Lex Cornia
LI 532
Final Paper
March 15, 2008

East of Eden:
The Discovery of Innocence on the Western Frontier

The western clouds divided and subdivided themselves into pink flakes modulated with tints of such unspeakable softness that it was a pain to come within the doors of civilization… How does Nature deify us with a few and cheap elements! Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature

The West captivates people. The West both as a direction of navigation and as an idea occupies a magical realm where boundaries become blurred and what is light becomes twilight and dark. Just as the East represents the arrival of sun with its light and rationality—of darkness dispelled— so too does the West embody the loss of that sun’s light and logic and the commencement of night. However, there are more boundaries between East and West than merely the presence or absence of light. After the time of Columbus, the people who looked toward the West, and particularly the North American continent, saw more than just land. The West was a sacred place where magic, hallowed, and even treacherous experiences were possible. This idea that possibilities existed in the West that did not exist elsewhere motivated millions to leave the Old World for the new and redefine themselves in a Western landscape of unlimited possibilities.

What is the West?
These early settlers, religionists, and explorers to the West came to the shores of the Atlantic seaboard unsure of what to expect from the new landscape they encountered. By leaving their homes and coming to a new land to make a new life, these immigrants breached a frontier. Frontiers are not solidified lines of demarcation; instead, they are indistinct and shifting perceptions that divide what is “us” from what is not yet “us.” As immigrants traveled west they increased the distance from their old, comfortable lives, and with each passing mile they left behind more of what was known and encroached upon the unknown.
This experience of crossing over to uncharted land affected the new settlers and explorers in different ways. Some of the immigrants saw America as beautiful land brimming with possibility. In her book, The Land Before Her, Annette Kolodny cites Captain John Smith’s first impressions of the new continent. He described this new-found western land as “a contery that hath yet her maidenhead, her treasuries hauing yet never beene opened, nor her originals wasted, consumed, nor abused” (3). Men like Smith reveled in the opportunity to cross over into the vast uncharted territory the West offered. However, other settlers saw this new, undefined landscape as threatening. As the eastern extremity of the continent became more settled, these people saw the West as a foreboding wilderness. For them the frontier began immediately outside of their doorsteps.
One example of this type of anxious reaction to the New World can be found in the account of Mary Rowlandson’s Captivity and Restoration narrative. In this book Rowlandson describes being taken captive by Indians and drug from her home into the wilderness. Her depiction of the unsettled American landscape reveals how she and others like her perceived the world just outside their thresholds. The West was a menacing place full of Indians and animals that could cross over the frontier boundary and enter your home to destroy you. Rowlandson recounts seeing the consequences of her sister daring to step outside the door of their cabin.
“My eldest sister being yet in the house and seeing those horrible sights, the infidels hauling mothers one way and children another, some wallowing in their own blood: and her elder son telling her that her son William was dead, and myself wounded, she said, ‘And Lord, let me die with them,” which was no sooner said, but she was struck with a bullet, and fell down dead over the threshold.” Rowlandson, 7

