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Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for

Winter 1983

American Literary Images Of The Canadian Prairies, 1860-1910

James Doyle Wilfrid Laurier University

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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 were is that of the remote and limitless frontier; the now traversing was cut up and rendered dan­ heroes are rugged individuals, usually Ameri­ gerous by yawning chasms, jagged rocks, rifts, cans, often modeled on Cooper's Leatherstock­ and gulches. There were marks everywhere ing, who impose rough frontier justice on around ... of volcanic convulsions, that had at evildoers. Canadian or British institutions some period of the world's history, upheaved are seldom in evidence. Even the Northwest the foundations of the mountains.,,8 Mounted Police are generally excluded from The vague unrealism of the northwestern these novels, for the American fictional roman­ frontier is reflected also in its political and ticization of the scarlet force belongs to a later social structures, or rather the lack of them, for period, the early twentieth century, and partic­ only occasionally is the setting identified in ularly to the efforts of the popular Michigan terms of national demarcations. Pathaway novelist James Oliver Curwood.1° Wheeler, in seems to be set in the Alberta-Montana fron­ Canada Chet, makes brief use of the Mounties, tier, but few place-names are mentioned, and bringing them in toward the end of his story all the characters except one French-Canadian like the U.S. Cavalry to effect a last-minute trapper are evidently American. Badger's The rescue; but his ambiguous references to them as Lone Chief and Death Trailer are explicitly "the Mounted Police" and "mounted Manitoba set north of the border, but except for a volunteers" suggest that his knowledge of the brigade of French-Canadian voyageurs in Death force was uncertain.ll Trailer, all the characters are American; and Yet it is an oversimplification to say that only in The Lone Chief is there any specific these writers "Americanized" the Canadian use of a northern setting, as the action takes West. Certainly they used stereotyped char­ place in a snowbound winter landscape. Edward acters and social traditions with which they L. Wheeler, the author of Canada Chet, seems and their readers were comfortably familiar. to have had some interest in the idea of Canada But it seems that their purpose was not to sug­ as a separate country, but this interest was gest that the Canadian prairies were or should developed in a comic direction. Canada Chet have been part of the United States; they im­ seems almost to be a clumsy fable of the plied, rather, that on the Northwest frontier, AMERICAN LITERARY IMAGES OF THE CANADIAN PRAIRIES 33 far from eastern customs and institutions, such United States in the northern plains. Judging labels as "American" and "Canadian" lost from the number of published travel narra­ much of their significance. On the free and tives, relatively few Americans made tours (or open frontier, where a man's worth was related side trips) to the Canadian West. Before the primarily to the art of survival, national pride­ opening of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the like that of Wheeler's militant Canada Chet­ mid-1880s, most travelers in the "great lone was sometimes even a character defect. land" of British North America were from Some of the various Leatherstocking avatars England or eastern Canada; westward-bound in the fictional Northwest are identified in Americans found more than enough undevel­ terms that suggest their liberation from narrow oped country and adventurous experience on political and social structures. The reputation their own side of the border. Even after the of Nick Whiffles, the old frontier scout in railway made tourism and immigration easier, Robinson's Pathaway, extends "up the Big there was not a great increase in literary atten­ Red," "down the Columby," "on the southern tion to the northern provinces. slopes of the Rocky Mountains," and '''cross Early American travelers into the Canadian the lakes to Montreal. ,,12 Similarly, W. J. plains included government and military offi­ Hamilton's Mountain Gid, the "free ranger," cials, explorers, and surveyors, all of whom "had wandered from the shores of the Golden seem to have assumed that the region would Horn off San Francisco, to Halifax on the east, eventually become a part of the United States. and from the uttermost regions penetrated by Governor Alexander Ramsey of Minnesota the trappers to the north-west of Hudson's visited the Red River of the North in 1851; in Bay to the mouth of the Rio Grande.,,13 1855 an Indian affairs agent ventured into what later became Alberta; and a group of explorers

