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Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for

Summer 2001

A New Vision Of America Lewis And Clark And The Emergence Of The American Imagination

James P. Hendrix Jr. The Lovett School

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Hendrix, James P. Jr., "A New Vision Of America Lewis And Clark And The Emergence Of The American Imagination" (2001). Great Plains Quarterly. 2259. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/2259

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. A NEW VISION OF AMERICA LEWIS AND CLARK AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE AMERICAN IMAGINATION

JAMES P. HENDRIX JR.

The consequences of an event take place in the mind, and the mind holds on best to images.

Nothing ever begins where one thinks it should. -William Irvin Thompson

When Lewis and Clark awakened in St. Louis Territory welcomed back explorers who had on 24 September 1806, one suspects that they been given up as lost. felt quite well rested. They had just slept in Two days later, as the initial fanfare began regular beds for the first time in 864 days. As to subside, Clark told us that they "commenced men who "had forgotten the use of chairs ... wrighting." The precise nature of this they must have had a way of standing and a "wrighting" is unclear. It may have been let­ look in their eyes," Bernard DeYoto imagines. l ters or other routine matters and may even Now was the time for reverie, and celebra­ have involved some copying of journal en­ tion, as the capital of the Northern Louisiana tries. 2 But what we do know is that a series of circumstances would delay for eight years the publication of an "official" paraphrase of the KEY WORDS: James Fenimore Cooper, Lewis and journals of Lewis and Clark, and a century Clark, North American intellectural history, North American literature and art, American culture, would pass before they would be seen in rela­ Washington Irving Jr. tively full form.3 But America quickly became aware of the great journey by other means, James P. Hendrix Jr. teaches history and American and this would prove to have a significant studies and is Headmaster of The Lovett School, a impact on the development of an American college-preparatory institution in Atlanta, Georgia. His culture. research interests include the history of the Trans­ Mississippi West, the American South, and American It is conventional to view Lewis and Clark's intellectual history. expedition as the essential first step in America's trans-Mississippi expansion. Will­ [GPQ 21 (Summer 2001):211-32] iam Goetzmann sees the return of Lewis and

211 212 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2001

Clark as not so much the end of a major pe­ To most Europeans the American West was riod of exploration, closing the door on the a barrier, an obstacle, that hampered the Pas­ quest for the Northwest Passage that had sage to India and its great commercial poten­ dominated since the time of Marquette, but tial. But to Jefferson such a route was a way the beginning of a new phase. In the imperial into, rather than only through, the Garden of struggles of the times, Lewis and Clark mark the New World. The path he looked to Lewis for Goetzmann the first important step in a and Clark to find would lead into "a farmers sequence that would result in the "winning" paradise .... [T]he passage might be the high­ of the American West for the United States.4 way that could link this garden to the markets I believe it is appropriate to view the expe­ of the world .... [T]he passage and the garden dition of Lewis and Clark as the initial phase would ensure the future of the republic ... [by] of an emerging American imagination, the giving it room to escape." American optimism starting point for what has variously been and the developing American nationalism described as "cultural nationalism" and "cul­ combined to form out of the return of Lewis tural patriotism."s Their journey, and Amer­ and Clark "a new image of the West ... [one ica's marveling over what they did, saw, and of] many dreams of [its] fertility, beauty, and reported, is a pivotal point in a turning away vastness."7 This new image would prove to be from Europe by American writers, painters, central to the awakening of an American cul­ and other intellectuals to their own land ture in the two decades following their return. and culture, and to an emerging American Lewis and Clark came back to a country imagination. The Voyage of Discovery, in whose culture was still seeking identity. Na­ short, engendered a new vision of America. tional identity would develop with fits and Lewis and Clark were not conquistadors, as starts, but it had reached considerable matu­ their voyage did not seek gold and silver. rity within two decades. Twenty years after Mountains of salt and lead, mastodons, Lewis and Clark beached their dugout canoes Welsh Indians, and furs, yes, but the fortu­ in St. Louis, a remarkable year of productivity itous last-minute acquisition of the Louisiana would make it clear that a distinctive Ameri­ Territory had added a new thrust to their pur­ can culture had evolved, one of considerable pose, one that likely was of comparable im­ merit. In 1826, James Fenimore Cooper would portance to the original Enlightenment publish the best known of his Leatherstocking science and Northwest Passage themes. While novels, The Last of the Mohicans; Thomas Cole it is not explicit in the formal instructions would establish himself as a well-respected Jefferson had given to Lewis in June 1803, American artist with two paintings, "The Falls there is no question that the president looked of the Kaaterskill" and "Daniel Boone at Home to his explorers for confirmation that the newly in His Cabin on Great Osage Lake"; George acquired West constituted a Garden of the Catlin would begin his long crusade to docu­ New World, space into which his agrarian ment Native Americans with two paintings of "chosen people of God" could expand. Con­ the Seneca chief Red Jacket; and the patriotic cerned about a burgeoning American popu­ song "The Hunters of Kentucky" would be for­ lation, and using a density alarm factor of ten mally published and would thus receive wide­ people per square mile, Jefferson felt an spread circulation with its celebration of the American West suitable for agriculture and victory at the Battle of New Orleans by the settlement would provide the ideal answer for American frontiersmen over their European potential overpopulation. The journals and adversaries. The Jacksonians were at work es­ other reports from the two sons of agrarian tablishing a new and distinctive American Virginia abound in commentary as to the per­ political style, and the American language fect nature of the new lands for such pur­ Noah Webster had called for in 1783 was giv­ poses. 6 ing evidence of a full appearance.8 How these A NEW VISION OF AMERICA 213 changes came to be, and how they might re­ September 1806 led to other letters that were late to Lewis and Clark, is the subject of this widely reprinted in newspapers from Kentucky study. to Massachusetts in October and November. 12 A steady flow of fine scholarship over the The first of the published journal accounts past forty years has explored many other di­ came in June 1807 (Sergeant Gass), followed mensions of the "voyage of discovery."9 The by several spurious versions, dubbed the Apoc­ scientific, diplomatic, economic, ethno­ rypha by Elliott Coues, beginning in 1809,13 graphic, geographic, and even geopolitical What is it about these early accounts that implications of the journey have all received piqued public imagination? In the broadest excellent treatments. to But there remains a sense, Bernard DeVoto's axiom regarding news paucity of scholarship on the possible impact of the expedition seems to catch the essence of the expedition on an American culture that of the reaction: "it satisfied desire and it cre­ was evolving in the two decades following ated desire: the desire of the westerning na­ Lewis and Clark's return. tion."14 Specifically, the Fort Mandan letters At least a decade would pass between that gave detailed descriptions to a curious popu­ return and the emergence of strong examples lous of previously unknown Native American of an American culture. And, as has been peoples and of the flora, fauna, and physical noted, a relatively full flowering did not come characteristics to be found in the heart of the forth until 1826. But given the fact that trans­ newly acquired Louisiana Territory. The let­ planted Europeans had been living in America ters written upon the return to St. Louis am­ for almost 200 years before Lewis and Clark, plified such information, as well as gave some such a ten- to twenty-year period seems rela­ appreciation of the drama and arduousness of tively brief in the context of cultural evolu­ the expedition and of the commercial poten­ tion. tial of abundant furs and even the Canton The evidence for connections between an trade. emerging American culture and Lewis and But the nature and success of the Gass and Clark ranges from overt, as in the cases of Apocrypha journals are more instructive as to Washington Irving, Cooper, and Catlin, to the public appetite. The initial Gass version, much that either must be inferred or is cir­ with its more detailed descriptions of the new cumstantial. Whether the evidence is direct territory, sold well and was reprinted several or more subtle, a necessary beginning point is times, including abroad. But what the public to demonstrate the various ways in which the most seemed to want is seen in the addition of writers and artists who were to be in the fore­ six romanticized woodcuts of encounters with front of an emerging American culture had grizzlies and Indians to 1810-12 editions of access to information about Lewis and Clark Gass, and especially in the Apocrypha phe­ in the first two decades of the nineteenth cen­ nomenon. Appearing first in Philadelphia in tury. 1809, and then both in the US and abroad in various editions up until 1851, these largely THE EXPEDITION AND ITS AUDIENCE: fictional accounts told of Indian chiefs, war­ JUNE 1805-1814 riors, kings and queens; of gold and silver; and of Edenesque, fertile, well-watered lands filled Information about the explorers and their with animal and vegetable abundance. IS expedition was available from multiple sources, In sum, by the time the official Biddle para­ some as early as June 1805. One April 1805 phrase of the journals appeared in 1814, the letter from Fort Mandan appeared in several American people and their potential literary newspapers in June and July of 1805, and an­ and artistic spokesmen had been given more other as part of a pamphlet published in sev­ than enough information about Lewis and eral cities in 1806. 11 The return to St. Louis in Clark to begin to create mythic heroes of the 214 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2001

