HAUNTING THE AMERICAN WEST AND THE AMERICAN FRONTIER
Manifest Destiny (2014-2023) as a Disursive Reevaluation of a Historical Process[1]
The conception of the division between the known and the unknown, between what lies to each side of the barriers of knowledge, has usually been culturally (socially and politically) manifested through the creation of one of the longest-lasting institutions in human history, that of borders. Separating a society (or a culture) from another has been understood as necessary and desirable by most human civilizations. These borders, depending on the historical moment and of the nature of the neighbors, have enjoyed a more or less degree of strength, varying from total closeness to total openness. However, there is a special case that calls our attention: how America (and Americans) have understood their borders and have interrelated with them. A frontier is not only a border, it is the boundary between two states of mind, between two appreciations that confront the Self and the Other. Thus, its evaluation from the perspective of the Humanities is necessary to offer a complete and accurate picture.
The creation and comprehension of the concept of frontier has been a dynamic process within the history of the United States[2]. But it has also been a crucial concept to understand the conception and shaping of the country, determining its form and its presence since the earliest colonial days almost to the 21 st century[3]. In addition, it has traditionally been bi-sided, affecting and been affected by the cultural evolution and perspectives of the country. In consequence, major historical and literary events have also contributed to adding information and points of view that, in return, have contributed to the definition of what the frontier has meant for successive generations. Among the different concepts that have been brought to the discussion, that of the pioneer(s) has almost been a constant, from heroic sublimation to contemporary re-visitations. As it has happened with other cultural concepts, the frontier has adopted a quasi-biological nature that has been fluid, and that in consequence has had a different level of interrelation with all those who have approached it. Since the original fears and mistrust: «[…] a hidious & desolate wildernes, full of wild beasts & willd men […]» (Bradford, 1984: 64), in the words of William Bradford (ca. 1590-1657), to the contemporary assimilations of the frontier in today’s popular culture, a long way has been traversed, but the idea remains the same.
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The Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804-1806) has always been seen as one of the pillars for the creation of American identity[4], the first fulfillment of manifest destiny and the empirical refutations of the country’s grandeur, and also the first exemplification of the pioneer aim that has been mentioned before[5]. Thus, Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809) and William Clark (1770-1838) became the prototypes of the (successful) pioneer. The aim of this article is to analyze the graphic novels’ series Manifest Destiny (2014-2023) [6] and how their authors have challenged this conception of the Corps of Discovery and, as a result, of the construction of the American western frontier. Through the gothic recreation of the expedition, Chris Dingess (born in 1974) and Matthew Roberts have questioned the foundations of the nation itself, from the mere natural existence west of the Missouri, to the relation with Native American, to religion, etc. The frontier, as depicted by the authors, is not only something to be explored and conquered, but something to be understood, something that can haunt you back[7]. Alongside the creation, consolidation, and evolution of the frontier itself, this cultural narcissus has also enjoyed a progressive growth, but also a progressive, and almost constant, re-definition. From the fear to the Natives in the West (remember Bradford, or Crèvecœur and his distresses of a frontier man) to the fear to post-modern, post-apocalyptic presences that inhabit the vast plains and deserts of the West in recent cultural products[8], Frontier Gothic has come to haunt the dreams of Americans, at least of those for which the frontier has historically become a source of life.
