Switzer, Richard. “Chateaubriand and the Welsh Indians.” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 3, nos. 1-2 (fall-winter 1974-75): 6-17.

In the following essay, Switzer details Chateaubriand's romantic reconstruction of the identity of the mound builders of the North American continent, as seen in the author's Voyage en Amérique.

It is clear that Chateaubriand, attempting to set up a coherent itinerary for his Voyage en Amérique, was being guided much more by his imagination and his readings than by his actual memories of the trip.¹ For this reason, the selection of sites he chose to evoke takes on a particular importance from the literary point of view. Obviously, for example, it is much more poetic to claim to have traveled America from the northern reaches of Canada to the southern tip of Florida, rather than admitting only to a modest itinerary in the northeastern United States.

In the same way, Chateaubriand...