a man profited, if he shall gain
the world and lose his soul? The new ways of today tear at indigenous
peoples and ancient cultures everywhere. In the meantime, the people
of the United States are not about to give the country back and return
to the lands of their ancestors. History, like time, has an arrow; but un
like time, it moves at an uneven pace: it can only stutter forward.
And so, during those frontier days of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, the technological possibilities were almost endless, and
American industry went on from one success to another. Other coun-