As a key point, beyond the success of examples like the Lewis and Clark expedition, the difficulties the aforementioned pioneers had to face also remain as a hot topic (with the Donner Party -1846-1847- as a crucial and paradigmatic point)[9]. This has given as a result the creation of a very interesting and illustrating literary concept, deeply related to the literary and cultural evolution of the country per se: that of the aforementioned Frontier Gothic[10], to which we will refer in the following paragraphs[11]. The notion of the frontier, and the progressive exploration and discovery of what lied beyond the physical boundaries of what once constituted this liminal territory, perfectly matches what Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) stated in his seminal essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature” (1927): «The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown» (Lovecraft, 2008: 15). Thus, the fear of the unknown will go along the pioneers as they entered the American territory (and the Euro-American imaginary), as also stated by David Mogen, Scott P. Sanders, and Joanne B. Karpinski: «As the imaginative border between the known and the unknown, the frontier subject has provided a bridge to gothic domains […]» (Mogen, Sanders, and Karpinski, 1993: 13). The frontier will occupy the place that the supernatural has for critics and theorists such as Lovecraft in the aforementioned essay. On the other hand, as American letters will exemplify in the following centuries, from Charles Brockden Brown’s (1771-1810) Edgar Huntly (1799) to Stephen King’s (born in 1947) It (1986), the frontier will also identify with the representations of the supernatural, making Lovecraft’s assumption even more akin to reflect a cultural reality. All this can be appreciated and interpreted as a recreation of the myth of Plato’s (428/427 or 424/423-348 BC) Cave[12]. As Plato’s characters abandon the security of the cave following the dream of the unknown, the characters (real or fictional) that populate Frontier Gothic also abandon civilization after an aim (or an urge) to explore what lies beyond.
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| Manifest Destiny, book one. |
Jumping now to the graphic novel series, it is interesting to see how the authors conceive a frontier that is not only movable geography-wise, but also an evolving entity whose dangers grow as the distance with the “metropolis” becomes bigger[13]. As a brief summary, the fictional Corps of Discovery have to travel from the confrontation of strange (yet dangerous) animal and vegetal forms (Vol. 1) to the confrontation with their own consciences (Vol. 8). Thus, as the unsuccessful pioneers that journeyed across the actual frontier, the characters of Manifest Destiny have to forcibly fluctuate from a danger that threatens the body [14] to a peril that endangers the soul[15]. This “pilgrims’ progress” enhances the notion of the ideological/cultural conception of the frontier, for it works on a relativistic level attacking what is considered as a major crime not only in universal terms (rape or murder), but also the moral implications these crimes may have for Lewis and Clark crew. Volume 3, with the massacre of the blue birds, is a turning point in this process, as Collins (intradiegetically) and Lewis (extradiegetically) recognize, proposing at the end of the volume the impossibility of the mission to succeed, since they had betrayed their word and destroyed the only pleasant creatures they have found across the frontier. Thus, the moral enters the narration: is it legitimate for the mission to go on (and to reach their goals) if their path is covered with the transgression of crimes and sins? A question that will reappear in Volume 8, when Sacagawea’s baby is proposed to be sacrificed to please the demonic entities that populate and haunt the West. Volumes 5 and 6, when the Corps of Discovery seek refuge in an abandoned fort, will constitute an interesting recreation of how this can be addressed both verbally and visually. There, a mysterious fog surrounds the place, forcing the pioneers to fight against what is both unknown and invisible. At that moment, the different members of the crew will be attacked by the crimes they have committed, but also by the terrors that haunt their minds and soul.
This notion would deserve a further discussion (probably an independent analysis), for the creators of Manifest Destiny raise even to the level of assimilating the success of the expedition with the success of the United States as a country. Volume 2 depicts the meeting Lewis had with Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) prior to the departure of the Corps of Discovery. At that meeting, President Jefferson shows Lewis the skull (chronologically, the first in this narration) of a horned, giant, cyclops-like monster (later labeled as the Sasquatch[16], main antagonist in Volume 4)[17], that had been brough to Washington by a previous explorer of the West. This unnamed character had also confronted the supernatural and untamed dangers that the frontier hides, had lost his crew and his mind, and had returned to the East to tell his story and warn future pioneers. In consequence, Jefferson’s ambition is what triggers Lewis and Clark expedition, fulfilling a desire that recalls the name of the series itself, that of Manifest Destiny[18]. The construction of the frontier lies then on a morally corrupted assumption and the country behind that construction does not deserve to succeed[19], as the Corps of Discovery do not either.
