You can read many of the people exploring the relatively uncharted regions of Asia and Africa (or New Guinea?), and generally they are received and fed by the people they encounter. The logic I read was that those people know of and recognize surrounding tribes, and will be hostile and war-like to any neighbours trying to encroach on their implied territory. A total stranger from far away just passing though is obviously less of a threat - but then, it’s usually a fairly large extended family/tribe, so a small explorer group of 3 or 4 people is no threat. They are happy to see someone/something different, hear stories if they can, etc. And then they’ll be on their way out of the territory, not threatening their hunting grounds or taking over.
How does this compare to the American frontier? Very few other places would have “settlements” of one not very extended family, isolated the way the American frontier did, who could be outnumbered and outgunned by one or two passing strangers. Plus, weapons were a lot more powerful than the locals encountered in Samarkand or Nepal who had bows and spears, and both sides knew that. Depending on the level of traffic, the family may not have a lot of food to spare. The major transition for plains Indians in the 1700’s was the acquisition of horses, which meant raiding parties could travel long distances, and be long gone before any revenge posse or war party could go after them. (plus the availability of river travel). This same applied to any traveller - they travelled faster than news. Thick woods on the eastern frontier made hiding easier. As a result, the stranger approaching on the American frontier was far more risky. (Not to mention, the resistance by local natives to encroaching settlers made the whole area more jumpy).
The car replacing the horse just makes the mobile random travellers even more risky today.
Balancing out the heartwarming stories are ones that made it clear that “Howdy stranger! Stay with us a spell” wasn’t always the default reaction, for good reason.
The Man From The Train describes a late 19th and early 20th century serial killer who selected families living on the outskirts of small, isolated towns and settlements in the Midwest and South, bludgeoning them to death with an ax.* News coverage didn’t pick up on the idea of a serial, but at least promoted considerable suspicion of strangers.
The Bloody Benders established a General Store and Inn along a well-traveled trail, into which they invited travelers . Not anywhere close to what was described in the OP.
I maintain that those folks living afar from towns or neighbors were unused to seeing strangers approaching their house, and viewed any unfamiliar face with suspicion.
There seems to be a deep-seated ingrained distrust of other humans being expressed by many people (I assume US-based but happy to be corrected). I wonder whether this is a clear and accurate description of an unwelcoming historical past, or just everyone has turned nastier in alignment with the zeitgeist of the nation in the present and back-projected it into the past, so that the now is being better excused and justified by history?
There were always bushrangers, highwaymen, footpads, road ragers, people of bad intent, lost travelling salesmen who abused the invitation to sleep in the same room as the farmer’s beautiful daughter (according to a form of joke that must now be extinct) and so on. They were a real and definite peril when they took place but in my part of the world they never overcame a broad instinct to trust strangers and offer the courtesies of civil society to them as much as people they knew. I’m genuinely intrigued as to why this was the case in an entire continent filled with convicts and their descendants and not yours. Maybe, now that we are 40+ posts in, it could be a reflection wearing your Thanksgiving glasses?
Australia, so the idea of a frontier (ie gradual stealing and occupation of land belonging to very unhappy indigenous people), low density of settler occupation, vast distances to your neighbour etc are directly comparable to North America.
The American Frontier is mostly a myth. Made for movies that were popular in th '50s, 60’s,70s and then died out. The era of the western movies lasted longer than the frontier ever did.
The Corps of Discovery, also known as the Lewis and Clark Expedition, spent a crappy winter near where I live and couldn’t wait to leave in the spring of 1804. My local town Astoria, Oregon was established in 1811. Still kind of a fur trading post, but that is the official date.
People came through, harvested what was profittable, and then families and stick built houses soon followed.
I am a big fan of Western movies, Mountain Man movies and books, but it was a very breif time of 20 years or so. It is hard for people to imagine just how fast the “frontier” was settled.
Trying to stay on topic in Factual Questions, but the whole American Frontier is mostly myth.
My father grew up in a small town in New Mexico in the late 1920s, and early 1930s. He said that when people started putting locks on their doors, the old-timers were appalled. “What if we are away from the house, and someone comes by who needs food?”
In a rural area with a low population density, few people have anything worth stealing. In a small town, where everybody knows everybody else, and what everybody else owns, a thief has no way to fence stolen goods. So the old-timers were less worried about theft, and more worried about a traveller starving.
You would approach a house. You would stop at a some distance, and shout “Hello, the house!” If the owners were home, they would look you over, and if they did not perceive you as a threat, they would invite you in. If they were not home, you were welcome to enter, and cook yourself a meal. (You were expected to clean up your mess.) It was assumed that in the long run, you would provide hospitality for others as often as you enjoyed others’ hospitality.
Hospitality is sacred to cultures with low population densities. You see this in Homer, the Old Testament, and rural areas around the world.
But as I said, what changed is (a) guns - it was far easier for a solo or small party to incapacitate their hosts and (b) Low density is relative - very few other societies lived the level of isolation of a nucelar family alone in a remote farmhouse.
The pattern in other locales, other eras was a small village. Whether rural England or China or nomads in Mongolia or America, they tended to be living in central villages or group camps. It’s one thing to overcome a group of two adults and a few children, another to deal with a group of ten to twenty adults. Even more so, before repeater and quick-load firearms. Folks in rural America had a reason to be wary.
Where I just moved from 6 months ago. There was a house on a trail. Not locked. A sign just said you are welcome to stay, and stay safe. Get warm, but please be respectful of the property. (I’m ad-libbing that). That was the gist of it. Home was open.