Washington Irving: Hope and Change

By Douglas V. Gibbs

Washington Irving was born in 1783, just a few years before the convention that provided us with the United States Constitution.  He died in 1859, shortly before the American Civil War. During that time period he had seen his share of change, and the hope that often went with that change. He realized that not all hope and change is good, but the human spirit longs for it anyhow.

Irving spent 17 years in Europe searching for native themes, but his journeys ultimately led him to The States, where he contributed importantly to the portraiture of the American Indian. His opportunities to observe the Indians were at first limited. But as time passed, as his opportunities to see the Indians from the inside blossomed, he viewed the Indians sympathetically, battling with the concept of Indian displacement and America's need to grow.

He called the Indians the unfortunate aborigines of America. He traveled across Indian territory in the 1830s, gaining an intimate contact with them few achieved, bringing to readers the beauty and dignity of the Indians, and how they adjusted to the changing landscape of an America acting upon its Manifest Destiny.

His writings often questioned the wisdom of colonization, yet conceded that it is human nature to expand societies, and grow civilizations.

Irving's conflict with colonization is revealed in a portion of "A History of New York" in 1809, where he describes what it would be like if men on the moon colonized Earth - a "how would you feel if it were done to you" kind of angle. Irving finished by telling the reader that he hoped the swiftness of colonization may be considered, and offered this antidote, "A renowned Dutch tumbler of antiquity, who took a start of three miles for the purpose of jumping over a hill, but having run himself out of breath by the time he reached the foot, sat himself quietly down for a few moments to blow, and then walked over it at his leisure."

In his writings Irving conceded that change happens, and sometimes that change is good, and sometimes not so good. The Indians, for example, lost their environment, but in return they live in a civilized society they were not able to manage for themselves. Civilization itself, however, can pose its own dangers, become overly controlled by a ruling elite, and squash the very liberty the population claims to champion, leaving the Indians once again to turn to self-reliance.

"There is a certain relief in change," Washington Irving once wrote, "even though it be from bad to worse; as I have found in traveling in a stage-coach, that it is often a comfort to shift one's position and be bruised in a new place."

-- Political Pistachio Conservative New and Commentary