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University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Great Plains Quarterly Studies, Center for

1993

New Encounters: Exploring The Great Plains of

John L. Allen University of Connecticut

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Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons

Allen, John L., "New World Encounters: Exploring The Great Plains of North America" (1993). Great Plains Quarterly. 750. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/750

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. NEW WORLD ENCOUNTERS EXPLORING THE GREAT PLAINS OF NORTH AMERICA

JOHN L. ALLEN

Arising partly from the debates, scholarly and Neither discovery nor exploration can be otherwise, surrounding the commemoration of examined outside the context of the cultural the Columbian Quincentennial, the claim has and intellectual milieu of the discoverers and been made that the European discovery and explorers. Major discoveries-whether they be exploration of the New World was a process that geographical or not-are made by people who had "meaning only in terms of European igno­ recognize data that do not conform to their rance, not in terms of any contribution to preexisting world view. Thus Europeans did universal knowledge"! and that the study of "discover" (meaning to find out about, to real­ exploration and discovery is therefore ethno­ ize, to see) the New World because neither centric or (worse) racist. Such a claim, which North nor was previously a part denies the mechanisms of exploration and dis­ of their geographical conceptualizations. Had covery their important place in the broader Native Americans sailed eastward across the epistemological process of how we know and Atlantic and arrived on European shores that understand the world, is contentious. were not previously part of their world view, they too would have achieved "discovery." It will be argued in this paper that various groups, at different times, have "discovered" the Great Plains-not necessarily meaning that they were John Allen is professor of at the University of Connecticut, editor of the three-volume North the first to find out about, to realize, or to see Exploration, and author of dozens of the Plains but that they were the first repre­ and essays on exploration and landscape perception. His sentatives of their cultural milieu to do so and Passage through the Garden: Lewis and Clark and that, therefore, their "discovery" had special the Image of the American Northwest (1975) is a meaning for them and for their culture group classic in its field. in terms of what we can call "non-conforming data." They had, in other words, encountered [GPQ 13 (Spring 1993): 69·80] New .

69 70 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 1993

MODELS OF GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE knowledge but of geographical knowledge from any or all points of view, covering (in his words) The essential failing of the arguments that "the geographical ideas, both true and false, of the s<:udy of discovery and exploration is "eth­ all manner of people-not only geographers, nocentric" or "racist" is that such arguments but farmers and fishermen, business executives ignore a substantial body of scholarship that is and poets, novelists and painters, Bedouins and neither. This literature views exploration as a Hottentots." For this reason, geographical knowl­ subjective process both dependent upon and edge, as Wright defined it, necessarily had "to creating geographical images or patterns of do in large degree with subjective conceptions." belief about the nature and content of the world Similarly, Bernard DeVoto, writing in 1952, or any of its regions; built into that view are proposed that those scholars studying North considerable analyses of and American exploration should seek to examine the environments they occupied and modified. the ideas that explorers had about geography, Nearly a half century ago, John K. Wright, a the misconceptions and errors in those ideas, geographer, described a geographical approach the growth of geographical knowledge following to the study of exploration that, had it been exploration, and "the relationship to all these adopted as a basic paradigm of historical schol­ things of various Indian tribes that affected arship, would have led to the development of them." Like Wright, DeVoto stressed the sub­ scholarly literature on explorers and explora­ jective elements in exploration, particularly tion that would have been palatable to current with regard to the American West. 2 DeVoto critics. But a number of studies of exploration could also well have agreed with Wright that by geographers have followed Wright's non­ the process of North American discovery and antiquarian, systematic, and integrative ap­ exploration incorporated the "invention" of proach. There is little evidence in the critical geographical knowledge and regional images as evaluations of the literature of exploration that much as it did the accumulation and accretion either Wright's pioneering work or those studies of lore. based on it have even been read by the critics. There are three common elements in Wright's Similarly, the works of Bernard DeVoto-an and DeVoto's work: a belief in the importance essayist and popular historian who also dealt of geographical knowledge, particularly its sub­ with subjectivity in the exploratory process­ jective nature; a belief in the significance of the have not been given their proper due by the relationship between natural environment, in­ critics of the literature of exploration and dis­ digenous peoples, and European and Euro­ covery. American explorers; and a belief in the subjec­ In 1943 Wright suggested that the of tive influence of the exploratory process upon exploration should involve an approach that later historical events. A model for a study of focused upon the role of geographical knowl­ the exploration and discovery of the Great edge in exploration. Wright argued, along with Plains based on Wright and DeVoto would the Mexican historian Edmundo O'Gorman, therefore include: