Envision log cabins and wagon trains, cowboys and Indians, Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, Sitting Bull, Wild Bill Hickok, and General Custer. These are the frontier images that pervade our lives from fictional and non-fictional sources. Through this course, you enter a time-machine and travel back in time to a period ranging from 1840 until the turn of the century. Once there, you will gain a very candid understanding of the Frontier spirit and lifestyle of the courageous men, women, and children who traveled west in order to fulfill their dreams of a better life, and to claim territory for the United States.
Through the intense and vibrant research of the, this course explores a plethora of information about various pioneers, with special emphasis on Prairie life, the Oregon Trail, and life in the Montana wilderness. In addition, examine and relive the two most enduring stories of the Frontier as told in Chicago 1893, the year of the Columbian Exposition. One is presented by famed historian, Frederick Jackson Turner in his remarkable lecture “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” and the other took place in “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s flamboyant extravaganza, “The Wild West.” Learn how these stories, facts, and insights, are reshaped in the twenty-first century as we rethink our understanding of that time, especially after absorbing the wisdom of Native Americans, Mexicans, and African Americans as they contribute what it means to be an American.
This course is applicable towards the following certificate(s):
*Early American History for the Classroom