The central conflict between Jim Keath and his siblings is rooted in competing worldviews: Jim’s life with the Crow versus the pioneer ideology that drove westward expansion. For 19th-century American settlers like the Keaths, identity was inextricably linked to land ownership and the concept of “civilizing” the wilderness. This belief was a core component of Manifest Destiny, a term popularized in 1845 by journalist John O’Sullivan, which asserted that the United States was divinely ordained to expand across the continent. Historians widely recognize Manifest Destiny as a white supremacist ideology that justified settler colonial expansion and the violent displacement of Indigenous peoples. This expansion was framed by many settlers as a moral mission to establish agrarian Christian settlements across lands already inhabited by Indigenous nations. In practice, westward expansion involved the removal, warfare, forced relocation, and campaigns that amounted to ethnic cleansing in many regions of the American West.

The Keath siblings’ perilous journey is motivated by this pioneer ideal; their goal is to settle on land in the Willamette Valley, which they see as their “only chance” (39) for economic stability and social identity. However, the language of “claiming” land in the novel reflects the settler assumption that western land was available for occupation, despite the presence and sovereignty of Indigenous nations. Their fear and suspicion of Jim’s Indigenous ways stem from this ideology. When Jonnie calls the Indigenous people “murderin’, heathen savages” (121), he expresses a common settler prejudice that viewed Indigenous cultures as antithetical to the ordered, land-based society they intended to build. Jim’s identity, forged in a world without fences or deeds, directly challenges the values his family is risking everything to achieve. The novel therefore reflects both the historical realities of westward expansion, and the persistent anti-Indigenous assumptions present in many mid-20th-century portrayals of the American frontier.