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From the establishment of the colony of New South Wales at Sydney in 1788, British soldiers and settlers fought a series of wars against Australian Aboriginal warriors to occupy land for farming and grazing. Rainfall in Australia is highly variable due to the influence of five external climate drivers, including the El Niño Southern Oscillation. This article argues there is a strong correlation between the onset of drought in the inland region of south-eastern Australia and the outbreak of armed conflict in the period from 1824 to 1841. This article argues that this approach of comparing climate data and records of conflicts can be extended to other regions and time periods in Australia, and in other regions of the world affected by similar climate drivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper quantitatively analyzes an 1885 Dakota Territory census to draw larger conclusions about Civil War veterans who migrated to the frontier. A sample of almost 6,000 veterans suggests that a significant percentage experienced some degree of wartime trauma, needed to reestablish themselves socially and economically, and took advantage of what financial security they had when homesteading newly opened territory. They were more likely to move to newly opened counties by themselves rather than with comrades from the war, relying on prior relationships only when moving to more established regions of the frontier where those associations might prove useful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Olhar de Professor is the property of Olhar de Professor and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Nineteenth-century American expansion has been shown as a type of Anglo-American "settler revolution," but the United States was also connected with France in France's ideas for the imperial development of Algeria. The two countries alike were ambitious empires, their leaders committed to expansion as a means of political and economic regeneration. More than this, the French empire "borrowed" images from its republican cousin to help incorporate Algeria. Writers during the July Monarchy saw American Indians' decline as a forerunner to white settlement's consequences in North Africa, although they rationalized how Algerians might be treated more benevolently. Napoléon III vowed to prevent an American analogue by setting aside Arab tribal land. Liberal reformers during the early Third Republic, however, called for assimilation of Algerians through land privatization, hailing the U.S. Homestead Act for how it could facilitate egalitarian, private land ownership, and thus help establish what Michel Chevalier had earlier imagined as the French "West." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the history of the U.S. Homestead Act of 1862. The author reflects on political debate over the distribution of land in the U.S. West to settlers and urban migrants. Emphasis is given to topics such as the Republican Party's adoption of a free land policy, the support of president Abraham Lincoln to provide opportunities for farmers, the displacement of Native Americans, and other entitlement legislation such as the Timber Culture Act and the Pacific Railroad Act.

The author responds to the article "Fatal Convergence in the Kingdom of God: The Mountain Meadows Massacre in American History," by Sarah Barringer Gordon and Jan Shipps, on the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre in Utah, which appears within this issue. Topics include how the importance of religion to the incident, both Methodist and Mormon, patriarchy and frontier, and the lack of historical source information about the Alexander Fancher group of Methodists.

This essay analyzes Aboriginal and settler landscapes within what became the Treaty #3 area of northwestern Ontario, during the late nineteenth century and after, and the tensions that exist between those landscapes. The Aboriginal landscape served the First Nations within their local framework but also included the international network of the fur trade. The settler landscape was created by people interested in expanding Canada, from Ontario into the West, through a road or railroad network, and in the development of the natural resources within the newly acquired territories in ways that represented the loss of control of the First Nations over their lands. This essay situates itself within William Turkel's ideas of continuity in change, meaning that while the colonial landscape came to dominate, the preceding Aboriginal landscape continued into the present day--a point that must be acknowledged and respected, if the current tensions over land that exist between First Nations and settler societies are to be resolved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the U.S. fur trade of the 1830s and 1840s with special attention to the mountain men, the main practitioners in this field, their religion as well as education, and their attitude towards the Native Americans. Other topics mentioned in this article include the role of the Trappers in 19th century U.S. history, the economic condition of the United States in the first half of the 19th century, and the role of Christianity for the mountain men.

The article discusses the settlement of Alaska by the U.S. between 1867-1895, focusing on the differences between U.S. and Canadian policy on settlement in frontier lands. Other topics include how historians use path dependence to study how the U.S. and Canada viewed frontier lands, the role each government played in organizing frontier settlement, and information on the governance and economy of Alaska during the time period.

