Book Review: "Frontier Violence: Another Look"

Hollon, W. Eugene. Frontier Violence: Another Look, New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.

In Frontier Violence, W. Eugene Hollon examines America’s violent past from colonial times through the late nineteenth century. Hollon’s study of violence on America’s frontiers is a reexamination (as the title implies, “another look”) of whether or not the violence myth has a leg to stand upon. The conclusion that Hollon reaches and the thesis of this work is that “frontier lawlessness was primarily the result, rather than the cause, of our violent society”. In explaining this thesis, Hollon examines incidents of violence which took place in regions far to the east of the frontier long after the process of “civilizing” was supposed to have taken place. Hollon was dissatisfied with the argument forged over time by Americans that violence was brought about by the lawlessness of the West. Since there were no laws in the West, the region was violent. Hollon disagreed with that explanation, stating “perhaps the real violence of the frontier was related more to anxiety, tension, frustration, and prejudice than to any action by outlaws, Indian fighters, and assorted vigilante groups”. Throughout Frontier Violence, Hollon argues that the majority of violent acts were perpetrated against minorities due to the aforementioned reasons.

Hollon examines incidents of violence relating to the colonial frontier, antebellum urban areas, Texas, California, the Chinese, gun culture, Indians and Mexicans, the Northern Plains, and the Southwest. Each of these categories is given its own chapter in Frontier Violence and they are linked by Hollon’s thesis “frontier lawlessness was primarily the result, rather than the cause, of our violent society”. The first chapter explores violence in the colonial period of American history. Hollon provides an interesting study of the Puritans in this chapter as well as providing the reader with an interesting explanation for the foundation of violent American behavior. According to Hollon, the Puritans lived relatively serene lives in England compared to what they faced in America. The intense desire to make their colony succeed, since returning to England did not appear to be much of an option, as well as the frightening reality of their strange new environment in which they were the minority led the Puritans to develop a policy that Hollon describes as shoot first, ask questions later. This policy towards the Native American inhabitants of the Puritan colonies set the tone for future American interaction with minorities or anyone that could be seen as a threat to their survival.

The Puritan inhabitants of New England are not the only group that Hollon studies in this opening chapter. One of the most interesting aspects of Frontier Violence is how Hollon employs his narrative style. The book is filled with intense stories of violence; within the first chapter Hollon writes about the Vikings, the Puritans, and the Spanish conquistadors and how each of these groups reacted to the presence of indigenous peoples. Hollon writes that across the board, when Europeans came in contact with native peoples they developed the attitude that the only means of survival in the new environment in which they found themselves was through violence. Acts of violence during the colonial period of American history were not reserved only for Native Americans, as Hollon argues, violence was also directed against the British by American colonists in response to unfavorable policies and taxes. The argument Hollon develops in this chapter is that violence has traditionally spread from metropolitan areas outward, to the periphery. So if one is trying to trace how violence spread to the frontier regions of America, one only has to examine social, economic and political institutions of the Atlantic seaboard. Violence in America developed in the colonies, was refined in metropolitan areas during the late colonial period and the American Revolution, and then spread to the frontiers; however, as Hollon explains in later chapters, violence would continue throughout the East long after the settlement of the West. In many ways, Frontier Violence was written to help Americans understand contemporary acts of violence in the 1970s, when the book was first published.

The next topic that Hollon explores is the incidence of violence in antebellum urban areas. Violence in urban areas before the Civil War usually took the form of vigilantism. This was especially true in the Southern states where local lawmakers were untrustworthy or access to law enforcement was difficult to come by, which was the case in several poor regions of the South. While this chapter is slow in developing to its stated purpose of examining urban violence, when Hollon does begin to discuss this subject he offers several interesting insights on the character and development of urban violence. According to Hollon, the three decades before the Civil War in the United States saw the greatest levels of urban violence in the history of the country. This is due in large part to the arrival of millions of immigrants from Ireland and Germany and the development of slum regions in eastern cities. With so many new immigrants arriving in this country, native-born citizens saw a rise in the competition for existing jobs and with a poorly trained police force it was difficult for lawmakers to control the level of violence in cities. Hollon provides numerous examples of acts of violence perpetrated against these immigrant groups and it certainly adds weight to his argument that violence is the result of anxiety and the fear of having their survival threatened.

