On Not Describing Death: Washington Irving, John Kirk Townsend, and Natural History's Descriptive Agency.

This essay examines the role of description in early American natural history and travel writing, focusing on Washington Irving’s *A Tour on the Prairies* (1835) and John Kirk Townsend’s *Narrative of a Journey Across the Rocky Mountains, to the Columbia River* (1839). Both authors use descriptive passages to delay narrative progress and thus defer confronting the ethical and emotional consequences of killing nonhuman animals, particularly bison, during westward expansion. The essay argues that this “descriptive agency” masks human responsibility by pausing time within the narrative, allowing expressions of grief to coexist with continued environmental harm. It situates these literary strategies within broader nineteenth-century imperialist and environmental contexts, highlighting how natural history’s descriptive mode both reflects and facilitates settler-colonial violence and ambivalent environmental ethics.