As the narrative continues, Rowlandson chooses to use the terms “inhumane creatures” (11) and “a company of hell hounds” (8) to describe the Indians who captured her while referring to the western landscape they removed her to as a “hideous wilderness” (28) and “impregnable maze” (24). These depictions of the people and environment of the West illustrate the dichotomy many early immigrants made between the settlements of the East and the wildness of the West. When Rowlandson is eventually returned to the settled side of the frontier she expresses her relief to “see such a lovely sight, so many Christians together” and speaks of being “entertained behind the doors of several Christian houses” (58). Rowlandson’s narrative helped to solidify the idea in many of the early immigrant’s minds that the Western frontier was a threatening place that one should avoid. However, despite the demonization of the West by Rowlandson and others, some immigrants believed the West to be a kind of Eden where a personal communion with the divine was still possible. This idea stems from the biblical account of the creation story which places special emphasis upon the importance of direction. In the third chapter of Genesis, God removes Adam and Eve from Eden because of transgression. After Adam and Eve leave Eden, God becomes worried that the couple might return “to put forth their hands, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever” (v. 22). Because of his concern that Adam and Eve might attempt to return to the innocence of Eden, God “sent them forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from whence they were taken” (v. 23). Not only did God banish them from the protective innocence the couple experienced in Eden, but He also “placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubim and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life” (vs. 23-24). Notice the emphasis Genesis places on direction. The placement of a destructive angel to prevent Adam and Eve from returning to their innocence in Eden is deliberately positioned “at the east of the garden.” If God removed the couple from Eden, then placed an angel at the east to prevent them from returning, then the Garden of Eden undoubtedly lay in the West according the Genesis account. As the setting for the innocence and purity of Eden, the West is often referred to as a Virgin landscape. Captain John Smith’s sentiments on the “maidenhead” of the West were also echoed later by others who looked at the land as a fertile bed for them to plant business ventures, colonizing efforts, and other plans in. In The Land Before Her, Kolodny refers to the many flyers and publications sent out to promote immigration to the New World frequently referred to the landscape as a “Paradise with all her Virgin beauties” (1). However, the virginal comparisons did not solely originate because of the rich financial or agricultural opportunities that America afforded. The idea of innocence and purity also pushed many to see in this new land stretching West the image of a virgin so unblemished that even God himself could dwell there. Emerson saw the inherent virtue of the landscape as something that could elevate the mind of man to a higher plane and greater communion with Nature or Deity. His account of becoming a “transparent eyeball” while walking through unsettled wilderness and experiencing “the currents of the Universal Being circulat(ing) through me” and becoming “part or particle of God” (10) belie Emerson’s underlying belief that the pure nature found beyond the frontier and boundary of civilized society can enable a person to experience God. Far from Rowlandson’s denouncement of the wilderness, Emerson elevated the West to “nature.” According to Emerson’s writing, the West and unsettled lands represent the very habitation of God himself. In accordance with the Christian ideals of most of the immigrants to America, the innocence of a virgin is required for God to take up His habitation. The Western landscape beyond the frontier became that holy, virgin vessel.
Why Immigrate to the West? The various attempts to define the West by Smith, Rowlandson, and Emerson resulted in a rush of new immigrants to America and the frontier. The depiction of the West as an untouched woman inspired many men to adopt the idea of Manifest Destiny, or exclusive rights and a kind of sexual domination over the land. Manifest Destiny represents the efforts of American immigrants to warn other European nations that they claimed the right to take the virginity of the Western lands. Colonizing or bringing a piece of the untamed western landscape into submission became a prerequisite for immigrants to become full citizens of the newly formed United States. Similar to initiation rituals, new immigrants were required to show their willingness to colonize or consummate their relationship with frontier lands by penetrating the virgin soil with equipment and seed to cause an unnatural growth of specific plants—cotton, tobacco, etc— on their property. Essentially, if a person is willing and able to successfully rape the land, that person can be granted membership the exclusive group of American citizens. The wealthy farmers, planters, and plantation owners represented the aristocracy of early America with men such as Washington, Jefferson, and Lee as some of the more prominent members. Not only did the frontier provide a space for immigrants to obtain and subdue cheap, fertile soil; these immigrants also participated in the domestication of the West as a whole. With each new immigrant claim to land and each season of successful and more successful crop yields, the frontier lands came to resemble the more civilized areas to the East more and more. The new settlements and farms of the immigrants assisted Eastern civilization in driving the Western frontier further back, like an army trying to rout its enemy. From the Catskills in New York to the Appalachian and Blue Ridge in the Virginia the entire western front receded with each newly claimed piece of land.
As the eastern seaboard became increasingly settled, planters needed cheap labor to work the thousands of acres of newly colonized land. Imported slaves from Africa fulfilled most of this demand; however, many landowners also brought indentured servants over from European countries. In his book, Colonists in Bondage, Abbot Smith writes that European immigrants were so eager to relocate to America and yet so poor financially that they would sell years from their own lives in return for passage to the New World. “during all of the seventeenth century indentured servitude was practically the only method by which a poor person could get to the colonies or by which white labor could be supplied to planters” (20). After a perilous voyage, immigrants would work for their employer for a set period of years during which they would pay off the price of their ticket to America. After the completion of their servitude, these immigrants sought to find land, often on the “frontiers of Virginia and her northern and southern neighbors” (Smith, 297) where they would attempt to somehow cultivate their property with native and non-native cash crops. Provided these efforts were met with success and their labors at impregnating the frontier with seeds yielded a fruitful harvest, these immigrants could vote, hold office, and participate in public affairs. In essence these people immigrated twice to become Americans, but it was their connection to frontier or Western land and their colonization of that land that ultimately made them citizens. This sacrament of the frontier enabled indentured servants to come into communion with the emerging American nation. In later years during the late 19th century, the Oklahoma territory opened up as