Wacousta; Or, The Prophecy: A Tale of the Canadas

Wacousta; Or, The Prophecy: A Tale of the Canadas, novel by John Richardson, was published in London and Edinburgh in 1832; and in Montréal in 1868, as Wacousta; Or the Prophecy. An Indian Tale. Numerous editions appeared under various titles. Many of them were pirated (eg, Waldie's Select Circulating Library edition, Philadelphia, 1833), and many were abridged. Richardson frames his novel within Pontiac's 1763 siege of forts Detroit and Michilimackinac, but at the story's centre is the gory and protracted development of Wacousta's revenge upon the British commander, Colonel De Haldimar, who had betrayed Wacousta by marrying his fiancée years earlier in Scotland. Wacousta (formerly a fellow soldier and friend of De Haldimar) is a Herculean savage, made monstrous by his bitterness, who advises Pontiac in his plans to capture the forts. The novel is at once a Gothic romance and a blood-soaked tragedy. Wacousta's complex publishing and editing history, and the story of Richardson's tortured life as well, have interested as many critics and bibliographers as the novel itself has. Wacousta was translated into German in 1858.