BOOK REVIEWS AND REVIEW ESSAYS - publications ...publications.usask.ca/nativestudiesreview/reviews/03-2...139 NATIVE STUDIES REVIEW 3, No. 2 (1987). BOOK REVIEWS AND REVIEW ESSAYS

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NATIVE STUDIES REVIEW 3, No. 2 (1987).

BOOK REVIEWS AND REVIEW ESSAYSJulia D. Harrison, Co-Ordinating Curator, with Ted J. Brasser, Berna-dette Driscoll, Ruth B. Phillips, Martine J. Reid, Judy Thompson, and Ruth Holmes Whitehead, editors. The Spirit Sings: Artistic Traditions of Canada’s First Peoples. Toronto: Glenbow, Alberta Institute and McClel-land and Stewart, 1987.

The Curator’s task is ultimately impossible, because it depends upon what is, rather than upon what ought to be. No recent exhibition has made this fact as obvious as The Spirit Sings. Specifically, its task was to explore “the physical cosmological, and artistic realms of the native populations of Canada at the time of early contact with Europeans,” by assembling objects “dispersed around the world,” according to Julia Harrison’s forthright Introduction to the Catalogue of the Exhibition,1

published separately from The Spirit Sings.In Canada, public recognition that Native art is, in fact, art, probably

dates from the Canadian West Coast Art exhibition (1928), a collection of Native art works selected by Marius Barbeau which was accompanied by Emily Carr’s paintings. It was nearly forty years later, however, when Doris Shadbolt wrote in her Foreword to The Arts of the Raven (1967), the catalogue of the major exhibition which launched the sequence of Native art exhibitions of which The Spirit Sings is the current culmination, “This is an exhibition of art, high art, not ethnology!”2 In the same spirit, Robert Gessain, in his Introduction to the aptlynamed catalogue, Masterpieces of Indian and Eskimo Art from Canada (1970), described its 186 works as “prestigious objects.”3 In both of these exhibitions, the majority of works were carvings, made by men, with a very limited number of skin and fibre objects, made by women.

In 1974, an exhibition of high significance, Athapaskans. Strang-ers of the North, displayed a broad selection of hitherto little seen works by men and women in truly balanced quantities. Norman Tebble stated that “those museums with great ethnographic col-lections have tended of late to concentrate upon ‘art shows,”’

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and pointed out that “we should not forget that artistic ability and the ap-

preciation of colours, forms, and materials are only an aspect of a unique

complex of subtle adaptations that go to make up the total culture.”4 In this

holistic spirit, Wilson Duff created the richly evocative speculations of his

exhibition, Images Stone B.C. (1975), in which he examined the “inner

logic which resides in the style and the internal structure of individual

works of art.”5 The most revelatory works were the reunited pair of stone

masks, one with closed eyes, and one with eyes open, from Kitkatla, a

Southern Coastal Tsimshian village, also shown in The Spirit Sings.

Ted J. Brasser continued this interpretive thrust in “Bo’jou Nejee!”

(1976), which made works from the Speyer Collection available for

viewing in Canada. Its central artifact, also included in The Spirit Sings,

was a 1740s Naskapi painted skin which displays the Universe divided

between “forest and summer” and “caribou and winter.”6 In his catalogue,

Brasser divided the many works by material, suggesting that bark was

sewn with root and skin with sinew, in expression of a similar vegetable/

animal duality. The role of Native spirituality became the central focus

of Jean Blodgett’s exhibition catalogue, The Coming and Going of the

Shaman (1978),7 in which ancient, traditional, and modern Inuit and

Alaskan Eskimo works were assembled to enhance understanding of the

shaman’s role in Arctic life. To these insights, Bernadette Driscoll added

her catalogue, The Inuit Amautik (1980),8 in which the life of Inuit women

was addressed through this garment and works of Inuit art depicting it.

In her sophisticated commentary she interpreted both the ga.ment and

its representation as expressions of spiritual, social and cosmological

meanings. Ruth B. Phillips’ essential study in her catalogue, Patterns of

Power (1984), made clear the cosmological meaning of Eastern Wood-

lands arts, with their embodiments, not least in their abstract motifs, of

the Manitous of the upper world and the under world which comprise the

cosmic polarities. The woven and embroidered bags bearing these motifs

and images “can be seen as three-dimensional models of the forces that

energize the cosmos.”9

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Having validated Native art as fine art, shown its relationship to the

totality of Native life, and explored its profoundly spiritual dimensions,

there remained the task of defining the relationship of Native art to that

of the Europeans into whose hands these many superb objects had come.

