Historigraphy of the American West - Essay Example Alexander Mackenzie and Thomas Jefferson, George Catlin and Paul Kane, Frederic Remington and the North West Mounted Police: the United States West intertwined with the Canadian West - there are thousands f other such moments, innumerable cruxes, and myriad border-crossings. The problem, ever and always, is in how we "Americans" understand these things. (Canadians, f course, are also "Americans" in the sense f being f this continent.) Each f us, Canadians and United States people, living within a national myth borne f exceptionalism, seek to assert our country's historical narrative - especially the narrative f West: expansion - "Westward the Course f Empire Takes Its Way" or, in Canada, the Laurentian thesis propounded to the Canadian Pacific Railway (completed in 1885): Pierre Berton's "The National Dream" (or Gordon Lightfoot's "Canadian Railroad Trilogy) (Kaye).