The experiences of army officers' wives stationed in British India and the U.S. West during the period 1830-1875 offer a critical dimension to understandings of imperialism. This comparative analysis argues that these women designed a distinct identity that blueprinted, directed, and legitimized the ambitions of empire. In feminizing the Army's ranking system, officers' wives appropriated and wielded male authority. Military homes--a space where class, race, ethnicity, and gender intersected--functioned as operational sites of empire, and, in managing household servants, officers' wives both designed and endorsed the principles of benevolent imperialism. Whether adjudicating local disputes, emasculating soldier-servants of lower rank, or enacting the social norms of the metropole, these women confidently executed their duty as imperial agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article profiles Western adventurer and entrepreneur Albert Henry (A. H.) Boyd, adapted from the author's monograph "A. H. Boyd: Entrepreneur of the Prairie." Topics include Boyd's early life and service in the U.S. Army in the U.S. Civil War, his construction of a sod house adjacent to the Santa Fe Trail, and his various business dealings including ranching, freight transport, and the Dodge House Hotel in Dodge City, Kansas.

The article discusses 19th-century travelers' accounts of Arkansas, with a particular focus on the writings of hunter and author Friedrich Gerstäcker. According to the author, Gerstäcker was a perceptive observer whose understanding of frontier conditions led him to portray life in Arkansas more favorably than other travelers such as Thomas Nuttall and George William Featherstonhaugh. Topics include poverty, gender relations, and violence.

Vigilantism appeared in the last decades of the nineteenth century in some Western territories of the United States in process of colonization. These movements were consequence of the way such territories were organized, as well as of the absence and/or ineffectiveness of a formal legislation or authorities enforcing the law. Thus, the purpose of vigilantism was to protect the life and property of the settlers, who actually took the law in their own hands with some degree of violence. This paper examines the characteristics of the vigilante movements in order to trace their impact in the process of territorial organization undergone by Western areas of the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses conflicts between Mormons and non-Mormons in Hancock County, Illinois during the mid-19th century. According to the author, violence was partly motivated by the Mormons' reputation as religious zealots and increased as large numbers of Mormons moved to the region. Details on violence in frontier culture and a chronology of the conflicts are also presented.

The author discusses 19th century homesteader Rebecca Burlend, who moved with her husband and children from England to Illinois and homesteaded in Pike County, which at the time included the village of Chicago. Tenet farmers, the Burlend's trip up the Mississippi River from New Orleans, Louisiana to Illinois, and the barter economy of Pike County are discussed, as well as corn farming, land clearing, and wheat harvesting.

This essay focuses on two updated, Americanized versions of the Robinson Crusoe story published in the final quarter of the nineteenth-century: Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island and Douglas Frazar's Perseverance Island: or the Nineteenth-Century Robinson Crusoe. The first half of the essay considers how these Robinsonades reworked Defoe's novel as a fantasy of applied technology in an industrialized agrarian context. The second half of the essay engages with recent historical work on nineteenth-century British expansion in order to consider how Verne's and Frazar's adventures might be understood in relation to the flow of migrants and money from Britain to America around the period the novels were written. As a result, the essay proposes The Mysterious Island and Perseverance Island as literary vehicles that inspired visions of agro-industrialization at a time when Victorian subjects were increasingly drawn to the American West as a site in which to sink their labour and finance. Thus linking the circulation of the adventure form with overseas capitalist enterprise, the essay concludes by reflecting upon how such expansionism might be understood with regard to the discriminatory processes of primitive accumulation and uneven development that have characterized the growth of the modern capitalist world system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the opening of Mexico's northern border in the late 1820s, many foreign emigrants left their homelands for the wild Texan frontier. The offer of land and opportunity was especially appealing to many Irishmen. Consequently, a great many Irishwomen soon found themselves alongside their husbands and children struggling to survive in an unknown land. Rosalie Hart Priour and Annie Fagan Teal both accompanied their families into Texas in the early 1830s with the dream of owning land. Their experiences during the initial overseas journey, colonization, and through the Texas Revolution reveal not only the hardships they endured, but also give insight into the mind-set of frontier women, and a better understanding of what it was that drove them to leave their homelands for a wild, and unknown country. As disease, revolution, and disorder attempted to pull the people from their land, many men and women's loyalty and even identity changed in order to maintain a hold on the land first given to them by Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an exploration into teaching of women's history of the 19th-century Western United States, focusing on the diversity of social groups present and the regional characteristics of those groups. The author criticizes the over-simplification of female presence and prominence in many historical portrayals of the Western frontier. It is then suggested that history teachers need to broaden the understanding of the subject in their classes. Three cases of Western women are profiled as samples of the larger diversity of social types, highlighting distinctions between Native American women, women settlers and pioneers, and women in mining communities.

