LOCALITY LIST OF THE SEEVER POTTERY COLLECTION, IN THE WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S MUSEUM.

Specimens numbered 1 to 28 inclusive - Taken in 1880 from mounds in Northcot's swamp, 6 miles west of Charleston, Mississippi Co., Mo., T. 26 N., R. 15 E. One mile N. of Bertrand, a station on the Cairo branch of the St. L., I. M. & S. Ry.

Nos. 29 to 80 inclusive. - Found in 1890, in Stanley mounds, 40 miles W. of Memphis, Tenn., in Cross Co., Ark., T. 8 N., R. 5 E. A very large group of mounds, covering 20 to 25 acres.

No. 81 — Taken in 1892 from Miller mounds, Poinsett Co., Ark., in S. 10, T. 10 N., R. 5 E. A large group in which several mounds are 20 to 35 feet high. They are 4 miles S. of Edwards station, on K. C. & Gulf Ry. Nos. 82 to 112 inclusive Taken in 1890 from Stanley mounds, Cross

Co., Ark., T. 8 N., R. 5 E.

Nos. 113 to 142 inclusive — Taken in 1890 from the Jones mounds, Cross Co., Ark., T. 9 N., R. 5 E. Cherry Valley, 12 miles west, is the nearest post office.

Nos. 143 to 145 inclusive - Taken in 1892 from Miller mounds, Poinsett Co., Ark., S. 10, T. 10 N., R. 5 E.

Nos. 146 to 151 inclusive - From various mounds in T. 8 and 9 N., R. 5 E., Cross Co., Ark.

Nos. 152. 153-Taken in 1892 from Miller mounds, in Poinsett Co. Ark., S. 19, T. 10 N., R. 5 E.

Nos. 154 to 157 inclusive - Taken in 1891 from various mounds in Cross Co., Ark., T. 8 and 9 N., R. 5 E.

No. 153 - From mound near Hatchie Coon, Poinsett Co., Ark., T. 12 N., R. 6 E.

Nos. 159 to 184 inclusive - From various mounds in Cross Co., Ark., T. 8 and 9 N., R. 5 E.

No. 185 - From mound near Hatchie Coon, Poinsett Co., Ark., T. 12 N., R. 6 E.

No. 186 From Miller mounds, Poinsett Co., Ark., S. 10, T. 10 N., R. 5 E. Nos. 187 to 193 inclusive — From Fortune mounds, at Neely's ferry, on St. Francis river, Cross Co., Ark., T. 9 N., R. 5 E. Cherry Valley is the nearest post office.

No. 194 From mound near Hatchie Coon, Poinsett Co., Ark., T. 12 N., R. 6 E.

Nos. 195 to 219 inclusive From the Fortune mounds, Cross Co., Ark., T. 9 N., R. 5 E.

Nos. 220 to 223 inclusive — From Sandy Woods settlement, near Diehlstadt post office, Scott Co., Mo., T. 27 N., R. 15 E.

No. 225- From mound near Diehlstadt, Scott Co., Mo., T. 27 N., R. 15 E. Nos. 226, 227 - From Cross Co., Ark.

No. 228

From mound near Diehlstadt, Scott Co., Mo., T. 27 N., R. 15 E.

No. 229- From Cross Co., Ark.

Nos. 230, 231- - Same as No. 228.

Nos. 232 to 236 inclusive – Taken in 1887 from Landers's mounds, in New Madrid Co., Mo., T. 25 N., R. 13 E. Six miles south of Little River station, on the St. L., I. M. & S. Ry.

No. 237 Taken from Miller mounds, Poinsett Co., Ark., S. 10, T. 10 N., R. 5 E.

Nos. 238, 239 - From Cross Co., Ark.

No. 240- From mound on the Madrid ridge, New Madrid Co., Mo., T. 25 N., R. 14 E.

Nos. 247, 248 - From Miller mounds, in Poinsett Co., Ark., S. 10., T. 10 N., R. 5 E.

Nos. 249, 250 -Fron New Madrid Co., Mo., T. 25 N., R. 14 E.

