Frontier Partisans

The Adventurers, Rangers and Scouts Who Fought the Battles of Empire

‘A Thoughtless Prodigality’: Wilderness, Modernity And The Frontiersman’s Paradox

, by

“It is the constructive side of frontier life that most appeals to me, the building up of a country. When the place is finally settled I don’t seem to enjoy it very long.”

— Frederick Russell Burnham

“I had a theory, not original, that each man kills the thing he loves. If it had any originality at all, it was only that a band of men, the fur-hunters, killed the life they loved and killed it with a thoughtless prodigality perhaps unmatched.”

— A. B. Guthrie, Jr. on his masterpiece novel “The Big Sky”

A few posts back, I waxed rhapsodic about the ancient forests of Appalachia. Meant it, every word. And yet I’d be lying if I said I don’t thrill to the epic effort to conquer nature, the struggle that is the beating heart of frontier history.

When I was a little kid, my folks used to take me to Knott’s Berry Farm, back before it was overrun with rollercoasters, when the main attraction was the Western Ghost Town. They had a real deal steam train and I loved the hot, wet, greasy stench of the engine, the full-throated blast of the whistle, the chug-chug-chug as it pulled out on its circle around the park. Nothing says “Industrial Revolution” and “Taming of the West” louder than the Iron Horse.

That, I think, is symbolic of a dichotomy I’ve lived with and tried to reconcile my whole life: I equally love the Wild … and the Industrial Age tools and technologies that tamed it, and in many cases destroyed it. And living in that dichotomy puts me right in line with my Frontier Partisan heroes. I’ve come to think of the phenomenon as the Frontiersman’s Paradox, which is summed up pretty succinctly in the quote from Burnham above. There’s something thrilling and creative in the “civilizing” process, but the civilization itself is… uninspiring.

Did we conquer the wilderness to make the world safe for Wal-Mart?

The mixed emotions of the Frontiersman’s Paradox are so commonly found in the record over a such a long stretch of time and such a vast geography that it’s virtually a cliché. Think Gus and Call in Lonesome Dove, mourning the passing of the Comanches and the bandits that they themselves ran to earth. They’d spoiled their own fun.

Simon Kenton in his old age could scarcely recognize the country he did so much to conquer.

Ted Franklin Belue closes his wonderful study of the Long Hunters, The Hunters of Kentucky, with a depiction of an aged Simon Kenton — who did as much as any single individual to wrest the land from its native inhabitants — gazing with bemusement at the civilization his work had wrought on a land he had entered when it was a kind of hunter’s paradise:

When old Kenton returned to Kentucky briefly from Ohio to visit, he hitched a wagon ride a few miles south of Limestone to take a sack of corn to a Washington gristmill. As David Hunter’s team topped a rise, Hunter reined in momentarily. Kenton, musing and drawing on his pipe stem, gazed at the land before him, all clapboard cabins and barns and greening pastures and cattle and horses where once there were buffalo rattling in the canebrakes.

“What a change. What a change,” Kenton exclaimed, shaking his head in amazement.

As the leather snapped and the wagon eased on, passing a certain spring — memorably dubbed ‘the Shitting Spring’ by Kenton and Daniel Boone years before for the many dung piles a Shawanoe (Shawnee) hunting party had deposited upon its banks — flowing on land claimed by Hunter’s father, Hunter’s venerable passenger grinned and spun a few yarns about his adventures with Boone, but in the end, Kenton realized that the fabled island in the wilderness he once knew, explored, hunted, trapped out, and helped wrest from the Shawanoes was no more.

Many of the old Africa hands became conservationists in their middle and later years — not so much out of guilt at their prodigal slaughter of elephants, rhinos, lion and other charismatic African game, as out of a desire that some of the old Africa that they loved be preserved.

It’s off the mark to write up the prodigality of the early frontiersmen as mere greed — in most cases they were simply in love (of lust) with the endeavor, the act of hunting the wildlife, logging the trees, prospecting for and mining the minerals. So many of them, like Burnham, grew bored and restless when the country grew settled — thanks to them — and they moved on to new hunting and trapping grounds, or the next big strike. Most of them never accumulated much personal wealth.

I get it. I truly do. I remember a long-range tuna fishing trip in Mexican waters I went on with my brother, where we got into a frenzied bite — the water boiling and the big fish pounding the bait the second it hit water. It was a wild slaughter, and I never wanted it to end. In that moment, I would have joyfully caught every fish in the Pacific Ocean. I don’t have to wonder how Long Hunters, Mountain Men or the old Africa hands could trap out the country, slaughter the buffalo, stack deerskins or ivory tusks to the sky. I know. Thoughtless prodigality, indeed.

