Volu m e II - Purdue University Calumet

Rachel Kalthoff
Hillsdale College
A Conservative on the Prairie:
Washington Irving’s Concern for the Loss of American Tradition and Liberty
in his Writings on the American Indians
Among the ranks of Cooper, Hawthorne, and Twain, Washington Irving (1783-1859) seldom
receives praise as one of America’s first great authors. Although mainly the author of short stories and
sketches, Irving’s works helped found the American literary tradition. His works set the stage for the
greater works of his better-know successors. Irving not only created an American literary identity but he
also through brief sketches, helped shape an American identity and sense of tradition. Though often
accused of shallowness and over-sentimentality, Irving’s emotional temperament and romantic style lent his
combination of history and myth a picturesque appeal to the hearts of his countrymen. Though Irving did
not embrace the romantics’ philosophy, he did engage in their literary style, a style where feelings and not
reason provided the ultimate medium of ideas. Rather than making syllogistic arguments Irving sought to
engage the hearts of Americans with snapshots of an America which, he believed, was vanishing under the
tide of Jacksonian expansion and democracy. His short works and gifted style allowed him to communicate
these concerns to an American people whose pursuit of agrarian virtue marginalized serious intellectual
leisure-time. Under Irving’s romanticism and emotional flair lay a conservative concern for the loss of
American tradition and American republicanism. This same concern animated his works on the American
Indians. Irving viewed the Indians as fellow humans and, most importantly, fellow Americans. His writings
on the Indians reflected this understanding. Despite accusations of triviality, these works, especially A Tour
on the Prairies, condemn the Indian removal policy, and associate the loss of the red man’s freedom with the
loss of a crucial part of American freedom and tradition. Far from ephemeral sketches, Irving’s writings on
the American Indians, especially A Tour on the Prairies, mourned the loss of Indian freedom as the destruction
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