first, investigation of Euro­ that America was not so much discovered or pean, Euro-American, and Native American explored as it was "invented," with the "inven­ geographical knowledge of the Plains and the tion" coming about as the result of the attempt importance of that knowledge for explorers and to reconcile the world view that preceded the exploration; second, examination of the contri­ events of 1492 with the expansion and change butions made to subsequent geographica110re of in geographical knowledge that followed the the Plains by those involved in the exploratory first landing of Columbus. It is important to process; and third, analysis of the impact of keep in mind that when Wright spoke of geo­ exploration of the Plains upon subsequent pro­ graphical knowledge, he was not just thinking cesses, including the subjective process whereby of European or Euro-American geographical the results of exploration are used to create NEW WORLD ENCOUNTERS 71 belief systems that become so dominant as to be This belief constitutes a tradition that is defined as "traditions." I submit that such a model would not only be dependent not upon the reality of the histori­ productive in terms of our understanding of the cal-geographical process but upon the inven­ Great Plains but would provide links between tion of it; that is, our shared view is of a past the exploration of the Great Plains and the as we believe it was or would like it to be broader process of exploration and the shaping rather than as it was .... These invented of geographical knowledge in general. Taking traditions have played an important role in what I view as essential in the viewpoints articu­ shaping our conceptions of who we were as lated by Wright and DeVoto and enlarging European migrants to a new and them somewhat, let me offer an example of a continue to govern our current understand­ study of Great Plains exploration that might ing of who we are as a people with traditions both satisfy the critics of exploratory studies and rooted in European-American thought pro­ place Great Plains exploration in conjunction cesses and experiences and largely ignorant with the Columbian Quincentennial by linking of Native American ones.4 the discovery 'of America with several "New World encounters" or "discoveries" of the Great Shortly after the first landfall of Columbus Plains and with the subsequent "invention of on an off the North American continent, American tradition."3 the invention of American tradition began. Emerging from the first half century of explora­ GEOGRAPHICAL INTERPRETATIONS AND tion in North America (between the first THE INVENTION OF AMERICAN TRADITION Columbian landfall and the early 1540s), there were four frequently contradictory interpreta­ "The invention of tradition" refers to that tions of North American geography and the process whereby a relatively limited body of North American environment (including its geographical knowledge becomes both shared native peoples) that became so fixed in the and taken for granted by a people and, ulti­ minds of European explorers and settlers that mately, becomes so fixed in their collective the interpretations served as conditioners of mind that the tradition begins to influence behavior and as shapers of what would become thought and action. Some traditions emerge American traditions. These four interpreta­ when preconceived geographical lore based tions were: the New World as Barrier, the New upon myth and folklore is given substance by World as Passage, the New World as Desert, geographical knowledge obtained through ex­ and the New World as Garden. Each of these ploration. Other traditions develop as new interpretations was transferred to the region of geographical knowledge helps to create new the Great Plains as representatives of three ways of thinking. colonial (, Great Britain, and An example of an invented tradition is the France) "discovered" and explored that region Euro-American belief prior to 1804. And in the Great Plains, after 1804, the interpretations evolved into the that our forefathers and mothers conquered American traditions that became crystallized a pristine wilderness untouched by as part of nineteenth-century American images before the European migrations, that those of the Plains and that, to a certain degree, who preceded Europeans upon this conti­ remain as part of the way in which we view this nent did nothing to modify that wilderness region today. In this fashion, images of the environment, and that our ancestors who Great Plains as Barrier, Passage, Desert, and conquered the wilderness can be invariably Garden still serve as metaphors for images of cast in the heroic mold. America in general. 72 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 1993

The objective of Columbus on his first voy­ for a passage to the west, in 1497 -98, John Cabot age was to secure for the merchant houses of and the Corte-Real brothers explored the Lab­ Spain a route to the riches of the that rador- region, searching for a wouH be shorter, safer, and easier than the -level strait through what they were begin­ Great Silk Road across , disrupted by the ning to conceive of as a continent. Subsequent collapse of the Khanate of the Golden Horde. explorations by and As soon as Columbus and his fellow explorers added to the growing store of in the and the Gulf of began geographical information and developing to understand the nature of the continental geographical images of North America and configuration of North, Middle, and South helped to perpetuate the belief in a sea-level America, they began to view the N ew World as route to Asia through what was, by the 1540s, a barrier lying athwart their path to the riches fully recognized as a continental barrier be­ of Cathay and Cipangu. The interpretation of tween Atlantic and Pacific. The interpretation the New World as Barrier was little more than of North America as holding the key to the an extension of the medieval concept of the Passage to India became so imbedded in both impediment of the all-encircling Sea the theory and practice of geography as to that surrounded the known world and-before become virtual