Introduction

The American West

• Concepts of “the West” have existed all throughout American history— physically spanning from the Appalachian wildlands, to the Great Plains frontier, to the deserts and canyons of the Intermontane Plateaus— temporally spanning from early settlement by Europeans, to manifest destiny’s western expansion, to the contemporary era. 
• The West is infamously ambiguous. Historians have debated its definition and conceptual origins, involving questions of both where and what “the West” actually is:
  • Should the West be seen as a place or as a process? Meaning, does it have a defined physical location? Or, rather, is the West a cultural artifact— defined by different peoples’ usage of land over time?
  • Does the West solely encompass historical reality? Or, in viewing the concept as a cultural artifact, does the West incorporate “imaginative geographies”— the assumptions and fantasies about western land, people, and lifestyles?
• The concept of “the American frontier” is fundamentally analogous to “the West,” both representing the geographic history of territorial expansion. For simplicity, the following analysis mainly references ‘the West,’ though these terms often can be used interchangeably. 

Ohrem’s central thesis

• The West is a dynamic ensemble of ideas and experiences, an unfixed concept on which people ascribed their thoughts and feelings. In particular, the West reflected cultural concepts of “the human,” “the animal,” and the perceived boundary between them.

Establishing definitions

• [An “ontology” is a conceptual framework that groups things into categories. For example, colors are discrete categories to which objects belong— lemons are yellow, limes are green, oranges are orange. Lemons are not purple because our socially-accepted color ontology says so. Different cultures have different ontologies— if a language does not distinguish between yellow and orange, only having one word to describe them both, then its color ontology therein defines both lemons and oranges as the same color. It is important to analyze ontologies because they determine how people conceptually interpret reality.]
• [This essay discusses several three main ontologies, being race, species, and civility. These are often reduced down to simple binaries, denoting in-groups and out-groups: American ontologies distinguish whites from nonwhites, humans from animals, and civility from savagery. This essay emphasizes how these out-groups were conceptually confounded with each other and alienated from whiteness, posing ‘savage racialized animals’ opposite to ‘civilized white humans.’ There was also an implied ontology of place, distinguishing eastern “civilization” from western “wilderness,” but these imagined geographies largely developed from the other ontologies— that civilization and wilderness were defined by race, species, and civility. This essay also argues that concepts of race and civility developed from the species ontology, projecting concepts of inferior animality onto humans.]

The human—animal binary

There were two dominant conceptions of the human—animal binary:

• The traditional ontology stated that humans and animals were fully distinct from each other. This was largely rooted in “the Great Chain of Being,” a Christian concept of class hierarchy which distinguished humans as an innately superior class above animals.
• In the Antebellum era, this strict human—animal barrier was challenged by emerging studies of evolution, comparative anatomy, and natural history. The resulting ontology stated that humans naturally embodied animality, however this human-animality was a spectrum along racial and savage boundaries— wild racialized humans were more animalistic and savage, whereas white civilization triumphed in correcting animalistic tendencies.  

Western boundary crossing

• The West was viewed as a place of transformation: As imagined by many Americans, settlers became animalistic and wild as they moved westward, whereas local savages were tamed as civilization encroached. The frontier, being a geographic boundary between civilization and wilderness, was thus also an ontological boundary between civilized and animalistic humans.
• Philosopher Dominique Lestel describes the concept of “animality” as a “horizon of the human.” Rather than humans and animals being fully identical or distinct, a horizon describes the perceived ability to move towards or away-from animality, where there is the possibility to fully ‘lose yourself to’ or ‘escape into’ animality by approaching this boundary.

Western savagery

Man-to-beast narratives

• The human—animal and civilized—savage binaries once demarcated and protected concepts of race, however the West progressively challenged these assumptions. By creating liminal spaces of ambiguous human-animality, boundaries were blurred and traditional ontological frameworks failed. For example, the Christian Great Chain of Being placed Native peoples as a “connecting link between the animal and intellectual creation,” as described by Jedediah Smith in 1826-1827, but this order was complicated by animalistic white frontiersmen. 