explorers. That much of the information about proved to be a road every bit as difficult for the two captains, and their Corps of Discov­ the young country as was the passage across ery, was of questionable veracity seems of little the continent for the Corps of Discovery. import. An American imagination had been Fighting a war with the most powerful nation awakened.16 on Earth; writing, debating, and ratifying two Constitutions; struggling to reestablish a vi­ ROMANTIC NATIONALISM AND THE able economy; enduring the rise of the politi­ MAKING OF HEROES cal parties that the Founders so feared; being insulted and internationally abused by both When Lewis and Clark reached St. Louis in France and England-whatever the young September 1806 they were immediately her­ country chose to celebrate in these trying for­ alded as heroes, and it is interesting to con­ mative years was often more illusory than real. sider what might have sparked such public But Lewis and Clark were certainly real, adulation. Zebulon Pike, and other explorers and a new nation hungry for such American who were essentially contemporaries of Lewis heroes responded with romantic and nation­ and Clark, did not receive a fraction of such alistic enthusiasm. 19 The country's turning attention. One obvious and inherent differ­ away from Europe, politically and especially ence is that Lewis and Clark would, as De culturally, would take some time to achieve Voto describes it, "always be the first."17 Be­ the levels of articulation Emerson, Thoreau, yond being the trailbreakers, what is it about Whitman, and others would give it in the sec­ the expedition that so seizes the public imagi­ ond quarter of the century. But Lewis and Clark nation? It could not have been scientific in­ seem to have been at the front edge of a trend formation. For Jefferson, Barton, Humboldt, to "turn away from the feudal past of Europe and others who had such high hopes for the to build a new order founded upon nature."20 scientific impact of the journey, a decent re­ The fortuitous timing of the expedition also port of the findings would- have to await the relates to a broader change in the intellectual Coues and Thwaites journal editions which climate of the times. As the Enlightenment bracket the turn of the twentieth century. The began to yield to an emerging romantic move­ Passage to India was as good as could be found ment in America, Lewis and Clark are a bridge but was not a practical route after all. Abun­ between the two. William Goetzmann points dant furs were to be had, and an Edenesque out that Catlin, Miller, Bodmer, and other land awaited the country, but these, too, do early artists of the American West have one not seem to justify the glowing words of the foot in the European artistic tradition they so newspaper accounts, toasts at celebratory ban­ envied and another in the New World subject quets, and lionizing poems of the sort Joel matter of the American West they were be­ Barlow read at a January 1805 White House ginning to use. They remained somewhat banquet. What is it that accounts for this pub­ rooted in eighteenth-century Enlightenment lic acclaim and for the widespread sale of early rationality, while they simultaneously reflected accounts of the journey such as those of Patrick an emerging nineteenth-century romanticism. Gass and the various Apocrypha editions? Thus Goetzmann uses wonderfully descriptive It seems that Lewis and Clark, in addition terms for them: "Euro-Americans" and "ro­ to the undeniable magnificence and romance mantic scientists."21 In many ways these terms of their achievements, were fortunate in the fit Lewis and Clark, especially as they served timing of their adventure. as a major stimulus for an emerging American Stephen Ambrose describes the United imagination. States of 1801 as a rather primitive and strug­ The country celebrated their heroes. They gling place. IS The 30-year period from Inde­ were greeted in St. Louis on 23 September by pendence to the return of Lewis and Clark a "great concourse of people that lined the A NEW VISION OF AMERICA 215 bank of the river [and this] must be considered dinner praised Lewis for "the difficult and dan­ as strong evidence of the respect entertained gerous enterprize which you have sO' success­ of those gentlemen for the danger and diffi­ fully atchieved." Not only had the adventure culties they must have encountered in their "covered [him] with glory ... , the man who expedition of discovery." The town buzzed with atchieved this interesting and arduous enter­ talk of the accomplishment: "The daring ad­ prize, is the produce of our soil, was raised venture became the theme of universal con­ from infancy to manhood among us, is our versation in the town," reported a local neighbour, our friend."24 An American hero­ chronicle. Two days later, St. Louis honored better yet, a native son of Virginia! A similar the two leaders with a dinner and a ball. The hero's welcome was afforded Clark when he newspaper, account of the event deemed the returned to his wife's home in Fincastle, Vir­ evening appropriate "honorable testimony ... ginia. The words of the 8 January 1807 public for those characters who are willing to en­ proclamation are instructive. Clark was praised counter, fatigue and hunger for the benefit of for his "prudence, courage and good conduct, their fellow citizens ... to those who pen­ ... [for having] acted so distinguished & hon­ etrate the gloom of unexplored regions." The orable a part on the theatre of human affairs; eighteen toasts ranged in praise from Jefferson ... navigated bold & unknown rivers, tra­ and Washington, to Commerce, Agriculture, versed Mountains, which had never before and Industry, and even to "the fair daughters been impressed with the footsteps of civilized of Louisiana." But after the captains had re­ man, and surmounted every obstacle, which tired, and modesty was no longer a deterrent, climate, Nature, or ferocious Savages could the final toast of the evening was offered to throw in your way ... extended the knowl­ "Captains Lewis and Clark-Their perilous edge of the Geography of your country; in other services endear them to every American respects enriched Science; and opened to the heart."22 United States a source of inexhaustible Earlier reference has been made to Clark's wealth." In all this Clark was championed for letter of 23 September 1806 to his brother having "uniformly respected the rights of hu­ Jonathan, a communication that had been manity, actuated by the principles of genuine drafted by Lewis. This letter, clearly intended philanthrophy, [yet] you have not sprinkled for publication, as was the custom of the day, your path with the blood of unoffending sav­ was first printed by the Frankfort (Ky.) Palla­ ages." As a result of all these accomplishments, dium on 9 October, along with an editorial the spokesman for the citizens of Fincastle note explaining that this "private" letter was proclaimed to Clark that his "fame will be as being printed "to gratify, in some measure, the pure and unsullied, as of that great man to impatient wishes of his countrymen" [for news whom Europe is indebted for a knowledge of of the returned expedition].23 As has been our continent; the extent and importance of noted above, Clark's letter was widely re­ which, it has been reserved for you to disclose printed. to the world."25 Here we have a true American This "public report" of Clark made its way hero: prudent but strong, courageous and east at about the same pace as that of the two skilled, but also compassionate. The time had captains. As they traveled, the public expressed come for an American to assume a Columbus­ its adulation. Banquets and dinners were held type role for our continent, with the quasi­ in St. Louis on 25 September; Louisville on 9 religious inference that Clark had been "called" November; Charlottesville, 15 December; to make better known to America and the Fincastle, Virginia, 8 January (1807); and world that which Columbus had discovered. Washington, D.C., on 14 January. Louisville American poet Joel Barlow also had such lit bonfires in their honor following the ban­ a relationship between Columbus and Lewis quet, while the address at the Charlottesville and Clark very much on his mind. Four 216 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2001

months after the return of the expedition, he Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Byron were de­ wrote President Jefferson suggesting that the fining for Europe the characteristics of roman­ Columbia River be renamed for Lewis "and ticism at essentially the same time Lewis and one of its principal branches [for] Clarke." In Clark were twice-crossing the continent. If support of this nationalistic expression he en­ romantics sought bravery, exotic places, mas­ closed a nine-stanza poem "On the Discover­ sive mountains, wild rivers, and so on, America ies of Captain Lewis." These verses proclaimed now had a powerful source of them at hand. In a North America that Lewis had united via his addition, Lewis and Clark had provided the "discovery" of a Northwest Passage and its sup­ country with a hero-tale of "courage, tenacity, posed relationship to other major rivers of the expansiveness ... curiosity, and a willingness continent. Most important, the key findings to aspire to lofty goals-all qualities pervad­ claimed by Barlow for Lewis had been accom­ ing ... [an emerging] American character."28 plished not by an Italian sailing under the Flag Thus the heroes were received and pro­ of Spain, but by a great American: claim~d. All knew they had opened the Ameri­ can West. How might they also have opened Then hear the loud voice of the nation the American imagination? proclaim, And all ages resound the decree: THE EMERGENCE OF AN AMERICAN Let our Occident stream bear the young LITERATURE hero's name, Who taught him his path to the sea. 26 We are harassed with a class of authors more numerous here [in the United States]' in This poem was part of a 14 January 1807 proportion, than in any other country­ banquet in Washington that honored Lewis, a worthless weeds springing up prematurely. Mandan chief, and other notables. Although -January 1807 preface to the Jefferson did not attend those present indulged Monthly Anthology and Boston Review in excessive praise of Lewis and the expedi­ tion. In addition to the Barlow poem, songs It would be over a decade before this dismal and instrumental music celebrated the occa­ assessment of the state of American letters sion and over two dozen toasts were given. could be contradicted. In August 1820 the Lewis was heralded as "patriotic, enlightened, Edinburgh Review proclaimed Washington and brave; who had the spirit to undertake, Irving's Sketch Book to be, in effect, the first and the valour to execute an expedition, which true American literature.29 This literary pub­ reflects honor on his country," while Clark lication, perhaps the most prestigious of its and other corps members were praised, in ab­ day, bestowed the honor on Irving for his use sentia, for "patriotic and manly perseverance of American natural settings, language, dress, [which] entitles them to the approbation of politics, and other customs and mores of the their countrymen." Barlow, not willing to rest young country. Consider, for example, his de­ with his poem, offered one of the final toasts. scription of a lake in the Hudson River Valley Of Lewis, and the expedition in general, he from The Sketch Book short story "The Legend proclaimed "victory over the wilderness, which of Sleepy Hollow:" is more interesting than that over men."27 Demonstrating patriotism, bravery, "manly The wide bosom of the Tappan Zee lay mo­ perseverance," and "victory over wilderness," tionless and glossy, excepting that here and Lewis and Clark were well on their way to there a gentle undulation waved and pro­ entry into an American pantheon. Over and longed the blue shadow of the distant moun­ over, romanticism and nationalism were ex­ tain. A few amber clouds floated in the sky, pressed in the praises bestowed upon them. without a breath of air to move them. The A NEW VISION OF AMERICA 217

horizon was of a fine golden tint, changing Van Winkle and lchabod Crane, use a lan­ gradually into a pure apple-green, and from guage and reflect other mores that are clearly that into the deep blue of the mid-heaven. differentiated from Old World antecedents. A slanting ray lingered on the wood crests In addition, his two sketches of Native Ameri­ of the precipices that overhung some parts cans in The Sketch Book are obvious reflec­ of the river, giving greater depth to the tions of indigenous culture. dark-gray and purple of their rocky sides. A Such topics, settings, and focus came natu­ sloop was loitering in the distance, drop­ rally to Irving. Born in New York City in 1783, ping slowly down with the tide, her sail he spent childhood days hunting and fishing hanging uselessly against the mast; and as in what was then a quasi-frontier setting on the reflection of the sky gleamed along the the outskirts of the city. Two older brothers, still water, it seemed as if the vessel was already men of letters, recognized a precocity suspended in the air. 30 in their youngest sibling and sent him on a two-year tour of Europe in 1804-6 to broaden Stanley Williams has pointed out the affin­ his education. By this time he had already de­ ity between this description and the soon-to­ veloped a fascination with the frontier, both emerge landscape painting of Thomas Cole from childhood experiences and from a Sep­ and others of the Hudson River School. In tember 1803 visit to Canada where he was addition, Irving's verbal panoramas can be seen spellbound by stories of North West Company as precursors to Cooper's Leatherstocking nov­ traders and trappers living and working in In­ els, the first of which was published in 1823. 31 dian country. Unlike his fellow New Yorker Irving, Cooper, and Thomas Cole-all entered John Jacob Astor, Irving did not see this fron­ the American cultural scene less than two tier "in terms of its potential wealth or its decades after the return of Lewis and Clark-a promise of commerce ... but [rather] in the remarkable convergence of three early pillars spirit of romance."33 of a rapidly developing American culture. Irving's interest in the frontier, and Native These three, of course, were preceded by Americans in particular, led to much reading over 200 years of previous writing and paint­ about the topics and to early publishing. He ing in America. From the earliest days of also served as editor of the Analeetie Magazine, Jamestown, Plymouth, and Massachusetts Bay, a Philadelphia magazine published by Moses works had been produced. Novels were being Brown, in 1813 and 1814. The two pieces on written in the young country by the 1790s, as Native Americans that later appear in The well as accounts of early frontier heroes. But Sketch Book were initially published by Irving such works were either set in exotic foreign in the February and June 1814 issues of the locales; were clearly imitative of English, Analeetie. In addition, an article in the 28 other European models, or the Classical June 1813, issue of the magazine makes refer­ World; or, as in the case of John Filson's bio­ ence to "the travels of the American Cap­ graphical sketch of Daniel Boone (1784), were tains, Lewis and Clarke ... lately published," presented in a language nearly indistinct from and the February 1814 issue had a review by that of the Mother Country. In other in­ Irving of Zebulon Pike's Exploratory Travels. 34 stances, as with Charles Brockden Brown's How much of Irving's early writing is at­ Wieland (1798), early conscious attempts to tributable to his knowledge of Lewis and write an American novel fell short due to both Clark is difficult to establish with precision. timing and the continuing literary shadow of Circumstance, however, makes it likely that England. 32 his awareness of the expedition came early Irving places five of his Sketch Book pieces and was as comprehensive as the initial in the Hudson River Valley. This and other sources would afford. He returned from his American settings, and characters such as Rip first European travels about the same time 218 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2001