tradition within a century of the the Columbian voyages-separated western Eu­ Columbian voyages and, in one way or another, rope from Cathay and Cipangu. The replace­ much of European and Euro-American explora­ ment of the barrier of the medieval Ocean Sea tion down to the opening years of the nine­ with the barrier of a new continent simply teenth century was devoted to the search for this redefined the limits to the ambitions of Euro­ invention.6 In time, the tradition of the Passage pean commerce, and much of European explo­ also came to imply the faith in growth and ration along the coastal margins of North progress represented by the new land. America from 1492 to the middle of the six­ Like the interpretations of Barrier and Pas­ teenth century was devoted to defining the sage, the interpretation of the North American nature of this barrier.5 environment as Garden dates from times even As the search for a way through or around the before the earliest explorations of Columbus barrier of North America continued, the second and his contemporaries. The concept of garden­ great interpretation of North American geogra­ like in the Ocean Sea west of phy began to take shape-the interpretation of were part of the cosmography of the Mediterra­ North America as Passage. The strength of the nean classical writers who described islands of European preconception of an easy route to the bliss and splendor off European shores. Simi­ Orient combined with the geography of logic larly, Celtic mythology-in the form of the isles and hope to create in the European imagination of Hy-Brasil and the Isla Fortunata or Blessed a vision of a passageway to the Sea of the Indies Isles of the Saints-conditioned Europeans in that could be uncovered by exploration. Even the belief in a paradise-like island environment before Columbus, classical and medieval geo­ in the Ocean Sea. From medieval geographical graphical theorists had posited a continental lore and the idea of a designed that was configuration for the world that would admit a commonplace of geographical the passage of waters (and the ships borne upon thought, there emerged the idea of the terres­ those waters) from east to west. trial Paradise-with lands of God-given rich­ On his first, second, and third voyages, Co­ ness, fullness, and variety-shown on the lumbus sought the "indrawing " of medieval easternmost verge of Asia on the maps of the theory but, despite the promising currents of the immediate pre-Columbian period.7 western Caribbean, failed to find the potential As soon as the news of the initial landfall of passage of medieval and Renaissance cosmogra­ Columbus reached Europe, there began to cir­ phers. Shortly after the initial Columbian search culate geographical descriptions of the newly NEW WORLD ENCOUNTERS 73 discovered lands that surpassed in their ex­ hand of the "savages," Europeans of the six­ travagant description of the New World envi­ teenth century and later used the words "des­ ronment anything the classical theorists or ert" and "wilderness" interchangeably to mean medieval and Renaissance theologians had land unsanctified by God. But it was a desert written on the evidences of God as seen in the that could be transformed into sacred space or works of his creation. Columbus himself be­ Garden by European occupation, thus provid­ lieved he had located the terrestrial Paradise on ing a religious as well as an economic justifica­ his third voyage, and lengthy descriptions of the tion for European conquest and colonization. Atlantic seaboard ofN orth America, penned by Like the image of the Garden, that of the Giovanni da Verrazzano only a couple of de­ profane Desert quickly became a dominating cades later, stimulated the preexisting Euro­ influence in American tradition and still pro­ pean belief in a Garden where the winds blew vides a rationale for American exploitation of gentle on man and where the native inhabit­ the environment. ants were people of the First Man, living in a Let me now take these four interpretations of state of grace. The New World was Garden in the nature and content of North America dat­ the European mind from the very beginning­ ing from the time of the Columbian explora­ partly because of the teleological demand for tions-the images of Barrier, Passage, Garden, "sacred" spaces within which Christian Europe and Desert-and combine them with a cursory could find surcease from the and look at Great Plains exploration, focusing on partly because of the secular promise of eco­ the relationships between geographical knowl­ nomic opportunity demanded by an expanding edge and exploration, between the environ­ mercantile system. The Garden, perhaps more ment and the exploratory process, and between than any of the other earliest interpretations of exploration and subsequent events, including the North American environment, crystallized the subjective process of inventing tradition. into an tradition that still dominates much of Space does not allow me to do anything other American thought. than to provide brief glimpses of those explora­ As the Passage and Barrier were conflicting tions of the Great Plains that were the most interpretations of North American geography, representative as New World encounters or occupying the same space in reality and the "discoveries" for the three great cultural same temporal framework in the minds of those groups-Spanish, English, and French-respon­ who contemplated them, so was there a counter­ sible for most of pre-nineteenth-century North image to the Garden-the interpretation of American exploration and, hence, for the in­ North America as Desert. Although some Euro­ vention of traditions that, in the nineteenth peans, particularly those from the Mediterra­ century, became distinctly American. nean region, understood the concept of climatic deserts, the Desert interpretation of the North SPANISH DISCOVERY AND THE TRADITION American environment was less a conceptual­ OF BARRIER ization of an arid and barren environment than it was an impression of a profane and challeng­ The Spanish were the first Europeans to ing one. Because North America was not inhab­ "discover" the Great Plains-and recall, if you ited by Christian folk, it was viewed by some please, that I am and will be using the word Europeans as being initially beyond God's sal­ "discover" to mean a "New World encounter," vation and was, therefore, understood as "pro­ in other words, an individual or group recog­ fane" rather than "sacred" space.8 nition of geographical data that does not con­ The gentle Arcadian people of the Garden form to that individual's or group's preexisting image became rude and barbarous savages in world view. The Spanish discovery of the Plains the Desert image and in erroneously viewing grew out of one of the best known geographic North America as land "unimproved" by the inventions of the entire First . 74 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 1993

