On the heels of Johnson there at once flocked to the Galena region a crowd of squatters and prospectors from Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee, while many came from southern Illinois. In 1825 there were in the Fever River diggings about 100 persons engaged in mining; in 1826 the number rose to 453, while across the river in Missouri there were fully 2,000 men thus employed-"miners, teamsters, and laborers of every kind (including slaves)"-but some of these were farmers, who, with their slaves, spent only their spare time in the mines. West of the great river the heirs of Spanish claimants held that the mines were private property, and American prospectors were warned off. This fact helped the development of the Fever River district to the east of the Mississippi. In 1827 the name Galena was applied to the largest settlement on the Fever. In 1829 the heaviest American immigration set in, and from that time the history of lead mining in the Fever River district is familiar. Four years later (1833) the Spanish and Indian titles in Missouri having been cleared, mining operations recommenced there upon an extended scale.

XVIII-THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN

HISTORY.

By PROFESSOR FREDERICK J. TURNER,

OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY.*

By FREDERICK J. TURNER.

In a recent bulletin of the Superintendent of the Census for 1890 appear these significant words: "Up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement, but at present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line. In the discussion of its extent, its westward movement, etc., it can not, therefore, any longer have a place in the census reports." This brief official statement marks the closing of a great historic movement. Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development.

Behind institutions, behind constitutional forms and modifications, lie the vital forces that call these organs into life and shape them to meet changing conditions. The peculiarity of American institutions is, the fact that they have been compelled to adapt themselves to the changes of an expanding people-to the changes involved in crossing a continent, in winning a wilderness, and in developing at each area of this progress out of the primitive economic and political conditions of the frontier into the complexity of city life. Said Calhoun in 1817, "We are great, and rapidly-I was about to say fearfully-growing!" So saying, he touched the distinguishing feature of American life. All peoples show development; the germ theory of politics has been sufficiently emphasized. In the case of most nations, however, the development

* Since the meeting of the American Historical Association, this paper has also been given as an address to the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, December 14, 1893. I have to thank the Secretary of the Society, Mr. Reuben G. Thwaites, for securing valuable material for my use in the preparation of the paper.

+Abridgment of Debates of Congress, v., p. 706.

has occurred in a limited area; and if the nation has expanded, it has met other growing peoples whom it has conquered. But in the case of the United States we have a different phenomenon. Limiting our attention to the Atlantic coast, we have the familiar phenomenon of the evolution of institutions in a limited area, such as the rise of representative government; the differentiation of simple colonial governments into complex organs; the progress from primitive industrial society, without division of labor, up to manufacturing civilization. But we have in addition to this a recurrence of the process of evolution in each western area reached in the process of expansion. Thus American development has exhibited not merely advance along a single line, but a return to primitive conditions on a continually advancing frontier line, and a new development for that area. American social development has been continually beginning over again on the frontier. This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character. The true point of view in the history of this nation is not the Atlantic coast, it is the great West. Even the slavery struggle, which is made so exclusive an object of attention by writers like Prof. von Holst, occupies its important place in American history because of its relation to westward expansion.

In this advance, the frontier is the outer edge of the wave— the meeting point between savagery and civilization. Much has been written about the frontier from the point of view of border warfare and the chase, but as a field for the serious study of the economist and the historian it has been neglected.

The American frontier is sharply distinguished from the European frontier-a fortified boundary line running through dense populations. The most significant thing about the American frontier is, that it lies at the hither edge of free land. In the census reports it is treated as the margin of that settlement which has a density of two or more to the square mile. The term is an elastic one, and for our purposes does not need sharp definition. We shall consider the whole frontier belt, including the Indian country and the outer margin of the "settled area" of the census reports. This paper will make no attempt to treat the subject exhaustively; its aim is simply to call attention to the frontier as a fertile field for investiga