Bendigo Shafter by Louis L'Amour
**Bendigo Shafter by Louis L'Amour Overview**
"Bendigo Shafter" is a novel by renowned author Louis L'Amour, blending themes of adventure, pioneer life, and personal growth in the American West during the 1860s. The story follows the journey of Bendigo Shafter, an eighteen-year-old French-Canadian who evolves from a youth into a responsible pioneer and trail boss amidst a backdrop of diverse challenges. The narrative is structured into three parts, detailing Shafter's experiences as he navigates dangers such as hostile encounters, harsh weather, and the complexities of settling in a developing frontier town.
Throughout the novel, Shafter showcases his skills as a hunter, peacemaker, and leader, while also engaging with a variety of characters, including resilient women and an esteemed Umatilla ally, Uruwishi. The plot captures the essence of the American experience, featuring rescue missions, the lure of gold, and the struggle to establish governance in a chaotic setting. The narrative culminates in a poignant exploration of love and commitment, as Shafter reconnects with his love interest, Ninon Vauvert, amidst the challenges of both the wilderness and urban life. With its rich character development and adventurous spirit, "Bendigo Shafter" stands as a significant work in L'Amour's literary canon.
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Bendigo Shafter by Louis L'Amour
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1979
Type of work: Novel
The Work
Bendigo Shafter seems destined for classic status. This unusually long L’Amour novel has all the necessary ingredients. Bendigo Shafter, the youthful French-Canadian hero and narrator, is eighteen when the action begins, about 1862. In the next year or so, he moves, as do many of L’Amour’s heroes, from youth to early manhood and matures as a responsible pioneer, a hunter, a trail boss, a peacemaking friend of Indians, a town marshal, and an author. Trouble takes various forms: violent weather, unpredictably hostile Indians, dangerous rescue missions, the need to build homes and offices in a wilderness and out of its materials, discovery of gold (which attracts would-be robbers and killers), cattle rustlers, and the near-impossibility of making independent westerners see the virtues of a Plymouth Colony-like governmental structure.
The plot is divided into three numbered parts. The first two are of almost identical length; the third, typically, is cut short. Part 1 is centered on the new town site, and Ben narrates many episodes of danger (attacks by renegades, avoidance of religious fanatics), rescue (of missing children, Mormons lost in the snow, rather stupid pioneers, and a wounded Shoshone), and plans for the future—better homes, more reading, a school, money saved to buy cattle.
In part 2, Ben has adventures along the famous Oregon Trail—proceeding through desert and snow, rounding up cattle, hiring Indians to help him drive his livestock home, fighting off thieves—and returns to be elected town marshal. This part is a veritable anthology of trail yarns.
Part 3 lacks focus and seems rushed, but it may sufficiently compensate for this by its variety and suspense. Ben is now patiently in love with Ninon Vauvert, a young girl who has left the little South Pass town to become a traveling actress. The two meet again in dirty, smoky New York City, but then, after lecturing Horace Greeley (1811-1872, the founder-editor of the New York Tribune) on the Far West, Ben suddenly takes a danger-fraught train ride back to Wyoming, refreshes his spirit at the sacred Indian Medicine Wheel in the Big Horn Mountains, and goes home again to face the open-ended challenge of chaotic politics.
Bendigo Shafter includes an unusual variety of women—a learned widow (marvelously depicted) who inspires Ben with her decency and big library, the stolid and work-worn wife of his older brother (named Cain for no discernible reason), a flirt who fails to seduce Ben and then disappears inexplicably from the story, many reliable old frontier wives, and Ninon. Ninon is only twelve at the story’s start and hence barely nubile, which is convenient for L’Amour because he always declines to present sexual passion in any detail. The most attractive character in the novel is arguably Ben’s ally Uruwishi, an Umatilla Indian so old that he knew Meriwether Lewis and William Clark back in 1805.
Bibliography
Bold, Christine. Selling the Wild West: Popular Western Fiction, 1860 to 1960. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.
Gale, Robert L. Louis L’Amour: Revised Edition. New York: Twayne, 1992.
Hall, Halbert W. Louis L’Amour: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003.
Hinds, Harold E., Jr. “Mexican and Mexican-American Images in the Western Novels of Louis L’Amour.” Southwestern American Literature 10 (Spring, 1985): 129-141.
Marsden, Michael T. “Louis L’Amour.” In Fifty Western Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook, edited by Fred Erisman and Richard W. Etulain. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982.
Weinberg, Robert, ed. The Louis L’Amour Companion. Kansas City, Mo.: Andrews and McMeel, 1992.