Medieval Mediterranean (particularly Iberian) lords were lulled to sleep under trees hung with geographical lore contained the legends of a little golden bells and sailed in boats with prows Spanish or Portuguese archbishop and seven of solid gold. A new myth-that of Gran bishops who had fled the Moorish invasions of Quivera-arose to fill the gap left by the disap­ the by sailing westward, with pointment of Cibola, and in the spring of 1541, their followers, into the Ocean Sea. Some­ Coronado and his force left the Rio Grande where in the Atlantic, they had found islands Valley and struck out eastward across the Staked upon which they had built seven cities of gold Plains of New Mexico and Texas and into the and alabaster, cities that appeared on medieval Great Plains physiographic province, ultimately and Renaissance maps as the Isles of Antilla. reaching as far as central Kansas. Here, among Columbus and his contemporaries sought for the grass huts of the Wichita Indians, the search the cities of Antilla in the Caribbean; not for a new Mexico or a new ended in failure finding them, they nevertheless gave to the and Coronado returned to Mexico. 11 Caribbean islands the name that has stuck­ The exploration of Coronado is a classic the "." As Spanish exploration into the example of the relationship between geographi­ and Caribbean coastal regions cal knowledge and exploration: it was precon­ failed to locate the cities of Antilla, the mythi­ ceived geographical lore that determined the cal cities retreated into the continental inte­ goals of Coronado; it was geographical lore­ rior until they had become identified as the obtained through contact with native peoples­ Seven Cities of Cibola and as a primary goal of that altered his exploratory behavior and caused Spanish exploration of the first half of the him to push ever northeastward; and it was sixteenth century.9 geographical lore-obtained through his obser­ During the latter years of the , several vation of the Great Plains environment-that Spanish explorations in and ultimately caused Coronado to abandon his the American Southwest provided additional search for a geographical will-o'-the-wisp. geographical data on the supposed location of The Coronado expedition also provides an Cibola.lO The contact of these early Spanish excellent case study of the relationship between explorers with the pueblo culture of the Zuni led the exploratory process and the development of to distorted descriptions of "many-storied" cit­ geographical knowledge, primarily because ies and, finally, in 1540, the of New Coronado, or at least his chronicler Pedro Spain dispatched Francisco Vasquez de Coro­ Castaneda, provided the European or Euro­ nado to seek for and find Cibola. Coronado and American world with the first and, for many his men wound their way through the rugged years the most accurate, depiction of the Great mountain country of western Mexico and into Plains environment, including its native inhab­ southeastern Arizona, where they located and itants. Are there more evocative descriptions of conquered the Zuni and Hopi pueblos they the Great Plains than Castaneda's "sea of grass" called Cibola and Tontoneac. These "cities" of or his comment that "the land is the shape of a adobe, containing little more precious than bowl ... [and] wherever a man stands he is copper and turquoise, were a shock to minds surrounded by the sky at the distance of a that had come prepared to find rooms filled with crossbow shot"? Or is there a better character­ gold and emeralds and Coronado shifted away ization than the chronicler's of the buffalo hunt­ from a reliance on his geographical preconcep­ ers of the Plains who "wander in companies ... tions in favor of data obtained locally from following the pastures according to the sea­ Native American populations. son ... the hunch-back Kine [the buffalo] ... From a captured Native American the Span­ are the food of the natives ... They are meat, ish named "the Turk," Coronado learned that , shoes, houses, fire, vessels [dishes and far to the northeast, in what was described as a utensils], and their masters' whole subsistence"? "sea of grass," lay cities of gold so rich that their There is no better early description of the NEW WORLD ENCOUNTERS 75 agricultural potential of the Plains than cal lore, with the interpretation of the Plains as Castaneda's comment that, whereas Coro­ Desert, and during the last period of Spanish nado's men occupation of Louisiana there began to appear in the Spanish literature comments about the did not find the riches of which they had aridity and barrenness of the Plains that were been told ... they found the beginning of a quite at odds with Castaneda's favorable de­ good place to settle in, so as to go farther scriptions of fertility and abundance. But the from there. Since they came back from the Spanish cannot be said to have invented the country which they conquered and aban­ tradition of the Plains as Desert. That role is doned, time has given them a chance to reserved for the English-the next European understand ... the good country they had in group after the Spanish to discover the Great their hands, and their hearts weep for having Plains environment. lost so favorable an opportunity.12 ENGLISH EXPLORATION AND THE TRADI­ Finally, Coronado's exploration illustrates TIONS OF PASSAGE AND DESERT