A Tour on the Prairies
by Washington Irving, 1835
Having, since my return to the United States, made a wide and varied tour, for
the gratification of my curiosity, it has been supposed that I did it for the
purpose of writing a book; and it has more than once been intimated in the
papers, that such a work was actually in the press, containing scenes and
sketches of the Far West.
These
announcements, gratuitously made for me, before I had put pen to paper, or even
contemplated any thing of the kind, have embarrassed me exceedingly. I have been
like a poor actor, who finds himself announced for a part he had no thought of
playing, and his appearance expected on the stage before he has committed a line
to memory.
I
have always had a repugnance, amounting almost to disability, to write in the
face of expectation; and, in the present instance, I was expected to write about
a region fruitful of wonders and adventures, and which had already been made the
theme of spirit-stirring narratives from able pens; yet about which I had
nothing wonderful or adventurous to offer.
Since
such, however, seems to be the desire of the public, and that they take
sufficient interest in my wanderings to deem them worthy of recital, I have
hastened, as promptly as possible, to meet, in some degree, the expectation
which others have excited. For this purpose, I have, as it were, plucked a few
leaves out of my memorandum book, containing a month's foray beyond the outposts
of human habitation, into the wilderness of the Far West. It forms, indeed, but
a small portion of an extensive tour; but it is an episode, complete as far as
it goes. As such, I offer it to the public, with great diffidence. It is a
simple narrative of every-day occurrences; such as happen to every one who
travels the prairies. I have no wonders to describe, nor any moving accidents by
flood or field to narrate; and as to those who look for a marvellous or
adventurous story at my hands, I can only reply, in the words of the weary
knife-grinder: "Story! God bless you, I have none to tell, sir."
In
the often vaunted regions of the Far West, several hundred miles beyond the
Mississippi, extends a vast tract of uninhabited country, where there is neither
to be seen the log-house of the white man, nor the wigwam of the Indian. It
consists of great grassy plains, interspersed with forests and groves, and
clumps of trees, and watered by the Arkansas, the grand Canadian, the Red River,
and their tributary streams. Over these fertile and verdant wastes still roam
the elk, the buffalo, and the wild horse, in all their native freedom.
These, in fact, are the hunting grounds of the various tribes of the Far
West. Hither repair the Osage, the Creek, the Delaware and other tribes that
have linked themselves with civilization, and live within the vicinity of the
white settlements. Here resort also, the Pawnees, the Comanches, and other
fierce, and as yet independent tribes, the nomads of the prairies, or the
inhabitants of the skirts of the Rocky Mountains. The regions I have mentioned
form a debatable groud of these warring and vindictive tribes; none of them
presume to erect a permanent habitation within its borders.