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| Manifest Destiny, book two. |
But the creators of Manifest Destiny do not only focus on these moral representations of what the frontier has of dangerous for the potential future of the construction of the country, for they also address, recreate, and question any possible element that has had a historical implication in the shaping of the term (at least in the American case). Beginning with the historical implications that the North-American frontier has for the European (and Eurocentric) conception of the term, Dingess, Roberts et alii go back to the historical and literary genesis of the concept[20]. Thus, one of the main inclusions the series shows is that of one Arturo Maldonado, depicted as a lieutenant of Pánfilo de Narváez (ca. 1470-1528) and later a companion in Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s (1488/1490-1559) expedition[21]. This Maldonado will be the entity that drove the aforementioned precedent explorer out of his mind, and he will also go along the Corps of Discovery until his destruction by the demon ruling the West in Volume 8, being a key presence in most of the crucial scenes of the series[22].
Besides History (although in narrow relation with it), it is possible to trace the role of religion within the series. Even if the creators do not really emphasize the religious aspect of members of the crew (something that can be seen as a weakness), they devote Volume 6 to the exploration of this topic[23]. After having faced the threatening fog that had assaulted them in the previous volume, the survivors of the Corps of Discovery are still trapped in the fort, with Maldonado around. Pryor, a character who had had no special relevance in the previous volumes, rises as a new leader of the expedition, leading a coup against Lewis and Clark and, according to his own confession, acting following God’s commands. Thus, he follows what Gregory H. Nobles stated in 1989: «Frontier religion also manifested itself in extremities of spiritual fervor that defied denominational description and, in some cases, in eccentricities of belief that bordered on the occult» (Nobles, 1989: 652). This rebellion will culminate in the “civil” confrontation between the explorers, dying several of them in the fight[24]. However, what is really interesting, once again, is the utilization of religion in the ideological construction of the frontier[25]. Since the frontier (at least in the early stages where the Lewis and Clark expedition is to be located) is a result of the positivists fruits of the Enlightenment[26], an approach coined in natural philosophy is still valid. Following the aforementioned Gregory H. Nobles, this translates as
The religious diversity of the backcountry eventually not only diluted the authority of the established churches, but ultimately contributed to their fall from official favor; in the years after the American Revolution, direct challenges from sectarian and dissenting groups in the backcountry helped promote the disestablishment of religion throughout the republic (Nobles, 1989: 652-653).
With the only exception to the mention of an established church, what Nobles describes here is perfectly appliable to Manifest Destiny, for religion directly challenges the authority of the expedition, thus of the frontier, creating a new scenario in which the ideals and the purposes coalesce. As Nobles mentions, only a tragedy can be the consequence.
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| Manifest Destiny, book six. |
In addition, the intervention of the religious ideology towards the conformation of the notion of the American frontier is not only exclusive of the Christian, European case, for Manifest Destiny also shows how the Native-American spirituality has a deep implication towards the re-definition of the concept. As previously mentioned, the West explored by these fictional Corps of Discovery is haunted by a demonic entity who demands constant sacrifice to remain silent, and who now demands the ultimate sacrifice of Sacagawea’s baby, the most innocent creature among the crew. So, the intermingle of Christianity and Native-American “religion” rises as crucial to shape a definition of the spiritual implications that the frontier has had, as explored by James V. Fenelon and Mary Louise Defender-Wilson (2004) or Sara A. Scott (2015), among others.