TRAVEL NARRATIVES looking for a route through the Rockies in­ cluded British territory in their 1859 expedi­ The dime novelists' emphasis on the vastness tion.14 and openness of the western landscape may also In 1860, an editor of the New York World be seen as a commitment to the idea of a con­ named Manton Marble contributed to Harper's tinental unity dominated by the United States. New Monthly Magazine a three-part narrative The heroes of these novels are all American, entitled "To Red River and Beyond," describ­ and their adventures reflect such values as ing his overland trek from Saint Paul to Fort rugged individualism and intuitive virtue that Garry. Unlike the dime novelists, Marble was are associated in popular culture with the fron­ more interested in the processes of cultural tier United States. Most American authors of and economic development than in the oppor­ narratives of travel in the Canadian West were tunities for anarchistic individualism and obliged by the accepted conventions of the adventure on the prairies. Like a tourist in genre to be more explicit about geography and Montreal or some other older eastern settle­ political and social structures, although in ment, he inspected the Roman Catholic cathe­ detailing their observations and impressions dral in Saint Boniface and the English church they often revealed their commitment to some in Fort Garry. Also unlike most of the novel­ form of American domination of the continent. ists, he was interested in comparing the relative Some travelers, on the other hand, were quite achievements of Americans and Canadians on receptive to the idea of an independent Canada the frontier, noting with satisfaction signs of and were prepared to contemplate the possible inefficiency and slow development north of the alternatives to American society that Canadians border. At Fort Garry, he observed two work­ might achieve in the West. men laboriously using a heavy ripsaw while a These generalizations are not meant to imply steam-powered circular saw stood idle nearby, that there were a great many travelers from the and commented that such a thing would not 34 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, WINTER 1983 be allowed to happen "in an American settle­ self-reliant agrarian society as was developing ment.,,15 in the northern American Middle West. Ten years later another contributor to The Riel Rebellions of 1870 and 1885 pro­ Harper's, Brigadier General Randolph B. Marcy voked some American interest in the Canadian of the U.S. Army visited and wrote of the same prairies, particularly among journalists and region in more disparaging terms. Vehemently expansionist politicians who saw the possi­ anti-British, Marcy argued that the slow and bility of repeating the experience of Oregon inefficient development in the Canadian North­ in the midcontinent. But except for a few vocif­ west is the fault of the shortsightedness of erous demagogues and sensationalistic reporters, "English capitalists, [who, 1 when called upon Americans were cautious in their attitudes to loose their purse strings for any purpose toward Canadian political developments and involving the slightest hazard, are as alien in suspicious of the French-speaking Metis rebels. their instincts to their descendants in the After only a few heated speeches and articles, United States as if their lineage had no approx­ American attention wandered from the subject, imation since the flood.,,16 In a similar vein, particularly after the Canadian government Marcy condemns the English policies toward effected an apparently successful resolution of the plains Indians and accuses the British of northwestern problems.19 opposing immigration into the Northwest in Even the completion of the Canadian Pacific order to perpetuate the fur trade and the Railway did not at first cause a great increase Hudson's Bay Company monopoly. in American interest in the region. As James B. Another American visitor to Manitoba in Hedges has pointed out, American westward the pre-Canadian Pacific years was Henry Van immigrants continued until about 1892 to be Dyke, a distinguished New York clergyman, almost exclusively interested in the land still essayist, poet, and short story writer. Like available in the United States; most American Marble and Marcy, Van Dyke noted the primi­ tourists likewise were more interested in their tive stages of settlement and development on own country than in Canada.20 There were, the Canadian prairies and reported the disillu­ however, a few