Us Vs. Them: Dualism and the Frontier in History
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University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers Graduate School 2004 Us vs. them: Dualism and the frontier in history. Jonathan Joseph Wlasiuk The University of Montana Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Wlasiuk, Jonathan Joseph, "Us vs. them: Dualism and the frontier in history." (2004). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 5242. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/5242 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Maureen and Mike MANSFIELD LIBRARY The University of Montana Permission is granted by the author to reproduce this material in its entirety, provided that this material is used for scholarly purposes and is properly cited in published works and reports. **Please check "Yes” or "No" and provide signature** Yes, I grant permission No, I do not grant permission Author’s Signature: Any copying for commercial purposes or financial gain may be undertaken only with the author’s explicit consent. 8/98 US VS. THEM: DUALISM AND THE FRONTIER IN HISTORY by Jonathan Joseph Wlasiuk B.A. The Ohio State University, 2002 presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts The University of Montana April 2004 Approved by: lairperson Dean, Graduate School Date UMI Number: EP40706 AH rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete, manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. D iss ertaBcm RaM sM ng UMI EP40706 Published by ProQuest LLC (2014). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code ProQ uest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Wlasiuk, Jonathan Joseph, M.A., April 2004 History Us vs. Them: Dualism and the Frontier in History (122pp) Director Dan Flores This is a history of the origins, forms, and decline of the frontier. After much research, I argue as my thesis that humans consciously constructed physically demarcated frontiers that separated their culture and territory from those outside their own and conceived of an ethical horizon that bestowed sacredness to the geographic and ideological core of the culture, which diminished the further-removed a land or people happened to be from that apex. Behaving much like an amoeba or single-celled organism with clearly defined walls (frontiers) and a nucleus (core), these cultures constantly referenced their cosmology and associated all humans and land that crossed into their frontier with either the positive myths and images from their most axiomatic beliefs or associated the newcomers with the most reviled antipodes of their tradition. In short: the dominant culture of a people provides methods and rituals with which to accept or cast out elements |fom outside the culture. I argue for the rehabilitation of the frontier in Western History. Advocates of the New Western History have all too often either denigrated the process of the frontier or excised it from Western History altogether. I posit that by reintroducing the potent explanatory power of the frontier, scholars liberate themselves to explore the function of process along with place. While this revision at first appears radical in its challenge to nearly twenty years of New Western scholarship, it boils down to a modest synthesis of frontier observations that appear in the works of scholars spanning the past 100 years. I submit that the rift between nature and humans remains an illusion of perception and seek to plug humans back into nature and view our cultures as no less “natural” than elaborate termite colonies, massive underwater coral reefs, or the photosynthesis of chlorophyll. By employing my model for understanding the function of cultures, we can interpret and at times quantify the various consequences of the Us vs. Them model in our modem landscape. Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................... ............................. 1 Chapter 1: The Origins of Us vs. Them............................................ 8 Chapter 2: The Puritans .............................................................................. 40 Chapter 3: New vs. Old Western History .................................... 66 Chapter 4: Of Life and Land ....................................... 93 Conclusion. ............................... 121 Appendix 1................................................................................................................................ 123 Appendix II .................................................................................................................. 124 Index of Place Names.. ............................................................... 130 Bibliography ................................................. .............................................................170 Illustrations Images 1. Theodore De Bry Engraving showing Natives in Despair ................... 124 2. Virgil and Dante ......................................................... 125 3. Cosmography Of Yurok Indians .................. 126 4. Cosmography of Greco-Roman-Medieval Mind ........... ..126 / Photographs 5. Devil’s Golf Course, Death Valley National Park ..... 127 Maps 6. Demonic Place Names in the United States (State Boundaries) ...................... 128 7. Demonic Place Names in the United States (No Boundaries) ................ 129 t iv Introduction The wordfrontier is not about to go away, for it will always hold a privileged place in the American cultural lexicon. By refusing to contest its meaning with our new understanding of the past, historians simply concede its use to others who continue to believe in, or perhaps long for, imperialist chronicles. --John Mack Faragher1 I began this thesis as an exploration into the presence of demonic place names in the American West. After creating a map that displayed the nearly 2,000 names, I found that the West held no monopoly in this regard and abandoned my initial conclusion that aridity compelled travelers to react negatively to western landscapes. My work soon deserted the provincial focus of demonic place names for the source of their parentage, the dualist tradition of Abrahamic religion. While I retained my analysis of demonic place names as a corollary of dualism—the doctrine that reality consists of two opposing elements—my research expanded to include some of the oldest recorded myths as well as yesterday’s news. At times wishing I had remained in my happy yet miniscule sea, I soon found a focus for the grandiose theme that served to harmonize the vast ocean of literature I chose to plumb. The idea of the frontier emerged as the logical consequence of dualism and appeared as the primary agent in historical issues surrounding our use and perception of the environment and foreign cultures. Upon receiving my formal proposal for the “Frontier in history” as the subject of my thesis, my advisor Dan Flores scribbled, “Some will say it’s a hubris beyond scale to try this” on my returned copy. Never satisfied with the more traditional, yet abstruse, thesis topics floating about my head, I felt I had struck upon a treatise that either would consume my will to enter academia altogether, or might well prove the foundation of my life’s work. While Dan remained concerned that my topic demanded a deduction, as he 1 John Mack Faragher, Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1994): 241. 1 put it, of “all of human history,” today I believe he would recognize that I tread little new land in this thesis. The ideas of the “frontier” and dualism have provided fodder for academics of all stripes, spawning the fields of western history and, by extension, environmental history within the past 150 years. Of course, outside of the purview of history, humanities scholars have gleaned valuable insights into the interplay between cultures at their borders (frontiers). Likewise, “harder” disciplines within the sciences have been mining the possible effects that eons of evolution have wrought on the way our species perceives the world as codified in our genome. Too, the “bone collectors” in the fields of paleontology and anthropology have been, literally, unearthing tangible clues to the humaij experience, seeking to understand the processes by which we emerged as a humble primate to become masters of our environment. However, what I seek to advance is a synthesis of art, literature, myth, and the most recent discoveries of the scientific community and weave it into a meaningful, hopefully comprehensible, human story. Throughout my thesis, I integrate recent findings from the field of evolutionary psychology to tease out the impact of human evolution on our perception—an influence that underlies all cultural traditions. Although the field is