José Angel Hernández

HIST: 6393; "Empire, War and Revolution"

February 2, 2000

 

Richard Slotkin.  Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860.  (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973), Pp. 670 + Bibliography & Index.

 

 

            1999 marked an "average year" for North American fixation on violence, sexual imagery, and an added combination of technological paranoia as a result of the new millennium.  For the most part, television screens tuned in to the daily media circus showcasing the latest "experts" on youth violence, gang activity, and the Psychic Friends Network.  The student shooting at Colorado's Columbine high school, however, gripped the nation and left the "experts" scrambling for explanations, counselors, and an array of gun-control measures.

            Of all the propositions these so-called experts put forth, none discussed the historical culture of violence that has become the foundation of our country's consciousness.  Instead of real explanations and solutions, we endured Senator Diane Feinstein and other "politicians" anxious to defend their domain at the public dole.  Many failed to connect the bullets flying in American classrooms with the bombs dropping on civilians in Kosovo.  Indeed, they missed the forest for the trees when instead of searching for the root cause of the problem (the culture of violence), they resorted to simplistic cosmetic trimming (more gun control).  Richard Slotkin's monograph on the mythology of the American frontier examines the origins of this "frontier mentality" and the making of our national character. 

            In Regeneration through Violence, Richard Slotkin argues that the North American frontier mythology is a major force in shaping the national character of the country.  By building on the theoretical constructs of Frederick Jackson Turner's "Frontier Thesis," Slotkin argues that the frontier was not so much a "regeneration" of democratic principles as much as it was one of violence.  Unlike Turner's notion of the frontier as a European and Socialist cleanser, Slotkin offers a more palatable thesis by incorporating the influence and conflict with various Native American populations.  The conclusions, nonetheless, are not that simple.  American settlers were "not simply an idiosyncratic offshoot of English civilization" but became "Americanized" or "Indianized" in their contact with the indigenous peoples of the continent.  By tracing the origins of violence and freedom Slotkin concludes that various European and North American mythologies influenced the early settlers before, during, and after Native American contact.[1]  Europeans who settled on the North American continent disembarked with an assortment of adopted ideas and mythologies from their native homeland(s).  In this particular context, Slotkin's analysis on European cultural baggage is worth quoting at length:

 

"The Europeans who settled the New World possessed at the time of their arrival a mythology derived from the cultural history of their home countries and responsive to the psychological and social needs of their old culture.  Their new circumstances forced new perspectives, new self-concepts, and new world concepts on the colonists and made them see their cultural heritage from angles of vision that non-colonists would find peculiar.  The internal tension between the Moira and Themis elements in their European mythologies (and the psychological tensions that is the source of this myth-duality) found an objective correlative in the racial, religious, and cultural opposition of the American Indians and colonial Christians.  This racial-cultural conflict pointed up and intensified the emotional difficulties attendant on the colonists' attempt to adjust to life in the wilderness.  The picture was further complicated for them by the political and religious demands made on them by those who remained in Europe, as well as by the colonists' own need to affirm—for themselves and for the home folks—that they had not deserted European civilization for American savagery."[2]

           

Much like Reginald Horsman's monograph on the origins of American racial Anglo-Saxonism, Slotkin understands that European settlers did not approach the New World with a cultural clean slate; or as Professor Buzzanco would say: tabula rasa.  Europeans carried with them centuries of cultural baggage and transported those ideas to the American continent, particularly the concept of Volkgeist.[3]  The new settlers underwent the logical process of a cultural tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis, or "times change and we change with them."  Racial prejudice, however, was not the only cultural and social "element" present at the time of contact.  Religious nuances and distorted comparisons between Catholicism and Native American blood rites provided an added cultural wedge between the two.  Slotkin believes that many of the above mentioned traits found fertile ground in North American literature, specifically in the accounts of Indian wars and captivity narratives.  According to Slotkin,

