Book I - Chapter I


We went all the way in day-coaches, becoming more sticky and grimy with each stage of the journey. Jake bought everything the newsboys offered him: candy, oranges, brass collar buttons, a watch charm, and for me a “Life of Jesse James,” which I remember as one of the most satisfactory books I have ever read. Beyond Chicago we were under the protection of a friendly passenger conductor, who knew all about the country to which we were going and gave us a great deal of advice in exchange for our confidence. He seemed to us an experienced and worldly man who had been almost everywhere; in his conversation he threw out lightly the names of distant States and cities. He wore the rings and pins and badges of different fraternal orders to which he belonged. Even his cuff buttons were engraved with hieroglyphics, and he was more inscribed than an Egyptian obelisk. Once when he sat down to chat, he told us that in the immigrant car ahead there was a family from “across the water” whose destination was the same as ours.

“They can't any of them speak English, except one little girl, and all she can say is ‘We go Black Hawk, Nebraska.' She's not much older than you, twelve or thirteen, maybe, and she's as bright as a new dollar. Don't you want to go ahead and see her, Jimmy? She's got the pretty brown eyes, too!”

This last remark made me bashful, and I shook my head and settled down to “Jesse James.” Jake nodded at me approvingly and said you were likely to get diseases from foreigners.



Another lantern came along. A bantering voice called out: “Hello, are you Mr. Burden's folks? If you are, it's me you're looking for. I'm Otto Fuchs. I'm Mr. Burden's hired man, and I'm to drive you out. Hello, Jimmy, ain't you scared to come so far west?”

I looked up with interest at the new face in the lantern light. He might have stepped out of the pages of “Jesse James.” He wore a sombrero hat, with a wide leather band and a bright buckle, and the ends of his mustache were twisted up stiffly, like little horns. He looked lively and ferocious, I thought, and as if he had a history. A long scar ran across one cheek and drew the corner of his mouth up in a sinister curl. The top of his left ear was gone, and his skin was brown as an Indian's. Surely this was the face of a desperado. As he walked about the platform in his high-heeled boots, looking for our trunks, I saw that he was a rather slight man, quick and wiry, and light on his feet. He told us we had a long night drive ahead of us, and had better be on the hike. He led us to a hitching-bar where two farm wagons were tied, and I saw the foreign family crowding into one of them. The other was for us. Jake got on the front seat with Otto Fuchs, and I rode on the straw in the bottom of the wagon box, covered up with a buffalo hide. The immigrants rumbled off into the empty darkness, and we followed them.



  1. The fictional city of Black Hawk is likely patterned after Cather’s hometown of Red Cloud, Nebraska. Much like Jim, Cather’s family moved to Nebraska from Virginia when she was nine. This analogue suggests that My Ántonia is semi-autobiographical. The relationship between Jim and Ántonia also mirrors the relationship between Cather and a girl she knew growing up named Annie Sadilek. Sadilek was left, pregnant, by a fiancé but later found happiness with a faithful partner and had many children.

    — Marissa, Owl Eyes Staff
  2. An obelisk is a rectangular stone pillar with a tapered top forming a pyramidion, or pyramid-shaped capstone. Egyptian obelisks were erected to honor pharaohs and the gods. They were often inscribed with hieroglyphics, recording histories and religious stories which flaunted the power and prestige of the pharaoh who had commissioned them—much like the passenger conductor’s badges and buttons.

    — Marissa, Owl Eyes Staff
  3. Hieroglyphics were the written symbols used by ancient Egyptians. Jim notices the hieroglyphics on the cufflinks of the passenger conductor and further describes the man’s gaudy display of his membership badges and buttons. This impresses the young, inexperienced Jim, highlighting his relative youth and fascination with anything “exotic” or outside of his realm of knowledge.

    — Marissa, Owl Eyes Staff
  4. Jesse James was an American outlaw from Missouri known for bank and train robberies. The book referenced here is fictional, but something similar would have been available, typically in the form of a dime novel.

    — Kayla, Owl Eyes Staff