exceptions, including the authors sionment of many British and English-Canadian of three noteworthy book-length travel narra­ immigrants. "Large numbers, being dissatisfied, tives on western Canada. have recrossed the line, and settled in Dakota William Henry Harrison Murray (1840- and Minnesota. In Pembina County alone the 1904), the author of several novels of adven­ number of Canadians is reckoned at one-half ture set on the western and northern frontiers, the population.,,17 traveled the Canadian Pacific Railway from In contrast to these travelers, the Boston Montreal to Vancouver and described his ex­ novelist and historian Charles Carleton Coffin periences in an episodic, idiosyncratic, alter­ found south-central Manitoba and the burgeon­ nately facetious and bombastic volume entitled ing settlement of Fort Garry as worthy of Daylight Land (1888). A strenuous advocate praise as the farming regions of Illinois and of continental unity, Murray saw the geograph­ Minnesota that he had come West to publicize. ical affinity between the Canadian and Amer­ In his travel book The Seat of Empire (1871), ican plains as proof of the inevitable union of describing his 1869 expedition from Chicago the two countries. "Never did man see a lovelier to Duluth, Coffin's only complaint is directed evidence of God's design and Nature's unity," against "the pusillanimity of President Polk" he declared in a Bostqn speech after returning for the resignation of American claims to the from Canada, "than stretches, green as a sleep­ Saskatchewan Valley.18 Even without republi­ ing sea, from Southern gulf to the white line can political and economic advantages, the of Northern snow, making in itself a prairie northern Red River country, according to empire that would feed half a world. ,,21 Coffin, was fostering the same prosperous and Throughout the chapters of Daylight Land AMERICAN LITERARY IMAGES OF THE CANADIAN PRAIRIES 35 dealing with the prairie provinces, Murray em­ This acknowledgment of the probable phasizes the potential of the region. "The durability of Canadian independence from the productive area of this western Canada," United States led Warner to seek a definition declares an American traveler in one of the of the unique western Canadian identity. His many semifictional dialogues in the book, "is attempts, however, significantly avoid specific ten times larger than the State of Illinois. Two detail. Manitoba, he declares, has a "free, hundred millions of people can be supported, independent spirit"; "one can mark already richly supported, north of the forty-ninth with tolerable distinctness a Canadian type parallel. ,,22 "I wish our countrymen would which is neither English nor American"; "there learn the facts about this huge empire of oppor­ is a distinct feeling of nationality, and it is in­ tunity to the north of them," says another of creasing.,,26 But Warner does not elaborate on Murray's travelers; "or that the Canadians had the "Canadian type" or this "feeling of nation­ knowledge of it themselves, faith in, and the ality." In spite of his assertions of Canadian right connections with us. Then you would see distinctness from the United States, his ulti­ this western land jump to the front of con­ mate conclusion is that western Canada is tinental observation. ,,23 Murray goes on to mainly a reflection of the western United States suggest that the Canadian prairies offer Ameri­ as it was twenty or thirty years earlier. In a cans the opportunity to abandon the conse­ series of companion essays to "Comments on quences of past mistakes and create a new and Canada" entitled "Studies in the South and better agrarian empire in the West. "As the soil West," Warner expresses the urban easterner's to the south under our silly system of agricul­ approval of the spread of urbanization and in­ ture becomes exhausted, as it soon will be, and dustrialization in the western states; in "Com­ the average yield per acre shrinks more and ments on Canada," as he approvingly observes more, the wheat growers must and will move the same processes in much earlier stages of northward.,,24 development, he also expresses a nostalgic Murray's aggressive annexationist conception attraction for the primitive frontier. of the Canadian West can be contrasted to the This same ambivalence is even more evident view of another American author who visited in Julian Ralph's On Canada's Frontier (1892). the prairies at about the same time and saw Ralph (1853-1903), a New York journalist the region, as he saw Canada as a whole, as a and novelist, toured the American and Cana­ valid alternative to the United States. Charles dian Middle West by rail and horseback, and