"The cultural anxieties and aspirations of the colonists found their most dramatic and symbolic portrayal in the accounts of the Indian wars.  The Indian war was a uniquely American experience.  Moreover, it pitted the English Puritan colonists against a culture that was antithetical to their own in most significant aspects.  They could emphasize their Englishness by setting their civilization against Indian barbarism; they could suggest their own superiority to the home English by exalting their heroism in battle, the peculiar danger of their circumstances, and the holy zeal for English Christian expansion with which they preached to or shot at the savages.  It was within this genre of colonial Puritan writing that the first American mythology took shape—a mythology in which the hero was the captive or victim of devilish American savages and in which his (or her) heroic quest was for religious conversion and salvation.  As their experience in and love for America grew, however--and as non-Puritans entered the American book-printing trade—the early passion for remaining "non-American" (or non-Indian) became confused with the love the settlers bore the land and their desire to gain intimate knowledge of and emotional title to it.  If the first American mythology portrayed the colonist as a captive or a destroyer of Indians, the subsequent acculturated versions of the myth showed him growing closer to the Indian and the wild land.  New versions of the hero emerged, characters whose role was that of mediating between civilization and savagery, white and red.  The yeoman farmer was one of these types, as were the explorer or surveyor and. later, the naturalist."[4]

 

The European contrast between civilization and nature found other outlets to vent differences between "civility" and "savagery."  Myths such as the ones mentioned above facilitated the aggressive westward expansion of the nineteenth century, particularly during the U.S.-Mexican War (1846-1848).  Additionally, questions regarding early captivity narratives and the fictitious nuances that they engender pose interesting comparisons between those of the early Spanish settlers in New Mexico.[5]

            Placed against Hietala's monograph on "manifest design," however, Slotkin's study on the mythology of the American frontier is complimented by additional factors absent from his own book: diplomacy, politics, partisanship, economics, divisions between free labor and slave labor, and logistics.  In defense of Slotkin, however, the author is primarily interested in excavating the origins of North American frontier mythology whereas Hietala's interest focuses on the question of "Manifest Destiny" during the Jacksonian period. 

            The benefit of Slotkin, in my opinion, has more to do with his understanding of the North American mentality and how those psychological underpinnings influence decisions outside of our own cultural distinctions, i.e. political, economic, diplomatic, and otherwise.  More importantly, and like I've mentioned before, the question over mythology is, in my estimation, one of the fundamental obstacles obscuring our peregrino (peregrinate) to an open-minded discussion regarding many of our current social, economic, and political issues.  The question over how mythology becomes part of our national character requires a crucial understanding of not only the origins of North American mythology itself, but also the ability to propose an alternative, practical model to take its place.  The latter, in my opinion, is much harder than the former. 

       

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

 

 


[1]           Ray Allen Billington, Review of Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860, by Richard Slotkin.  In The American Historical Review 78, no. 4 (October 1973), pp. 1116-1117; Leo Marx, Review of Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860, by Richard Slotkin.  In The Journal of American History 62, no. 2 (September 1975), pp. 365-366; Frederick W. Turner, Review of Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860, by Richard Slotkin.  In The American Political Science Review 69, no. 2 (June 1975), pp. 705-706; Thomas Philbrick, Review of Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860, by Richard Slotkin.  In American Literature 45, no. 3 (November 1973), pp. 454-456; David Grimstead, Review of Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860, by Richard Slotkin.  In William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Volume 31, no. 1 (January 1974), pp. 143-146.

[2]           Richard Slotkin.  Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860.  (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973), pg. 15.

[3]            Reginald Horsman.  Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of Racial Anglo-Saxonism.  (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981),  pp. 25-42.       

[4]           Slotkin.  Regeneration Through Violence.  pg. 21.

[5]           The early settlers, according to Slotkin, were fond of relating narratives/stories of captivity, especially relating instances of Indian "savagery" and "barbarity."  Although not mentioned by the author, it appears as though the early settlers coveted a sort-of Christian martyrdom as a way of, perhaps, cleansing their own barbaric souls.  In this regard, religion is crucial to understanding the mind-set of the early settlers.  For an interesting comparison of early Spanish settlements —during the same periods—and questions of martyrdom, particularly amongst the Franciscans, see Ramón A. Gutiérrez.  When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846.  (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1991).