another opportunity for un-landed immigrants to enter into citizenship after displaying their willingness to “cultivate” a piece of the virgin frontier. So many eager immigrants and “cultivators” showed interest in the Oklahoma territory that U.S. government officials decided to hold a race where the first individual or family to arrive at a 160 acre stake of land could claim it and receive title provided improvements were made upon the land. In his book Contested Territory, author Murray Wickett writes that “the Oklahoma land run is the ultimate symbol of the American frontier… a frantic rush for economic opportunity” (54). This sexualized communion between immigrant and the frontier was not only limited to a heterosexual act. Women also are depicted in both literature and history as colonizers and settlers of the great American frontier. Willa Cather’s character Alexandra Bergeson also lays claim to landscape in the novella O Pioneers! Not only does this depict landscape as something to be tamed, but it also implies a sexual relationship between humans and landscape in which both women and men can penetrate the land with equipment and seed and cause unnatural plants to grow there. This idea is extended throughout O Pioneers! as Alexandra cultivates the Nebraska farm country to becomes an abundant producer of alfalfa. Alexandra’s success at settling the virgin land allows for the possibility for a homosexual relationship to develop between women and the innocent virgin spirit of the West. Not only is Alexandra the most adept farmer (or impregnator in sexualized metaphor), she is also the strongest character in the novel with much more foresight and emotional strength than her male counterparts. However, despite the gender-related differences between Alexandra’s relationship with landscape and other male cultivators, she nonetheless takes part in the virgin sacrament and rape of the frontier and becomes an affluent and important citizen thanks to the fertility of the land. Cather extends the metaphor of taming the West and likens the Nebraska landscape to a horse. She writes, “This land was an enigma. It was like a horse that no one knows how to break to harness, that runs wild and kicks things to pieces” (15). The metaphor that Cather draws between the land itself and a wild horse is very interesting. It connotes that the western landscape is not human, it is animal. This animalistic landscape is also depicted as something that resists domestication. However, despite Cather’s animalization of the immigrant’s relationship to the land, the language she uses suggests that the trembling animal could be broken to harness under Alexandra’s steady hand.
What Happens in the West? The frontier or borderland that lies just on the outskirts of civilization provides a place where new immigrants can take part in a communion-like ritual of landscape rape. However, what happens in the interior of the West far removed from any influence of civilized society? What kind of change takes place when an individual crosses over the boundary separating what has been settled from what has yet to be— the frontier. Once across this ambiguous frontier, the traveler encounters a place in which time seems to be suspended. As in the Genesis Garden of Eden, paradise, or the West, represents a sphere in which God has held the hands of time, and the people and creatures live in a state of eternal sameness. The same enticement of the West affects people. The West has the effect of amnesia upon the minds of those who partake of it. In many ways, it resembles the lotus flowers from Homer’s Odyssey. In the epic, any persons who tasted of the lotus flowers immediately forgot about home and chose to stay where they could eat the flowers. As Odysseus explains to King Alcinous, “Now whosoever of them did eat the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus, had no more wish to bring tidings nor to come back, but there he chose to abide, ever feeding on the lotus, and forgetful of his homeward way” (Book IX, 129). Interestingly, in the epic the Lotus-Eaters inhabit an area along the northern coast of Africa, on of the westernmost locations that Odysseus sees in his journey. A similar effect can be found among the mountain men and explorers of the Rocky Mountains. Often times these men would become so intoxicated by the rugged beauty and isolation they found in the West that they would spend years in the mountains instead of the months they had planned on. These men became real life Rip Van Winkles, being suspended from time for so long they were not aware of major events such as presidential elections, new territories, or wars. Rip’s journey into the Catskills constitutes what, at that time, could be considered crossing over the frontier and into the heart of the West. While he is there he encounters mythical beings who cause him to fall asleep at the base of a tree for an unnaturally long period. When Rip awakens, he returns to civilization unknowing that the world has changed in his absence and he is unable to cope with the drastic shift in society. Again, several similarities correspond to the biblical account of Adam in the Garden of Eden. In that account, God causes a deep sleep to come over Adam. While Adam is asleep God changes his world by fashioning a woman out of one of Adam’s ribs. This woman, Eve, goes on to introduce sin into the world by partaking of the forbidden fruit and transgressing God’s commandments. For this transgression Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden and forced to inhabit a hostile world much different from the one they knew previously. Similarly, Rip goes westward toward Eden, and there he falls asleep and awakes in a hostile world much different from the one he knew previously. Cecil Alter commented on the Siren song of the West beckoning men ever onward in his book, Jim Bridger: A Historical Narrative. He writes “Though body and limb called these men back to the settlements, the heart and mind continue to move toward the high passes in search of the ‘eternal spirit that lives in the mountains’” (Alter, 38). Alter sees the motives that drove men like Bridger and Jeremiah Johnson to the mountains as more than simply economic opportunity. These men fled to the mountains as a refuge, a place to find a deeper communion with the West than could be found by the immigrants on the borders of the frontier. Not only did these men prefer living in the mountains, many of them lost any semblances of “domestication” and hearkened back to a more primitive, native state that reclaimed some of the innocence the virgin landscape had lost under the hand of settlers. Jim Bridger was a full member of the Crow Indian Nation and Jeremiah Johnson married a Flathead squaw who bore him three children. “These men took Indian brides, adopted Indian customs, and many times preferred Native culture to their own Anglo-European roots” (Alter, 57). This spirit of the mountains or the Edenic qualities of the West also work in Jack London’s The Call of the Wild. Although the main character of the story is a dog, London nonetheless writes a Sirens song story of the domesticated being called back to a more primitive state. When Buck leaves the side of his master and follows a timber wolf far into the wilderness away from camp, London describes the lure of the West to return to a former state of being. “Buck was wildly glad. He knew he was at last answering the call, running by the side of his wood brother toward the place from where that call surely came. Old memories were coming upon him fast… He had done this thing before, somewhere in that other and dimly remembered world, and he was doing it again, now, running free in the open, the unpacked earth underfoot, the wide sky overhead.” London, 188

