The Last Trail, Zane Grey

Awhile ago, I picked up my first western novel, West of the Tularosa by Louis L'Amour. It was a very charming series of short stories. I really enjoyed the quick action and skillful insertion of sparse details that somehow managed to really bring the tales alive. Having had such a positive experience with this book, I went hunting for other western novels. Zane Grey has a reputation for being a good western styled writer. His books are numerous and freely available at Gutenberg.org.

The scene is set in Ohio on the wild frontier. Here in them there woods where Indians are hoss theives and a constant source of terror for the frontiermen alongside a few white men. The white men are cunning and intelligent, while the Indians prowl around like stealthy large cats ready to pounce at any moment on white folks to rape and steal.

The tale centers around two pivotal characters: Johnathan Zane and Helen, a surreally beautiful purple/blue eyed girl who is able to instantly stir up trouble amongst men who want to marry and do whatever else men like to do to attractive women. The bordermen, as they're called, are two 'giant' men who stand about 183cm/6' tall. Their names are Johnathan Zane and Wetzel. Fairly quickly after Helen's first meeting with Johnathan, she decides to make him hers. Though in her late teens, she finds this man in his 40s to be to her taste as the model of heroism and gentlemanly comportment.

The description of the general pioneers in this area is that they are very brave, heroic, and extremely tough – not to mention moral and Christian. They never give up and they generally win their way through any adversity or adversary. The setting is a gorgeously described primitive paradise. The ideal man is a farmer. It's the bordermen who fight to keep them safe, mostly from Indians: A borderman lived under the green tree-tops, and, therefore, all the nodding branches of sassafras and laurel, the grassy slopes and rocky cliffs, the stately ash trees, kingly oaks and dark, mystic pines, together with the creatures that dwelt among them, save his deadly red-skinned foes, he loved.

I can see a bit of Tarzan in the borderman that Zane describes. He's able to live amongst the natives, but not with them. He is a giant. He's an ideal man. I believe that Zane Grey, the author, predates Burroughs' Tarzan. However, perhaps when I have the Internet at home again I can look it up. Where in the Tarzan series, one has to endure the ocassional racist comment about the Africans in Burroughs' setting, one has to endure the racist comments on the Natives. But, where I was able to tolerate Tarzan's impression of the Africans in the books, the comments made by Jonathan are far worse. Never did Tarzan ever suggest that he wanted to exterminate the natives to the jungles of Africa in which he lived. Johnathan says to his friend, "...in a few more years there won't be any need for a borderman. When the Injuns are all gone where'll be our work?"

Earlier in the novel a man mentions that he wants to marry a girl, but before he does, he wants to have enough money for a bit of property. The Colonel—Johnathan's brother—offers to him a free 80 acre parcel of land. It's described in lovely detail. Such homesteads surely are rarer now. In any case, I can somehow imagine that this land might have meant something to the natives that lived there before them. Yet, without consulting them on the issue of whose land it is, he simply gives it to someone. In essence, stealing another 80 acre parcel of land and giving it to a couple to fight for.

Despite some of the kind words written about the women of the fort and its surroundings, women are weak and need to stay at home. They cannot walk about without getting lost. Helen finds herself lost outside the fort one day when fortune happens to have Johnathan on his way back to the fort. He sees her trail and follows it, curious about whose trail it was. When finding her, he admonishes her to stay in the fort. When she becomes petulant, he turns to pretend to walk off. When she realizes she's a helpless weak woman, she calls out to have her saviour bring her home.

There's a certain sadness I feel through the ultimate victory which Colonel Zane won with the help of the bordermen. Their ancestral home, the home of 'the savages,' "The beautiful Ohio valley had been wrested from the savages..." In essence, a kind of genocide of the beautiful valley to essentially steal the ancestral home of the natives is the ultimate victory of the white man.

To give the natives credit, in the book that is, they often are described as not fearing death. They meet their fates with admiration, not hatred or anything resembling cowardice. The outlaws were welcomed and assisted by the Natives. Had those in the fort also extended their hand out to the Natives, might not they have also found friendship and enabled cohabitation? Of course, it's impossible to know, but easy to speculate.

Wetzel, the chief Indian killer, muses that the beautiful forest in which he made his life will all become corn fields. One wonders if somehow he has a fleeting regret of the terrible work that he pursued to ethnically cleanse the land of its Native population in favour of those who would turn the land into nothing more than an endless expanse of corn.

While I don't like a lot of the politics that Zane Grey brings up: the racism and ethnic cleansing are in particular hard to swallow. His strength is in his generous descriptions of the beautiful forests and streams. He articulates these scenes extremely well. The romantic side of the tale leaves something wanting. However, that's something I am not a fan of. Building up a female character to the point of unbelievability—perfect beauty and character. The alpha female for the alpha male. I'm also not a fan of the perfect hero who has no real fault or vice. That kind of hero doesn't exist, and it never did. What that hero does is reprehensible in their butchering of the Natives.