Paul Kane's Journal of his Western Travels, 1846-1848 - History and ...

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MAP TO ILLUSTRATE M'- KAN E '$ TRAVELS IN 1liE TERRITORY OF THE HUDSON '$ BAY COMPANY. Reproduced from Paul Kane , Wanderings of an
Artist Among tile Indians of North America from Canada to Vancouver' Island and Oregon through the Hudson's 8ayCompany's Tenitory alii
Back Again (London, 1859). Kane's route, beginning in Toronto, is indicated by a heavy line. Collection, General Research Division, The Ne\
York Public Library, Astor, unox, and Tilden Foundations.
that matter - the book carries this explanation further
with adjectives that imply a judgment of the
woman, ajudgment that the journal emphatically does
not make: •• . . . ooIy wearing her oldest and diirtiest
clothes. " All in all, the effects of these two narratives,
and the persona of the Paul Kane that they convey.
diverge significantly.
Besides notable stylistic alterations, a comparison
of the two versions points up how much of the
book was composed after Kane's trip .. The journal,
for example, contains no reference whatsoever to
Kane's trip up the Willamette River valley (Oregon);
nor does it mention Kane's hearing of the massacre of
the missionary, Marcus Whitman, and his wife, Narcissa,
and twelve other people. Thus, where thejournal
is silent, Wanderings of an Artist contains a chapter
(the twenty-first) that begins by advertising
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"Dreadful Tidings - Horrible Tragedy" (222), and
whi'ch proceeds to tell of Kane's hearing the news of
the massacre at the Whitman mission (the Whitman
Mission National Historic Site is near modem Walla
Walla, Washington). The news, which reaches Kane
in the book when he ~ts to Fort Colville (in the
Columbia River valley near the modem border between
Washington and British Columbia) on the way
north in the late summer of 1847, distresses him deeply
because the Whltmans had treated him very hospitably
when he stayed with them for five days - July
) 8th-22nd - earlier in the summer. The report of the
killings is fully and dramatically drawn. The problem
is that with the journal silent the ghost -writer has
Kane learn of the massacre on "September 21st," or
sixty-seven days before it started.
Once alerted to this impossibility, the reader of
Maclaren I Kane