Dennis Reid and Joan Vastokas addressed to this their catalogue, From

the Four Quarters (1984),10 of an exhibition of stunning originality, in

which a sequence of four historic periods was illustrated by works of

Native and European artists shown side by side. The display proceeded

from the early equality of refined craftspersonship to the later inroads

of mechanization in which radically changed values overwhelmed the

visions of both groups.

In his own summary of the transition of Native art from “ceremonial”

through “commercial” to “the new art,” art of “personal expression” or

“public statement,” Tom Hill provided the distinctive insights of one who

is both a Native person and a distinguished curator, in the catalogue he

co-wrote with Elizabeth McLuhan, Norval Morrisseau and The Emergence

of the Image Makers (1984).11 When the Art Gallery of Ontario placed

these contemporary Native works on its walls, the effort by art galleries

to recognize in Native art the individual artist and the individual work

had come full circle. And in 1986, Julia D. Harrison’s exhibition, Metis:

People Between Two Worlds, significantly and permanently broadened

the canon of what comprises Native art yet again.l2

It is to this sequence of exhibitions that The Spirit Sings (1987) is

both successor and inheritor. It was accompanied by two publications:

the book I am reviewing, which contains essays by the curators, and

the actual catalogue-fully annotated and illustrated-which I have found

indispensable in understanding and interpreting the essays. The Spirit

Sings is a very good book written by a committee. It is sumptuously

illustrated and its essays are major studies, most of which represent the

state of the art in their respective fields. In all but one of these essays

there is a balance of objects made by men and objects made by women,

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so that the collaboration of the sexes in creating meaning and assuring

survival is made clear.

Ruth Homes Whitehead, whose essay, “I Have Lived Here Since

the World Began: Atlantic Coast Artistic Traditions,” opens the volume,

quotes an eighteenth century dismissal of Maritime art as “fanciful

scrawls,” (p. 25) but responds that “decoration is used to express and

enhance magic.” Once, I was told by a Micmac-speaking student, that

there was one difference between a Euro-Canadian woman and a Micmac

woman who had taught her to do porcupine quill embroidery: the latter

taught that in sorting quills, one must always lay them in order, with “their

noses pointing in one direction and their feet in the other.” A porcupine

quill is a porcupine, and life-forms are entitled to respect. In this instruc-

tion lies the whole of The Spirit Sings.

This meaning becomes clear in “Like a Star I Shine: Northern Wood-

lands Artistic Traditions,” by Ruth B. Phillips. She states that Native arts

“give outward visible form to beliefs about the correct relationship of

human beings to one another and to the supernatural forces surrounding

them” (p. 92). For the Native artist, making matter into art is a “trans-

formational act” (p. 77). Phillips breaks new ground in establishing five

aesthetic principles of Woodlands art: the use of naturalistic effigies; an

“additive” principle of ornament; the symbolic importance of luminous

materials such as shell; a spatial distribution of motifs which she calls

“asymmetrical,” to which I shall return below; and an aesthetic of posi-

tive and negative shape.

Ted Brasser’s essay, “By the Power of Dreams: Artistic Traditions

of the Northern Plains,” continued the emphasis on spiritual elements,

while suggesting that “after the holocaust of the early epidemics the

spiritual world-view eroded and was replaced by a drive for material

and prestige” (pp. 114-115). Judy Thompson’s essay “No Little Vari-

ety of Ornament: Northern Athapaskan Artistic clothing, a “’second

skin,’ closely linked to the soul and personality of its owner” (p. 148).

Bernadette Driscoll in “Pretending to be Caribou: The Inuit Parka as

an Artistic Tradition,” demonstrates that the male parka depicts sea

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mammals when used for marine hunting, and caribou when used for hunt-

ing on land, while the female parka is devoted to images of maternity.

“As an artisan,” she says, “the Inuit seamstress ranked among the most

innovative and skilled craftspeople in the world” (p. 200).

Martin J. Reid’s essay “Silent Speakers: Arts of the Northwest Coast,”

is in some degree of contrast to all this. First, she states (contrary to the

evidence even of her own illustrations) that “art created by males … has

a representational intention; art created by females … is non-representa-

tional” (p. 226). Secondly, her aesthetic canon is based upon Bill Holm’s

now-classic Northwest Coast Art: An Analysis of Form (1965), while

recent exhibitions of North West Coast textile arts such as Doreen Jensen

and Polly Sargent’s Robes of Power (1986) have had no apparent impact.

She uses the long-held view that northern and southern coastal art differed

in emphasizing, respectively, social as opposed to spiritual themes, a view

which is now being reinterpreted, as the spiritual meaning of a northern

coastal cosmos expressed in terms of social hierarchy is being explored

by Margaret Seguin’s Traditional and Current Tsimshian Feasts (1985)

and John Cove’s Shattered Images (1987). Of course the scholarly study

and aesthetic analysis of North West Coast art began earlier than any other

so the inclusion of earlier interpretations is understandable.

