The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890 [Paperback]

Richard Slotkin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 1998 | ISBN-10: 080613030X | ISBN-13: 978-0806130309

In The Fatal Environment, Richard Slotkin demonstrates how the myth of frontier expansion and subjugation of the Indians helped to justify the course of America’s rise to wealth and power. Using Custer’s Last Stand as a metaphor for what Americans feared might happen if the frontier should be closed and the "savage" element be permitted to dominate the "civilized," Slotkin shows the emergence by 1890 of a myth redefined to help Americans respond to the confusion and strife of industrialization and imperial expansion.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Fatal Environment is the second volume of Richard Slotkin's epochal study of the frontier myth in the cultural history of the United States. Like its predecessor, Regeneration Through Violence, the book discusses the archetype of the lone frontiersman/Indian hunter and how it has been used to rationalize the destructive excesses of American territorial expansion. Time and time again, the hunter/killer exerts a power over the wilderness that rests not upon the inherent superiority of his white civilization, but on the psychic absorption of the "barbaric" customs of the peoples on the uncharted landscape.

Slotkin begins by elaborating on the themes of the previous study, specifically showing how the mythic Indian fighter, who defined sectional interests in the decades prior to the Civil War, evolved into the frontier aristocrat, who not only possesses the virtues of the "leatherstocking" hero but also demonstrates the ability to lead men in erecting large-scale, technologically complex enterprises. Thus, Slotkin argues, popular imagery concerning the conquest of the West was made to reflect the interests of post-Civil War industrialized capitalism.

Custer's Last Stand epitomizes the transformation of the frontier hero from warrior to robber baron. In the book's most vivid chapter, Slotkin shows how the popular press turned the Boy General's defeat into a call not only for the destruction of the Plains Indians but for social controls over the immigrants who formed the emerging, potentially militant, urban proletariat. The Fatal Environment makes a compelling case that the culture of cowboy capitalism was steeped in the suppression of class conflict. --John M. Anderson

From the Publisher

The second volume in the award-winning trilogy that includes Gunfighter Nation, this important historical work examines the origins of the mythical American frontier and traces its development in the nineteenth century. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 656 pages
• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press (April 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080613030X
• ISBN-13: 978-0806130309
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #69,653 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars panoramic & provocative, December 18, 2000

By 

Orrin C. Judd "brothersjudddotcom" (Hanover, NH USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890 (Paperback)

This inordinately ambitious, often overreaching & self-contradictory, but nonetheless thought-provoking book takes as it's central thesis the following: "The dominant themes of the Frontier Myth are those that center on the conception of American history as a heroic-scale Indian war, pitting race against race; and the central concern of the mythmakers is with the problem of reaching the 'end of the Frontier'. Both of these themes are brought together in the "Last Stand" legend, which is the central fable of the industrial or 'revised' Myth of the Frontier." Slotkin proceeds to trace the impact and the changing understanding of the Frontier Myth from King Phillip's War to 1890, when Frederick Jackson Turner declared the Frontier closed. He maintains that over this period of time the hero of the myth evolved from an agrarian/frontiersman/hunter to a soldier-aristocrat, because that was what industrial capitalism required.

Of course, this thesis begs several questions: Does Custer as culmination of the myth of the industrial captain make any sense? He was, after all, suckered and slaughtered by a pack of illiterate barbarians, are we to believe that the overlords of Capitalism wanted to be seen as incompetent fops? Also, why does Sitting Bull emerge as an American legend too? Shouldn't we expect him to be remembered as some kind of monster, rather than as a noble savage?

The reason that Slotkin can not, or does not, answer these questions, is because his book is a work of ideology as much as of history. He wanted to vilify Capitalism and 19th century robber barons and so, he finds primary sources to support his view. But does the fact that a few novels or newspapers treated the Last stand in the manner that he hoped they had actually prove anything? How do we know what kind of influence these contemporary writings had & did they really outweigh the opposing presentations in other periodicals and novels? And what explains the image that comes down to us in films like She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, where Custer is portrayed as a blindly obstinate fanatic, largely responsible for his own death? Had Capitalism lost the need for it's own myths? It hardly seems likely.

In the end, Slotkin's book should be read for the panoramic sweep it offers of Frontier history and for the provocative, albeit inaccurate, theories that it offers up. His arguments are well worth wrestling with & refuting.

GRADE: B-

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Understanding the Myth that Framed America's World View, May 30, 2000

By 

"booknut8" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890 (Paperback)

Richard Slotkin was educated in the New York City public schools and has a Ph.D.in American Civilization from Brown University (1967).

The essence of Slotkins' theory is that myths, stories drawn from history, are preserved in their narrative and become part of the language, as a deeply encoded set of metaphors that contain all of the lessons we have learned from our history, and all of the essential elements of our world view.

Slotkin's intention is to trace the historical development of a single major American myth, "Custer's Last Stand", and offer a critical interpretation of its meaning. The reader will judge the significance of this single myth, not simply by noting its recurrence and persistence, but by the waxing and waning of its hold on the marketplace in relation to other genres expressive of other myths. The focus of his study is myth as a set of narrative formulas that acquire, through specific historical action, a significant ideological change. To explain,a world defined by myth produces discontent. Ideology, however offsets this by generating a new narrative, or myth, that will account for and give value to reality. This creates the basis for a new cultural consensus or world view.

A good illustration of Slotkin's thesis is his chapter on regeneration through violence in the history of the Indian War 1675-1820. He focuses on the common elements of the literary mythology of Indian dispossession and the violent wars of conquest. The colonists acquired title to lands through this conquest and engaged in expansion. This is the system of belief that veiled the processes of economic development as a model for the rationalization of class subordination at home and imperialism abroad. This course reflects the social reality that the myth ideology of the Frontier was developed to conceal the processes of economic development.

You may never read a history book or enjoy an American historical novel again without testing Slotkin's "myth theory" for yourself. I was fascinated by the inevitable truth of Slotkin's theory, placed my "critical view-finders" aside, to simply enjoy my reading discoveries. I recommend this book as an enlightened examination of American perceptions, beliefs, stereotypes, and political policies.

8 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intense research, May 28, 2000

By 

Lee D. Phillips (Newark, De. United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890 (Paperback)

The professional editorials above do a fairly good job in summarizing the gist of this monumental work. What I want to draw attention towards is the absolute yeoman work Slotkin did in researching this the middle act of his trilogy. For example, pouring through miles of newspapers he makes startling observations of how editors placed their stories about Indian uprisings and unrest in the factories from non Anglo-Saxon workers in psychological and proximal juxtaposition in the many newspapers of the day. A mythos was created that was passed on to the subsequent generations of Americans. This mythos (which, I feel, as cultural learned behavior partly fuels all modern racism)is evidently examined further in the third book of the series, "Gunfighter Nation." I will be reading this next work soon. The myth and role of the "culture hero" such as Custer is also very interesting and could well serve as a case study for the psychological and anthropological needs constructs that people have for heroes as examined by Ernest Becker's Pulitzer Prize winning book "The Denial of Death." The book is sometimes hard going but is well worth it. It might also be very profitable to read Slotkins's first book of this trilogy, "Regeneration Through Violence" which covers the colonial period.