Stephen Aron

And I would argue in that regard, some people argued, oh, this was just, you know,

a bow to political correctness, to sort of trying to be, you know, a feel-good frontier being created here, or a wishtery, as I sometimes call it.

But in fact, I think they actually got it right, that in switching away from the notion that there was always and ever hostility between Native tribes on the plains and Euro-American migrants crossing off the plains, and instead picking up on this, the role that Native peoples played as

guides, as trading partners and so forth, they actually have highlighted something really important that historians have now also tended to emphasize.

Yeah, and I think just even more generally, the idea of frontier, the association of frontier with possibility and with promise and promised land, and certainly Oregon comes to exemplify that.

those notions about promise and promised land and possibility that continue long after those lands are filled up, relatively speaking.

And you get this notion of Americans searching ever for new frontiers to settle wherever they might be, or even to move beyond

Older notions of frontier associated exclusively with land to new sources of opportunity and possibility.

And I think, again, it traces back to these Western migrations as the founding creed.

And I think one of the things that I just would add here on that point, because I think it's a really important one, in recent decades, historians certainly and more broadly, I hope, Americans have come to grapple with not just the possibilities and the promise, but also the broken promises and the costs, both environmental and cultural, that came with this expansion.

Obviously, most profoundly felt by Native peoples whose numbers were decimated and whose lands from which they were displaced

And deported, essentially.

It is a pleasure.

And as I said, let me echo, please, everyone, come visit the Archer Museum of the American West and learn about the American West.