Vigilantism and mob violence was usually the response to the growing crowds of immigrants in large cities before the Civil War, especially in the South where educational levels were lower and white citizens regularly were armed with knives and/or guns. The purpose of this chapter is to show readers that before Americans moved beyond the Mississippi River and began the process of conquest in the West, they were well conditioned to violence, having been raised in violent areas of the East. As Hollon states in this chapter, “violence in the American character was well developed long before large numbers of settlers were ready to move into the Great Plains and the Far West”.

Violence in Texas is explored in chapter three by examining the question of why Texas maintained a frontier mentality that condoned acts of violence by her citizens until well after the physical frontier moved on. By studying Texas violence, Hollon was able to detect what exactly made Texas unique, the answer was the very high level of race hatred that existed for much of the nineteenth and twentieth century. The early white settlers of Texas early on formed a race hatred for Mexicans and Indians due to the level of hostility that existed naturally between three very different cultures. The Texans, and this goes back to Hollon’s earlier argument, viewed their survival as being threatened by the existence of competition in the form of Mexicans and Native Americans on lands they were trying to conquer. In response to their feelings of threatened survival, the Texans reacted violently, which in turn led the Native Americans and the Mexicans to react violently. On their part, Mexicans attacked Texas settlements for nearly sixty years following annexation; a normal reaction when one considers that these people had their land taken from them by the Texans. While the frontier had moved on much earlier, a frontier mentality remained because of the raids by Mexicans on border towns and due to the length of time it took for Texans to handle their “Indian problem”. Hollon states that the Texans took an inordinately long time resolving this “problem”, something in the vicinity of sixty years while most other regions dealt with similar situations in perhaps one or two decades. Race hatred continued in Texas long after border fights with Mexican raiders and fights between the Texas Rangers and Native Americans, especially when slaves were freed following the Civil War. The Texans expanded their race hatred to include newly freed black slaves.

Violence towards minorities as a theme of Frontier Violence continues with Hollon’s chapter on the early history of California following independence from Mexico. In this chapter Hollon describes the diverse groups who came to settle the state and he discusses acts of violence against the minority population. Hollon claims that while California had a shorter period of violence than compared to Texas, more violence was stuffed into its frontier period than any other state or region. Hollon begins his description of violence in California with the Spanish and later Mexicans who controlled the region. In example after example, Hollon describes brutal violence and repression used against the indigenous inhabitants of the region to punish them for the smallest infraction. If Native Americans ran off from the Spanish mission they would be murdered or whipped until they were nearly dead. If they stole a horse or mule, an entire village would be murdered and their possessions would be burned. When Americans took possession of the region, the violence continued against the indigenous peoples and extended to include the Mexicans and later the African Americans who came to region. California was a very violent region and the murder rate for Native Americans was so high that few of the original tribes of that state exist today.

Chinese immigrants began arriving in California during the late 1840s and soon after they earned the race hatred of that state’s white population. Hollon writes that all minority groups eventually earn the race hatred of white citizens when their group “becomes too visible” and for the Chinese this was during the Civil War. By 1882 the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed and immigration from that country almost ceased. At first, during the 1850s, Hollon states, the Chinese were looked upon favorably for their intelligence, work ethic and their reputation for dependability. What happened to change the minds of white Californians was the presence of the Chinese in gold mines. Soon the old fears returned: competition for jobs would increase and survival would be threatened. Whites responded to these fears by driving the Chinese from gold mines and laws were passed that only allowed them access to the “tailings” and poorer diggings that whites believed did not yield enough gold to be worth their time. Eventually the Chinese were pushed into urban areas where they found work in the laundry industry and as fishermen. Laws were passed that prevented the Chinese from testifying in court, so often crimes against this ethnic group went unreported and unpunished. Unlike Mexicans, Native Americans and African Americans, the Chinese for the most part did not rise up against white Americans, not when acts of violence were perpetrated against them and not when they were pushed away from their legally owned mines. Violence against Chinese railway workers and coal miners also occurred frequently in western frontier territories as fears of competition for jobs and just plain race hatred were made manifest. In many railroad towns where Chinese workers outnumbered white workers, murders and other acts of mob violence frequently occurred. Hollon argues that not until the Japanese began to arrive on the West coast in significant numbers did the hatred of the Chinese lessen.