Examples of the West’s animalizing effect

• Early in American history, the lives and experiences of “backwoodsmen” embodied the West’s degeneracy. For example, in 1744, physician Alexander Hamilton from Maryland wrote in his travel journal about the dangers of the woods. He describes part-human part-animal beasts called “Buckskins,” mythical creatures representing people estranged from civilized society. This figure seems to derive from European folklore of the “Wild Man.”
• In 1782, J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur wrote that frontier life had animalizing tendencies. By living in wilderness, frontiersmen were in fierce natural competition with animals and other humans, such as from deer taking crops and wolves taking livestock. This competition then forced the frontiersmen into an offensive position, becoming like carnivorous animals to survive.
• Discussions of the civilized—savage boundary often referenced “half-breeds,” a pejorative term used to describe individuals who existed somewhere between civility and savagery. This term usually denoted mixed-raced identity for both humans and animals, such as horses born from white-bred and native-bred horses. In 1835, Washington Irving described mixed-race Indigenous-Europeans, coming from the “rabble rout of nondescript beings that keep about the frontiers, between civilized and savage life.” 
• Half-breeds were not conceptually restricted to race, however, and the term could apply to any case of perceived ambiguity. This usage of the term is apparent in Charles Latrobe’s 1835 description of western animals, stating, “the dogs were numerous and seemingly a cross between the dog and the wolf. Every thing had an air of half-breed, and from this the fowls were not an exception; the bodies of the hens were raised up upon long, yellow, unsightly legs to an unusual height, and a particular breed of ducks was not wanting to complete the picture.” These descriptions show that the concept of “half-breeds” was based on white standards and expectations— the animals were not literally bred from civilized and wild lineages, but their appearances and behaviors were perceived as existing somewhere between white standards of civility and imagined wilderness expectations. 

• Regarding his 1846 journey on the Oregon Trail, Francis Parkman describes an apparent natural struggle between peoples. He explains that due to impassable differences between civilized whites and wild natives, they are naturally determined to turn against each other, stating “so alien to himself do they appear, that … he begins to look upon them as a troublesome and dangerous species of wild beast.” These descriptions of animality evoke an antagonistic concept of race, where a perceived inherent conflict between animal species is projected onto racial boundaries.
• In 1859, R.J.C. Atkinson described how the West influenced white bodies and minds, developing animalistic behaviors and abilities. He describes frontiersmen’s lack of intellect or logical reasoning, relating to associations of low-intelligence with savagery, animality, and racialized others. Rather, wilderness survival was thought to require more primitive skills, thus sharpening bodily senses like vision and directionality. 

Civilization as a corrective force

Expansion as an American identity

• Over time these frontiersmen birthed a new American identity, defined by individualist masculine wilderness survival, battling against savage humans, animals, and nature. As expressed by Theodore Roosevelt, Frederic Remington, and Frederick Jackson Turner in his “frontier thesis,” these frontiersmen paved the way for western expansion, and therefore they represented the process of becoming American. Rather than evoking negative associations of wilderness, frontiersmen were then viewed as pioneering and spreading Americanness across the continent. These figures continue to be associated with wildness, savagery, animals, and nonwhite others, however their white racial ontology was thought to naturally prevail over these uncivilized identities, peoples, and lands.

Settler ideologies of societal progress

• Complimentary to the man-to-beast narratives, various wild-to-civilized narratives described how white civilization “corrected” animalistic human behaviors. This civilizing trend is most clearly demonstrated by ideologies of Native erasure, where the geographic expansion of white social order was intended to “correct” or outright exterminate Native peoples in wake of superior white social order.
• [This settler ideology still exists today, but its logical structure is slightly different. Maintained over time is the idea that U.S. culture and lifestyles are better than so-called “traditional lifestyles”—  that “modern life” is more logical or civilized, having “superior” technology and material processes, being a more-advanced state of humanity. This belief is held even independent of life-satisfaction reports, where it is thought that people would be objectively better-off under certain socio-political-economic states. Such ethnocentric thinking ignores the flexibility of human psychology and the inherent subjectivity of culture, leading to a settler ideology which justifies cultural erasure in the name of spreading modernity.]

Examples of whiteness’ civilizing effect

• Within his 1782 text, Crèvecoeur also writes about a rural farm, describing the ideal patriarchy of a white farmer peacefully ruling over his family, servants, livestock, and wild animals. He analogizes cattle to citizens of a republican government: “…by superior knowledge I govern all my cattle as wise men are obliged to govern fools and the ignorant.” This scene contrasts to his previous descriptions of natural competition on the frontier, as a white farmer herein has the power to maintain a civilized socionatural order. 
• In 1844, wilderness adventurer Charles Wilkins Webber wrote about his experiences in nature, specifically discussing the apparent relationships between animals. He emphasized competition and violence in the natural world, referring to predator-prey relationships as the principle form of interspecies relations. Considering humans to be the apex predator, Webber states that, “the strong, of course, conquer,” thus taking a teleological stance that white men are naturally designed to dominate the weak.
• Human relationships with domesticated animals were often analyzed as indicators of civility. For one, people must “tame” themselves in order to “tame” an animal, so greater control over animals signaled greater control over the self. Furthermore, the behaviors of domestic animals were scrutinized as being more or less wild— the dogs of native settlements were described as swarming and ferocious yet cowardly, more similar to wolves than white-bred dogs. While writing about his 1846 trip on the Oregon Trail, Francis Parkman Jr. described Pawnee dogs as “[not having] acquired the civilized accomplishment of barking,” instead howling as “unruly wolfish dogs.”
• In 1857, Frederick Law Olmsted wrote that “[Native peoples’] young, like those of other animals, can be caught and tamed,” as an alternative to outright extermination. Whereas such statements depict Native people as animals, Americans did not necessarily assume equivalence between racial and animal identities. These complexities are demonstrated by Olmsted’s contrasting description of natives as provoking animalistic ferocity in white men, which alternatively implies that animality is a latent quality of all humans but is usually kept in-check by white civilization.