well the relationship between exploration and subsequent events, including the invention of From the very beginning of North American tradition. For Castaneda's favorable assessment exploration, English efforts were focused on the of the Plains as farmland notwithstanding, the interpretation of the New World as Passage. Spanish-over the course of the next two and a Indeed, even before the first Columbian land­ half centuries-transformed that solid and ac­ fall, English mariners sailing out of Bristol had curate geographical assessment into the in­ sought westward across the Atlantic for a route vented tradition of the Barrier. Castaneda's to Asia. The discovery of Newfoundland and account had spoken of the Gardenlike quality of Labrador by John Cabot in 1497 gave the En­ the Great Plains-but it had also spoken of vast, glish a fix on a route across the North Atlantic awesome spaces and distances and, fearing the that they believed, for more than a century, encroachment first of French and English and would to the commercially feasible route to later of Americans from the north and east, the Cathay and Cipangu. By the beginning of the Spanish created-out of Castaneda's dream of last quarter of the sixteenth century, when the "that better land that we did not see"-a buffer concept of North America as a separate conti­ zone against the imperial advance of other nent was firmly fixed in European cosmography, powers. The government of sup­ English theorists such as and Humphrey pressed the knowledge of abundance in the Gilbert were developing treatises for the discov­ heartland, and Spanish settlements in the ery of a Northwest Passage to the Pacific through Plains-other than military garrisons-were dis­ the northern portions of the continent.13 From couraged as the Spanish in North the to the , the English efforts to America strove to erect a barrier that would discover the Passage took them into separate them from the English and French and waters and led to discovery of the Americans just as effectively as the original drainage region. There the search for a sea-level interpretation of North America as Barrier had strait to the Pacific died out for a time and the separated Europe from Cathay and Cipangu. British, through the operation of the commer­ The nomadic buffalo-hunting tribes were cial venture known as "the Company of Adven­ traded with but, unlike other Native Americans turers" (later called the Hudson's Bay Com­ with whom the Spanish had come in contact, pany), began exploring the lands south and west they were mostly left alone. They were part of of Hudson Bay in search of a passage and of the barrier invented by Spain in the Great native populations to provide the furs upon Plains. The invented tradition of Plains as Bar­ which English commerce in northern North rier gradually merged, in the Spanish geographi- America had come to depend. 76 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 1993

By the later years of the seventeenth century, learned much about the character of the Great English explorers in the Hudson Bay region had Plains region but about the mighty rivers that learned something of the regional geography of traversed it and even heard rumors of the great the lands immediately adjacent to the Bay; they mountains that bounded the plains on the west. had also learned of great rivers west of Hudson His one failure, in his own estimation, was in Bay that might hold the key to the Passage. not reaching the mountains and the tribe of Knowledge of the potential rich fur areas be­ Indians that he came to call "the mountain yond the Hudson Bay littoral and conjecture poets." over the great rivers that supposedly flowed in Kelsey's magnificent efforts were largely ig­ the direction of the setting sun prompted the nored by the English until the middle years of Hudson's Bay Company to send out, in 1690, the eighteenth century, but when his accounts one of its most remarkable explorers-and the were retrieved from the already enormous first British subject to encounter the New World Hudson Bay archives, two clear views of the of the Great Plains. This young explorer (only western interior began to emerge. The first was nineteen years of age in 1690) was Henty Kelsey; the view of the river systems of the northern his mission was to obtain geographical knowl­ Plains as holding the key to a water passage edge of the interior and "by all faire psuasion & through the interior to the Pacific. Kelsey cer­ kind usage to Invite [Indians) to come downe & tainly knew that the Saskatchewan River, which trade only" at the posts of the Hudson's Bay he had crossed, flowed toward the east; in the Company.14 hopeful imaginary geography of the Hudson's It is difficult to reconstruct Kelsey's route Bay Company officials, however, the Saskat­ south and west from Hudson Bay because much chewan's course was reversed; it flowed toward of his journal was written in poetry (and dread­ the west, toward the Pacific, and it was not until ful poetry it was, too). Nevertheless, it would Alexander Mackenzie's explorations of the late seem that over the course of the next couple of that the English learned they could not years he traveled from York at the reach the Pacific directly via the river systems of mouth of the Nelson River on Hudson Bay as far the interior. south and west as the southern branch of the The second element in the English image of Saskatchewan River and even beyond, nearly to the interior was of the Great Plains as "barren the 50th parallel. It is clear from his journals ground," with soil and climate insufficient to that he passed through the series of vegetation support European-style agriculture. 