Land of savagery/land of promise : the European image of the American frontier in the nineteenth century / by Ray Allen Billington.
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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New York :
Norton,
©1981.
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| Edition: | 1st ed. |
| Subjects: |
Table of Contents:
- Prologue: early visions of the new world. Nature glorified: the golden age ; Nature degraded: the view from America ; Nature in eclipse: seventeenth-century rationalism ; Nature glorified: the age of romanticism ; The noble savage ; The changing image: the captivity narratives.
- The image-makers: land of savagery. Europe's Coopermania ; The cult of the western ; Beginnings of realism: the early novelists ; The impact of the western ; The sensationalists.
- The image-makers: land of promise. The promoters ; The "America letters" ; The travelers.
- The look of the land. The woodlands frontier ; The prairies and the plains ; Mountains and deserts of the far west
- Native Americans: from noble to ignoble savagery. Europeanizing the noble savage ; "Bad" Indians: evil incarnate ; The ignoble savage.
- Native Americans: doomed to extermination. Frontier savagery: the European view ; Official savagery: federal Indian policy ; Extermination justified: the imperialistic view ; Extermination deplored: the humanitarian view.
- The frontiersmen: heroes vs. villains. Hunters and plainsmen ; Squatters and backwoodsmen ; Enter the cowboy.
- Pioneer farmers: unsung heroes. Portrait of the pioneer ; Cultural decay
- or renaissance? ; Religious fanaticism ; Uncivilized manners.
- Europeans view the western character. Frontier materialism ; Frontier wastefulness ; The restless temper ; Optimism and the spirit of progress ; The work ethic ; Frontier ingenuity ; Frontier puffing.
- Land of opportunity. The garden of the world ; The American urge ; The lure of pioneering ; The rewards of labor ; Frontier success
- and failure.
- Land of Equality. The basis of frontier equality ; Frontier equality ; Frontier liberty ; Frontier democracy.
- Land of savagery. Centers of lawlessness: the Mississippi valley ; Centers of lawlessness: the far west ; Frontier law enforcement ; Frontier nativism.
- The European reaction. Emigration and its impact ; The political impact ; The social impact.
- Epilogue: the persisting image. The role of western fiction ; Celluloid westerns ; Frontier cultism ; The image in modern perspective.