Lewis and Clark completed their journey at St. scene, this time with an internationally popu­ Louis. He immediately immersed himself in lar character taken straight from the Ameri­ the literary life ofN ew York, in which his broth­ can wilderness. But it was to take him a while ers were already well established, publishing to find this literary hero. James Fenimore Coo- the Salmagundi papers in 1807 and his farcical . per was thirty-one years old when he wrote his History of New York late in 1809. One would first novel, Precaution, in 1820. Tradition has expect him to have stayed current with New it that he produced this book on a dare, as he York and other eastern newspapers, all of which and his wife had been reading a novel they carried the early accounts of Lewis and Clark. judged to be of limited merit, and Cooper of­ In addition, his knowledge of the 1807 Gass fered the opinion that he could write a better journal, or one of the multiple versions of the one. His wife called his bluff, resulting in Pre­ Apocrypha, was very possible. Finally, it ap­ caution, a mediocre work heavily imitative of pears likely he was familiar with the 1814 English models. He achieved better quality Biddle edition of the journals. The February with The Spy in 1821. Set in Revolutionary 1815 issue of the Analectic Magazine carried a America and with a patriotic message, it met review of the Biddle publication and, given with excellent success and was heralded as the Irving's close relationship to the Analectic dur­ first American novel of merit.37 ing these years and the fact that he did not go Cooper intentionally set out to write an abroad until three months after this issue ap­ American novel with The Spy. His quest for pears, his awareness of the review, and of the the "mental independence" of the United Biddle edition of the journals, seems quite States was a driving force in much of his writ­ likely.35 ing. He had lamented in 1812 that England In any event, it is logical to surmise that the remained "the idol" of American's "literary Lewis and Clark expedition played a role in adoration," and when he finally set his mind shaping, at some important formative stage, to write an American literature, he found a Irving's vision of the Amerie:an West. Stanley very receptive audience. Victory over England Williams tells us that by the time Irving re­ in the War of 1812, and the ensuing fervent turned in 1832 from seventeen years abroad, nationalism of the "Era of Good Feelings," he "had an intimate knowledge of the various created a favorable climate for Revolutionary editions concerning the expedition of Lewis heroes like those in The Spy.3S and Clark." He would augment this knowledge At the same time he was basking in the with a personal visit to Clark in St. Louis in afterglow of the success of The Spy, Cooper mid-September 1832 and make extensive use began work in December 1821 on what would of the Biddle edition of the journals in his prove to be his most compelling and memo­ three frontier-related 1830s publications: A rable character. Natty Bumppo-"Leather­ Tour of the Prairies (1835), Astoria (1836), and stocking"-was created and introduced as a The Rocky Mountains: or Scenes, Incidents and preliminary sketch in The Pioneers (1823.) He Adventures in the Far West (1837).36 proved to be so popular, however, that Coo­ As the first legitimate literary voice of the per was encouraged to go further with this emerging American imagination, Irving likely American child of the forest, and he subse­ had a full knowledge of Lewis and Clark from quently wrote four more novels in the the earliest days of their return. While it is Leatherstocking saga. impossible to conclude exactly what influence Greg Nobles has pointed out that Cooper this awareness had on his development as our introduces Leatherstocking at a time Ameri­ first writer, a claim for a significant impact can "popular culture became fascinated with seems legitimate. the frontier." The images of Natty Bumppo A fellow New Yorker was soon to follow joined those of Crockett, Indians both "noble" Irving on the burgeoning American literary and "savage," and even the emerging mythical A NEW VISION OF AMERICA 219

Andrew Jackson as visions of the American an American frigate in the Revolution, The frontier that "intrigued easterners looking Pilot (1823), and the first of what was intended west." The fear of a hostile wilderness of ear­ as thirteen historical novels celebrating Revo­ lier generations was being replaced by roman­ lutionary events in each of the original states, tic literature and painting that portrayed the Lionel Lincoln (1824-25), he returned to the West as "the new hope for the nation's fu­ proven Leatherstocking formula with four ture." Even though few east of the Mississippi more novels in that saga. The best known of had actually seen the trans-Mississippi West, the five, The Last of the Mohicans, was pub­ "thousands had envisioned it in their minds," lished in 1826 and The Prairie in the following and Cooper and subsequent writers of "West­ year. Over a decade would pass before he com­ ern fiction" were pleased to feed this inter­ pleted the series with The Pathfinder (1840) est. 39 Lewis and Clark certainly should be seen and The Deerslayer (1841). as part of the process that generated this emerg­ Cooper's background up to the writing of ing American imagery, but they have received the first Leatherstocking novels is an interest­ little such attention from scholars. ing one. Born in Burlington, New Jersey, the It was, in many different ways, a new same year the country ratified its new Consti­ America that Cooper was writing for. The first tution, he was raised in the upstate New York quarter of the nineteenth century had wit­ town his father, in quasi-Thomas Sutpen fash­ nessed a doubling of the size of the country ion, carved out of the wilderness. William through the Louisana Purchase, rapid western Cooper, a classic "type" of the Revolutionary expansion, major population growth, victory and Early National periods, used the economic over the very nation that had just vanquished turbulence of the Revolutionary era as the Napoleon, and a concurrent explosion of na­ opportunity to seize Loyalist lands and propel tionalism. Henry Nash Smith makes the point himself on a fascinating journey, from wheel­ that, prior to Cooper, ambivalence character­ wright to land baron, judge, successful politi­ ized America's attitude toward the frontier. cian, and former revolutionary turned staunch Daniel Boone was seen both as a necessary conservative of Federalist political persua­ "conqueror" and "civilizer" of wilderness and sion.42 as a "fugitive" from the ills of civilization. But Cooper's eight surviving children were un­ the growth and urbanization of the country remarkable in the accomplishments of their were such that this ambivalence disappeared youth and early adulthood. James, the young­ by the time of Leatherstocking. As Cooper est of the brood, was something of a ne'er-do­ began his writing career, civilization, in the well who was dismissed from Yale after two eyes of many, was now unequivocally wicked, years, had a brief stint as a midshipman in the and "untouched nature ... a source of navy, and then achieved some financial sta­ strength, truth, and virtue."4o bility by marrying into a wealthy family of Whether by instinct or design, Cooper Westchester County, the De Lanceys. But even seemed to sense these changes, knew his audi­ with this financial windfall, Cooper and his ence well, and produced in The Pioneers a fron­ siblings, dubbed "idle aristocrats" by one Coo­ tier-type novel that experienced even more per scholar, manage to squander the estate left praise than The Spy. Laudatory reviews came to them by Judge Cooper's death in 1809. from virtually every periodical in the land, as Things began to crumble in the 1820s, and by well as from abroad. Sales were of such magni­ the end of the decade William Averell, the tude that Cooper was able to survive a serious son of a shoemaker who had once made shoes financial crisis, buy back the old family estate for Judge Cooper's family, had gained com­ in Cooperstown, and sustain a life of relative plete control of the judge's former assetsY prosperity and growing prestige.41 After wit­ But by these same 1820s Cooper had cre­ nessing only moderate success for a novel of ated Natty, and with him came fame and 220 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2001 financial success. The origins of the Leather­ Cooper introduced, the "American Abraham," stocking saga and the subject matter therein and by the smooth transition of wealth, power, are complex, as they are with analysis of any prestige, and control to this patriarch's wise author. Most important to this study, what and successful patrician heirs. His writing be­ role did Cooper's knowledge of Lewis and came a psychological vehicle that could take Clark play in his emergence as America's first him to a fantasy world infinitely more pleas­ successful novelist, and particularly in his fo­ ing than the realities of his life in the 1820s. cus on Natty Bumppo and the American fron­ As Alan Taylor puts it, "Cooper imagined an tier? The developments of Cooper's novels, America where he securely belonged to an leading to and including the creation of this honored, ruling class-defying the actual in­ memorable character and the locales he fre­ stability of fortune and subdivision of author­ quents, deserve considerable attention. ity in the Republic .... In The Pioneers he Precaution, as we saw above, was written as crafted a reassuring past intended to secure a whim in an attempt to improve upon an the Republic's future stability."46 English novel, so its origins are self-explana­ In Cooper's ideal world the shortcomings tory. With The Spy he turned to a tale he had of legal and other institutions are overcome heard from fellow New Yorker John Jay of a by the leadership and control of a natural selfless American spy who had served hero­ elite, a patrician class in which the author ically in divided Westchester County during fantasized himself as a leading member. But the Revolution. The setting was in the New in this process the free-spirited Natty is a ca­ York he knew well, both from his youth in sualty. He is called before the patriarchal judge Cooperstown and his current residence in for killing a deer out of season, and he causes Westchester County. The patriotic tone re­ trouble by being a "squatter" on privately flects Cooper's immersion in the "cultural pa­ owned land. Cooper resolves these dilemmas triotism" and "cultural nationalism" so evident for his child of nature by having him depart at the time, and in particuJ.ar his determina­ Otsego for the trans-Mississippi West. When tion to create a novel that would answer the we next see him in The Last of the Mohicans he contemporary cultural slur of British writer has grown young and near superhuman and Sydney Smith: "Who reads an American has abandoned civilization for life in the wil­ book?"44 derness. And in The Prairie, published the year The Pioneers, with its unveiling of Natty after Mohicans, Natty has progressed to the Bumppo, is more complex in its genesis. Ex­ heart of the Louisiana Territory and is travel­ planation of the physical location for the novel ing on a parallel track to Lewis and Clark, is straightforward. Set in frontier New York, headed, like the two captains, for the Pacific. in what appears to be an area very akin to that It is not known precisely when Cooper be­ around Cooperstown and Otsego Lake, both came interested in and influenced by Lewis his daughter and a leading Cooper scholar see and Clark. But it is clear that such influence the novel's descriptions and landscapes as de­ was present and significant. In his writing up rived "from an entire childhood and youth to 1825 he had sufficient material from his life ... [a] reservoir of images."45 But the romantic experiences to sustain his characters and set­ story line appears to reflect much deeper is­ tings. But Cooper had to research The Last of sues. the Mohicans, with its attempted immersion in In The Pioneers Cooper created a fictional the culture of Native Americans, as well as world more to his liking than the realities of The Prairie, particularly, with its trans-Missis­ financial and personal failure. In his novel sippi setting (an area of the country Cooper the potential anarchy and economic turbu­ had not visited). lence of the frontier are suppressed by the in­ Cooper came up with the plot structure for stinctive wisdom of a new fictional type that Mohicans while on a tour of Lake George, A NEW VISION OF AMERICA 221