Burnham’s biographer Steve Kemper notes that Burnham always thought of himself being on the “progressive” side of history — the side of social improvement and development of the land for its “highest and best use.” Yet, Burnham also knew himself to be, “at heart a splendid savage, nothing more.” This, too, is an aspect of the Frontiersman’s Paradox, and, again, I feel it in my bones.

I do not despise civilization and modernity. As an educated man of arts and letters, I embrace both. I have a fairly well developed sense of civic responsibility. And yet I also carry within me an atavistic drive. Mostly, those characteristics rest easy up against each other; sometimes they are in tension. Sometimes I want nothing more than to chuck that sense of civic responsibility into the ditch and tree the town.

Puts me in mind of a scene from a recent episode of The Son. Eli McCullough, former Comanche captive-turned-warrior is, in 1915, desperately trying to drill his imperial ranching dynasty into the 20th century, seeking financing for oil exploration on his south Texas lands. Sitting in the bar at the Driskill Hotel (one table over from where Marilyn and I sat when we visited Austin last), he is confronted by a pompous windbag of a potential investor, who isn’t going to invest in oil; he really only wants to “meet the Colonel.” For his part, the nattily dressed Colonel indulges in a vivid fantasy of scalping the bloviating bastard alive while screaming at him in Comanche.

Eli cleans up well, but he’s thinking about scalping you.

I feel it. I bet y’all have, too, on occasion. Eli tamps down the splendid savage; the civilized man prevails —barely — because it’s 1915.  We do that, too, because it’s 2017.

But the paradox remains. I want to be both civilized man and splendid savage. I want the trees and the cutting of them; the glorious wildlife and the killing of it; unmapped territory and the mapping of it. Thing is, we’re out of territory. Can’t just “build up the country” and move on to the next untrammeled frontier. We’re confronted with another paradox — we must regulate the wilderness to keep it wild; trammel unlimited freedom in order to preserve any freedom at all. We limit our catch or our bag, as we should, as we must — and tamp down the lust for more. We set aside lands as Wilderness or National Monuments because we can no longer mine it, drill it, log it, graze it and move on to find new, pristine country to explore.

We have no option other than to reconcile the Frontiersman’s Paradox in a way we can live with in the 21st Century — else thoughtless prodigality will kill not only what we love, but ourselves as well.

Comments

  1. Well done, Jim.

    I, too, straddle savage and civil. Past and present, too. I like diseases eradicated and communication via the Internet.

    While not as heartfelt, a similar paradox even exists for me today at my day job. I automate software. My charter – if you take it to its logical end – is to automate myself out of a job. Fortunately, I am just good enough that there will always be maintenance and other firefighting to keep me around.

    But software is not the wilderness nor an exhaustible natural resource.

    Reply

  2. Outside Austin was Steiner Ranch, a cow and horse operation that also produced two PRCA world champions – a son and grandson of the owner. They even had a practice bull riding setup. I met an ex-bull rider in Montana who told of spending part of the winters at the Steiner’s so he could practice with them.
    A friend of mine- an Austin native and ex-Marine sniper – drove by the ranch many times in his youth. It was in a beautiful little “valley” that you could see most of from the road. Idilic Texas Hill Country.
    Steiner Ranch now is a very large somewhat upscale housing development. My friend told me awhile ago that he drove that same road one day. As he took in the view, and his mind recalled what that view had looked like back in the day, my friend thought, “You know, not all change is good.”

    And, in a comment re: Mark Spragg’s “Where Rivers Change Direction,” a tremendous book about growing up wrangling horses and leading trips on his dad’s outfitting ranch in Wyoming, and remaining in Wyoming as a writer, Terry Tempest Williams said, “Here is a book for women to read to learn the hearts of men. Here is a book for men to read to curse what they have lost.”

    Reply

      • Housing developments break my heart more often than not. Ironic, I suppose, because I grew up in one that had probably been some kids’ deep woods for decades.

        A hillside apple orchard was next door to my sister’s house and we were free to trespass. Some years ago, a house went at the top, trees were culled. Now the hill is someone’s front yard. It’s still a beautiful area but I never look at that hill the same way.

        When I was a kid, my father’s favorite fishing spot was a creek you needed to hike a little bit into the woods to reach. Now, the backyards abut the bank. On the other side, ironically, town conservation land runs a trail where the old fishing/Boy Scout trails ran. If only they had conserved more. Much more.

        Reply

          • A couple of years back some of the relatives were working on finishing out a cabin in southern Colorado. This was out in the old coal country. Pretty much the back of beyond. The outer structure was complete at the time and they were working on the interiors and some minor external improvements.

