The Yellow Chief
The Yellow Chief: A Romance of the Rocky Mountains is a novel by Thomas Mayne Reid written in 1869, converging frontier fiction with anti-slavery messages.
It is one of 75 adventure "romance" novels that Mayne Reid wrote in his lifetime, including The Rifle Rangers (1850), The White Chief (1855), The Scalp Hunters (1856), and The Headless Horseman (1866).
Through Woboga, Yellow Chief and his men find the ex-Mississippi planters corralled in an enclosed gorge in the Rocky Mountains by Bijou Creek of the South Platte River.
Meanwhile, Edward O'Neil, who has since left Mississippi to the Colorado mountains to escape his heartbreak over Clara Blackadder, travels as a fur trapper with his experienced, older companion, 'Lije Orton.
After much strategic planning, 'Lije Orton, Edward O'Neil, and mountain man Black Harris track down Yellow Chief and his Cheyenne troupe and manage to kill them all with little difficulty.
By describing the rails as "penetrating" the prairies, readers can assume Mayne Reid's bitter reaction to industrialization, as his romantic view of America's uncharted territories reigns throughout the novel.
The real geographical places of the Bijou Creek at the South Platte River of The Yellow Chief are regions of the unorganized territories of the United States, east of the Rocky Mountains.
Native American tribes and mountain men engaged in trade at this structure, which would employ James Beckworth and Sacajewea's son Jean Baptiste Charbonneau in its existence.
The novel follows convention of imperial adventure fiction, exemplifying values of the genre such as the nationalist and sacrificing male hero, a damsel in distress, and the dangers of 'the other', as well as a desire to conquer them.
While characterizing retribution attacks on the romanticized natural lands of the Rocky Mountains, Mayne Reid also adds to the imperial adventure fiction tradition of toiling fear of retaliation with desire of the foreign romance.
[1] The Yellow Chief also features a common plot theme of Mayne Reid, in which a heroine's "weak brother" becomes caught in the clutches of a villain seeking revenge.
[4] English Westerns also abide to the theme of the West being a temporary place to visit - as the male hero, such as Edward O'Neil, is given the opportunity to learn and "wrest a good living" on the frontier, and then immediately returning to society.
English Western authors have little knowledge of the animals of the American West and their behaviors, often presenting them in a very menacing way, such as the horse stampeded at the end of The Yellow Chief.
The novel deals with issues of perceptions of race in 19th century America, questioning the humanity and hypocrisy of slaveholders who adhere abusive punishments onto slaves; especially since Blue Dick is blood-related to the Blackadders, and racially ambiguous.
Mayne Reid was born in Ireland and considered a British novelist, giving The Yellow Chief a foreign and critical perspective on these American race relations.
[9] Mayne Reid's experiences in America as a slave overseer in the south, an Indian fighter, and an officer in the Mexican War gave him the authority to write these stories, and also lent him the conventional biases of white American society.
Often referring to the Cheyennes as "skunks", Mayne Reid characterizes the Yellow Chief's gang as frequent drunks, making them easily manipulated to the fur trader's attacks.