Glens Falls, and other upstate New York sites CELEBRATING THE AMERICAN LAND­ in 1824. When he sat down to write the novel SCAPE AND NATIVE AMERICANS in the early summer of 1825, he turned to the Biddle edition of the Lewis and Clark jour­ The same influences that led to self-con­ nals for information on Native AmericansY scious efforts by Irving and Cooper to produce In The Prairie, begun early in 1826 while at an American literature also impacted Ameri­ home but completed in Paris (he and his can artists in the 1820s. And it was certainly family sailed for Europe in June 1826), the time for American artists to focus on their influence of Lewis and Clark was much more homeland. They were stuck in the ruts of neo­ overt. classicism, the "high style," and epic histori­ Much of the plot of The Prairie revolves cal paintings. Most fled abroad as soon as around a journey by Leatherstocking that rep­ possible to study with, and imitate, the Euro­ licates Lewis and Clark's. Indeed, his travels pean masters they so admired. None yet seemed occur virtually simultaneous to that of the to recognize the artistic potential of Ameri­ Corps of Discovery, although Natty reaches can scenery, what Thomas Cole would later the Pacific in 1804, a year prior to Lewis and proclaim to be "a rich and delightful banquet Clark. Scenes of hunting, cooking, and other ... [an] Eden; the wall that shuts us out of the elements of camp life are derived from the garden is our own ignorance and folly [if we journals, as are the names and characteristics turn to Europe .... It is [the artist's] own land; of Native Americans. Cultural references such its beauty, its magnificence, its sublimity-all as the use of buffalo hides in making "bull are his; and how underserving of such a birth­ boats" by Plains Indians also appear to be taken right, if he can turn toward it an unobserving from the Biddle journals.48 eye, and unaffected heart!"49 It is surprising that studies of Cooper do J ames Thomas Flexner calls Thomas Cole not suggest a connection between Lewis and an "Eagle Emergent" and credits him with start­ Clark and the creation of Natty. Many sources ing a revolution in American art, the "Native on Cooper expound theories about Natty's School." Born in 1801 in the heart of England's origins, ranging from a local hunter Cooper textile industry, Cole read of the American had known in his youth to models such as West as a child and dreamed of this new world Daniel Boone, Kit Carson, and J edediah Smith, where relatives from both sides of his family but none mention Lewis and Clark as possible had gone. His father's economic troubles led influences. Given Cooper's close knowledge the family to move to America in 1819, and and detailed use of Lewis and Clark, it is logi­ they initially settled in Philadelphia. But con­ cal to assume they became one of the amalgam tinuing financial struggles forced four reloca­ of sources that went into Cooper's creation of tions in the next five years. The first of these Leatherstocking. Legitimate American heroes changes took the bulk of the family to of their ilk were very appealing to Cooper, Steubenville, Ohio, but Cole remained in and they likely had a significant influence on Philadelphia. In the fall of 1819, however, he him in imagining Natty Bumppo. walked 300 miles across the Alleghenies to Washington Irving and J ames Fenimore Steubenville. Since childhood he had had an Cooper were the pioneers in the establish­ interest in drawing and had dabbled in en­ ment of a viable American literature. Just how graving both in England and Philadelphia, but significant the influence of Lewis and Clark it was an itinerant painter by the name of John was on them, in the absence of more direct Stein that apparently inspired him to become documentary evidence, probably cannot be an artist, with his first attempts being as a established. Strong circumstantial evidence, portrait painter. 10 however, makes substantial impact quite Traveling by foot in February 1822 and at­ likely. tempting to drum up business, Cole battled 222 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2001 the competition of a German portrait painter by Cole. Trumbull, who supposedly had been named Des Combes, as well as his personal musing over the unachieved potential of dislike of the itinerant portrait business. American art, was seized by the brilliance of Heavily in debt, he rejoined his family, now in Cole's work and is reported to have proclaimed: Pittsburgh, but discarded their advice to enter "This young man has done what all my life I a more lucrative trade and moved on to Phila­ attempted in vain to do." Trumbull bought delphia in the fall of 1823. Still impoverished, one of the paintings, of "The Falls of ill-fed and -clothed, and suffering from rheu­ Kaaterskill," and told fellow artist Asher matism, he spent so much time studying the Durand and poet William Cullen Bryant of art in the Pennsylvania Academy that he was his discovery. They purchased the other two almost tossed out as a vagrant. 51 paintings and Cole's fame, according to The next three years were critical ones for Durand, "spread like wildfire."14 Thus was Cole. While it is impossible to establish with launched Cole's career, one that would pros­ precision what led him to the American land­ per until his premature death in 1848. By that scape, a number of influences seemed to con­ time his reputation was clearly solidified as verge during this brief time frame. The the founder of the Hudson River School, and landscape paintings he saw in the Pennsylva­ of what Flexner calls the Native School. His nia Academy of Americans Thomas Doughty death was declared a "national loss" by a con­ and Thomas Birch, as well as those of the Ital­ temporary newspaper, he was eulogized by the ian Salvator Rosa, apparently made a major likes of William Cullen Bryant and James impression. Cole obtained a copy in 1825 of Fenimore Cooper, and he was memorialized William Oram's treatise on landscape paint­ by what was tantamount to a competition ing, and his study of this work helped him among surviving Hudson River painters to see refine his technique. An instinctive love of who could best honor their mentor. 55 nature, an inherent romantic temperament, How might Cole's popularity relate to Lewis and a shy and brooding personality also came and Clark's journey into the Louisiana Terri­ into play. But whatever the mental processes tory two decades prior to the "discovery" of might have been, Cole completed and showed Cole in New York City? Perhaps it is best ex­ a landscape painting (now lost) at the Penn­ plained by the cultural climate of the times. sylvania Academy's annual show of 1824.51 The same forces that influenced Irving and In the summer of 1825 Cole traveled up the Cooper, and that help explain their roles as Hudson into the Catskills, sketching "until leading writers of their time, are also signifi­ his hands and his eyes ached." Returning to cant for Cole. In addition to his childhood New York City to transform these sketches interest in the wilds of America, "from the onto canvas, he produced three landscapes that beginning of his career [as a young adult] Cole initiated the "revolution" Flexner credits Cole was deeply attracted to wilderness tales and with starting.53 rural stories-'Rip Van Winkle,' The Last of These three paintings first met the public the Mohicans, the legend of Daniel Boone," eye at a pivotal time in the history of New and the like.56 Lewis and Clark should be con­ York and of the nation. In November 1825, sidered an essentially formative influence on N ew York and the country were celebrating the development of such uniquely American the opening of the Erie Canal, a development images, hero stereotypes that were attractive with enormous economic, political, and even to Cole, Cooper, and many others of that pe­ sectional implications. Flexner tells us that it riod. is at this precise moment of celebration that The same "cultural nationalism," "cultural the venerable American painter John Trum­ patriotism," and "romantic nationalism" that bull visited the shop of aNew York frame propelled Lewis and Clark to hero status and maker who had on display the three landscapes created a viable market for the "American" A NEW VISION OF AMERICA 223 writings of Irving and Cooper also lay behind Catlin was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsyl­ Cole's successes. There was a "taste" in the vania, in 1796 into a family that had been in 1820s for celebrations of American wilder­ America since 1644. His childhood was filled ness vistas, and Cole was careful in his paint­ with formative influences that contributed to ings to remove fences, handrails, and steps in his life's work. Wilkes-Barre at the turn of the order to present Kaaterskill Falls, and other century was a major disembarkation point for rustic scenes, as they would "have appeared travel west, much as St. Louis was to become before the advent of white settlement." The a generation later. When he was only one year beauty and abundance of the American land­ old, the family moved even farther into the scape, which Cole celebrated in his 1836 lec­ frontier, traveling forty miles over an Indian ture "On American Scenery," was a substitute trail to a "farm in a forest" on the bank of the "for [the] missing national tradition" of a Susquehanna River. Both Catlin's father and young country. A "natural backdrop," in the paternal grandfather had served honorably in words of Perry Miller, "relieved us of having the American Revolution, and his maternal to apologize for a deficiency of picturesque grandparents had fought against Indians dur­ ruins." General ambivalence among Ameri­ ing the Pennsylvania "Wyoming Massacre" of can intellectuals over progress and utilitari­ 1778. His mother had been captured by the anism, over the impact of "the axe" and "the Iroquois during these hostilities but was re­ machine in the garden," made Cole's cele­ leased unharmed after a short period. She was brations of Nature all the more popular only seven at the time.58 ("Nature" having come to be "spelled with a Although his father had been classically capital and referred to as feminine" by Cole's educated and the Catlin home was filled with time, as Miller points out). Perhaps the best books, Catlin observed later in life that his validation of such an intellectual climate is childhood days were "whiled away, apparently the marketability of Cole's American land­ somewhat in vain, with books reluctantly held scapes. As one scholar puts it, Cole quickly in one hand, and a rifle or fishing-pole firmly learned, and somewhat resented, that the and affectionately grasped in the other." His public would buy most anything from him as first adventure hunting with the rifle, at age long as the title included "The Catskills," or nine, led to a dramatic encounter with an otherwise appealed to the thirst for represen­ Iroquois warrior. Just as Catlin was taking aim tations of American "Nature" scenes.57 at a ten-point buck, the animal was felled by Arguably our first American painter, Cole another shot, fired, he soon learned, by an succeeded because of his ability to produce Iroquois chief who had been searching the paintings that appealed to the same images area for gold supposedly buried by the Indian's and ideas that Irving, and especially Cooper, father during the Wyoming conflict. Catlin's so successfully tapped-sentiments that the father encouraged a friendship between the Lewis and Clark expedition helped set into Indian and the boy, a relationship that may motion. have had considerable significance in Catlin's Cole's American landscapes focused on later career as a painter, ethnologist, and the Hudson River Valley, the Catskills, and champion of the Indian cause. The gift of a other scenes from the East. The first major tomahawk by the chief, however, was later to American artist to mine successfully the have a scary outcome. As Catlin was "playing trans-Mississippi terrain made known by Lewis Indian" with the weapon the next year, it rico­ and Clark was George Catlin. And Catlin's cheted off a tree and left a life-long scar on his adventures traveling the West in the early left cheek. 59 1830s come close to matching some of those His father had been grooming Catlin to endured by Lewis and Clark thirty years ear­ follow in his footsteps as an attorney and sent lier. him in 1817 to study law in Litchfield, Con- 224 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2001