Sarah Winnemucca is largely remembered today as the author of the first autobiography penned by a Native American woman. Her book, Life among the Piutes, represents far more than a literary footnote. Winnemucca was an astute observer of US expansion into western North America and an outspoken critic of the violence and dispossession that her contemporaries dismissed as the inevitable byproduct of progress. Winnemucca pointed out the cruelties associated with the 'settlement' of the Far West, identifying particularly the many acts of violence perpetrated against Native women. Adapted largely from her public lectures, Life among the Piutes was both a comprehensive indictment of US actions and a clear description of possible remedies - remedies policy-makers routinely ignored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Th ere have been numerous studies of the frontier myth as it operated in the early republic and throughout our history. As a result of this work, we know a lot about the frontier myth, its history, elements, and ideological functioning. We know less, however, about how that myth developed when its ideological elements met the empirical realities of western emigration. I argue that four specific cultural fictions--erasure, civilization, community, and democracy-- are integral elements of the larger fiction of the American frontier myth. By understanding them through the vehicle of the Donner Party narratives, we can deepen our understanding of that myth and the ways in which it operates and resonates throughout the national culture and contributes to the development of American national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Espanola de Antropologia Americana is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the ways in which technology, the frontier, and exoticized American Indians were part of the same discourse in France and the U.S. as exemplified in their prominence in the 1889 World Exhibition held in Paris, France. The shared cultural concept of "free land" and the romanticizing of pioneer life explain why frontier Indians had such an appeal in Paris and is confirmed through cited articles published between March and October 1889 in the bi-monthly magazines "Le correspondant" and "La Revue des Deux Mondes." The 47-page booklet printed for the 1889 World Exhibition of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show is also discussed as an intercultural source linking French and U.S. visions of the frontier.

The article discusses the classical tradition in the pioneer town of Elmira in central New York in the 19th century. The culture of the ancient Greeks and Romans was emulated by public leaders and private individuals in an effort to legitimize and define their communities throughout the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It cites the significance of funerary monuments in Elmira's Woodlawn Cemetery. The creation of tradition is attributed to the weakening of the social patterns of the old society as a result of a rapid alteration of a society.

Between 1550 and 1848, approximately 200 presidios were established on the northwestern frontier of Hispanic civilization in North America. Over time, the institution evolved from small garrisoned places into a distinctive type of military colony. Prior to 1750, many presidios were not fortified. Those that were reflected vernacular building traditions that echoed medieval models. During the last 100 years of Spanish rule, efforts were made to modernize the presidios and professionalize their garrisons. These projects were only partially successful. Despite increasingly limited resources, portions of the presidio system managed to survive into the middle of the 19th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A reprint of the article "Manners and Domestic Habits of the Frontier Inhabitants, in the First Settlements of Ohio," by S. P. Hildreth, which appeared in the January 1856 issue of "The Medical Counselor," is presented. Topics discussed include a description of the dress worn by settlers on the eastern branch of Duck creek near Marietta, the design of the cabin and position of the furniture, and how the settlers accommodate their guests.

The article discusses the role of frontier schools in the U.S. During the 19th century frontier schools played a large role in the U.S. as they were often the main arena for social interaction in isolated frontier communities. Frontier schoolhouses were often constructed from local materials such as sod or pine.