Volu m e II - Purdue University Calumet

Irving’s conservatism went deeper than his attempt to preserve the small town traditionalism and
Americanism of upstate New York, that it resulted from a treasuring of the republican principles that
enabled the self-governing existence of those small American towns.
If seen as a participation in a greater lament for the loss of American freedom, Irving’s more
indirect treatment of Indian freedom in the Tour can be seen as an attempt to critique not only Indian policy
but also a changing American political system. Several of Irving’s anecdotes concern his horse and
reflections on the difference between wild and domesticated horses. Irving wrote about the capture of a
wild horse:
I could not but look with compassion upon this fine young animal whose whole course of
existence had been so suddenly reversed. From being a denizen of these vast pastures,
ranging at will from plain to plain … he was suddenly reduced to perpetual and painful
servitude… The transition in his lot was such as sometimes takes place in human affairs,
and in the fortunes of towering individuals—one day a prince of the prairies—the next day
a pack horse. (Washington Irving, Three Western Narratives, 94).
This passage connects the loss of the horse’s freedom to the loss of human freedom. In doing so the passage
reflects Irving’s goal of investigating American freedom through an investigation of the west in The Tour.
Because Irving had recently returned from a long sojourn in the cities of Europe, he probably had a
heightened concern for American freedom. His concern for the loss of Indian freedom reflects his
perception of the diminishing liberty in America. He wrote,
Nothing surprised me more, however, than to witness how soon these poor animals, thus
taken from the unbounded freedom of the prairie, yielded to the dominion of man. In the
course of two or three days the mare and the colt went with the lead horses and became
quite docile. (Washington Irving, Three Western Narratives, 115).
Irving’s astonishment at the swift taming of the horses illuminates his shock at the complicity of Americans
in the loss of freedom as Americans themselves became “tamed” to city life, industry, and foreign custom.
The similarities that Irving saw between the loss of Indian freedom and the loss of traditional republican
America also appeared in his retelling of Indian myths.
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