necticut. This career, however, was to be short­ visiting and observing on the Indian reserva­ lived. After only a year or two of practice in tions of western New York.6l the courts of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, At least four contemporaries-Charles Bird Catlin, as he later described it, "very deliber­ King, James Otto Lewis, Peter Rindisbacher, ately sold my law library and all (save my rifle and Samuel Seymour-were gaining reputa­ and fishing-tackle), and converting their pro­ tions as painters of American Indians. Along ceeds into brushes and paint pots; I com­ with genre paintings of the West, this must menced the art of painting." Quickly gaining have created a sense of urgency in Catlin.63 a good local reputation as an amateur portrait Finally, in the spring of 1830, he departed for painter, he moved to Philadelphia in 1821 St. Louis. Armed with letters of introduction determined to gain more formal training for a from the Commissioner of Indian Affairs and career in painting. His time in Philadelphia, others, his first and most important call in St. then clearly the center of American art, likely Louis was on William Clark, then Superin­ included exposure to the Peale studios, where tendent of Indian Affairs and former Gover­ he may well have crossed paths with Thomas nor of the Missouri Territory. Cole. Portraits, both full-size and miniature, Clark, in his position as gatekeeper to and mark his early work and were of sufficient merit caretaker of the trans-Mississippi West, was to gain him election in February 1824 to the bombarded with callers such as Catlin. In ad­ Philadelphia Academy and in 1826 to the dition, he was aware of the current efforts of National Academy (of New York.) Early por­ Charles Bird King and J ames Otto Lewis to trait subjects included Governor DeWitt paint Native Americans. Thus, there were Clinton of New York, with the first of three multiple reasons for him to give Catlin only such works completed by Catlin in December cursory attention, and Catlin seemed to be 1824.60 aware of potential dismissal. While no record At some point in these early Philadelphia of their initial meeting has survived, it ap­ years, probably in 1824, Catlin underwent a pears that Catlin overwhelmed Clark, in the life-changing experience. A delegation of In­ most positive of ways, with a rapid display of dians were in town en route to discussions in Indian paintings from his portfolio, letters of Washington. Encountering this group, in all introduction, and personal charm. Clark's fa­ the majesty and splendor of their native garb, vorable initial impression was cemented by Catlin was transformed. He resolved that his his observing the speed and excellence of life's work must be to document "the history Catlin's work, as he invited him to sketch and and customs of such a people, preserved by paint various Indians who frequented his of­ pictorial illustrations." Such work he felt to fice. And the production of a formal, flatter­ be "worthy the life-time of one man, and noth­ ing portrait of Clark by Catlin also likely ing short of the loss of my life, shall prevent helped the painter's cause. But whatever the me from visiting their country, and of becom­ reasons, it is clear that Clark took Catlin un­ ing their historian."61 der his wing and was of immense assistance to A lack of funds and backlog of portrait ob­ him. Clark actually accompanied Catlin on ligations temporarily delayed the implemen­ several trips in 1830 to visit Indian locales of tation of this dream, but Catlin immediately the Missouri drainage and provided helpful began to read about the West and soon turned introductions for more trips Catlin took on his artistic attention to Native American sub­ his own in 1831.64 ject matter. In 1826 he painted two portraits On 26 March 1832, shortly after "ice-out" of the Seneca chief Red Jacket. Catlin mar­ on the Missouri, Catlin left St. Louis on the ried in 1828 and moved to Albany, New York. maiden voyage of the American Fur Com­ This gave him a good base from which to pur­ pany's steamboat Yellow Stone. This journey, sue his newfound passion, as he spent time the first by such a vessel to the mouth of the A NEW VISION OF AMERICA 225

Yellowstone River, became the foundation of Catlin's work moved from the mind's eye Catlin's greatest work. By the time he returned to the visual senses the images of the West to St. Louis in the fall of 1832, he had traveled that the words of Lewis and Clark and their 2,000 miles up the Missouri, including a 200- successors had established. As Bernard DeVoto mile overland stretch, and canoed with two puts it, Catlin's portraits brought "the Plains trappers all the way back down the river to St. Indian to the American eye for the first time," Louis from Fort Union at its junction with the and his landscapes of the West gave the young Yellowstone. In the course of these travels he country its first view of a vast region which observed, lived with, and hunted with innu­ "by 1837, was exercising an exceedingly pow­ merable tribes, recording their manners and erful influence on the national imagination."67 customs. Working rapidly and aided by a pho­ Predisposed toward the frontier and its origi­ tographic memory for detail, he used a stan­ nal inhabitants by his upbringing, Catlin's dard canvas (28" x 23" or 11" x 14") to produce 1824 "conversion" unleashed an amazing ca­ 135 paintings: sixty-six portraits of Indians reer, one whose subject matter initially fit well from life, thirty-six scenes of Indian life, with the romantic nationalism of the times. twenty-five landscapes, and eight hunting Given his access to the Peale studios and mu­ scenes. Catlin reported on his journeys in a seum, it seems inconceivable that his post- series of letters to the New York Commercial 1824 immersion in the literature of the West Advertiser in the summer of 1832, and when would not have included the Biddle edition of these written reports were enhanced by the Lewis and Clark journals. The Biddle vol­ viewings of his work in St. Louis, Cincinnati, umes had been printed in Philadelphia, speci­ Pittsburgh, and finally, by 1836, in Albany, mens from the journey were abundant in New York City, and other eastern cities, the Peale's Museum, Charles Willson Peale had West of the American imagination had its first done drawings for the "scientific volume" significant pictorial representations.65 Barton was to have prepared to accompany Catlin was to live forty more years. These the publication of the journals, and Philadel­ four decades encompassed several more jour­ phia, generally, was one of the primary intel­ neys to the West, as well as to the Southeast lectual sources for the expedition.68 Once and South America, to record Indian life. again, by both direct and more subtle ways, These adventures included a 1,000-mile solo Lewis and Clark likely played a significant role ride on his horse, "Charley," from the far in Catlin's development as an early American Southwest, across the Plains, back to St. Louis. painter and in his concurrent "powerful influ­ His grand plan was to generate high interest ence on the national imagination." in his work via "Catlin's Indian Gallery," which met with initial success in eastern showings in THE REORIENT A TION OF A CULTURE 69 1837, and then to sell his collection to Con­ gress as a foundation for a National Indian "The Lewis and Clark expedition excited Gallery. But his proposals to Congress, in spite the country as Raleigh and Hakluyt excited of powerful endorsements and appropriate the people of England, for it disclosed an un­ Committee approvals, never passed, for a va­ known world of mystery and thought."70 riety of reasons. Perhaps the most significant "Excited ... an unknown world of mystery was Catlin's impassioned advocacy of Ameri­ and thought." This bold assertion by Van Wyck can Indians, which one Catlin scholar pointed Brooks, while undocumented in his popular­ out put the painter "on the wrong side" of a ized treatment of early American intellectual "guilty conscience regarding the treatment of life, is an apt summary of my study. An immer­ Indians" that Congress was already feeling by sion in the early writings of Irving and Coo­ the 1830s and 1840s. He died, deaf, destitute, per, and in the paintings of Cole and Catlin, and unappreciated, in 1872.66 continually suggests connections to Lewis and 226 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2001

Clark. In some instances the 1804-6 expedi­ viewed as a vast and largely untamed new tion serves as a direct source for these early land.72 American writers and artists, but the greater Lewis and Clark had truly seen the "brave impact is more subtle and indirect. new world" beyond the Mississippi and Mis­ Many others follow Lewis and Clark and souri, and they were the essential first step in deserve their own just place as influencers of making these marvels known to their fellow an emerging American culture. The efforts of countrymen. They did so precisely at the right Zebulon Pike in 1805-6 and Stephen H. Long historical moment, when a surge of romantic in 1819-20, to give two early examples, were nationalism was sweeping the country. The made known to the country more rapidly and Corps of Discovery, indeed, is at the very heart fully. Probably in reaction to the delays asso­ of these fundamental changes. They were the ciated with the publication of the journals of instruments of a visionary, geopolitically as­ Lewis and Clark, accounts of the Pike and tute president who commissioned the expedi­ Long explorations came into print almost im­ tion to counter British continental ambitions, mediately after the return of the expeditions. and whose purchase more than doubled the Those of Long were further enhanced by the amount of land available to his "chosen people addition of professional artists and scientists of God." to the team.71 Inscribed in the bark of a large Pacific Coast The road to public awareness was smoother pine: "Capt William Clark December 3rd 1805. for the later ventures but the fact remains that By Land [from the] U States in 1804 & 1805."73 there were multiple ways, as early as June 1805, The first Americans to cross the continent by that America came to know about Lewis and land, they also become, both directly and sub­ Clark. As we have seen, newspaper accounts tly, the first major force to turn the American were widespread, especially in 1806 and 1807, mind away from an obsessive focus on the Old the Gass and Apocrypha versions of the jour­ World, redirecting it to the fertile subject nals were readily available from 1807 and on, matter so abundant in the Garden of the New and the Biddle "official" version finally came Land. into print in 1814. It was not the immediate They were also a microcosm of the com­ and definitive information track envisioned plexities of the young country. In addition to by Jefferson, but it was more than enough to the two leaders and nine others from Virginia, fascinate the mind of a young country. these were four from New Hampshire, nine Perhaps most important, Lewis and Clark, from Kentucky, seven from Pennsylvania, at as DeVoto continually reminds us, "will al­ least one from six other states, an African­ ways be the first." They deserve more atten­ American, a young native American woman tion as a logical starting point for significant and her infant, French-Canadians, Protestants, cultural changes that swept early-nineteenth­ Roman Catholics, non-believers, and even a century America; changes that created a cli­ Newfoundland retriever. Their makeup and mate that challenged, inspired, and nurtured their adventures could have filled volumes of our formative writers and artists to a reorien­ print and miles of canvas. The impact was not tation of our culture. It seems far more than to be so direct, but they were there, always the coincidental that after Lewis and Clark these first, and deserve greater recognition for their intellectuals finally began to abandon the ob­ role in the early-nineteenth-century emer­ session with English and European culture that gence of an American imagination. had stifled for so many years the emergence of an indigenous culture. They began to turn away NOTES from the formalism of European antecedents with increasing comfort and even national 1. Bernard DeVoto, The Course of Empire (Bos­ pride, for the "wilder images" of what they ton: Houghton Mifflin, 1952), p. 541. A NEW VISION OF AMERICA 227

