Westward Movement

Westward Movement

Ever since the Europeans' early explorations of the New World in the sixteenth century, the frontier had always been a site of persistent white colonial encounters with racial “others”— most often Native Americans. The Indian, indelibly associated in the popular imagination with the western frontier, exercised a strong influence on American male identity. Usually portrayed or imagined as either a bloodthirsty savage or a noble son of nature, the Native American man was alternately depicted as one to be destroyed in pursuit of western expansion and resources or as one to be emulated as an example of pure ...