Contents

• The significance of the frontier in American history / Frederick Jackson Turner
• The Turner thesis is dated and provincial / George Wilson Pierson
• The Turner thesis is universal and relevant / Walter Prescott Webb
• The Indian cannot be civilized / George Armstrong Custer
• The Indian cannot be civilized by force, starvation, and hypocrisy / Helen Hunt Jackson
• The military protects civilization from savages / George Armstrong Custer
• The military savagely destroys the Indians / testimony from U.S. Congressional investigations
• Indians must submerge their identity in the dominant culture / Elaine Goodale Eastman
• Indians must assert their ethnic identity / Archie Fire Lame Deer and Richard Erdoes
• Physical hardships challenge the fur trader / Francis Chardon
• Fiscal and organizational problems challenge the fur entrepreneur / Washington Irving
• Nature severely challenges the miner / Daniel B. Woods
• Capital and technology foster victory over nature / Edward Gould Buffman
• The frontier woman supports her husband and his career / Elizabeth Custer
• The frontier woman develops strength and independence / Bessie Efner Rehwinkel
• The Chinese must stay / Yan Phou Lee
• The Chinese must go / James D. Phelan
• The white cowboy helped win the west / Joseph McCoy
• The black cowboy was the equal of his white brother / Nat Love
• Calamity Jane was any man’s equal / Edward L. Wheeler
• Billy the Kid was a folk hero / Walter Woods
• Billy the Kid was a sociopath / Pat Garrett
• The Western film is merely entertainment / Geoffrey O’Brien
• The Western film provides cultural insights / JoEllen Shively
• Some Western films clarify the historical record / Susan Wloszczyna
• The cowboy in advertising
• Levi Strauss invented Western work clothes for miners, cowboys, and engineers / Lynn Downey
• Ralph Lauren appropriated Western work clothes for modern consumers / Ann Fabian