What does the Frontier myth mean?

This section will draw from cultural historian Richard Slotkin's majestic trilogy on the creation of the Frontier myth. Please see sources below.

The North American frontier has been a space of both fascination, hope and fears ever since the first European settler colonists arrived at the east coast of the North American continent. For the settlers, the frontier was not only the border between wilderness and settlement but also the border between civilization and savagery. The fear for the unknown in the frontier and for the "uncivilized state" of the indigenous population co-existed with hope for the possibilities of the frontier that at the expense of the indigenous peoples (who were meant to be civilized, assimilated, or annihilated) could be "tamed", civilized (for example through the introduction of Christianity) and consequently establish and expand the European colonies on the North American continent. In this, we see the origins of the American Myth of the Frontier. The European settler colonists left a Europe (separation from civilization) to settle on the North American continent in an uncivilized state (regression from a civilized life to make a new, primitive life in the wilderness) which led to a life or death fight between the settlers and the wilderness (conflict with both nature and the indigenous population). The mythical story that is created is therefore a specific rotation of separation, regression and regeneration through violence. The last category has an important function in the myth because the progression of society in various incarnation of the Frontier myth is tied violence, in particularly towards the indigenous population. The conflict with the indigenous population created some of the earliest borders in the American national identity. In the view of the settlers, the fact that the settlers (and the subsequent "white" American population), like the indigenous population, "originated in the American wilderness" didn't mean that they were savages like the indigenous population. These important opposites (European colonists/indigenous person, civilization/wilderness) are present in an another, important aspect of the Frontier myth, an aspect that Slotkin calls Savage War symbolism. Savage War is the justification for the subjugation of the indigenous population in the European hierarchy in North America. The motivation that is given through Savage War symbolism is that civilized Europeans can not co-exist with the primitive indigenous population. They have to be subjugated and oppressed because if they are not, this will cause the destruction of white civilization.

In summary, the Frontier myth was not only a mythic construction but also a theory of development to explain the social, political and economic consequences of the European colonization and a historiographical argument to explain the large features of the short history of the United States.