The Frontier Myth and the People of the Western United States
In 1893, historian Frederick Jackson Turner advanced his now-famous Frontier Theory, arguing that the American identity was forged through the process of exploring and adapting to new environments in the frontier west. Key to both Turner’s theory and the myth of the frontier that pre-dated it was the idea that brave white American men conquered a previously empty land through their grit in a relentless march west, but the land was populated long before white Americans arrived, and the people who lived, explored, and settled there were a far more diverse population than the myth acknowledges. Joining me in this episode is returning guest Dr. Megan Kate Nelson, author of The Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier.
Our theme song is “Frogs Legs Rag,” composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “The west, a nest and you,” composed by Billy Hill with lyrics by Larry Yoell and sung by Lewis James on November 16, 1923, in Camden, New Jersey; the performance is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is the American Progress, painted by John Gast in 1872; the image is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.
Additional Sources:
- “Brief History of the AHA,” American Historical Association.
- “Significance of the Frontier in American History (1893),” by Frederick Jackson Turner, The American Yawp Reader.
- “How the Myth of the American Frontier Got Its Start,” by Colin Woodard, Smithsonian Magazine, January/February 2023.
- “Sacagawea, c. 1788 - c. 1812/1884?” by Teresa Potter and Mariana Brandman, National Women’s History Museum.
- “Sacagawea: Intrepid Indigenous Explorer [video],” The New York Historical.
- “Lewis & Clark Expedition,” National Archives.
- “Indian Treaties and the Removal Act of 1830,” Office of the Historian, United States Department of State.
- “Indian Territory,” Library of Congress.
- “Indian Territory,” by Dianna Everett, The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, January 15, 2010.
- “Cheyenne Sanctuary: The Northern Cheyennes’ Exodus, Mari Sandoz, and Lost Chokecherry Lake,” by Emily Levine, The Nebraska Sandhills, October 23, 2024.
- Northern Cheyenne Tribe.
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Megan Kate Nelson is a historian, cocktail enthusiast, Pulitzer Prize finalist, and the author of five books.
Her forthcoming book, The Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier tells two richly detailed and interwoven stories.
The first reveals the captivating lives of women and men moving through the American West — Indigenous peoples, Black Americans, Mexican Americans, and Canadian and Asian immigrants—in the nineteenth century.
The second tracks the attempts of many Americans to remove these westerners from history, through a frontier myth that lionized individualism and conquest and celebrated white settlers traveling west in search of prosperity.
The Westerners is one of LitHub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2026!
Megan is also the author of The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West, which was a 2021 Pulitzer Prize finalist in History, and Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America, winner of the 2023 Spur Award for Historical Non-Fiction, as well as Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American CIvil War, and Trembling Earth: A Cultural History of the Okefenokee Swamp.
A fellow of the prestigious Society of American Historians, Megan is also a regular guest on radio shows and TV documentaries about U.S. Western history and popular culture. She has recently become a podcast host, interviewing book authors as part of the “Historians and their Histories” podcast for the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Megan al…Read More
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