Mythmaking and the consequence of "soul history" in Jim Harrison's Legends of the Fall

Studies in Short Fiction, Fall, 1999 by Patrick A. Smith

In Tristan's room, Ludlow discovers a worn copy of "Report of a Reconnaissance of the Black Hills of Dakota.... He had not opened the book in three decades mostly out of grief that his recommendations on the Sioux had been not taken, even scorned, after which he resigned his commission and left for Vera Cruz" (206). The book is a treatise that Ludlow himself had written on the "Indian Question," which figures so prominently in much of Harrison's fiction, including Legends of the Fall. Ludlow, a member of the Seventh Cavalry, has advised that the "region is cherished by the owners as hunting grounds and asylum.... The Indians have no country farther west to which they can migrate" (207). The Colonel's terse statement underscores the importance of Native American values in the narrative, particularly in the life of the passionate and spiritual Tristan, who has underlined portions of the text. In the highlighted passages, Ludlow traces Tristan's development apart from his family and as part of the Native American culture. His marks on the pages include "a passage on a blood-red moon that fired the beige landscape, to which Tristan had added `I seen this phenom, once with Stab who would not talk at campfire'" (208).

The most disturbing image in the book for Ludlow is a "description of buffalo skulls which Ludlow recognized foresaw One Stab's Ghost Dance superstitions and Tristan's boyish passion, `A man who shoots a buffalo and not eat the entire body and make a tent or bed of the skin should himself be shot, including the bone marrow which Stab says restores all health to the human body'" (208). Tristan's addenda contrast to the literate, almost poetic style of Northridge's chronicles in Harrison's novel Dalva (1988), which similarly portrays soul history through a Native American context. While Northridge relies on his best powers of observation to record the assimilation and destruction of the people of whom he become a part, Tristan writes with an unstudied passion that arises from his relationship with One Stab, the corner-stone of his spiritual understanding of soul history. While Northridge's journals have intrinsic value for historians, Tristan's musings will never be read by anyone but his own father, who must draw conclusions about his son from the few objects in the room and two terse statements of unfettered individuality.

Tristan's psychic and spiritual distance from his own brothers is apparent in their journey to Calgary, where they will join the Canadian forces enlisted to fight in the war. Tristan kills a deer and shares the liver with One Stab, "to the disgust of Samuel who only ate deer meat out of instinctive politeness. Alfred, as usual, was ruminative and noncommittal, wondering how One Stab and Tristan could eat so much meat. He preferred beef" (197). Tristan has always considered One Stab his mentor, and the relationship is one of mutual respect. They know each other so well, in fact, that One Stab is able to foresee the coming tragedy of the Ludlow family: One Stab "picked up Samuel's saddle as if he were picking up doom herself, doom always owning the furthest, darkest reaches of the feminine gender" (197). Each member of the Ludlow family fulfills the tragic events of One Stab's prophetic vision. He is placed in the spiritually privileged position of seer, the link between Tristan and the soul history that, of the Ludlow family, he alone can understand. Only Tristan comprehends One Stab's relationship with nature; only Tristan can make the connection between history and the present.