The American frontier is, and has always been, a place of scope and complicated mythologies. Thanks to Western cinema, the glorious scale of this huge landscape has been populated with epic stories of outlaws, natives, pioneers, and imperialistic dreamers. But before the flat expanse of the cinematic screen cultivated the rich tapestry of lives on the American frontier, the page helped to emancipate the experiences of those who lived it.
Admittedly, I am not a blossoming expert or scholar on the lives of those who braved the vast unknown of the American continent in its infancy. However, I remember well enough the hardship of reading James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans for the first time at university. It isn’t a bad book. In fact, I was charmed by its grandiose narrative and attempt to liaise with the realities of settler societies and their native American counterparts. But it was tough and un-tactile in its translation. It mythologised and romanticised the grit. It invited nuance and simultaneously disposed of it when it wasn’t fitting. In simpler terms, it is agape with holes. Yet, it did do something significant. It herded me into the world of the frontier to locate the lived existences of those who settled in a land that didn’t belong to them.
Beyond Fenimore Cooper’s epic retellings, the authenticity of settler literature is found in the finer details. To explore and relish in unpicking the works that exist within its specific canon is to find trends and patterns that emerge in the language and structuring of things. This isn’t solely limited to the United States itself, but across the globe, throughout the past and present, the act of colonialism and settling is itself bound together in the discourse and commentary it brings to life. For historian Patrick Wolfe, the nexus of the colonial venture is metastasised through the reshaping of the narrative with words and ideas. Without question, the word ‘settler’ itself is a softened term, animated to augment how colonists are perceived. If we were to substitute the word for ‘invader,’ the narrative is no longer about the act of finding a new home, but more about replacing someone else's. This is Wolfe’s priority: to excavate these narratives and determine how shape and structure direct the moral climate of the colonial ventures themselves.
For example, if we look at Israeli settlers in Palestine, the narrative is loaded with ideas of ‘reclamation’; where the land itself is being re-absorbed or restored to its ‘rightful’ ownership. But what does this mean for the Palestinians? If Israelis are settlers, what term suits the narrative when referring to Palestinians? To use the word ‘native’ implies they originally belong to the land, and therefore the land belongs to them. Some documentation and evidence point to hardline Israeli zionists using terminology such as ‘infiltrators’ or ‘trespassers’ to refer to Palestinian natives. If this is the case, the land itself is interpreted through the lens of being a spatial locale where historical and ethno-religious subjectivity demonstrates ‘rightful’ belonging.
Undoubtedly, how one refers to people or places is a categorisation that is more than just rational or empirical; it is a prism of ethical and moral scaffolding. In the case of the American frontier, the experience of the natives runs parallel to that of the settlers. Only in recent historical times has the term ‘Native American’ been used to refer to the various peoples whose ancestors originally inhabited the American continent. However, during the expansion of the American frontier by white colonial groups, these peoples would’ve been referred to as “savages,” “red men,” or “Indians.” These discriminatory exonyms not only reveal the perspectives of settlers, but also their own attempts to hegemonise themselves.
For example, as recorded by Daniel Boone in his eponymous account, written in 1784, ‘The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone,’ the land’s absence of any typical European ‘civilisation’ means that the land is perceived as being “unsettled.”¹ Therefore, through this language, Boone and others like him do two things. Firstly, they delegitimise the political occupancy of indigenous peoples, and secondly, they interpret the land as a ‘misused’ or ‘wasted’ resource that therefore needs to be salvaged. In suggesting that the native population is incapable of being custodians of the land, the settler crusade is legitimised and upheld as a heroic cause. This principle isn’t scarce. Despite being a text produced over a century after the settler expansionism period, Willa Cather’s 1913 novel ‘O Pioneers!’ fictionally documents the experiences of an immigrant family of settlers during this time.
