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Drawn Into Unknown Lands“: Frontier “DRAWN INTO UNKNOWN LANDS”: FRONTIER TRAVEL AND POSSIBILITY IN EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE Except where reference is made to the work of others, the work described in this dissertation is my own or was done in collaboration with my advisory committee. This dissertation does not include proprietary or classified information. ___________________________________ Derrick Loren Spradlin Certificate of Approval: _____________________________ _____________________________ Constance Relihan Hilary Wyss, Chair Professor Associate Professor English English _____________________________ _____________________________ Chris Keirstead Kathryn Braund Assistant Professor Associate Professor English History _____________________________ Stephen McFarland Dean Graduate School “DRAWN INTO UNKNOWN LANDS”: FRONTIER TRAVEL AND POSSIBILITY IN EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE Derrick Loren Spradlin A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Auburn University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Auburn, Alabama December 16, 2005 ii “DRAWN INTO UNKNOWN LANDS”: FRONTIER TRAVEL AND POSSIBILITY IN EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE Derrick Loren Spradlin Permission is granted to Auburn University to make copies of this dissertation at its discretion, upon request of individuals or institutions and at their expense. The author reserves all publication rights. ______________________________ Signature of Author ______________________________ December 16, 2005 iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT “DRAWN INTO UNKNOWN LANDS”: FRONTIER TRAVEL AND POSSIBILITY IN EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE Derrick Loren Spradlin Doctor of Philosophy, December 16, 2005 (M.A., Middle Tennessee State University, 1999) (B.A., David Lipscomb University, 1996) 212 total typed pages Directed by Dr. Hilary Wyss This dissertation explores the symbolic meanings contained in literary depictions of journeys to the American frontier written during the late 1700s and early 1800s. I argue that these depictions work to create and advance the multifaceted concept of the American frontier—what exactly the frontier is, what possibilities are available to the frontier traveler, what role the frontier plays in the life of the nation, and what cultural values are and are not compatible with life on the frontier. While an author’s description of a journey to the frontier writes these aspects of the frontier, the frontier itself affects a traveler’s preconceived notions about it and thus influences the written text. Individual and collective possibilities regarding warfare, westward expansion, history, religion, and community are explored in texts of different genres and written in different times and places in order to better understand the scope of the different ways that British colonists and citizens of the young United States thought about the frontier. iv Style Manual Used: Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 6th ed. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2003. Computer Software Used: Microsoft Word (Office XP edition) v TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION President George W. Bush, Lewis and Clark, and the Possibilities of the American Frontier..................................................................1 CHAPTER ONE “Coloured Glasses”: National Expansion and the Gaze of the Frontier Traveler..............................................................................22 CHAPTER TWO Travel, History, Nationalism, and Prince Madoc in America…...………..……………71 CHAPTER THREE “This Strange Mass of Human Beings”: Frontier Bodies and New Religious Forms...................................................................112 CHAPTER FOUR Misfits on the Frontier and the Possibilities of Identity…....………….……………...146 EPILOGUE Gatekeepers of “Frontier”: Natty Bumppo and the Frontier Culture Museum………………………………….…183 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………….……………………………188 vi INTRODUCTION President George W. Bush, Lewis and Clark, and the Possibilities of the American Frontier On January 14, 2004 at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration headquarters in Washington, DC, United States President George W. Bush presented his plans for the future of the nation’s space exploration program. Coming just less than a year after the in-flight loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia on February 1, 2003 grounded America’s manned space vehicles, the President’s ambitious proposal for NASA included returning American astronauts to the moon by the year 2020 and using that lunar mission to gain the know-how to send humans to explore Mars. During his speech, President Bush paralleled NASA’s voyages into space with the voyage into the North American west performed by the Lewis and Clark expedition from 1804 to 1806. He stated: Two centuries ago, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark left St. Louis to explore the new lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase. They made that journey in the spirit of discovery, to learn the potential of vast new territory, and to chart a way for others to follow. America has ventured forth into space for the same reasons. We have undertaken space travel because the desire to explore and 1 understand is part of our character. And that quest has brought tangible benefits that improve our lives in countless ways. (par. 7-8) With these words, President Bush succinctly demonstrates how the image of a journey into the American west can hold great promise and possibility. He continues with the imagery, declaring, “Mankind is drawn to the heavens for the same reason we were once drawn into unknown lands and across the open sea. We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives, and lifts our national spirit. So let us continue the journey” (par. 25). His mere mention of the feat of Lewis and Clark conjures up for his audience mental pictures two hundred years in the making, images of determined, buckskin-clad American explorers traversing mighty rivers, vast plains, and snow- peaked mountains. In fact, if there is one journey to America’s west prevalent in the minds of Americans, it would certainly be that of the Lewis and Clark expedition. The bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition in 2004 spurred numerous celebrations of the journey, in addition to countless popular and scholarly books released on the expedition in the years leading up to the bicentennial. For example, the U.S. Mint began its Westward Journey Nickel Series, which included four new designs for the nickel— all of the Lewis and Clark expedition—for release in 2004 and 2005; this is the first change for the U.S. nickel in six decades. Federal promotion of the expedition does not end there. Lewis and Clark can also be found on $0.37 stamps issued in 2004, and from 2004 through 2006 Lewis & Clark: The National Bicentennial Exhibition will make stops in museums in St. Louis, Philadelphia, Denver, Portland, and Washington, DC. Available at Toys R Us stores is the Lewis and Clark family board game, manufactured 2 by American Historical Games, LLC. Finally, National Geographic Films released in large format film and showed to wide acclaim in IMAX theaters Lewis & Clark: Great Journey West. Cultural manifestations of Lewis and Clark seem unlimited. Those manifestations included here in no way constitute an exhaustive list but are simply representative of the many kinds of ways the Lewis and Clark expedition is currently finding its way into American culture. Fascination with Lewis and Clark, though, is not at all new to the twenty-first century. Indeed, the expedition caught the attention of the nation as soon as word of its return from the Pacific coast spread around the country. Concerning the popularity of the written account of the expedition, James H. Maguire proposes “that The Journals of Lewis and Clark are the headwaters of western American literature in the same way that William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation is one of the fountainheads of American literature” (68). From money to toys to museums to the source of a genre of American literature, the Lewis and Clark expedition is deeply rooted in the minds of many Americans as the picture of the American west. Thus, President Bush chose shrewdly to include Lewis and Clark in his NASA speech, for, as Henry Nash Smith writes, “The importance of the Lewis and Clark expedition lay on the level of imagination: it was drama, it was the enactment of a myth that embodied the future” (17). What better image for the President to use to spark the nation’s interest in manned missions to Mars? This image exudes national pride, momentous achievement, and “undaunted courage” (to borrow the Thomas Jefferson-penned phrase that popular historian Stephen Ambrose selected as the title for his recent best-selling book about Lewis and Clark). Moreover, the linguistic context within which President Bush places the Lewis and 3 Clark image indicates exactly what qualities he intends the image to convey. He speaks of “the spirit of discovery,” of “potential,” of the “desire to explore,” of national “character,” of “tangible benefits,” and of “national spirit.” He uses vibrant and optimistic verb phrases like “explore” (twice), “ventured forth,” “improve our lives” (twice), and “lifts our national spirit.” These are the words and phrases that complement President Bush’s allusion to Lewis and Clark, an allusion calculated to secure support for the Mars plan by exciting in the audience feelings of nationalistic grandeur. In the same way that the Lewis and Clark expedition across the continent and to the Pacific Ocean and back punctuated President
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