Inventing race from savage animality

‘Wilderness’ comprising racialized others

• The concept of “wilderness” hinged upon aesthetic depictions of natural landscapes. But as demonstrated by the previous examples, its conceptual basis was more deeply intertwined with concepts of race, savagery, and animality. Therefore, wilderness referred to a physical location but was ultimately a cultural construct based on Euro-American imaginings of the ‘savage wildlands’ beyond white civilization. These imagined geographies thus produced false narratives to justify white hegemony. 
• In 1841, George Catlin wrote that ‘savage’ originally meant ‘wild,’ but its definition had shifted to denote a “most ferocious, cruel, and murderous character.” This definition is relativistic to white audiences, where ‘savagery’ depended on white Americans’ perception of outsiders, particularly framed as violent enemies of white civilization. In making this point, Catlin disagreed with many of his contemporaries, instead implying that ‘wild humans’ were not inherently savage. As evidence for this, he notes a difference in the narratives of wild animals and wild humans: predatory animals such as grizzly bears were consistently described as bloodthirsty, cruel, and thus truly savage, whereas Native peoples were sometimes branded as poor and helpless. Therefore, despite both being called “wild,” they were not equal in terms of ferocious savagery. Nevertheless, many other philosophers did not make this distinction between wildness and savagery, thus maintaining a simplified binary of ‘bloodthirsty savage wild human-animals’ against ‘civilized white humans.’ The dominance of this ontology is evidenced by the unilateral force of imperialism— Native peoples and grizzly bears may have been differently framed as enemies of the state, but they were both nevertheless erased by civilization’s expanding frontier.

Constructing race from animality

• Racial boundaries were reinforced by the human—animal binary, where animalistic characterizations were projected onto people of color to further distinguish them from white humanity. Regarding Crèvecoeur’s description of wilderness environments, Paul Outka writes that wild nature was perceived to influence racial identity, but Ohrem more specifically identifies animality as contributing to concepts of race: Crèvecoeur’s depiction of tame farmlands implies that civilized society is created by a white man’s control over humans and animals. In his contrasting depiction of wild frontierlands, human-animal social relations cause the corruption of white frontiersmen’s racial and species identities, which conceptually hinges on the projection of animalistic traits onto native bodies and lifestyles.

The threat of corruption

Corrupting white civilization

• In describing how wild environments turned civilized humans into animalistic savages, Western narratives highlighted the fragility of social relationships in white society. Whereas white civilization was structured to tame natural savagery, transformation into animality implied moral regression and lawlessness. The perceived threat was damage to American lifestyles and social order— For example, perhaps frontiersmen would fully abandon civil society due to the overwhelming animalizing effect of nature, thus becoming savage and failing to expand white civilization. Referencing the mythos of part-human monsters, Hayden White describes this fear of human-animal transformation as “species corruption.” As concepts of species and race overlapped, this fear arose parallel to racial insecurities, similarly termed “racial corruption.”

Drawing a white—nonwhite boundary

• Whereas concepts of race once emphasized environmental factors, emerging ideas of “biological essentialism” conversely stated that races were distinct immutable biological categories. This perspective denied that frontiersmen were driven animalistic and antisocial by their environments, instead arguing that white people embodied whiteness inherently by design. As written by James Hall in 1833, white frontiersmen were not inferior to white Easterners because “men’s brains – at all events, the brains of white men – are made alike, all the world over.” Hall also defended the white frontiersmen’s civility by referencing that, despite being exposed to savage peoples and environments, they are also removed from undesirable racialized Americans— “the savage ferocity of the wild Irishman, and the sullen stupidity of the English peasant.”

Drawing a human—animal boundary

• Published in 1850, “Boddlebak the Bear-Tamer” was a short story highlighting fears of species corruption and incivility: A frontiersman wanders into a bear cave, in which live a rugged old man and several bears. The old man attempts to civilize the bears by speaking and interacting with them like humans, however the bears’ natural savagery prevails and they eventually kill the frontiersman. 
• This narrative warned against species degeneration, demonstrating that savage animals could not ascend into civility, and they would instead pull humans down into savagery. The old man’s unified human—animal ontology, “that all [human and nonhuman animals] are by nature the same,” was framed as absurd and dangerous, leading to the frontiersman’s death. Therefore to prevent the corruption of man by beast, a boundary must be drawn between savage animals and civilized humans, be it a metaphysical boundary regarding animals’ limited capabilities, or a socially constructed boundary of exclusion from civilization.