There are many other elements in the narration of Manifest Destiny that serve to the purpose of challenging the traditional concept of the frontier coined by the pioneers. However, the limitations make it impossible to discuss them here. Future research will probably allow us to see all these details. In conclusion, as proved in the previous pages, Manifest Destiny shows an interesting version of the construction of the American frontier. Through the different passages that the authors explore in the volumes, the reader can see the ideology that lies behind the historical processes that led Euro-Americans to the conquest of the American West. The different creatures, threats, etc., that the fictional Corps of Discovery have to face are a symbolic representation of what the future is hiding for the United States after the Louisiana Purchase. Not in vain, one of the main features of the series is the moral implications the resolution of the problems ahead of the frontier can carry for the members of the crew. As seen, the frontier is not solid, but needs to be considered almost as a quasi-biological entity (like those included in Manifest Destiny ), subject to process of evolution. Thus, the conception and the approach to the implications the frontier has had (and still has) also needs to be subject to the possibility of modification or re-evaluation if the socio-cultural-historical context varies. The frontier witnessed by historical Lewis and Clark is not same as the frontier represented in the accounts that came after their expedition (and not the same seen by Jefferson). A universal sense of morality, and of justice, is the only tool available to correctly re-define the different versions of what needs to be understood as a frontier. The question that is left after the conclusion of the narration is whether it is preferable to have a haunted West (free from interferences) or a haunted nation. To which extent is aiming President Jefferson to expand the boundaries of the Republic (physical and ideological) to consolidate the American presence west of the Missouri?
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| The creatures that cross paths with Lewis and Clark are somewhere between the biological and the fantastic. |
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[1] This paper is part of the activities of the Research Group “Poetics and Emerging Textualities: 19 th to 21 st Centuries” (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain), the Research Group “Multidisciplinary Studies in Literature and Art –LyA–” (Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Spain), of the Complutense Institute for the Study of Religion and of the Research Institute of Humanism and Classical Tradition (Universidad de León).
[2] However, it needs to be stated that the concept of frontier is not exclusive of the United States, for other countries whose history is shaped by colonization are also subject to explore this concept (i.e. Argentina, Australia…).
[3] Not in vain, even to the present day, Alaska still receives the unofficial denomination of “The Last Frontier.”
[4] However, we should mention that this expedition was not the only, American-led one towards the West. A few years later (1832-1834), a milestone in the exploration of the Great Plains would be placed by Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied (1782-1867) who, following Lewis and Clark, travelled following the course of the Missouri River to present-day Montana, as stated in his book Reise in das Innere Nord-Amerikas (1840).
On the other hand, Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) would conceive in 1840 the fictional account of the first American attempt to reach the Rocky Mountains, narrated in his unfinished novel The Journal of Julius Rodman, Being an Account of the First Passage across the Rocky Mountains of North America Ever Achieved by Civilized Man : «WHAT we must consider an unusual piece of good fortune has enabled us to present our readers, under this head, with a narrative of very remarkable character, and certainly of very deep interest. The Journal which follows not only embodies a relation of the first successful attempt to cross the gigantic barriers of that immense chain of mountains which stretches from the Polar Sea in the north, to the Isthmus of Darien in the south, forming a craggy and snow-capped rampart throughout its whole course, but, what is of still greater importance, gives the particulars of a tour, beyond these mountains, through an immense extent of territory, which, at this day, is looked upon as totally untravelled and unknown, and which, in every map of the country to which we can obtain access, is marked as ‘an unexplored region.’ It is, moreover, the only unexplored region within the limits of the continent of North America. Such being the case, our friends will know how to pardon us for the slight amount of unction with which we have urged this Journal upon the public attention. For our own parts, we have found, in its perusal, a degree, and a species of interest such as no similar narrative ever inspired. Nor do we think that our relation to these papers, as the channel through which they will be first made known, has had more than a moderate influence in begetting this interest. We feel assured that all our readers will unite with us in thinking the adventures here recorded unusually entertaining and important. The peculiar character of the gentleman who was the leader and soul of the expedition, as well as its historian, has imbued what he has written with a vast deal of romantic fervor, very different from the luke-warm and statistical air which pervades most records of the kind. Mr. James E. Rodman, from whom we obtained the MS., is well known to many of the readers of this Magazine; and partakes, in some degree, of that temperament which embittered the earlier portion of the life of his grandfather, Mr. Julius Rodman, the writer of the narrative. We allude to an hereditary hypochondria. It was the instigation of this disease which, more than any thing else, led him to attempt the extraordinary journey here detailed. The hunting and trapping designs, of which he speaks himself, in the beginning of his Journal, were, as far as we can perceive, but excuses made to his own reason, for the audacity and novelty of his attempt. There can be no doubt, we think, (and our readers will think with us,) that he was urged solely by a desire to seek, in the bosom of the wilderness, that peace which his peculiar disposition would not suffer him to enjoy among men. He fled to the desert as to a friend. In no other view of the case can we reconcile many points of his record with our ordinary notions of human action» (Poe, 1994: 521-522). As Margarita Rigal Aragón recognizes in her introduction (Rigal Aragón, 2011: 48), Poe directly used Lewis’s and Clark’s journals as a source for the construction of the itinerary followed by Julius Rodman.