16 This in­ belts that the British-after him-recognized terpretation of the Plains as Desert became so as the transition from the tundra of Hudson Bay fixed in the English geographical knowledge as shores to the boreal forest of the interior to the to mature into an invented tradition that con­ parkbelt bordering the grasslands of the north­ trolled English behavior toward the grasslands ern Great Plains, and ultimately, into the Great regions well into the nineteenth century. Even Plains province itself. In 1691, Kelsey, traveling as skilled a geographer and excellent an ob­ west and south with Native Americans, noted server as the great David Thompson wrote of the reaching "ye outtermost Edge of ye woods" and Great Plains in the 1790s; "these Great Plains entering into a region of short grass prairie that may be said to be barren for great spaces, even he referred to as "barren grounds."15 For a time of coarse grass ... even the several Rivers that he lived among Native Americans of the Great flow through these Plains do not seem to Plains including, quite probably, the Blackfeet, fertilise the grounds adjacent to them."1? Like with whom he traveled, hunted buffalo, and Coronado's discovery of the Great Plains, fought with grizzly bears. He was almost certain­ Kelsey's discovery was borne of geographical ly the first European to do most of these things. misconception, was influenced by geographical From his Native American hosts he not only knowledge, and was responsible for the creation NEW WORLD ENCOUNTERS 77 of subsequent geographical ideas and invented tive: the interpretations of Garden and Passage. traditions-in this case, the invented tradition French explorers from Cartier in the 1530s to of the Desert. Champlain in the early and even later Of all the invented traditions that character­ were familiar with the works of Giovanni da ized the English views of the New World, the Verrazzano, sailing the Atlantic coast for Francis tradition of the Desert of the interior was per­ I of France and describing, along the northern haps their greatest mistake. Because of the portions of that coast, what he believed to be a Desert tradition, the English-like the Spanish terrestrial paradise.18 who viewed the Plains as Barrier-made little The modified notion of the terrestrial para­ or no attempt in the seventeenth and eigh­ dise of Verrazzano appeared (often in the guise teenth centuries to penetrate the region or to of great cities such as Norumbega or Hochelaga) use it for productive purposes. Their unwilling­ on the beautiful French maps of the Dieppe ness to do so quite probably cost them the school of cartography, and well into the seven­ greater part of their North American empire. teenth century, French explorers penetrating further into the interior via the St. Lawrence FRENCH EXPLORATION AND THE TRADI­ sought for the gentle natives and forests with TIONS OF GARDEN AND PASSAGE aromatic and narcotic liquors described by Verrazzano. As French explorers entered the The third and last group of European explor­ Great Lakes and began moving down the valleys ers to discover the Great Plains-nearly two of the Ohio and Mississippi, the rich fur re­ centuries after the Spanish but only shortly after sources and the smiling meadowlands of those the English-were the French, penetrating the regions reinforced the French tradition of the region from two directions: the northeast via Garden-as did geographical information pro­ the Great Lakes drainage basin and the south­ vided by Native Americans-and wherever the east via the Gulf Coast and lower Mississippi French traveled in eastern North America, they valley. It might seem strange that the French, tended to see the Garden in the landscape. the most active and widely ranging North Verrazzano's account also contained the in­ American explorers, took so long to move into terpretation ofN orth America as Passage. While the Plains. At least part of the reason was the sailing off the sand bars separating North invented barrier of the Spanish that became an Carolina's Pamlico Sound from the Atlantic operational geographical idea and an imperial Ocean, Verrazzano had looked westward into geopolitical reality of Spain's North American the Sound and believed he gazed upon the Sea empire. Also important was the fact that the of the Indies. Much of his later exploration was English, moving into the northern Plains from devoted to finding a route through the narrow the Hudson Bay drainage, had begun to com­ barrier and locating the Passage. The Passage pete with the French in the area west of the concept, articulated by Verrazzano and also Great Lakes and may have thus delayed French appearing on numerous French maps, drove the entry into the Plains region for several decades. French explorers westward as much as had the But most meaningful, perhaps, was quite simply search for the Garden. Stimulated by Native that the French had plenty to occupy their American reports of great waters to the west, exploratory energies east of the Great Plains Cartier believed the St. Lawrence was the Pas­ region. sage; three quarters of a century later, Samuel France had entered North America via the Champlain, also deriving accurate but misun­ Gulf of St. Lawrence and the river that ran into derstood geographical lore from native peoples, it. From the very beginnings of French explora­ held the same belief. tion of the St. Lawrence, two of the four early The earliest Frenchmen to penetrate the interpretations of North America were opera- sought the Passage through 78 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 1993 that inland waterway system, as did the French Spanish settlements and could tell him nothing explorers who traveled westward from the Great of a route to the Pacific, and he returned to the Lakes toward the Canadian Plains and Lake Mississippi valley. Like Coronado, whose dream Winnipeg or who crossed from Great Lakes of Quivera had died out in the grasslands of drainage to Mississippi drainage and followed Kansas, La Harpe's ambitions for the discovery the Mississippi down to the Gulf of Mexico.19 By of a Passage came to an end in the grasslands of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth cen­ Oklahoma. turies, the French vision of a Passage had come Benard La Harpe and his French contempo­ to center on the Missouri and other western raries were driven westward by the twin objec­ tributaries of the Mississippi that would, they tives of the Garden and the Passage-both believed, lead to a great interior sea from which interpretations of North American geography mighty rivers flowed westward to the Pacific. Of