Dudley Warner (1829-1900), the eminent New like Warner, he admired the signs of civiliza­ England man of letters and one-time collabo­ tion and material progress that were transform­ rator of Mark Twain, recorded in his "Com­ ing the region, particularly in the United States. ments on Canada" (1890) his impressions of "Our wild life in this country [the U.S.] ," he the railway excursion from Montreal to Van­ wrote in On Canada's Frontier, "is, happily, couver. Unlike Murray, Warner carefully gone. The frontiersman is more difficult to find studied not only the landscape and settlements, than the frontier, the cowboy has become a but the western Canadian political and social laborer almost like any other, our Indians are situations. His observations of the strong Brit­ as the animals in our parks, and there is little ish loyalism among prairie settlers and his of our country that is not threaded by rail­ recognition of the contribution of the trans­ roads or wagon-ways." But if Ralph's modern continental railway to Canadian national urban sensibilities applaud the disappearance of unity led him to the conclusion that in spite the wild West, part of him delights in dis­ of American economic and cultural influences covering the Canadian plains, much of which the northern country was destined to remain remains in 1892 "as Nature and her near of "for a long time on her present line of devel­ kin, the red men, had it of old. ,,27 Most of On opment in a British connection. ,,25 Canada ~ Frontier is a sentimental celebration 36 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, WINTER 1983 of America's vanishing West, as it is reflected article on "The Great Plains of Canada" empha­ obliquely in the small and scattered homesteads sized the "vastness and solitude and silence" and settlements, the rugged pioneers, and the of Manitoba, while other writers dwelt on the vast stretches of undisturbed prairie in Canada. economic potential of the region. Western Canada offered "millions of acres of good LAND AND IMMIGRATION PROMOTERS wheat land waiting for occupation by the surplus population of the world"; "a vast By the mid-1890s, the dominant American country with abundance of the very best grain­ attitude toward the Canadian West was moving growing, cattle raising [land] "; and agricultural closer to W. H. H. Murray's boosterism than to resources "sufficient, if developed, to support the nostalgic admiration of Warner or Ralph. a population of 200,000,000.,,29 With the advent of Wilfrid Laurier's Liberal Most of these writers emphasized, as W. H. H. government at Ottawa in 1896 and the imple­ Murray did, the infinite potential of the Cana­ mentation of an aggressive policy of encourage­ dian prairies, and many of them shared his ment to foreign investors and settlers, the way belief in continental unity. "The enterprising was cleared for the American "invasion" of 'Yankee,' as the people from the United States the Canadian West. The image of invasion was are called in Canada ... cross [ es] a boundary an especially popular cliche among the many line which is largely imaginary"; "Americans American journalists and popular writers who and Canadians are so much alike that they were enlisted by private land promoters and by fraternize wonderfully well in this new country the Canadian Department of the Interior to -much better, in fact, than English and Cana­ publicize the northern prairies in the United dians"; "the Canadians are Americans-they States. can't help themselves.,,30 Other writers, how­ The first priorities of these promotional ever, draw back from annexationist statements writers were to dispel American ignorance, -perhaps for fear of offending their magazines' indifference, or hostility toward Canada and to Canadian readers, or perhaps for the more im­ emphasize the geographical unity of the west­ portant reason that their primary intended ern plains and the ethnic homogeneity of the audience is the dissatisfied American farmer, English-speaking North American people. A who would not want to find in Canada a mere writer in the Cosmopolitan in 1894 referred to continuation of the economic and political "the number of [American] tourists one sees conditions he has found unsatisfactory. "It is in Canada provided with heavy clothing, and not Canada's destiny to become annexed to the sweltering in a temperature of one hundred United States," wrote popular novelist James degrees in the shade," but by 1903 another Oliver Curwood in 1905, just beginning his writer was prepared to claiQI that promotional literary career as a contributor to magazines. efforts had "changed the Western farmer's "Four out of five of the Americans, while