[5] An aim that was already existent before the political independence of the United States, as stated by J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur (1735-1813) in his Letters from an American Farmer (1782): «Now we arrive near the great woods, near the last inhabited districts; there men seem to be placed still farther beyond the reach of government, which in some measure leaves them to themselves. How can it pervade every corner; as they were driven there by misfortunes, necessity of beginnings, desire of acquiring large tracts of land, idleness, frequent want of economy, ancient debts; the re-union of such people does not afford a very pleasing spectacle. When discord, want of unity and friendship; when either drunkenness or idleness prevail in such remote districts; contention, inactivity, and wretchedness must ensue. There are not the same remedies to these evils as in a long established community. The few magistrates they have, are in general little better than the rest; they are often in a perfect state of war; that of man against man, sometimes decided by blows, sometimes by means of the law; that of man against every wild inhabitant of these venerable woods, of which they are come to dispossess them. There men appear to be no better than carnivorous animals of a superior rank, living on the flesh of wild animals when they can catch them, and when they are not able, they subsist on grain. He who would wish to see America in its proper light, and have a true idea of its feeble beginnings and barbarous rudiments, must visit our extended line of frontiers where the last settlers dwell, and where he may see the first labours of settlement, the mode of clearing the earth, in all their different appearances; where men are wholly left dependent on their native tempers, and on the spur of uncertain industry, which often fails when not sanctified by the efficacy of a few moral rules. There, remote from the power of example and check of shame, many families exhibit the most hideous parts of our society. They are a kind of forlorn hope, preceding by ten or twelve years the most respectable army of veterans which come after them. In that space, prosperity will polish some, vice and the law will drive off the rest, who uniting again with others like themselves will recede still farther; making room for more industrious people, who will finish their improvements, convert the loghouse into a convenient habitation, and rejoicing that the first heavy labours are finished, will change in a few years that hitherto barbarous country into a fine fertile, well regulated district. Such is our progress, such is the march of the Europeans toward the interior parts of this continent. In all societies there are off-casts; this impure part serves as our precursors or pioneers; my father himself was one of that class, but he came upon honest principles, and was therefore one of the few who held fast; by good conduct and temperance, he transmitted to me his fair inheritance, when not above one in fourteen of his contemporaries had the same good fortune» (Crèvecœur, 2009: 46-47)
[6] A series of eight volumes agglutinating the different numbers published between 2014 and 2023.
For a general evaluation of how the genre of gothic graphic novels should be understood, see Julia Round (2014 and 2015).
For a particular evaluation of Manifest Destiny as a gothic graphic novel, see José Manuel Correoso-Rodenas (Correoso-Rodenas, 2022: 127-128).
[7] Something also proposed by other authors like Paul Schrag and Xaviant Haze (2011).
[8] Creating results such as the “ghost-town síndrome,” as define and explored by Martin Procházka (2013).
[9] For more information about this event and its surrounding circumstances, see, for instance, Charles McGlashan (1879 [1918]), Joseph King (1992), Kristin Johnson (1996), Donald Hardesty (1997), Ethan Rarick (2008), Tim McNeese (2009), and Kelly Dixon (2011).
