building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

the machine has not yet reached. This picture is totally allegorical. If the animals
represent the wild world, then the book held tightly by the goddess symbolises the
civilising mission and awareness of America. The groups of people also have to be
interpreted in the logic of the advance of progress from East to West, similar to the
movement of the sun. The human figures in the bottom right‐hand corner are
typical colonists. They have bordered their property with a fence, they have built a
house on their own land and they are ploughing the fields in order to start sowing
their crops. A little further on are the pioneers on horseback and the hunters who
open up the road. Where a prairie schooner has passed lie the carcasses of the
buffalo, the tragic remains of the passage of the white man, signs of the advancing
frontier. At the foot of the mountains, amidst the mist vague forms appear which
make us think of troops of soldiers on the move or of stable settlements which
blend into the horizon. To the left of the picture, between the fleeing buffalo and
wild animals, are the Indians, portrayed as incapable and reluctant to adapt to
progress. The only threat is suggested by the dust roused by the buffalo, which
envelops the left‐hand side of the landscape in an aura of mystery. This does not
really intimidate, but is rather a setback which arouses the explorer’s curiosity.
Gast’s landscape, full of familiar scenes of frontier life, is powerfully descriptive and
engrossing, even though it is based on stereotypes and summons up the symbols of
the culture of Manifest Destiny. The conquest of new territories proved essential in
the development of the ideology of the frontier and the American economy.
At first, expansion was a simple affirmation of backward, predatory systems to
exploit the soil and the natural resources. In other words, expansion reflected the
needs of the landowners of the Deep South, who had used the plantations to create
an effective driving force to conquer the territories. Agricultural production costs
remained low and consumed land capital. At a later stage, colonisation of the West
began to create a conscience in people, which became part of the American
ideology. The Dimes novels by Erastus Flavel Beadle (1821‐1894) and the paintings
of the West helped to make a world of pioneers, outlaws, stage‐coaches, buffalo
hunters and Indians generally familiar [Figures 128‐134]. Without any awareness,
the Americans were destroying the landscapes, for which they had fought so dearly.
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