not conception of the Canadian Northwest, which overjoyed at being subjects of a king, would he formerly looked on as akin to Siberia. ,,28 vote against annexation to the United States.,,31 Yet while these publicists reassured prospec­ The ideal conception of western Canada seems tive immigrants of the geographical continuity to be that of a new yet familiar nation, like between the American and Canadian Middle the United States but not of it, sharing the West, they did not want to suggest that the re­ virtues derived from the Jeffersonian ideal of gions were identical. Like the travelers Charles a nation of yeoman farmers, while avoiding Dudley Warner and Julian Ralph, they repre­ many of the modern republic's economic and sented the northern prairie as comparable to political errors. the American plains as they were twenty-five This is essentially the view expounded by to fifty years earlier, before the disappearance Emerson Hough (1857-1923), author of The of free land and the rise of cities. Thus an Covered Wagon (1922) and many other popular AMERICAN LITERARY IMAGES OF THE CANADIAN PRAIRIES 37 novels of the old West. In a discursive, idiosyn­ of United States immigration and investment cratic book, The Sowing: A 'Yankee's' View of activities in the Canadian West, Americans England's Duty to Herself and to Canada tended to lose interest in the subject. Until (1909), Hough addressed the problem of settling that time, however, many of them saw the the Canadian West, which he recognized as the Canadian prairies-in the words of the dominion last North American agrarian frontier. No government's famous slogan-as the "last best annexationist, Hough was quite prepared to west," where the great American pioneering accept the idea of a Canadian West independent experience could be carried on beyond the of the United States and bound by tradition "closing" of the United States frontier, into a and loose constitutional ties to England. In­ geographical and imaginative infinity. The cele­ deed, it was ethnic unity rather than political bration of infinitude-of free and open fron­ unity that interested him; in his view, English­ tiers receding endlessly toward an indeterminate speaking immigrants from the British isles, with horizon-is a recurrent image in the American their long tradition of "Anglo-Saxon" liberal­ writing about the Canadian West. Again and ism, were to be preferred over a polyglot again, in the few dime novels of the Northwest, peasantry from the despotic societies of con­ in the narratives of travelers, in the appeals of tinental Europe. A major problem, however, land promotion publicists and journalists, we was that the majority of British immigrants find the exuberant-and sometimes wistful­ came from the overcrowded urban slums and rhetoric of spatial infinitude, echoing the most were unfit by physical and psychological in­ pervasive element of the "American dream." adequacies for the strenuous life of farming the The western vision, as more imaginative writers plains. such as Henry Thoreau, Herman Melville, and Hough's proposed solution, combining a Walt Whitman knew, can be found anywhere: scheme of selective immigration with govern­ in the northeastern or southern seas, in the ment-run training facilities for would-be home­ microcosmic environs of a New England village, steaders, is politically naive and morally suspect, in the capacious sensibilities of the poetic since it calls for a complex and rather auto­ imagination. But first and always, it is found in cratic administrative structure and is based on the North American West. And, as a few Amer­ late nineteenth-century theories of racial ican writers saw and articulated, it could be superiority. But the image of the Canadian West found even in Canada. in The Sowing is at least interesting as a semi­ Utopian view of the subject that avoids both NOTES the frontier nostalgia of such writers as Charles Dudley Warner and Julian Ralph and the an­ 1. Edward L. Wheeler, Canada Chet, the nexationist assumptions of other travelers and Counterfeiter Chief; or, old Anaconda in commentators. Hough's view of the Canadian Sitting Bull's Camp: A Tale of Two Boys' West is perhaps closest to the predominant Adventures (New York: Beadle, 1879), p. 2. post-Confederation view that Canadians held 2. See, for example, A. K. Weinberg, Mani­ of themselves, since it involves an independent fest Destiny: A Study of Nationalist Expansion­ Canada, potentially equal or even superior to ism in American History (Baltimore: Johns the United States, inheriting in the twentieth Hopkins University Press, 1935), chapter 12; James B. Hedges, century the major role in the westward destiny Building the Canadian West: The Land and Colonization Policies of the of the English-speaking people. Canadian Pacific Railway (New York: Mac­ millan, 1939); Paul Sharp, Whoop-Up Country: CONCLUSION The Canadian-American West, 1865-1885 (Min­ neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1955); After 1911, with the defeat of Wilfrid Karl Bicha, The American Farmer and the Laurier's government and the gradual subsiding Canadian West, 1896-1911 (Lawrence, Kansas: 38 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, WINTER 1983