The final chapters of Frontier Violence examine themes in a broader context than the ones previously discussed. Hollon explains the gun culture of the frontier region as a sort of myth related to the imagined contemporary necessity of firearms in this nation. According to Hollon the firearm was at one time an actual necessity due to the violence of the frontier region (rattlesnakes, horse thieves, angry and frustrated Native Americans) but over time the need for Colt revolvers and other six-shooter weapons dissipated. However, the myth persists today that Americans need guns. Hollon does not come down on either side of the contemporary gun control debate but he does acknowledge that there are extremist views on both sides. What Hollon does do is analyze the importance of the six-shooter and he discusses how the weapon was used in acts of violence along the frontier. The six-shooter revolver was a weapon that served many purposes, most of which were violent, but some of which were less so, according to Hollon’s analysis. Possessing a six-shooter could bring respect, it could in some cases be seen as an equalizing force and the weapon could serve as a means of protection. In terms of violence, during the Civil War the Colt armory made many of these weapons, hundreds of thousands of young men were trained how to use them and were accustomed to violence due to what they had seen and done during the conflict. With such a large population trained and armed and now out of the military, it is little wonder, states Hollon, that murder rates surged after the Civil War in almost every major urban center and in rural areas incidents of violent crime also increased. An example of this would be the James Gang, trained to fight with Quantrill as guerilla soldiers during the Civil War; following their service they employed their job skills as bank robbers.

In chapter seven, Genocide—or Manifest Destiny, Hollon provides an essay on the history of the violent interaction between Euro-Americans and Native Americans. This is a general survey of the violent conquest of indigenous lands from colonial times through the nineteenth century. Hollon discusses federal Indian policy during the Grant administration, one of the few instances in this chapter where he goes into any degree of depth to make his point that the winning of the West was filled with acts of genocide while being described by white Americans as Manifest Destiny. The policy of exterminating the buffalo to force plains Indians onto reservations is discussed as part of Grant’s Indian policy, as is the loss of sovereignty by the major plains Indians groups during this period. Overall it is an informative chapter, although Hollon has fewer narratives of frontier violence in this section.

The final two chapters of this work examine violence on the Northern Plains and the Southwest, respectively. The Northern Plains was the scene of bloody fighting between large cattle operations owned by so-called cattle kings and small ranch owners and farmers. The problems started following the Civil War when many Americans decided to utilize the Homestead Act and carve out farms in the West. The example that Hollon uses is the Johnson County War that took place in April of 1892. The cattle kings had grown frustrated at the arrival of so many grangers who were fencing off land and restricting access to water sources. Many cattle kings also believed that the small time ranchers and farmers (a.k.a. grangers) were cattle thieves. Hollon admits that some of these newly arrived settlers might have been cattle thieves but the real problem he sees is the fact that so many of the cattle kings believed their survival was being threatened and these people were ready to react violently. Hollon spends most of this chapter on the Northern Plains discussing the Johnson County War, even though only four men died altogether, and he terms it the war of the range. The reason this war was so important, according to Hollon, was that “it marked the dividing line between the Old West, ruled by the cattle kings and the New West of the pioneer homesteader”.

One of the events of the Johnson County War that led to so much frustration on the part of the cattle kings was the fencing of land and the restriction of access to water. In his chapter on the Southwest, Hollon discusses the importance of barbed wire; how it was invented in Illinois in 1874 and how it was readily adapted to use by the cattle kings of Texas, including the famous King Ranch. There were many benefits to the use of barbed wire but because so many people made a living off cattle rustling and using the water rights of other ranchers, violence accompanied the introduction of the wire in Texas. Another discussion topic of this chapter is the level of violence that broke out in New Mexico territory during the late 1870s, especially the Lincoln County War and the participation of hired mercenaries and gunmen like the famous Billy the Kid. The level of violence in this region of the country was immense, even when compared to other regions of the country.

Hollon argues his thesis in a convincing fashion and his narrative style of history is very engaging, especially when he fills his writing with stories of violence that took place on the frontier as these help bring a human dimension to his book. His thesis is believable and is one of the best theories to explain how violence developed in this country and how it spread to the frontier region.