The titular term, “pioneer,” restructures the historical narrative of colonial bodies from being ‘invasive’ to ‘progressive.’ This linguistic association of colonial peoples as explorers or “pioneers” emancipates them from the reality of their stealing of the land. By doing this, the process isn’t immoral, instead synonymous with advancement for the sake of humanity. As it is stated in the novel itself, “The land belongs to the future." The fact that the novel was written many years following this historical migration of peoples proves that the sentimentality that settlers risked their lives to assist future generations. Like Boone, Cather perceives the ‘empty’ land as something that needs sculpting and reframing. The presence of the native peoples themselves is merely perceived as a barrier or intrusive feature that limits the ‘potential’ of the land itself. In suggesting that the land “belongs to the future,”² ownership is dismantled from being something interlinked to human presence, but instead is articulated as a space that ‘must’ be changed to meet the requirements of the future. Regarded often as ‘virginal land,’ this concept is married to the American historical psyche, with states like Virginia being named in response to this colonial vision. Similarly, cultural cornerstones such as the quasi-mythologised arrival of European colonists at Plymouth Rock, or the concept of ‘manifest destiny’, help to embed this confidence in the moral superiority of their quest for advancement.
Wolfe's assertion that settler colonialism operates as a "structure, not an event"³ is particularly significant when examining settler literature. The repeated use of terms such as "pioneer”, "settler”, and "frontier" demonstrates how colonial occupation is normalised through language long after the initial act of settlement. These narratives do not simply recount historical encounters; they continually reproduce the ideological conditions that legitimise settler possession of land. Through this lens, texts such as ‘O Pioneers!’ reveal how literature participates in an ongoing process of colonial self-justification; transforming territorial acquisition into a narrative of progress, civilisation, and national destiny.
In African settler narratives, this same fixation with land needing settling is profound. More so in this colonial space, however, we see the influence of domestic spaces in cementing the colonial process. Olive Schreiner’s 1883 novel, The Story of an African Farm, navigates the experiences of a white South African family immersed in the desolate, desert region of Karoo in South Africa. Mainly inspired by Schreiner’s own upbringing and early life, the text exposes how the domestic environment exists as an artificial barrier to the wilderness of the unsettled vicinity; a sign of civilisation. Schreiner writes about the landscape, noting how "The plains stretched away, and the little farmhouse stood alone beneath the sky."⁴
Interestingly, the phrasal verb “stretched away” imagines the unsettled land as an expansive, alien environment. In making this clear separation from the farm, Schreiner is decoupling the African landscape from the White European homestead. Whereas the land is immeasurable and immense in scale and size, the farmhouse is “little” and static. By establishing these parallels, the colonial mindset establishes itself as binary. Anything not built upon, colonised, or settled is a vacuum that either requires colonisation or exists in spite of the colonial agenda. The bucolic, beautified presentation of the farmhouse being “alone beneath the sky” romanticises the isolation of the settler community against the encroaching native landscape. The domestic locale of the farm, where agricultural domination is required and both food and resources are produced, is one of conflict. Sure, it is a place where a family might live, like any other family, but in the same breath, a farm is designed to prioritise production. As a rooted property, the farm becomes an act of permanence, both benefiting from the land via its resources and as a colonial act in itself.
The mythology of the American frontier has long occupied a central position within the literary imagination, shaping understandings of expansion, nationhood, and belonging. As the texts examined here demonstrate, literature does not merely reflect the realities of settler colonialism but actively participates in the production of its meanings and justifications. Through Boone's depiction of an "unsettled" wilderness, Cather's celebration of the pioneer figure, and Schreiner's representation of the colonial farmstead, the written word functions as a mechanism through which occupation is normalised and Indigenous presence is marginalised. Considered through Patrick Wolfe's conception of settler colonialism as a "structure, not an event," these texts reveal how literary narratives contribute to the ongoing reproduction of colonial ideologies long after the initial act of settlement has occurred. Consequently, the study of settler literature offers more than an insight into historical experiences; it exposes how literature itself participates in constructing, legitimising, and sustaining particular understandings of land, identity, and belonging.