A frontiersman, a hunter, a warrior

Abstract

The frontier territory generates or attracts particular personality types, which become its reflection, symbol to a certain extent. The article purpose is to define the specificity of one of these frontier types that corresponds fully to frontiersman concept. According to American researcher, R. Slotkin’s terminology, in American frontier it is «a hunter»; in South-Russian (Caucasian) one – «a Caucasian». Diachronic comparative analysis of these two frontier images is the main method of the research. During the analysis their common features have been found out – marginality, adventurism, love of freedom, the state of socio-cultural intermediacy between different cultures: the Indians’ culture and the white men’s culture, especially that of English-speaking colonists; the Caucasian peoples’ culture and Russian culture. It is shown in transgressive changes, primarily in the field of vestimentary and alimentary culture. However, American frontier is characterized by this image being more mythologized at the governmental level that appears not only in its literature and cinematographic adaptation, but in implementation of some mythologized personaliae into educational process. Contrary to «a hunter», «a Caucasian» frontier image has been always connected with a social institution, related to the development of the state, – an army or bureaucracy. It was not exposed to such a wide all-levels mythologization as it had always been ambivalent both for imperial and Soviet Russian historiography.

Key words: a frontier, a frontiersman, frontier personality type, a hunter, a Caucasian, a marginal person.