BACKWASH OF THE FRONTIER—HALLOWELL 463 
Longfellow bore the same sort of relation to Schoolcraft as Cooper 
did to Heckewelder. Generally speaking, there was no inclination on 
the part of eastern novelists, dramatists, or poets who selected Indian 
themes to become acquainted with living Indians of the contemporary 
frontiers as a background for their productions. Indeed, a volume of 
short stories, “Tales of the Northwest,” about Indians in the Upper 
Mississippi region, written by one who knew them intimately, was 
ignored after its publication in 1839. William Joseph Snelling, the 
author, had insisted that “a man must live, emphatically, live with 
Indians; share with them their lodges, their food, and their blankets, 
for years, before he can comprehend their ideas, or enter their feel- 
ings.” American writers were not yet ready for this early call to 
realism. But for American readers, a novel entitled “Altowan; or 
Incidents of Life and Adventure in the Rocky Mountains,” by Sir 
William Drummond Stewart, an eccentric Scot, who during the 1830’s 
had spent 6 years in the West, was published in New York in 1846. 
Although the novel was undistinguished in writing and had some 
romantic trappings, in this case the author had seen a great deal of 
Indian life. What makes the book unique is that one of the leading 
characters, as pointed out by De Voto, is an Indian transvestite—a 
berdache—and this individual is depicted in highly realistic terms. 
The author pictures his behavior and dress in detail, and no doubt 
is left about what he was. “I know of no English or American novel 
of that time or for many years later that is half so frank about homo- 
sexuality,” writes De Voto.” 
In painting and popular music there was a parallel romantic tradi- 
tion. Gleanings from historical documents or tradition were tinc- 
tured by an extremely free use of imagination. It is obvious, for 
instance, that the artist who provided the frontispiece for Mrs. Mor- 
ton’s “Ouabi, or The Virtue of Nature” (1790) knew as little about 
Indians at first hand as did the author of this poem in the noble 
savage tradition. And Benjamin West’s painting of one of Penn’s 
treaties with the Indians, dating from about 1771, offers a direct 
parallel to the literary artist who drew on historical documents for 
his source material. 
Part of Mrs. Morton’s poem was set to music by Hans Gram the 
year after its publication. This composition, the first orchestral score 
published in the United States, was entitled “The Death Song of an 
Indian Chief,” although there is no evidence that the composer knew 
anything about aboriginal music. In 1799, a musical arrangement of 
“Alk’amoonok, the Death Song of the Cherokee Indians,” reputedly 
based on a genuine Indian melody, was published and soon became 
very popular. It had been sung in “Tammany” (1794), the first 
American opera. An eccentric musician, Anton Philip Heinrich, 
12 Bernard De Voto, ‘‘Across the Wide Missouri,” p. 426. Boston. 1947. 
492520—59——_31 