derived from the earliest French contacts with the Missouri, for example, Father Marquette the continent and reinforced by nearly two wrote: "I hope by means of it to make the dis­ centuries of exploration. Their explorations covery of the Vermillion Sea or California."2o were based on mixtures of early European con­ The French discovery of the Great Plains was ceptions of the New World, the knowledge thus prompted by two interpretations of North gained through exploration, and Native Amer­ American geography: that the interior of North ican geographical knowledge, and provide us a America was a Garden holding great riches and clear illustration of the importance of geo­ that through that Garden flowed the rivers that graphical lore for explorers and exploration. would lead to the Sea of Cathay and Cipangu. Again, as suggested by our model for study­ In 1700 the French had established a pres­ ing exploration, La Harpe's penetration of the ence along the Gulf Coast and in the lower Plains made important contributions to subse­ Mississippi valley and from that region began quent geographical lore. La Harpe met neither the westward penetration that, they hoped, the Comanches nor the Pawnees-both tribes would lead to the PacificY A number of French he had hoped to contact-but he did meet a parties were sent out by way of the Red and number of peoples new to the French and had an Arkansas rivers to seek the Passage to the Gulf opportunity to view firsthand the great cultural of California-by way of New Mexico. Some of revolution taking place among the Plains tribes these travelers may have reached the eastern as a result of the introduction of the . La fringes of the Great Plains but the literature of Harpe penned the first written descriptions of their efforts is geographically inconclusive on buffalo-hunting horse Indians; if for no other that point. reason, his exploration was therefore signifi­ The first documented entry into the Plains cant for developing geographical knowledge of by a French explorer began in 1718 when Benard the American interior. La Harpe, steeped in the La Harpe was dispatched to follow the Red French tradition of the Garden, also wrote River upstream, cross to the Arkansas, and glowingly of the prairies and short-grass plains. attempt to locate the Passage from that riverY "The country was wonderfully beautiful, with La Harpe ascended the Red River into Okla­ its 'savannas,' its river bottoms choked with homa and then crossed the height-of-Iand to the berries and fruit trees and wild roses, its inex­ Arkansas River, ultimately traveling as far west haustible forage, its salt springs, its endlessly as present-day Tulsa, believing he would locate receding horizon, and the wind forever running not only the source of the river but the Spanish across the bending grass."23 settlements of New Mexico and California La Harpe had returned with a mass of geo­ (viewed as only a short distance beyond). Na­ graphical data on the Great Plains, most of it tive American informants near his farthest misunderstood. He had obtained accurate infor­ westward penetration of the Plains told him mation from Native Americans but was inca­ that he was still a great distance from the pable of understanding it, and resulting from his NEW WORLD ENCOUNTERS 79 and other early French penetrations into the lands of the Plains as something that did not Plains, were three "thickly clustering miscon­ conform to existing geographical data. For ceptions": distances across the Plains were grossly Lewis and Clark, however, the Plains did con­ underestimated, the sources of the rivers of the form to their preexisting geographical lore­ Plains were viewed as being far away from most of it derived from the French but with a where they actually were, and total ignorance healthy measure of Spanish, British, and Native prevailed of the nature or even the existence American data added as well. Most important, of the .24 The legacy of La perhaps, is the fact that-by the time of Lewis Harpe's discovery of the Great Plains was, and Clark-the Plains was a "known" geographi­ therefore, a mixture of fact and totally errone­ cal region (not the same thing as an understood ous ideas, all of which were bequeathed to the geographical region) for which an entire com­ Spanish who would shortly succeed the French plex of invented traditions already existed in the in Louisiana (and would do little to clear up American imagination. the misconceptions because of their persistent Remember our earlier definition of the "in­ view of the Plains as beneficial only as a bar­ vented tradition" as a relatively limited body of rier). By the' time of La Harpe, the French geographical knowledge that becomes both interpretations of the Garden and the Passage shared and taken for granted by a people and, had already become invented traditions. As ultimately, becomes so fixed in their collec­ such they were passed on to the Americans who tive mind that it begins to influence thought would strengthen them and would utilize the and action. When Thomas Jefferson began to set invented traditions of Garden and Passage to in motion the events that culminated in the stimulate their own exploration of the Great Lewis and Clark expedition, the Garden and Plains region. the Passage were already invented American traditions, certainly not shared by all but shared EXPLORATION AND THE INVENTION OF by a majority of Americans of the time. AMERICAN TRADITIONS Jefferson's motives in sponsoring Lewis and Clark were conditioned by these traditions. The expe­ When the Great Plains became American dition itself, including its aftermath, was also territory in t he opening years of the nineteenth conditioned by the traditions of Passage and century, the period of "discovery" was over. As Garden. Other invented traditions existed, Americans like Thomas Jefferson began to as­ derived from British and Spanish interpreta­ semble the data of Great Plains exploration tions of the Plains as Desert and/or Barrier-and from the "New World encounters" of Spanish, these were of variable strength for some Ameri­ British, and French, it became clear that further cans throughout