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American Literary Images of the Canadian Prairies, 1860-1910 University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for Winter 1983 American Literary Images Of The Canadian Prairies, 1860-1910 James Doyle Wilfrid Laurier University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Doyle, James, "American Literary Images Of The Canadian Prairies, 1860-1910" (1983). Great Plains Quarterly. 1734. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/1734 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. AMERICAN LITERARY IMAGES OF THE CANADIAN PRAIRIES, 1860,1910 JAMES DOYLE In 1879, the prolific dime novelist Edward L. except insofar as these regions occasionally Wheeler produced a narrative entitled Canada figured in ideals of continental or hemispheric Chet, The Counterfeiter Chief, set in "a loca­ unity. tion as hitherto quite neglected by the pen of Wheeler's comments on American neglect the novelist and veracious historian-i.e., in of the Canadian West require some qualifica­ the British possessions to the North-west of tion. Throughout the late nineteenth and early Minnesota."l If, as Wheeler suggests, American twentieth centuries there was a small but stead­ writers were indifferent to the Canadian West in ily increasing American expression of interest the nineteenth century, this lack of attention in the Canadian prairies. This interest, as it can be related to a number of considerations, emerged in economic and demographic activity the most obvious of which is the fact that and the rhetoric of "manifest destiny," has Americans were sufficiently occupied by the been documented by modern American and undeveloped regions within their own border. Canadian scholars.2 Little attention has been The westward experience in the United States devoted, however, to the image of the region was a nationalistic phenomenon, related to the as it appears sporadically in imaginq.tive writing. visions of freedom and unique identity that The importance of this image is well established preoccupied the collective thought and imagina­ in scholarly tradition. "It is a truism of history," tion to the exclusion of extraterritorial regions, as Robin Winks has pointed out, "that what people believe to be true is more important than what 'in fact' actually happened, since James Doyle is an associate professor of English they act upon their beliefs, not on 'the facts.,,,3 at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, On­ Henry Nash Smith, in his classic study, Virgin tario. His articles have been published in various Land: The American West in Symbol and scholarly journals, including Canadian Litera­ ture and Canadian Review of American Studies. Myth, has provided the definitive demonstra­ He is the author of Annie Howells and Achille tion of the interaction between imaginative Frechette (1979) and editor of Yankees in vision and empirical experience as they refer Canada: A Collection of Nineteenth-Century to the West. Travel Narratives (1980). As Virgin Land illustrates, the literary images 30 AMERICAN LITERARY IMAGES OF THE CANADIAN PRAIRIES 31 inspired by the western frontier were not neces­ who flourished in the great age of westward sarily incorporated into distinguished works of expansion, extending from the American Civil art. Writers such as Thoreau, Melville, and War to the end of the first decade of the Whitman used impressionistic or symbolic twentieth century, since it was in this period conceptions of the West in various contexts, that the most prominent and durable concep­ but the detailed literary exploitation of the tions of the West were formulated and estab­ region was left to the traveler, the journalist, lished in the North American imagination. and the writer of formulaic adventure fiction. In the scrutiny of literary works incorporat­ This generalization is particularly applicable to ing the American image of the Canadian West, the American image of the Canadian West, some distinctions between travel writing and elements of which are found in travel narra­ fiction must be recognized. In general, travel tives, feature magazine articles, and adventure writers appear to be more faithful than novel­ fiction in the dime and nickel novel formats. ists to verifiable empirical experience, and more This American writing about Canada is, com­ interested in description than narrative, although paratively speaking, neither extensive nor they are often committed to a political or social artistically significant; but a scrutiny of some ideology-such as continental unity, to mention examples may add to our understanding of the the most important example-which lends a American conception of the western frontier. subtle but perceptible bias to their representa­ The study of these works should also con­ tions of the western frontier. Novelists, on the tribute to the continuing exploration of the other hand, have less obligation to verifiable similarities and differences between the Cana­ reality than to the conventions of the literary dian and American Wests. Literary critics, form with which they are working, and to the historians, and other scholars have approached expectations of their readers. In such novels this subject from various angles and have as Canada Chet, geographical and political established many important points of affinity accuracy is often sacrificed to the extravagant and distinction. As Dick Harrison has pointed details of violent adventure and romantic love out in his introduction to Crossing Frontiers: that the urban eastern reader of this kind of Papers in American and Canadian Western Lit­ escape literature expected. erature, the traditional distinction between the American "wild west" and the Canadian DIME NOVELS prairies, where social institutions preceded large­ scale settlement, seems valid as a working The American fictional use of western Can­ generalization upon which to base more specific ada appears as early as 1859 in a novel entitled historical and literary studies.4 But such studies, Pathaway; or, The Mountain Outlaws, by John as the papers in Harrison's volume demonstrate, Hovey Robinson. In Pathaway, as in the hand­ almost always involve the comparison of dis­ ful of similar productions, the setting is only crete national entities. This is particularly true vaguely characterized as "the Northwest" in in the case of literary studies: American novels the region of "the southern branch of the Sas­ about the American West are compared with katchewan. ,,5 In two other dime novels, Joseph Canadian novels about the Canadian West. This E. Badger's The Lone Chief; or, The Trappers approach is inevitable, given the pervasive of the Saskatchewan (1873), and its sequel, nationalistic inclinations of writers on both Death Trailer, the Scourge of the Plains Crees sides of the border. But some writers have from (1873), the setting is more specifically identi­ time to time glanced across the frontier line, fied as "many miles north of the line that and their impressions should be noted as ad­ divides the United States from the British juncts to the comparative study of the two possessions," again in the region of the Sas­ regions and their cultures. It should be of par­ katchewan River. 6 The Saskatchewan seems to ticular value to examine the works of writers have been a favored choice among settings for 32 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, WINTER 1983 Northwest adventure stories; it figures also in vicissitudes of Canadian-American relations, for W. J. Hamilton's Mountain Cid, The Free the title character is a fiery, American-hating Ranger (1878), which is set in "the foothills British loyalist who lies in wait in his secret of the Saskatchewan.,,7 It was, however, the stronghold on the Manitoba prairies, ready to exotic sound of the name rather than any con­ seize unwary American travelers and put them siderations of geographic authenticity that led to work as slave laborers in his counterfeiting to its repeated use, for the mythic region of the shop. One of wheeler's later novels, Deadwood Saskatchewan created by these novelists lacks Dick Jr. 's Desperate Strait; or, The Demon either consistent local features or a clear rela­ Doctor of Dixon's Deposit (1892) is set in a tionship to the larger context of North Ameri­ prairie town that "enjoyed one distinction: can geography, except as such elements might namely it did not know positively whether it be useful to the plot. In fact, plot creates belonged to the States or to the Dominion.,,9 landscape in this kind of fiction, for the authors But the town's location on the international conjure up a variety of environments, including boundary is the occasion only for some inci­ thick forests for tracking and Indian fighting, dental humor, while the main plot has to do rivers or lakes for canoe chases, foothills and with a mad doctor's attempt to infect various mountains to inspire sentimental expressions of people with hydrophobia. romantic sublimity, and open prairie for peace­ The Northwest of these adventure novels is ful travel. The dominant landscape, however, little more than a minor variation on the seems to be a kind of badlands, as in Pathaway, stylized fictional American West. The landscape where "the ground which the parties
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