            We were up there somewhere on the order of thirty days. If you wanted water, you drove ten miles to the spring and filled a reserve tank. If you wanted it hot, you boiled some. Me and my cousin slept on army cots in front of the fireplace. Our sole source of electricity was a car battery trickled-charged through a single solar panel. We crashed when the sun went down to preserve our battery and kerosene stores, cooked most of our meals on a camp stove, and were usually pretty well raring to go about the hour or sunup. All of my worldly possessions for this venture fit into a pickup toolbox. The nearest town big enough for resupply was a two-hour round trip.

            We did have neighbors. We never saw them. They lived fifteen miles distant, and the only sign of their house was a light on the side of the barn that showed up about the size of the head of a pin at night, and only if they remembered to leave it on.

            Granted, we weren’t exactly pioneering and probably weren’t even roughing it, but a funny thing happened.

            I’ve never slept better. Never before or since has my head been so clear or my thoughts near as focused. Productivity was through the roof. I peeled off something like fifteen pounds and starting putting on muscle. Truth be told…I wasn’t me. Not the me I was accustomed to, the one that went to school and had a job and stayed up half the night crawling the internet and playing videogames. The one that didn’t seem to be going anywhere.

            I think maybe for the first time I actually felt alive. So much so that by the time it was all over I was better than half-willing to strike off into the wild with a rifle and a bedroll and a good knife and see what happened.

            But I didn’t. Other obligations, you know.

            I went back to being that version of me I didn’t like much. Too many times to count I’ve waited for the chance to do it again. Since then circumstances have changed somewhat. There’s no returning to the time or the place. That’s shut out. Done. Gone.

            So I guess what I can take from the memory is this:

            You can be a productive citizen in the eyes of society or you can be a free man. Be damned if you can do both. But once you know what it is to be free you’ll never want anything else.

            * * *

            Alright…that’s probably enough of your time I’ve wasted tonight. I’ll crawl back into my cave now.

  3. You have to go back to Lonesome Dove, when Gus says to Woodrow, “We killed off all the Indians, and we killed off the bandits and horse thieves. Woodrow, we’ve killed off everything that made this country interesting.” Unfortunately, it is happening in Alaska. I think that those of us the read Jim’s Frontier Partisans, and the end of a dying breed. I don’t know that anyone coming after us will appreciate these characters and events in history like we do. They probably will just become fly shit on the pages of history.

    Reply

  4. I heartily concur with the sentiments in this post.

    The thing that breaks my heart is my fellow farmers who can’t stand to have a little patch of trees or grass or wetland or whatever on their land. How boring an existence they are leaving for any progeny that continues the business.

    I am also heartbroken (and scared shitless) by the headlong rush toward autonomous vehicles.

    I will be watching with amusement how engineers who can barely realize that a gravel road exists will be trying to mathematically model meeting wide farm equipment on narrow roads.

    Reply

  5. First came the churches
    Then came the schools
    Then came the lawyers
    Then came the rules

    He may have been singing about a specific place and time, but Mark Knopfler pretty much nailed the entire march of humanity in four lines. As an side, I’d put rate him one of – if not THE – premier guitar artist of the 20th century.

    But those words up there have got to be heartbreaking for anybody who’s ever watched something they know and love get steamrolled (sometimes literally) for the sake of a progress they neither recognize or want.

    As for modern conservation, that’s a fair strange animal in and of itself. I got to see Yellowstone a couple of years back and loved every mile – but by turns, you can’t help but wonder how it must have looked without pavement and highline wire and Park Service buildings everywhere. It’s a wonder, no doubt. But for the chance to have seen it as a NATURAL wonder…

    Reply

      • Of those I believe ‘All the Roadrunning’ may be the reigning favorite, but that’s just one song out of a standout album.

        Frankly, those are two artists I’d never have put in the same neighborhood, much less the same studio, but I’m glad it happened all the same.

        Reply

  6. I could write a fat book or two on my own experiences trying to ward off “progress”, and is why, no doubt, I relate to the “primitive” types so much better than the “civilized”. I was involved in numerous guerrilla conflicts from early childhood on up, trying to save the forested territory where I lived that I considered my own. I actually won some conflicts, but lost the war, of course, like so many other indigenous peoples throughout history. There is virtually NOTHING left from where I grew up, which I consider a monumental loss not only for the ecosystem and the wildlife, but the poor kids that have to grow up there now. And in thinking back at the many “Delinquent” acts I committed in those days one might think in my more mature adult years(ahem!), I’d regret some of those incidents. But I ACTUALLY relive them thinking on how, with my greater knowledge from experience, I could have cost the bass-turds MORE dearly! And all this occurred many years before someone, upon hearing some of my stories of those days, quite appropriately placed a copy of Abbey’s “Monkey Wrench Gang” in my hands!

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *