Post 2 - "A Walk at Sunset"

In class Friday, we mainly discussed Sigourney’s “Indian Names.” Although we did not discuss Bryant’s “A Walk at Sunset,” there were some points in it that I found very interesting. Bryant’s poem is about the speaker going on a walk at sunset, obviously, and during the walk the speaker thinks about Native Americans and the impact they had on the land. The speaker ultimately concludes that the Natives are all but gone, supporting the “Vanishing Indian” theory. While a lot of literature and history portrays Native Americans as noble people who respected nature and only took what they needed, I interpret Bryant’s poem as saying that Native Americans, just like white settlers, disrespected nature.

I get this notion from Bryant’s 6^th stanza. This stanza reads

For ages, on the silent forests here/Thy beams did fall, before the red man came/To dwell beneath them; in their shade the deer/Fed, and feared not the arrow’s deadly aim/Nor tree was felled, in all that world of woods/Save by the beaver’s tooth, or winds, or rush of floods.

In this stanza, the speaker describes the forests as silent before the red man, or Native Americans came. North America was totally undisturbed before Natives discovered it. Even though white settlers may have taken advantage of nature, Natives were doing that well before them. Bryant also says that deer fed and did not have to fear being shot and killed by Native Americans. While it is often viewed that Native Americans respected nature completely, they too disturbed the peaceful, silent order of nature.

This is not a popular view about Native Americans. They are often viewed as very respectful people. Bryant, however, is not wrong to say that nature was disturbed by them. Indeed it was because there were no human inhabitants of North America before them. It is a view that I have never seen from anyone but Bryant, so it is interesting to read.