The call of the West reached out to more than just the rugged, individualist mountain men. The opportunity for a rediscovery of innocence also appealed to groups of people seeking refuge in the West. One of these groups was the Mormons. Initially, the Mormons settled in Jackson County, Missouri, but religious persecution forced them to move further West. Their founder, Joseph Smith, taught that the Mormon people would help to reestablish the city of Zion on the American continent.
“I received by a heavenly vision to take my journey to the western boundaries of the state of Missouri… After viewing the country, seeking diligently at the hand of God, He manifested Himself unto us , and designated, to me and others, the very spot upon which He designed to commence the work of the gathering, and upbuilding of an ‘holy city,’ which should be called Zion—Zion, because it is a place of righteousness, and all who build thereon are to worship the true and living God, and all believe in one doctrine, even the doctrine of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Joseph Smith

The Mormon understanding of Zion reverts back to the city of Zion described in the Old Testament in the prophet Enoch’s time. Similar to Buck in The Call of the Wild and the lives of the mountain men, the Mormons believed the West afforded them the opportunity to get back to a time of greater innocence, nativity, and a closer spiritual union with Deity. Before he was martyred in Illinois, Smith prophesied that his followers “would be driven to the Rocky Mountains (where) they will build cities and become a mighty people in the midst of the mountains” (517). This belief motivated thousands of Mormon immigrants to travel overland to the Great Salt Lake Valley where they sought to establish a Zion society. The idea of Zion refers to the people living with “one heart and one mind” and “being sufficiently sanctified to bear the presence of the Father” (478). This idea coincides with the Genesis creation story where, because of the purity and innocence of Adam and Eve in the garden, they were able to have personal interaction with deity. Similar to Emerson, Mormons believed that by regaining the innocence of the West and nature they could revert back to an Edenic state of purity and salvage true religion. As Mormon converts from Europe immigrated to America through New York and Boston, then made their way to the frontier before embarking on their arduous journey to the Intermountain West, they would write songs and poems envisioning the paradise they hoped to find. One of these songwriters named William Clayton received news that his wife had given birth to a healthy baby boy in Illinois. He felt so inspired he immediately penned the words to the hymn “Come, Come Ye Saints.” This hymn went on to become the anthem of the Mormon migration to the West and remains a favorite in the modern Mormon Church today. The final stanza of the hymn expresses the Mormons’ vision of what awaited them in the West.
“We'll find the place which God for us prepared,
Far away in the West,
Where none shall come to hurt or make afraid;
There the Saints will be blessed.”

