Abstract
Mythic Frontiers examines how what we call the American frontier functions as a narrative for silencing the violent, oppressive, colonizing forces of manifest destiny by othering those who stood in its way and by elevating its principal architects to mythic heights. The frontier complex is organized into five eras: removal (1804–1848), restraint (1848–1887), reservation (1887–1934), recreation (1920–1980), and redoubling (1980–present). By the time Frederick Jackson Turner declared the frontier closed in 1893, it had been fully constituted in popular mythologies and fantastic frontier narratives such as Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West shows. It was this imagined frontier, converted into Wild West films and television programs, which filled the popular imagination by the mid-twentieth century. The National Park Service, state parks, and museums enshrined the mythologized frontier as history. In Fort Smith, Arkansas, this imagined Wild West frontier is packaged for cultural heritage tourists. Colorful stories of “Hanging Judge” Isaac C. Parker, Deputy US Marshal Bass Reeves, brothel madam Laura Zeigler, “Bandit Queen” Belle Starr, and Cherokee “outlaws” Zeke Proctor and Ned Christie constitute the frontier complex, replete with nooses, gallows, restored bordello, and staged shootouts. These mythic tourist discourses effectively silence imperialism, racism, and sexism in the nation’s history, deny the role Fort Smith played in it, and function as a refuge for contemporary neoliberal ideologies. Meanwhile, disenfranchised peoples are relocated, developers prey upon our fears in a declining manufacturing economy, and “cruel optimism” is placed in the “Bring It Home” campaign of the US Marshals Museum.
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