A Cycle of the West

The Song of Three Friends

To Hilda

Οιον το γλυκύμαλον ερεύθεται άκρω επ’ ύσδω άκρον επ’ ακροτάτω: λελάθοντο δε μαλοδρόπηες, ου μαν εκλελαθοντ’, αλλ’ ούκ εδύναντ’ επίκεσθαι.

Note

The following narrative, though complete in itself, is designed to be the first piece in a cycle of poems dealing with the fur trade period of the Trans-Missouri region. The Song of Hugh Glass, which was published in the fall of 1915, is the second in the series.

The four decades during which the fur trade flourished west of the Missouri River may be regarded as a typical heroic period, differing in no essential from the many other great heroic periods that have made glorious the story of the Aryan migration. Jane Harrison says that heroic characters do not arise from any peculiarity of race or even of geographical surroundings; but that, given certain social conditions, they may and do appear anywhere and at any time. The heroic spirit, as seen in heroic poetry, we are told, is the outcome of a society cut loose from its roots, of a time of migrations, of the shifting of populations. Such conditions are to be found during the time of the Spanish conquests of Central and South America; and they are to be found also in those wonderful years of our own West, when wandering bands of trappers were exploring the rivers and the mountains and the plains and the deserts from the British possessions to Mexico, and from the Missouri to the Pacific.