The Intellectual Tradition of the Latter-day Saints

by Leonard Arrington
Originally published Spring 1969 (04:01)
In one of the earliest books of imaginative literature about the American West (published in 1826), novelist-editor-missionary-biographer Timothy Flint reveals a common impression of the time that “in travelling towards the frontier, the decreasing scale of civilization and improvement exhibits an accurate illustration of inverted history.” Flint’s better-known contemporary, James Fenimore Cooper, although an admirer of the West, acknowledged that “refinement and gentility were conceivable only in members of an upper class
with enough wealth to guarantee its leisure, and a sufficiently secure social status to give it poise and assurance.” Still another contemporary, Ralph Waldo Emerson, stated that “The pioneers are commonly the off-scourings of civilized society.”
Eastern intellectuals were almost unanimous in describing Western settlers as uncouth, unpolished, and culturally degraded. The natural landscape of the West, in which most of the Eastern romantics included the Indians, was often regarded as sublime, but the adjustment to wilderness life encouraged the squatters to slip backward in the scale of civilization. Out of the West, in the opinion of Arthur Moore, came “rank anti-intellectualism.”
Read the full article