2. Gary E. Moulton, ed., The10urnals of the Lewis the times. James Fenimore Cooper's The Prairie and Clark Expedition, 13 vols. (Lincoln: University (1827) describes Daniel Boone moving "three hun­ of Nebraska Press, 1983-2001), 2:8, 10,35; 8:372. dred miles west of the Mississippi, in his ninety­ 3. Paul R. Cutright, A History of the Lewis and second year, because he found a population of ten Clark Journals (Norman: University of Oklahoma to a square mile, inconveniently crowded!" Coo­ Press, 1976), is the standard treatment of the long per, The Prairie, A Tale (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, and clouded history of published information about 1985), p. 10. the expedition, from an initial newspaper account 7. Ronda, "So Vast" (note 5 above), pp. 6-7; in June 1805, to the 1970s. The publication history John Logan Allen, Passage through the Garden: Lewis of the Journals has a happy current status with the and Clark and the Image of the American Northwest definitive twelve volumes edited by Gary E. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975), pp. Moulton from 1983 to 1999. Moulton, 2:35-48, is a 45,330. Allen, p. 371, points out that the Passage more current summary of the editing and publish­ to India, with its geopolitical, imperial, and long­ ing of the Journals than Cutright. Robert Lawson­ range commercial implications, was of little inter­ Peebles, Landscape and Written Expression in est to those who lived "in the small towns and on Revolutionary America: The World Turned Upside the farms of the South and Old Northwest." Rather, Down (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, these Jeffersonian yeomen "instead ... thought of 1988), pp. 278-80, has a useful appendix that sum­ the promised Garden that had been proclaimed." marizes the publication history of the Journals and 8. The "Hunters of Kentucky" was performed those of other expedition members. However, as early as 1822 but was not published and widely Lawson-Peebles's speculation as to the causes of circulated until 1826. An excellent discussion of Lewis's gaps in keeping the Journals is controver­ the emergence of American literature is Michael sial. T. Gilmore, "The Literature of the Revolutionary 4. William H. Goetzmann, Exploration and and Early National Periods," in The Cambridge His­ Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning tory of American Literature, ed. Sacvan Berovitch, of the American West (New York: Alfred Knopf, Vol. 1, 1590-1820 (New York: Cambridge Univer­ 1966), pp. 3-8, 180. sity Press, 1994), pp. 541-693. A comparable work 5. Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The Ameri­ for the emergence of American art is Neil Harris, can West as Symbol and Myth (New York: Vintage The Artist in American Society: The Formative Years, Books, 1950), and Roderick Nash, Wilderness and 1790-1860 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, the American Mind, rev. ed. (New Haven, Conn.: 1982). Yale University Press, 1973), both use the "cul­ 9. Lewis and Clark scholars often point to the tural nationalism" phrase. The same intellectual publication of Donald Jackson's Letters of the Lewis trend is described by James Ronda as "cultural pa­ and Clark Expedition with Related Documents, 1783- triotism." See Ronda, '''So Vast an Enterprize': 1854, 2d ed. in 2 vols. (Urbana: University of Illi­ Thoughts on the Lewis and Clark Expedition," in nois Press, 1962; 1978) as the principal stimulus Ronda, ed., Voyages of Discovery: Essays on the Lewis for such quality and volume. Gary E. Moulton, "On and Clark Expedition (Helena, Mont.: Montana Reading Lewis and Clark: The Last Twenty Years," Historical Society Press, 1998), p. 6. I have synthe­ and James P. Ronda, '''The Writingest Explorers': sized these interpretations, as well as those of The Lewis and Clark Expedition in American His­ Goetzmann, with my own in suggesting the more torical Literature," both in Ronda, ed., Voyages of encompassing term of "Romantic Nationalism." Discovery (note 5 above), give a good feel for this 6. Donald Jackson, Jefferson and the S tony Moun­ explosion of Lewis and Clark scholarship, all pro­ tains: Exploring the West from Monticello (Urbana: duced prior to Stephen Ambrose's bestselling 1996 University of Illinois Press, 1981), pp. xix, 30, 110; biography of Lewis and the Ken Burns's popular Ronda, "So Vast," ibid., pp.1-3; Smith, Virgin Land, 1997 TV documentary on the expedition. ibid., pp. 11-12. Jefferson, in his first inaugural 10. For examples, see Paul R. Cutright, Lewis address, had engaged in a little hyperbole in pro­ and Clark: Pioneering Naturalists (Urbana, Ill.: Uni­ claiming that the United States possessed "room versity of Illinois Press, 1969); DeVoto's Course of enough for our descendants to the hundreth and Empire (note 1 above); James P. Ronda, Lewis and thousandth generation." Although the discoveries Clark among the Indians (Lincoln, Nebr: University of his explorers do not completely mitigate this of Nebraska Press, 1984); J ackson, Jefferson and the exaggeration, Jefferson's 1801 expression of an early Stony Mountains (note 6 above); Allen, Passage Turnerian "safety valve" certainly assumed more through the Garden (note 7 above); and Goetzmann, validity after the Louisiana Purchase and the ex­ Exploration and Empire (note 4 above). With the plorations of Lewis and Clark. The ten people per exception of DeVoto, all of these studies have been square mile index seems to have been a standard of published within the last four decades. 228 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2001