[10] A concept that should not be considered as exclusive of the United States for, as Margaret Atwood (born in 1939) mentioned in the lectures (and then essays) gathered under the title of Strange Things (1991 [1995 (2001)]), Canada has also extensively participated of this category. For a more modern reevaluation, see Cynthia Sugars (2014).
[11] As a subdivision of American Gothic, also a questioning of the American myth, as Teresa Goddu mentions in the introduction to her seminal essay Gothic America (Goddu, 1997: 10).
[12] Included in his Republic [Πολιτεία] (ca. 375 BC).
[13] For a more detailed explanation, although applied to the Spanish case, see Peggy Samuels (1990).
[14] The first casualty will be corporal Shaw, assaulted and murdered by a giant mosquito.
[15] Remember the argued cases of cannibalism related to the aforementioned Donner Party.
[16] For a relation of this mythical creature with American folklore, see John Russell Napier (1973).
[17] Similar to the giants seen by the soldiers of Hernán Cortés (1485-1547), as narrated by Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1496-1584) in his Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España (published in 1632): «[…] y dijeron que les habían dicho sus antecesores que en los tiempos pasados que había allí entre ellos poblados hombres y mujeres muy altos de cuerpo y de grandes huesos, que porque eran muy malos y de malas maneras, que los mataron peleando con ellos, y otros que quedaban se murieron; e para qué tamaños e altos cuerpos tenían, trajeron un hueso o zancarrón de uno dellos, y era muy grueso, el altor como un hombre de razonable estatura; y aquel zancarrón era desde la rodilla hasta la cadera; yo me medí con él, y tenía tan gran altor como yo, puesto que soy de razonable cuerpo; y trajeron otros pedazos de huesos como el primero, mas estaban ya comidos y deshechos de la tierra; y todos nos espantamos de ver aquellos zancarrones, y tuvimos por cierto haber habido gigantes en esta tierra» (Díaz del Castillo, 2017: 213).
[18] It is necessary to remember how Americans conceived the idea of “Manifest Destiny” during the 19 th century. Widely understood, this socio-political concept would lead to an expansion of the country towards the West, completing the colonization of the continent and linking the Atlantic with the Pacific. This had several effects that were especially visible from the Presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) onwards, like the war with Mexico or the different relocations Native nations suffered. In regards of politics, “Manifest Destiny” also contributed to the shape of the panorama the US would have during most of the 19 th century, with the rise of the Democratic Party: «Most Democrats were wholehearted supporters of expansion, whereas many Whigs (especially in the North) were opposed. Whigs welcomed most of the changes wrought by industrialization but advocated strong government policies that would guide growth and development within the country’s existing boundaries; they feared (correctly) that expansion raised a contentious issue, the extension of slavery to the territories. On the other hand, many Democrats feared industrialization the Whigs welcomed... For many Democrats, the answer to the nation’s social ills was to continue to follow Thomas Jefferson’s vision of establishing agriculture in the new territories in order to counterbalance industrialization» (Faragher, Buhle, and Czitrom, 2015: 413).
[19] An idea that is highlighted in Volume 8, when several of the members of the crew are faced with the actual future of the West, seeing the atrocities the United States would perform in the following decades.
[20] As seen below, Naufragios (1542) should be included in the discussion.
[21] For more information, see José Manuel Correoso Rodenas (2021)
[22] José Manuel Correoso-Rodenas offers an interesting evaluation on the presence of this character: «However, his name makes the reader think more of Coronado who, as above explained, explored areas near these. A possible explanation for the inclusion of a soldier of Narváez in the West would be the Cabeza de Vaca expedition, one of the most Gothic examples of the Spanish exploration and conquest of North-America. Indeed Cabeza de Vaca’s Naufragios exposes many of the elements that American Gothic will later include» (Correoso-Rodenas, 2022: 135).
[23] The cover of the volume already displays a cross in its center, introducing what will be main source of fear in the following pages.
[24] As an actual confrontation happened when a religious society was established in the American frontier following the creation of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. See, for instance Benjamin E. Park (2020).
