Slotkin is well-known for several lengthy studies of the Frontier in American culture, including Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 (1973), The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890 (1985), and Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (1992). In this essay from Gunfighter Nation, he examines the long survival of the Frontier idea in American culture.

Questions to Consider:

1) What is The Frontier Thesis? Why does Slotkin refer to it as the "Frontier Myth"? Is there a difference between Turner's statement of the significance of the Frontier and the idea of the Frontier as it developed from Colonial days to the present?

2) What role does Slotkin argue the frontier myth has played in American history?

3) How does Slotkin support his argument about the Frontier Myth?

Further Readings:

Buffalo Bill Historical Society in Cody, Wyoming.

Museums West's Powerful Images: Portrayals of Native America provides an excellent introduction to the visual cretion of hte Frontier myth.

William T. Pilkington's "The Western Movie to 1960" in Literary History of the American West.

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