11. Cutright, Moulton, and Lawson-Peebles, all out that the Lewis and Clark story is a "hero tale" cited in note 3 above, give a full history of the that shares much in common with other tales in various publications related to the expedition and world cultures such as Jason and the Argonauts and should be consulted for details of items appearing Gilgamesh. between 1805 and 1814. See also Donald Jackson, 17. De Voto, Course of Empire (note 1 above), p. 543. "The Race to Publish Lewis and Clark," Pennsylva­ 18. Stephen Ambrose, Undaunted Courage: nia Magazine of History and Biography 85 (April Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Open­ 1961): 163-77. The Fort Mandan letters, one dated ing of the American West (New York: Simon & 2 April 1805 from Clark to William Henry Harrison Schuster, 1996), chap. 4, "Thomas Jefferson's (then serving as governor of the Indiana Territory American, 1801," passim. and who had assisted the two captains in prepara­ 19. Allen, Passage through the Garden (note 7 tion for their journey), and the other from Lewis to above), p. 369, makes the excellent point that the Jefferson, dated 7 April 1805, are in Jackson, Let­ glamorization and romanticizing of the expedition ters (note 9 above), 1: 227-36. may have been enhanced by the delay in publish­ 12. On these letters see Jackson, Letters (note 9 ing the scientific findings of the journey. In the above), 1: 317-35, and Jackson, Jefferson and the absence of this information, emphasis was instead Stony Mountains (note 6 above), pp. 199-200,202. placed on more intangible elements. See also Gary E. Moulton and James J. Holmberg, 20. The quote is from Smith, Virgin Land (note 5 "'What We Are About': Recently Discovered Let­ above), p. 47. Smith, pp. 48-51, is an excellent ters of William Clark Shed New Light on the Lewis discussion of Emerson and Whitman on this point. and Clark Expedition," Filson Club History Quar­ On the "turning away" from Europe and the rela­ terly 65 (July 1991): 402-3. A comprehensive list­ tionship between nationalism and the push for an ing of newspapers that print Clark's 23 September American culture, see also Loren Baritz, "The Idea 1806 letter to his brother Jonathan, a document of the West," American Historical Review 66 ( 1961): clearly intended for public dissemination, is in 618-40; and John C. McCloskey, "The Campaign Robert H. Becker, ed., The Plains and the Rockies: A of Periodicals After the War of 1812 for a National Critical Bibliography of Exploration, Adventure and American Literature," PMLA 50 (1935): 262-73. Travel in the American West, 1800-1865 (San Fran­ McCloskey's emphasis, as his title indicates, is on cisco: John Howell-Books, 1982), p. 20. the formative role of the War of 1812. 13. On the Gass Journal, and all the controversy 21. William Goetzmann and Joseph c. Porter, surrounding it between Lewis. and the publisher, The West as Romantic Horizon (Omaha, Nebr.: Cen­ see Cutright, History of Journals (note 3 above), ter for Western Studies, Joslyn Art Museum, 1981), chap. 2. On the Apocrypha, see Elliott Coues, ed., pp. 12, 16. The History of the Expedition under the Command of Lewis 22. The only known newspaper account of the and Clark . .. (New York: Francis P. Harper, 1893), 1: event is the Frankfort (Ky.) Western World, 11 cxi-cxvii;Jackson, Letters (note 9 above), 1: 554; Becker, October 1806. This account also describes the re­ ibid., pp. 45-50; and Cutright, ibid., chap. 3. ception afforded the expedition on 23 September. 14. Bernard DeVoto, ed., The Journals of Lewis It is available in Ronda, ed., Voyages of Discovery and Clark (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1953), p. lii. (note 5 above), pp. 203-5. The "universal conver­ 15. A reprint of a Gass edition that includes the sation" about Lewis and Clark in St. Louis is re­ woodcuts, added by Philadelphia publisher Mat­ corded in Arlen Lange, "Expedition Aftermath: thew Carey, is in Carol Lynn MacGregor, ed., The The Jawbone Journals," WPO 17 (February 1991): Journals of Patrick Gass (Missoula, Mont.: Mon­ 13. [Note: Original spelling and punctuation has tana Press Publishing Co., 1997). This edition is been maintained in all quotations taken from pri­ enhanced by an excellent introduction by mary sources.] MacGregor about Gass and the various editions of 23. Jackson, Letters (note 9 above), 1: 325-30. his journal. Lawson-Peebles, Landscape and Written Western World, in reporting on 11 October the 25 Expression (note 3 above), pp. 226-7, stresses the September banquet, had lamented that while the romanticizing of the West by the Apocrypha edi­ citizens of St. Louis wished "to evince fully their tions, especially the emphasis on "innumerable joy at this event," such a celebration "cannot but riches" of precious stones, gold and silver, furs, and be considered as very interesting to every Ameri­ on a "Garden" of unparalleled fertility and agricul­ can." Ronda, ibid., p. 204. tural potential. On the Apocrypha, see also J ack­ 24. Ambrose, Undaunted Courage (note 18 son, Letters (note 9 above), 2: 554-5. above), p. 407; Jackson, Letters (note 9 above), 2: 16. On the making of Lewis and Clark as mythic 692-3, emphasis as in original. heroes, see Bob Moore, "The Mythic Lewis and 25. Jackson, Letters (note 9 above), 2: 358-9. Clark," WPO 26 (February 2000): 35-36. Moore, 26. Barlow's letter to Jefferson is in ibid., pp. drawing upon the work of Joseph Campbell, points 361-3. A discussion of this attempt by Barlow to A NEW VISION OF AMERICA 229 create what Albert Furtwangler calls "a homespun stint as editor of The Analectic, see Williams, ibid., American hero" is in Furtwangler, "Captain Lewis 1: 136-41. in a Crossfire of Wit: John Quincy Adams v. Joel 35. Williams, Life of Irving (note 29 above), 1: Barlow" in Ronda, ed., Voyages of Discovery (note 5 144, reports him sailing from New York on 25 May above), pp. 229-51. 1815. A review of the Irving Papers at the Beinecke 27. National Intelligencer, 16 January 1807. See Library at Yale University does not shed light as to also Furtwangler, ibid., p. 236. when Irving first used the Biddle edition or other­ 28. Moore, "Mythic Lewis and Clark" (note 16 wise gained initial knowledge of Lewis and Clark. above), p. 35. The journal Irving kept during the time he wrote 29. Edinburgh Review 67 (August 1820): 160. For The Sketch Book also has no such references, and a similar contemporary praise of Irving and The Sketch survey of his letters from 1806 through the 1820s is Book, see Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Febru­ similarly unproductive. See Stanley T. Williams, ary 1820, p. 559. The standard biography of Irving ed., Notes While Preparing Sketch Book, etc., 1817 (1783-1859) is Stanley T. Williams, The Life of (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1927), Washington Irving, 2 vols. (New York: Oxford Press, and Ralph M. Aderman et aI., eds., The Complete 1935). For an excellent brief sketch of Irving by Works of Washington Irving: Letters, 4 vols. (Bos­ Williams see The Dictionary of American Biography ton: Twayne Publishers, 1978-82). Rust, Astoria 9: 505-11. Another valuable overview is in Gilmore, (note 33 above), p. xxi, says Irving used the Biddle "Literature of Revolutionary and Early National edition prior to his 1815 departure for Europe but Periods" (note 8 above), pp. 661-75. does not offer documentation in support of this 30. Stanley T. Williams, introduction to Will­ claim. Williams, ibid., 2: 79, says that Irving "was iams, ed., Washington Irving: Selected Prose (New still reading frontier tales when he left America in York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1965), p. xiv. 1815, and he had sent ... for more books on the 31. Ibid. Indians," but makes no specific mention of Lewis 32. Spencer, Quest for Nationality (note 8 above), and Clark. passim; Arthur K. Moore, The Frontier Mind: A 36. Williams, Life of Irving (note 29 above), 2: Cultural Analysis of the Kentucky Frontiersman, (Lex­ 39,79,89,351-2, quote from p. 351. See also Rust, ington, Ky: University of Kentucky Press, 1957), Astoria (note 33 above), pp. xxi-xxiii. Irving ac­ passim; and Cathy N. Davidson, Revolution and the knowledges in his introduction to Astoria that "I Word: The Rise of the Novel in America (New York: have ... availed myself occasionally of collateral Ocford University Press, 1986), pp. 83-109. On lights supplied by the published journals of other this general point see also note 8 above. Moore, p. travellers who have visited the scenes described: 105, says that the 1813 effort of poet Daniel Bryan such as Messrs. Lewis and Clarke." Quoted in to write an epic poem about Boone fails because it Edgeley W. Todd (ed.), Astoria, or Anecdotes of an "transforms the old hunter into a preposterous Enterprise Beyond the Rocky Mountains (Norman, Miltonic hero." Lawson-Peebles, Landscape and Okla: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964), pp. Written Expression (note 3 above), chap. 7, makes xlvii-xlviii. Williams, ibid., 2:353, is critical of Irv­ the case for Charles Brockden Brown as an early ing for going far beyond "occasional" use of Lewis American novelist. While Brown deserves recog­ and Clark, and without attribution. On Irving and nition as our first "professional novelist," that is, Astoria, see also James P. Ronda, Astoria and Em­ one who makes a living by writing, and for making pire (Lincoln, Nebr.: University of Nebraska Press, a conscious effort to escape "European canons of 1990), pp. 337-41. style," Lawson-Peebles concludes that this early 37. Useful short sketches about Cooper are by Pittsburgh writer is never able to do so with com­ Carl Van Doren in the The Dictionary of American pleteness. See Lawson-Peebles, ibid., p. 261. Biggraphy, 4: 400-07; Stanley Williams in Robert 33. Quote is from Williams, Life of Irving (note E. Spiller et aI., eds., Literary History of the United 29 above), 1: 34. See also Richard Dilworth Rust, States, 3d. ed. (London: The Macmillan Co., 1963), ed., Astoria, Or Anecdotes of an Enterprise Beyond pp. 253-69; and by Gilmore, "Literature of Revolu­ the Rocky Mountains, by Washington Irving (Bos­ tionary and Early National Periods" (note 8 above), ton: Twayne Publishers, 1976), p. xxi. (originally pp. 676-93. The story of the "dare" that led to published in 1836). Cooper's first novel is told by his daughter in Susan 34. The Analectic Magazine, 2 (28 June 1813): Fenimore Cooper, ed., Pages and Pictures from the 408; 3 (February 1814): 89-104, 145-56; 3 (June Writings of James Fenimore Cooper, with Notes by 1814): 502-15. The 1813 reference to Lewis and Susan Fenimore Cooper (New York: W.A. Townsend Clark journals would have to be to one of the Apoc­ & Co., 1861), p. 20. rypha editions, as Biddle was not to appear until 38. In a retrospective 1831 letter to a friend, the next year. For an overview of Irving's brief Cooper made reference to a major purpose of his 230 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2001 writing: "Her [the United States'] mental indepen­ including as initial members Asher Durand, Samuel dence is my object." Quoted in James Franklin F. B. Morse, and William Cullen Bryant. See Alan Beard, ed., The Letters and Journals ofJames Fenimore Taylor, William Cooper's Town: Power and Persua­ Cooper (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University sion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic Press, 1960), 1: xviii. Susan Cooper asserts that her (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1995), pp. 408-11. father makes a very conscious attempt to make The 42. On this background, see Taylor, ibid., passim, Spy an American novel "in scenery, in the charac­ a superb blending of literary and historical scholar­ ters, and in its spirit." Cooper, ed., Pages and Pic­ ship. tures, ibid., p. 26. On Cooper's nationalistic intents, 43. Taylor's description of this "nineteenth-cen­ see also Gilmore, ibid., pp. 676, 679, 688-9; Wayne tury bourgeois morality play" is fascinating. See Franklin, The New World of James Fenimore Cooper Taylor, ibid., p. 404. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 44. Taylor, ibid., pp. 406-9; Spencer, Quest for passim, but especially pp. 39-74; and Thomas Nationality (note 8 above), p. 74. On the "cultural Philbrick, "Cooper's The Pioneers: Origins and patriotism" and "cultural nationalism" climate of Structure," PMLA 79 (1964): 582-3, which sug­ the times, see also note 5 above. gests this Cooper novel, published two years after 45. Susan Cooper, Pages and Pictures (note 37 The Spy, may have found some of its nationalistic above), pp. 48-55; Beard, "Historical Introduction" tone from Cooper's judgment that Irving's Sketch (note 38 above), p. xxiv; Taylor, ibid., pp. 412-17. Book was not sufficiently "American." The quote is from Beard. 39. Gregory H. Nobles, American Frontiers: Cul­ 46. Taylor, ibid., pp. 417 -23, quote from pp. 422- tural Encounters and Continental Conquest (New 3. Franklin, New World of Cooper (note 38 above), York: Hill and Wang, 1997), pp. 146, 149-52, 155. passim, offers a similar interpretation. The "Ameri­ Moore, Frontier Mind (note 32 above), p. 167, makes can Abraham" phrase is from Warren Motley, The the same point. Henry Nash Smith and John R. American Abraham: James Fenimore Cooper and the Milton see Cooper as the "father" of the modern Frontier Patriarch (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer­ American Western. Smith, Virgin Land (note 5 sity Press, 1987). above), passim, and Milton, The Novel of the Ameri­ 47. Susan Cooper, Pages and Pictures (note 37 can West (Lincoln, Nebr.: University of Nebraska above), p. 129.John G. E. Heckewelder's 1819 work Press, 1980), pp. 5-8. R. W. B. Lewis, The Ameri­ on Indians in the Pennsylvania and New York area can Adam: Innocence, Tragedy, and Tradition in the was also a source for Mohicans. See Arthur C. Parker, Nineteenth Century (Chicago:-University of Chi­ "Sources and Range of Cooper's Indian Lore," New cago Press, 1955), p. 91, sees Natty as the forma­ York History 52, no. 4 (1954): 451. Cooper places tive "hero of American fiction." the travels leading to Mohicans in 1825, but James 40. Smith, Virgin Land (note 5 above), p. 77. Franklin Beard's "Historical Introduction" to The The size of the United States prior to the Louisiana Last of the Mohicans, A Narrative of 1757, by James Purchase was 892,135 square miles; the Purchase Fenimore Cooper (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, added 924,279. One index of the rapidity of west­ 1983), p. xx, establishes 1824 as the correct date. ern expansion is the growth of Kentucky. Its popu­ Regarding the important issue as to when Cooper lation in 1790 was 73,677; in 1800, 220,955; 1810, obtained a copy of the Biddle edition, neither re­ 406,511; 1820,564,317. What were to become view of Beard, ed., Letters and Journals of Cooper Mississippi, Alabama, Missouri, and Tennessee (note 38 above), nor of the Cooper papers at the experienced the same explosive growth. The gen­ American Antiquarian Society and in the Beinecke eral population of the United States grew from 3.9 Collection at Yale sheds any light on the question. million in 1790 to 9.6 million in 1820. A compulsive record keeper, Cooper kept receipts 41. James Franklin Beard, "Historical Introduc­ for virtually everything he purchased, including tion" to The Pioneers, by James Fenimore Cooper books and newspaper subscriptions. My research in (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1980), pp. xlii-xlvii, these documents and related materials, however, gives an extensive summary of the reviews. The found no mention of the Biddle edition or other Pioneers sold 3,500 copies on the first day, an un­ material available at the time about Lewis and precedented figure for an American writer. His suc­ Clark. This research, combined with my correspon­ cess with this novel, and The Spy, led to his election dence with leading Cooper scholars Wayne Franklin to the prestigious American Philosophical Society and Hugh MacDougall leads me to the conclusion in April 1823 and to his receiving an honorary that, barring some future documentary discoveries, degree from Columbia University in August 1824. we will never be able to establish with precision In addition, his reputation was such that he was when and exactly how Cooper was influenced by able to form a New York City-centered society of Lewis and Clark. Some such influence is clear, but writers and artists, the Bread and Cheese Club, its precise nature is, and will likely remain, cloudy. A NEW VISION OF AMERICA 231