the remainder of the nine­ geographical investigation of the Plains would teenth century as they were given substance by be through exploration rather than discovery. geographical knowledge obtained through ex­ Because their intellectual and cultural milieu ploration and as new geographical knowledge included contributions from the discoverers helped to create new ways of thinking. But the and explorers of Spain, England, and France, invented traditions of Garden and Passage re­ Lewis and Clark and other early American mained paramount. explorers of the Great Plains were not encoun­ Beginning with the first entries into the tering lands that were new to their cultural region of the Great Plains-the "New World milieu but were, rather, relatively familiar. It encounters" of Spanish, English, and French can be argued that, as representatives of a discoverers-and continuing into the period of people with a two-hundred year history of west­ American exploration and beyond, this re­ ward migration through a forest environment, gion has been viewed by different groups Lewis and Clark, during their epic journey of through lenses of different understanding. And 1804-06, could have recognized the great grass- in the viewing, we have all created our own 80 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 1993

invented traditions and have found, in the 9. William Babcock, Legendary Islands of the exploration of the Plains, our own metaphors for Atlantic (New York: American Geographical Soci­ America. For those of us who study the Great ety, 1922); Stephen Clissold, The Seven Cities of Cibola (New York: C.W. Potter, 1961). Plains, there may be something in the region 10. George P. Hammond and Agipito Rey, eds., itselt that engenders this process: "There is Narratives of the Coronado Expedition (Albuquerque: nothing much to see," wrote Wright Morris, University of New Mexico Press, 1940). "but perhaps that is why one goes on looking .. 11. John L. Allen, "Lands of M yth, Waters of .. Where there is almost nothing to see, there Wonder: The Place of the Imagination in the His­ tory of Geographical Exploration" in David man sees the most."2S Lowenthal and Martyn J. Bowden, eds., GeogTaphies of the Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, NOTES 1975), pp. 46-52. 12. Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus or 1. Richard White, "It's Your Misfortune and Purchas his pilgTimes (, 1612), cited in DeVoto, None of My Own": A History of the American West Course of Empire, (note 2 above) pp. 44, 48. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), p. 13. Allen, "From Cabot to Cartier" (note 5 119. above); Allen, "The Indrawing Sea" (note 6 above). 2. John K. Wright, "Where History and Geog­ 14. Hudson's Bay Company Letters Outward, vol. raphy Meet: Recent American Studies in the His­ 11 (London: Hudson's Bay Record Society, 1948): 48. tory of Exploration," Proceedings of the Eighth Ameri­ 15. See Richard I. Ruggles, "British Explora­ can Scientific CongTess 10 (1943): 17-23; reprinted tion of Rupert's Land" in John L. Allen, ed., North in J.K. Wright, Nature in GeogTaphy (Cam­ American Exploration, vol. 1 (Lincoln: University of bridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), pp. 24-32, Nebraska Press), forthcoming. citation from p. 27; Edmundo O'Gorman, The In­ 16. John L. Allen, Passage Through The Garden: vention of America (Bloomingron: University of Lewis and Clark and the Image of the American North­ Indiana Press, 1961); John K. Wright, "Terrae west (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975), Incognitae: The Place of the Imagination in Geog­ pp. 15-23. raphy", Annals of the Association of American Ge­ 17. J.B. Tyrell, ed., David Thompson's Narrative ogTaphers 37 (1947): 1-15; reprinted in Wright, of His Exploration in Western America, 1784-1812 Human Nature in GeogTaphy; citation from p. 83; (Toronto: Champlain Society Publications, 1916), Bernard DeVoto, "Preface," Course of Empire (Bos­ p. 186. ton: Houghton-Mifflin Company, 1952); Ted C. 18. See Verrazzano's letter to the King of France, Hinckley, "Vanishing Truth and Western Hisrory," excerpt in John Conron, ed., The American Land­ Journal of the West 31 (1992): 3. scape: A Critical Anthology of Prose and Poetry 3. See Martyn J. Bowden, "The Invention of (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 95- American Tradition" Journal of Historical GeogTaphy 99. 18 (1992): 3-26. 19. Lawrence J. Burpee, The Search for the West­ 4. John L. Allen, "Editorial," Journal of His­ ern Sea, 2 vols. (Toronto: The Champlain Society, torical GeogTaphy 18 (1992): 1. 1908). 5. John L. Allen, "From Cabot to Cartier: The 20. R.G. Thwaites, ed., Jesuit Relations and Al­ Early Exploration of Eastern North America," An­ lied Documents, vol. 59 (Cleveland: A.H. Clark and nals of the Association of American Geographers, Co., 1900): 141. 82(1992): 500-521. 21. Abraham P. Nasatir, ed., Before Lewis and 6. John L. Allen, "The Indrawing Sea: Imagi­ Clark: Documents Illustrating the History of the Mis­ nation and Experience in the Search for the North­ souri, 1785-1804, vol. 2 (Lincoln: University of west Passage, 1497-1632," in Richard Abate, ed. Nebraska Press, 1990): 8. American Beginnings: Exploration, Culture and Car­ 22. Ralph A. Smith, "The Exploration of the tOgTaphy in the Land of Norumbega (Lincoln: Univer­ Arkansas River by Benard de la Harpe in 1721-22," sity of Nebraska Press, 1993), forthcoming. Arkansas Historical Quarterly 10 (1951): 339-63. 7. Clarence Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian 23. DeVoto, Course of Empire{note 2 above), p. Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from 174. Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century 24. Ibid., p. 175. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California 25. Wright Morris, "Our Endless Plains," cited Press, 1967), pp. 357-74. in John L. Allen, "The Garden-Desert Continuum: 8. John Stilgoe, Common Landscapes of Competing Views of the Great Plains in the Nine­ America, 1540-1845 (New York: Oxford University teenth Century," Great Plains Quarterly 5 (1985): Press, 1985), pp. 18-35. 217-18.