As Clayton’s hymn suggests, the idea of the West in the minds of immigrants inspired millions to leave what they had known and set out in search of a new land with new opportunities. For some these opportunities were financial, others saw the chance to escape what they saw as a corrupt society and regain some semblance of innocence in the vast, uncharted Western landscape. As the frontiers of the world vanish and less and less is unexplored, the idea of the West continues to intrigue and captivate us as an area where we are able to redefine ourselves—whether that place exists on maps or in our minds, humans will continue push out at our frontiers and perhaps become immigrants to new places of being and thinking. The only frontiers are the ones we set before ourselves.

Works Cited

Alter, Cecil J. Jim Bridger: A Historical Narrative. 1925. 2nd ed. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962.

Anderson, Nels. Desert Saints: The Mormon Frontier in Utah. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1942.

Cather, Willa. Death Comes for the Archbishop. New York: Random House, 1992.
- - -. O Pioneers! New York: Random House, 1992.

Clayton, William. “Come, Come Ye Saints.” Hymns of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 1992. 30.

Cooper, James Fennimore. The Last of the Mohicans. New York: Penguin Books, 1997.

Ehrlich, Gretel. The Solace of Open Spaces. New York: Viking, 1985.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Nature .” Essays and Lectures. New York: The Library of America, 1983. 1-48.

Ford, John, dir. How the West Was Won. 1962. Videocassette. Warner Brothers, 1993.

Irving, Washington. “Rip Van Winkle”. Collected Stories: The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon gent. 1819. Ed. Haskell Springer. Lim. ed. Philadelphia: The Franklin Library, 1985.

Jeremiah Johnson. 1972. DVD. Paramount, 2001.

Kolodny, Annette. The Land Before Her: Fantasy and Experience of the American Frontiers, 1630-1860. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.

London, Jack. The Call of the Wild. 1903. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1920.

McMurtry, Larry. Lonesome Dove. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985.

“The Odyssey.” The Complete Works of Homer. Trans. S. H. Butcher and Andrew Lang. New York: The Modern Library, 1935.

Paint Your Wagon. 1969. DVD. Paramount, 2004.

Rowlandson, Mary. Captivity and Restoration. 1678. Fairfield: 1st World Library, 2005.

Smith, Henry Nash. Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth. 1950. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973.

Smith, Joseph. Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith. Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 2001.

Stegner, Wallace. The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1964.

Stewart, Elenore Pruitt. Letters of a Woman Homesteader. 1914. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961.

Wickett, Murray R. Contested Territory: Whites, Native Americans, and African Americans in Oklahoma. Baton Rouge: Louisanna State University Press, 2000.