The fatal environment
Subtitle: the myth of the frontier in the age of industrialization, 1800-1890
By: by Richard Slotkin.
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Norman
Language: eng
Number of pages: 636
Subjects: Frontier and pioneer life -- United States -- Historiography.; Little Bighorn, Battle of the, Mont., 1876 -- Historiography.; Frontier and pioneer life in literature.; American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Myth.; United States -- Territorial expansion -- Historiography.
Description: In The Fatal Environment, Richard Slotkin demonstrates how the myth of frontier expansion and subjugation of the Indians helped to justify the course of America's rise to wealth and power.

Using Custer's Last Stand as a metaphor for what Americans feared might happen if the frontier should be closed and the "savage" element be permitted to dominate the "civilized," Slotkin shows the emergence by 1890 of a myth redefined to help Americans respond to the confusion and strife of industrialization and imperial expansion.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [587]-618) and index.
Originally published: New York : Atheneum, 1985.