The Pahrump Paiute-Euroamerican Frontier Region, 1830-1882.

The historical roots of the Euroamerican-Native American confrontation in North America are analyzed by examining a frontier region in Pahrump Valley, Nevada, during the nineteenth century. A frontier region can briefly be defined as a geographic area actively contested by two or more social groups. The frontier region ceases to exist when the conflicting social groups re-establish (along a continuum of coercion to cooperation) relatively stable geopolitical boundaries or zones. Primary and secondary historical sources were utilized for reconstructing nineteenth century frontier region interactions. Local data were then integrated into a regionally-based, world-systems framework of historical geographic analysis. A case study will examine the Pahrump Paiute-Euroamerican frontier region, 1830 - 1882. It is argued that this frontier region, among thousands of others, was formed as a direct result of the global expansion of the capitalist world-economy from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. The antecedents of the capitalist world-economy are traced to the rise of imperialist state-level societies in Mesopotamia and Egypt approximately five thousand years ago. A long range world-systems perspective provides the analytical means for placing the Pahrump Paiute-United States Frontier Region within a multi-scaled, historical context which integrates global, continental , and interregional territorial processes of the capitalist world-economy. The social and ecological problems which first arose in the Pahrump Paiute-Euroamerican frontier region remain unresolved.