Coronado Press, 1968); Harold M. Troper, Only 16. Randolph B. Marcy, "Rupert's Land and Farmers Need Apply: Official Canadian Gov­ Its People," Harper's New Monthly Magazine ernment Encouragement of Immigration from 41 (July 1870): 290. the United States, 1896-1911 (Toronto: 17. Henry Van Dyke, "The Red River of the Griffin House, 1972); James G. Snell, "The North," Harper's New Monthly Magazine 60 Frontier Sweeps Northwest: American Per­ (May 1880): 815. ceptions of the British American Prairie West at 18. Charles C. Coffin, The Seat of Empire the Point of Canadian Expansion (circa 1870)," (Boston: Osgood, 1871), p. 61. Western Historical QJ4arterly 11 (October 19. For a detailed discussion of American 1980): 381-400. 3. Robin Winks, The Myth of the American responses, see Donald F. Warner, "Drang Nach Frontier: Its Relevance to America, Canada, Norden: The United States and the Riel Rebel­ and Australia (Leicester, U.K.: Leicester lion," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 39 University Press, 1971), p. 7. (March 1953): 693-712. 4. Dick Harrison, Introduction to Cross­ 20. Hedges, Building the Canadian West, p. ing Frontiers: Papers in American and Cana­ 94. dian Western Literature, ed. Dick Harrison 21. W. H. H. Murray, Continental Unity: An (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1979), Address ... Delivered in Music Hall, Boston . .. p.6. Dec. 13, 1888, 2d ed. (Boston: Calkins, 1888), 5. John Hovey Robinson, Pathaway; or, Nick Whiffles, the old Trapper of the Nor'West p.7. (New York: Beadle, 1878), p. 3. This edition, 22. W. H. H. Murray, Daylight Land (Boston: with its slightly different subtitle, is the same Cupples and Hurd, 1888), p. 99. novel as that published in 1859. 23. Ibid., p. 145. 6. Joseph E. Badger, The Lone Chief; or, 24. Ibid., pp.146-47. The Trappers of the Saskatchewan: A Tale of 25. Charles Dudley Warner, Studies in the the Long Trail (New York: Beadle and Adams, South and West, with Comments on Canada 1873), p. 9. (New York: Harper, 1890), p. 484. 7. W. J. Hamilton, Mountain Gid, The Free 26. Ibid., pp. 437, 453, 455. Ranger; or, The Bandit's Daughter (New York: 27. Julian Ralph, On Canada's Frontier Beadle and Adams [1878]); p. 49. (New York: Harper, 1892), p. 139. 8. Robinson, Pathaway, p. 8. 28. Lee Meriwether, "The Great British 9. Edward L. Wheeler, Deadwood DickJr.'s Northwest Territory," Cosmopolitan 18 (No­ Desperate Strait; or, The Demon Doctor. of vember 1894): 15; [C. W. Hager], '''Ameri­ Dixon's Deposit (New York: Beadle and canization' of Western Canada," Nation 77 Adams, 1892), p. 2. (2 July 1903): 6. 1Q. See Sharp, Whoop-Up Country, p. 70, for 29. C. A. Kenaston, "The Great Plains of the suggestion that some Americans reacted at Canada," Century 44 (August 1892): 565; first with suspicion to the Mounted Police, who Sydney C. D. Roper, "The Wheat Lands of Can­ were seen as serving the interests of the Hud­ ada," Appleton's Popular Science Monthly 55 son's Bay Company. (October 1899): 777; Cy Warman, "Migration 11. Wheeler, Canada Chet, p. 15. to the Canadian Northwest," American Month­ 12. Robinson, Pathaway, p.27. ly Review of Reviews 26 (September 1902): 13. Hamilton, Mountain Gid, p. 36. 296; Frederick A. Ogg, "Vast Undeveloped 14. For a summary of these early travel ex­ Regions," World's Work 12 (October 1906): periences, see Irene M. Spry, "Early Visitors 8079. to the Canadian Prairies," in Images of the 30. Warman, "Migration to the Canadian Plains: The Role of Human Nature in Settle­ Northwest," p. 295; Theodore M. Knappen, ment, ed. Brian W. Blouet and Merlin P. Law­ "Western Canada in 1904," American Monthly son (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, Review of Reviews 30 (November 1904): 1975), p. 171. Spry's article includes a detailed 581-82; Theodore M. Knappen, "Winning the survey of the many British accounts of travel Canadian West," World's Work 10 (September in the Canadian West. 1905): 6598. 15. Manton Marble, "To Red River and Be­ 31. James Oliver Curwood, "The Effect of yond," Harper's New Monthly Magazine 22 the American Invasion," World's Work 10 (February 1861): 310. (September 1905): 6607,6611.