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Cumberland Gap Quotations
| "Thus we behold Kentucky, lately an
howling
wilderness, the habitation of savages and wild beasts, become a
fruitful field;
this region, so favourably distinguished by nature, now become the
habitation
of civilization, at a period unparalleled in history, in the midst of a
raging
war, and under all the disadvantages of emigration to a country so
remote from
the inhabited parts of the continent." Daniel Boone, The Adventures of
Colonel Daniel Boon[e] (1784). |
"The exploitation of the beasts took
hunter and trader to the west, the exploitation of the grasses took the
rancher west, and the exploitation of the virgin soil of the river
valleys and prairies attracted the farmer. . . . But the most important
effect of the frontier has been in the promotion of democracy. . . .
The frontier is productive of individualism. Complex society is
precipitated by the wilderness into a kind of primitive organization
based on the family. . . . The frontier individualism has from the
beginning promoted democracy." Frederick Jackson Turner, The
Significance of the Frontier in American History (1893).
|
"It
would seem that the White race alone received the divine command, to
subdue and replenish the earth: for it is the only race that has obeyed
it--the only race that hunts out new and distant lands, and even a New
World, to subdue and replenish. . . . Civilization, or extinction, has
been the fate of all people who have found themselves in the trace of
the advancing Whites, and civilization, always the preference of the
Whites, has been pressed as an object, while extinction has followed as
a consequence of its resistance." Senator Thomas Hart Benton,
Congressional Globe, 29, no. 1 (1846): 917-918.
|
"The
country belonging to the Crows was not only beautiful, but it was the
very heart of the buffalo range of the Northwest. It embraced endless
plains, high mountains, and great rivers, fed by streams clear as
crystal. No other section could compare with the Crow country,
especially when it was untouched by white men." . . . "But when the
buffalo went away, the hearts of my people fell to the ground, and they
could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened."
Plenty-coups, Crow Indian Chief, in Frank B. Linderman, American: The
Life Story of a Great Indian (New York, 1950).
|
"Gone
are the millions of American buffalo. Their wanton slaughter brought
temporary profit and sport. But their departure opened the North
American continent for human development. . . . The buffalo have almost
disappreared as a result of one of the remarkable wild-animal
eradication programs recorded in human history. The benefit is
mankind's. Few should weep over buffalo. America never would have
blossomed to its current status in world leadership unless buffalo were
removed from the land." The Daily Chronicle, Centralis-Chehalis,
Washington, September 10, 1979.
|
| "Narrative
is a peculiarly human way of organizing reality, and this has important
implications for the way we approach the history of environmental
change. . . . Nature and the universe do not tell stories; we do. . .
." William Cronon, "A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and
Narrative," Journal of American History, 78 (March 1992), 1347-1376. |
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