Michael Dorris’s “Trusting the Words” “‘As far as man could go to the north in a day, or a week, or a whole month, there was nothing but woods. There were no houses. There were no roads. There were no people. There were only trees and the wild animals who had their homes among them.’ Say what? Excuse me, but weren’t we forgetting the Chippewa branch of my daughters’ immediate ancestry...” (beginning ofLittle House in the Big Woods, qtd in Dorris 967 or R250) “a curiously empty, a pristine wilderness in which only white folks toiled and cavorted, ate and harvested, celebrated and were kind to each other” (Dorris 967 or R250) “in the process of perpetuating a Eurocentric myth that was still very much alive” (Dorris 967 or R250) “And there were no Indians [...] Manifest Destiny protected its own [...] oblivious to any ethical messiness that might interfere with the romance” (Dorris 968 or R251)
