SOURCE: MacLaren, I. S. “Samuel Hearne's Accounts of the Massacre at Bloody Fall, 17 July 1771.” ARIEL 22, no. 1 (January 1991): 25-51.

In the following essay, MacLaren points to differences in Hearne's field notes and the subsequently published A Journey to the Northern Ocean to show that the latter is not necessarily an accurate account of the events being depicted.

In the twentieth century we are continually trying to alter and refine our descriptions of facts, while at the same time trying to stabilize literary texts in “definitive” editions. The description of a fact has no acknowledged literary value and becomes disposable at a moment's notice. The description of a fantasy, once canonized as literature, becomes immutable.

(Mary B. Campbell, The Witness and the Other World 140)

Formerly every Thing printed was believed, because it was in Print: Now Things seem to be disbelieved for just the very same Reason.

(“A Traveller” [Benjamin...