is shown in blue while the
Captaincy General of Chile is shown in green.
Argentina The southern Indigenous frontier of the
Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata was the southern limit into which the Viceroyalty could exert its rule. Beyond this lay territories
de facto controlled by Indigenous peoples who inhabited the
Pampas and
Patagonia. These group were mainly the
Tehuelche,
Pehuenche,
Mapuche, and the
Ranqueles. Various military campaigns and peace treaties were arranged by the Spanish in order to either stop indigenous incursions in Spanish lands or to advance the frontier into indigenous territory. In the 1870s, to counter the cattle raids (and the native peoples on horseback), Argentina constructed a deep trench, called
Zanja de Alsina, to prevent cattle from being driven west and establish a boundary to the raiding tribes in the Pampas. Under General
Julio Argentino Roca, the
Conquest of the Desert extended Argentine power into
Patagonia.
Bolivia For long time a frontier existed east of
Tarija in southeastern Bolivia. Starting in the late 16th century, the Spaniards saw the tribes inhabiting the eastern jungles, and the "
Chiriguanos" in particular, as a threat. This informal role was given by the establishment of the Spanish
Army of Arauco in the city which was financed by a payments of silver from
Potosí called
Real Situado. Mapuche-Spanish and later Mapuche-Chilean trade increased further in the second half of the 18th century as hostilities decreased. Mapuches obtained
goods from Chile and some dressed in "Spanish" clothing. Despite close contacts, Chileans and Mapuche remained socially, politically, and economically distinct. During the
Occupation of Araucanía the Republic of Chile advanced the frontier south from
Bío Bío River to
Malleco River where a well defended line of forts was established between 1861 and 1871. Having decisively defeated Peru in the
Battles of Chorrillos and
Miraflores in January 1881, Chilean authorities turned their attention to the southern frontier in Araucanía seeking to defend the previous advances that had been so difficult to establish. The idea was not only to defend forts and settlements but also to advance the frontier all the way from
Malleco River to
Cautín River. enacted by the British around 1835 to legitimize their colonization of
Australia. The idea implicitly negated any recognition of legitimate pre-existing occupation and embodied a blank denial of land rights to the indigenous peoples whose territories were being annexed by European colonists. Throughout American history, the expansion of settlement was largely from the east to the west and so the frontier is often identified with "the West." On the Pacific Coast, settlement moved eastward. In New England, it moved north. "Frontier" was borrowed into English from French in the 15th century with the meaning "borderland," the region of a country that fronts on another country (see also
marches). The use of frontier to mean "a region at the edge of a settled area" is a special North American development. In the Turnerian sense, "frontier" was a technical term that was explicated by hundreds of scholars.
Colonial North America Voyageurs passing a waterfall In the earliest days of European settlement of the
Atlantic Coast, the frontier was essentially any part of the forested interior of the continent beyond the fringe of existing settlements along the coast and the great rivers such as the
St. Lawrence,
Connecticut,
Hudson,
Delaware,
Susquehanna River, and
James. British, French, Spanish, and Dutch patterns of expansion and settlement were quite different from one another. Only a few thousand French migrated to Canada; the habitants settled in villages along the St. Lawrence River, built communities that remained stable for long stretches, and did not leapfrog west the way that the Americans would. Although French fur traders ranged widely through the
Great Lakes and
Mississippi River watershed, as far as the
Rocky Mountains, they did not usually settle down. Actual French settlement in those areas was limited to a few very small villages on the lower Mississippi and in the
Illinois Country. Likewise, the Dutch set up fur trading posts in the Hudson River Valley, followed by large grants of land to
patroons, who brought in tenant farmers who created compact permanent villages but did not push westward. In contrast, the British colonies generally pursued a more systematic policy of widespread settlement of the
New World for cultivation and exploitation of the land, a practice that required the extension of European
property rights to the new continent. The typical British settlements were quite compact and small: under a square mile. Conflict with the Native Americans arose out of political issues on who would rule. Early frontier areas east of the
Appalachian Mountains included the Connecticut River Valley. The
French and Indian Wars of the 1760s resulted in a complete victory for the British, who took over the
French colonial territory west of the Appalachians to the Mississippi River. The Americans began moving across the Appalachians into areas such the Ohio Country and the
New River Valley.
American frontier as it looked prior to 1840. Painting from memory by
Alfred Jacob Miller After victory the
American Revolutionary War and the signing
Treaty of Paris in 1783, the
United States gained formal, if not actual, control of the British lands west of the Appalachians. Many thousands of settlers, typified by
Daniel Boone, had already reached
Kentucky and
Tennessee and adjacent areas. Some areas, such as the
Virginia Military District and the
Connecticut Western Reserve (both in
Ohio), were used by the states as rewards to veterans of the war. How to formally include the new frontier areas into the nation was an important issue in the
Continental Congress in the 1780s and was partly resolved by the
Northwest Ordinance (1787). The
Southwest Territory saw a similar pattern of settlement pressure. For the next century, the expansion of the nation into those areas, as well as the subsequently-acquired
Louisiana Purchase,
Oregon Country, and
Mexican Cession, attracted hundreds of thousands of settlers. The question of whether the
Kansas Territory would become "slave" or "free" helped to spark the
American Civil War. In general before 1860, Northern Democrats promoted easy land ownership, and Whigs and Southern Democrats resisted the
Homestead Acts for supporting the growth of a free farmer population that might oppose slavery and for depopulating the East. When the Republican Party came to power in 1860, it promoted a policy of a free land, notably the Homestead Act of 1862, coupled with railroad land grants that opened cheap (but not free) lands for settlers. In 1890, the frontier line had broken up; census maps defined the frontier line as a line beyond which the population was under 2 persons per square mile. The impact of the frontier in popular culture was enormous, as shown in
dime novels,
Wild West shows, and after 1910
Western films that were set on the frontier. The American frontier was generally the edge of settlement in the West and typically was more democratic and free-spirited in nature than the East because of the lack of social and political institutions. The idea that the frontier provided the core defining quality of the United States was elaborated by the great historian
Frederick Jackson Turner, who built his
Frontier Thesis in 1893 around the notion. ==Canadian frontier==