The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization 1800-1890

About this book

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.