48. E. Soteris Muszynska-Wallace, "The Sources sioned by the Death of Thomas Cole (New York: of The Prairie," American Literature 21 (May 1949): Appleton, 1848). Cooper's 1849 memorial praises 193-200, gives several examples of Cooper's direct Cole's "Course of Empire" series as "one of the use of the Biddle journals. Muszynska-Wallace and noblest works of art that has ever been wrought." several other scholars make it clear that Stephen Quoted in T ruettner and Wallach, Thomas Cole H. Long's journals, published in 1823, were also a (note 50 above), p. 95. significant source for Cooper. Muszynska-Wallace, 56. The quote is from Truettner and Wallach, pp. 196-200, undertakes the laborious chore of com­ ibid., p. 79. These two scholars, in pp. 43-44, point paring excerpts from The Prairie to appropriate parts out that Cole did paintings derived from scenes in of the Biddle edition and to the 1823 printing of the Leatherstocking novels. On this point, see also Long's journals. This work makes clear portions of Gilmore, "Literature" (note 8 above), pp. 690-91; Cooper that must have come from Lewis and Clark. James F. Beard Jr., "Cooper and His Artistic Con­ Henry Nash Smith, in his introduction to the 1950 temporaries," New York History 52, no. 4 (1954): Holt, Rinehart, and Winston edition of The Prai­ 480-95; and Donald Ringe, "James Fenimore Coo­ rie, pp. vi-vii, sees Long as the dominant source but per and Thomas Cole: An Analogous Technique," does make brief mention of Lewis and Clark. Orm American Literature 30, no. 1 (March 1958): 26-36. Overland, The Making and Meaning of an American Vesell, introduction to Life and Works (note 49 Classic: James Fenimore Cooper's 'The Prairie' (New above), p. xix, points out that when Cole traveled York: Humanities Press, 1973), pp. 60-61, 67, 68- to Europe in 1829 he carried a letter of introduc­ 86, sees the use of the Biddle edition as especially tion from Cooper. important in Cooper's portrayal of the Sioux. The 57. The conclusions of this paragraph are based most intriguing suggestion regarding the influence upon the following sources: Truettner and Wallach, of Lewis and Clark on Cooper is in Overland, ibid., ibid., pp. 30-31, 65, 70-44, 79; Cole, "Essay on pp. 59-60. He suggests that Cooper's stereotyping Scenery" (note 49 above), pp. 1-12; Novak, Nature in The Prairie of the Sioux (villainous) and the and Culture, 20, 160-65; Miller, "Nature and Na­ Pawnee (virtuous) may have derived from Meri­ tional Ego" (note 55 above) pp. 204-16; Flexner, wether Lewis's characterization of the two tribes in Wilder Image (note 49 above), pp. 42-44; and Leo his April 1805 report from Fort Mandan to Jefferson. Marx, The Machine In The Garden (New York: As discussed in the text, this report was widely Oxford University Press, 1964). available in 1806. 58. Sketches of Catlin's childhood and early years 49. Thomas Cole, "Essay on American Scenery," are in Harold McCracken, George Catlin and the American Monthly Magazine 1: n.s. (1836): 1, 12. Old Frontier (New York: Dial Press, 1959), pp. 18- 50. Louis Noble's 1853 biography of Cole men­ 23; Goeztmann, Exploration and Empire (note 4 tions childhood reading by Cole about "the natural above), pp. 184-91; Joseph R. Millichap, George beauties of the North American states." Noble, Catlin (Boise, Idaho: Boise State University, 1977), ibid., pp. 4-5. For biographical summaries of Cole's pp. 5-11; William H. Truettner, The Natural Man early life, see Flexner, ibid., pp. 5-7; Alan Wallach, Observed: A Study of Catlin's Indian Gallery (Wash­ "Thomas Cole, Landscape and the Course of Ameri­ ington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute, 1979), pp. 11- can Empire," in Thomas Cole: Landscape into His­ 39; William H. Goetzmann and William N. tory, ed. William H. Truettner and Alan Wallach Goetzmann, The West of the Imagination (New York: (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1994), W.W. Norton & Co., 1986), pp. 15-17; Brian W. p. 25; and Vesell, ibid., pp. xvi-xvii. Dippie, Catlin and His Contemporaries: The Politics 51. Flexner, ibid., pp. 6-9; Truettner and of Patronage (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, Wallach, ibid., pp. 25-26. 1990), pp. 5-21; and Marjorie Halpin's introduc­ 52. Flexner, ibid., pp. 16-19; Truettner and tign to Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, Wallach, ibid., pp. 26-28; Harris, Artist in Ameri­ and Conditions of the North American Indians Writ­ can Society (note 8 above), p. 119; Barbara Novak, ten during Eight Years' Travel (1832-1839) amongst Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Paint­ the Wildest Tribes of Indians in North America, by ing, 1825-1875 (New York: Oxford University Press, George Catlin (1841; reprint, New York: Dover 1980), p. 90. Publications, 1973), pp. viii-ix. Catlin's own sum­ 53. Flexner, ibid., pp. 19-20. mary of his childhood is in ibid., p. 2. Truettner, 54. Ibid., pp. 3-5, 19-20; see also Vesell, p. xviii, whose biographical sketch is quite comprehensive, and Noble, pp. 34-36 (both note 49 above). cautions that some of Catlin's autobiographical 55. Perry Miller, "Nature and the National Ego," comments are exaggerated, or otherwise distorted. in Errand into the Wilderness, ed. Perry Miller (Cam­ 59. McCracken, ibid., p. 18; Millichap, ibid., pp. bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1956), p. 7-9. The quote is from Catlin, Letters and Notes, 213; William Cullen Bryant, Funeral Oration Occa- ibid., p. 2. 232 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2001

60. Truettner, Natural Man (note 58 above), pp. colored aquatint frontispiece to the 1823 account 12,81-2; McCracken, ibid., pp. 21-27; Goetzmann of the Long expedition. and Goetzmann, West of Imagination (note 58 66. McCracken, ibid., pp. 158-60, 183-208. Most above), pp. 16-17. of Catlin's paintings eventually do make their way 61. Catlin, Letters and Notes (note 58 above), p. to the Smithsonian Institution, via their purchase 2. McCracken places the date of this event in 1824; by an American railroad magnate in 1852, and their Goetzmann and Goetzmann in 1826; Millichap in subsequent bequest to the Smithsonian (ibid, p. 1823; Dippie simply says that Catlin "never gave 204). Millichap, Catlin (note 38 above), p. 17, the year." Truettner does not suggest a specific date, points out that Catlin proposed that the entirety of but says it was "presumably before 1826." My read­ the Plains between the Mississippi and the Rockies ing of the multiple sources points to 1824 as the be set aside for the Indians. This was not, of course, most likely year, but certainly a date prior to 1826. a popular position to take in a time when the doc­ 62. McCracken, Catlin (note 58 above), pp. 24- trine of Manifest Destiny was nigh sacred. 27. Millichap, Catlin (note 58 above), p. 11, makes 67. De Voto, Access (note 65 above), p. 396. the claim re Catlin's reading "about the West," but 68. Truettner, Natural Man (note 38 above), pp. is nonspecific. Goetzmann and Goetzmann, West 63, 69, 72-73, also stresses Cooper's influence on (note 58 above), p. 16, assert that James Fenimore Catlin, which is consistent with the fascination Cooper was one of Catlin's favorite authors and dub both Cooper and Cole had with all things related him "the Leatherstocking of American art." Dippie, to the American frontier. Catlin (note 58 above), pp. 17-18, also stresses the 69. Both this phrase and much of the general ideological kinship between Catlin and Cooper. concept of this study are indebted to John Higham's 63. McCracken, Catlin, pp. 26-27; Goetzmann classic essay, "The Reorientation of American and Goetzmann, West, p. 18 (both note 58 above). Culture in the 1890's," in Writing American His­ 64. Truettner, Natural Man, pp. 16-17; Halpin, tory: Essays on Modern Scholarship, ed. John Higham introduction to Letters and Notes, pp. xi-xii; (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970), pp. McCracken, Catlin, p. 30; Goetzmann and 73-102. Goetzmann, West, p. 18 (all note 38 above). The 70. Van Wyck Brooks, The World of Washington portrait of Clark is in the National Portrait Gallery Irving (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1944), p. 102. in Washington, D.C. Catlin's familiarity with Lewis 71. Goetzmann, Exploration and Empire (note 4 and Clark is evidenced on mal)y occasions. One of above), passim, remains the best treatment of these the most obvious comes when he makes a stop dur­ post-Lewis and Clark efforts, and of their "pro­ ing an 1832 descent of the Missouri to visit, and grammed" nature of mission, makeup, etc. paint, the site of Sergeant Floyd's grave. See 72. The "wilder image" phrase is from William Truettner, ibid., pp. 79, 248-9. Cullen Bryant's sonnet, "To Cole the Artist De­ 65. Truettner, ibid., pp. 20-26,105; Halpin, ibid., parting for Europe," quoted in Truettner and p. x; McCracken, ibid., pp. 44-132. Goetzmann Wallach, Thomas Cole (note 50 above), p. 52. The and Goetzmann, ibid., pp. 10-14, credit Samuel citation for the DeVoto quote is Course of Empire Seymour, who along with 19-year-old Titian Peale, (note 17 above). accompanied the 1819-20 expeditions of Stephen 73. Moulton, Journals (note 2 above), 5: 106. Long, with producing "the first eye-witness picto­ Clark's inscription is in response to a similar phrase rial representations of the West to be placed before Alexander MacKenzie had carved into a tree at the the American public." Seymour's 1820 "Distant completion of his 1793 transcontinental crossing View of the Rocky Mountains," appeared as a hand- of Canada.