Nos. 251 to 254 inclusive - From mound one mile west of mouth of Tyronza river, in Cross Co., Ark.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN

HISTORY,'

BY FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER, PH. D.

[Address delivered at the Forty-First Annual Meeting of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, December 14, 1893.]

In a recent bulletin of the superintendent of the census for 1890 appear these significant words: "Up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement, but at present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line. In the discussion of its extent, its westward movement, etc., it cannot, therefore, any longer have a place in the census reports." This brief official statement marks the closing of a great historic movement. Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development. Behind institutions, behind constitutional forms and modifications, lie the vital

The foundation of this paper is my article entitled, “Problems in American History," which appeared in The Ægis, a publication of the students of the University of Wisconsin, November 8, 1892. This address was first delivered at a meeting of the American Historical Association, in Chicago, July 12, 1893. It is gratifying to find that Professor Woodrow Wilson whose volume on Division and Reunion," in the Epochs of American History series, has an appreciative estimate of the importance of the West as a factor in American history-accepts some of the views set forth in the papers above mentioned, and enhances their value by his lucid and suggestive treatment of them in his article in The Forum, December, 1893, reviewing Goldwin Smith's History of the United States.

2 Extra Census Bulletin, No. 2, April 20, 1892.

1

forces that call these organs into life, and shape them to meet changing conditions. Now, the peculiarity of American institutions is, the fact that they have been compelled to adapt themselves to the changes of an expanding people to the changes involved in crossing a continent, in winning a wilderness, and in developing at each area of this progress out of the primitive economic and political conditions of the frontier into the complexity of city life. Said Calhoun in 1817, "We are great, and rapidly I was about to say fearfully growing!" So saying, he touched the distinguishing feature of American life.

All peoples show development: the germ theory of politics has been sufficiently emphasized. In the case of most nations, however, the development has occurred in a limited area; and if the nation has expanded, it has met other growing peoples whom it has conquered. But in the case of the United States we have a different phenomenon. Limiting our attention to the Atlantic coast, we have the familiar phenomenon of the evolution of institutions in a limited area, such as the rise of representative government; the differentiation of simple colonial governments into complex or-i gans; the progress from primitive industrial society, without division of labor, up to manufacturing civilization. But we have in addition to this a recurrence of the process of evolution in each western area reached in the process of expansion. Thus American development has exhibited not merely advance along a single line, but a return to primitive conditions on a continually advancing frontier line, and a new development for that area. American social development has been continually beginning over again on the frontier. This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character. The true point of view in the history of this nation is not the At lantic coast, it is the Great West. Even the slavery struggle, which is made so exclusive an object of attention

1

Abridgment of Debates of Congress, v., p. 706.

by writers like Professor von Holst, occupies its important place in American history because of its relation to westward expansion.

wave

tion.

In this advance, the frontier is the outer edge of the the meeting point between savagery and civilizaMuch has been written about the frontier from the point of view of border warfare and the chase, but as a field for the serious study of the economist and the historian it has been neglected.

What is the frontier? It is not the European frontier a fortified boundary line running through dense populations. The most significant thing about it is, that it lies at the hither edge of free land. In the census reports it is treated as the margin of that settlement which has a density of two or more to the square mile. The term is an elastic one, and for our purpose does not need sharp definition. We shall consider the whole frontier belt, including the Indian country and the outer margin of the "settled area" of the census reports. This paper will make no attempt to treat the subject exhaustively; its aim is simply to call attention to the frontier as a fertile field for investigation, and to suggest some of the problems which arise in connection with it.

In the settlement of America we have to observe how European life entered the continent, and how America modified and developed that life, and reacted on Europe. Our early history is the study of European germs developing in an American environment. Too exclusive attention has been paid by institutional students to the Germanic origins, too little to the American factors. Now, the frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization. The wilderness masters the colonist. It finds him a European in dress, industries, tools, modes of travel, and thought. It takes him from the railroad car and puts him in the birch canoe. It strips off the garments of civilization, and arrays him in the hunting shirt and the moccasin. It puts him in the log cabin of the Cherokee and the Iroquois, and runs an Indian palisade around