Washington Irving and the American Indian

Abstract

When Washington Irving returned to America in 1832 after an absence of seventeen years, he was internationally known as a writer, principally on basis of The Sketch Book (1819-1820). Since most successful pieces in that work dealt with American subjects, it is not surprising that Irving began amassing new American materials immediately upon his return. Significantly, in reacquainting himself with his native country, Irving sought out haunts of American Indian. By early October 1832, only weeks after his return, he was in Indian Territory west of Arkansas. From Fort Gibson, one of nation's western-most military outposts, he plunged into prairie wilderness west of Cross Timbers for a month's tour of hunting grounds of Pawnees, Comanches, and other wild tribes. One result of excursion was A Tour on Prairies (1835), one of most significant expressions of Irving's attitude toward American Indians. It was followed quickly by other narratives about wilderness, Astoria (1836) and The Adventures of Captain Bonneville (1837), in which Indian also figures prominently. Exactly what Irving's attitude toward Indians was has concerned scholars for over forty years. The consensus has been two-fold. First, scholars have said that while Irving tries to present a sympathetic, yet realistic view of Indians, perhaps more realistic and fairer than any other writer of his time,1 his attitude during years following his return to United States differed from that of years preceding The Sketch Book. Albert Keiser, for instance, concludes that Irving's sentimentalism in first two decades of century caused him to praise New England Indians for their struggles against invading Europeans but that upon his return to United States, the literary of picturesque native somehow failed to fascinate cultured cosmopolitan, eliciting only perfunctory expressions of a benevolent attitude.2 To Charlton Laird, Irving's later words do not betray any sense of the tragic and ironic possibilities of stories of Astoria and Bonneville, and Laird