[25] Something that, again, was a reality since the arrival of the Puritans to the continent in the early 17 th century.
[26] J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur perfectly describes this situation, when he mentions the co-existence of different Christian denominations in pre-independent America: «Let us suppose you and I to be travelling; we observe that in this house, to the right, lives a Catholic, who prays to God as he has been taught, and believes in transubstantiation; he works and raises wheat, he has a large family of children, all hale and robust; his belief, his prayers offend nobody. About one mile farther on the same road, his next neighbour may be a good honest plodding German Lutheran, who addresses himself to the same God, the God of all, agreeably to the modes he has been educated in, and believes in consubstantiation; by so doing he scandalises nobody; he also works in his fields, embellishes the earth, clears swamps, etc. What has the world to do with his Lutheran principles? He persecutes nobody, and nobody persecutes him, he visits his neighbours, and his neighbours visit him. Next to him lives a seceder, the most enthusiastic of all sectaries; his zeal is hot and fiery, but separated as he is from others of the same complexion, he has no congregation of his own to resort to, where he might cabal and mingle religious pride with worldly obstinacy. He likewise raises good crops, his house is handsomely painted, his orchard is one of the fairest in the neighbourhood. How does it concern the welfare of the country, or of the province at large, what this man's religious sentiments are, or really whether he has any at all? He is a good farmer, he is a sober, peaceable, good citizen: William Penn himself would not wish for more. This is the visible character, the invisible one is only guessed at, and is nobody's business. Next again lives a Low Dutchman, who implicitly believes the rules laid down by the synod of Dort. He conceives no other idea of a clergyman than that of an hired man; if he does his work well he will pay him the stipulated sum; if not he will dismiss him, and do without his sermons, and let his church be shut up for years. But notwithstanding this coarse idea, you will find his house and farm to be the neatest in all the country; and you will judge by his waggon and fat horses, that he thinks more of the affairs of this world than of those of the next. He is sober and laborious, therefore he is all he ought to be as to the affairs of this life; as for those of the next, he must trust to the great Creator. Each of these people instruct their children as well as they can, but these instructions are feeble compared to those which are given to the youth of the poorest class in Europe. Their children will therefore grow up less zealous and more indifferent in matters of religion than their parents. The foolish vanity, or rather the fury of making Proselytes, is unknown here; they have no time, the seasons call for all their attention, and thus in a few years, this mixed neighbourhood will exhibit a strange religious medley, that will be neither pure Catholicism nor pure Calvinism. A very perceptible indifference even in the first generation, will become apparent; and it may happen that the daughter of the Catholic will marry the son of the seceder, and settle by themselves at a distance from their parents. What religious education will they give their children? A very imperfect one. If there happens to be in the neighbourhood any place of worship, we will suppose a Quaker's meeting; rather than not show their fine clothes, they will go to it, and some of them may perhaps attach themselves to that society. Others will remain in a perfect state of indifference; the children of these zealous parents will not be able to tell what their religious principles are, and their grandchildren still less. The neighbourhood of a place of worship generally leads them to it, and the action of going thither, is the strongest evidence they can give of their attachment to any sect. The Quakers are the only people who retain a fondness for their own mode of worship; for be they ever so far separated from each other, they hold a sort of communion with the society, and seldom depart from its rules, at least in this country. Thus all sects are mixed as well as all nations; thus religious indifference is imperceptibly disseminated from one end of the continent to the other; which is at present one of the strongest characteristics of the Americans. Where this will reach no one can tell, perhaps it may leave a vacuum fit to receive other systems. Persecution, religious pride, the love of contradiction, are the food of what the world commonly calls religion. These motives have ceased here; zeal in Europe is confined; here it evaporates in the great distance it has to travel; there it is a grain of powder inclosed, here it burns away in the open air, and consumes without effect» (Crèvecœur, 2009: 49-51). Something challenged by Laura M. Chmielewski in her essay The Spice of Popery. Converging Christianities on an Early American Frontier (2011).