The Spirit Sings, taken as a whole, combines aesthetics with in-

terpretations of the spiritual elements that are central to Native art.

A striking leitnotif, introduced by Phillips, is the element of “asym-

metry,” for which I would prefer the term “complementarity” or even

“simultaneity.” The effect is not really characterized by a lack of sym-

metry, since the actual images are almost always axially symmetrical,

but by the use of two motifs which simultaneously coexist but differ

even as they complete one another. On North West Coast kerfed boxes,

and Eastern Woodlands woven or quilled bags, one image appears

on one side and another on the other. When these objects are rotated

the images appear and reappear, each presupposing the other. Again,

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one of two carved posts of a North West Coast house may bear the crests

of a noblewoman and the other the crests of her husband, signifying a

marriage which has combined two clans. On the Plains, the imagery of

one military society may appear on one moccasin, and that of another

on the other. Each motif enhances and reinforces the other in such us-

ages. And yet again, the two halves of the Naskapi painting depicting the

summer and the winter, represent alternating states of being, while North

West Coast crest images combine elements of animal, human, vegetable,

spirit, in a single form, even as transformation masks express successive

identities.

The implication is not one of permanent change as in the Western

concept of conversion or evolution, but of various states of being and

various cosmic elements existing simultaneously. This transformational

element has often been remarked upon, and it appears in Western culture

in the concept of the sacrament, but that long understanding has been ac-

companied by an equally long Western emphasis upon all forms of process

as linear and irreversible. To the more complex, supple, and multivalent

world of Canadian Native art, such concepts might be seen not only as

rigid and simplistic but even dangerous. We will have to wait for exhibi-

tions of Western art curated by Native people in order to find out.

Nancy-Lou Patterson

NOTES1 Julia D. Harrison, Introduction, The Spirit Sings; Artistic Traditions

of Canada’s First Peoples-The Catalogue of the Exhibition (Toronto:

Glenbow-Alberta Institute and McClelland and Stewart, 1987), p. 7.2 Doris Shadbolt, Foreword, Wilson Duff, Bill Holm, Bill Reid, Arts

of the Raven (Vancouver: The Vancouver Art Gallery, 1967).3 Robert Gessein, Introduction, Masterpieces of Indian and Eskimo

Art from Canada (Paris: Societe des Amis du Musee de l’Homme, 1969;

Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, 1970).4 Norman Tebble, Foreword, The Athapaskans: Strangers of the North

(Ottawa: National Museum of Man, 1974), p. 5.

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5 Wilson Duff, Images Stone BC: Thirty Centuries of Northwest Coast Indian Sculpture (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1975).

6 Ted J. Brasser, “Bo’jou. Neeiee!”: Profiles of Canadian Indian Art (Ottawa: National Museum of Man, 1976), p. 23.

7 Jean Blodgett, The Coming and Going of the Shaman: Eskimo Shamanism and Art (Winnipeg: The Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1978).

8 Bernadette Driscoll, The Inuit Amautik: I Like My Hood to be Full (Winnipeg: The Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1980).

9 Ruth B. Phillips, Patterns of Power (Kleinburg, Ontario: The Mc-Michael Canadian Collection, 1985), p. 25.

10 Dennis Reid and Joan Vastokas, From the Four Quarters: Native and European Art in Ontario 5000 BC to 1867 AD (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1984).

1l Elizabeth McLuhan and Tom Hill, Norval Morrisseau and the Emergence of the Image Makers (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1984), passim.

12 Julia D. Harrison, Metis, People Between Two Worlds (Calgary: The Glenbow-Alberta Institute, 1985).

Victor P. Lytwyn. The Fur Trade of the Little North Indians, Peddlers, and Englishmen East of Lake Winnipeg, 1760-1821. Winnipeg: Rupert’s Land Research Centre, University of Winnipeg, 1986.

This is a study of the fur trade in the area known to early Canadian fur traders as the Little North, or Le Petit Nord, as distinguished from the Grand North lying northwest of Lake Winnipeg. More precisely Lytwyn defines it to be the region between Lake Superior in the south and the Hudson Bay Lowlands in the north, and between Lake Winnipeg in the west and the divide between the Albany and Moose River systems in the east. Common economic interests and linkages distinguish it from surrounding areas. The time frame is the period of rivalry between the Hudson’s Bay Company and Montreal traders which began in 1760 and terminated with the union of the Hudson’s Bay Company and North West Company in 1821. Attention throughout focuses upon this rivalry and the shifting locations where it was

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most intense. Consequently, this is not a study of the fur trade at a single

trading post. Nor is it a study of the Indians, although some information is

given on them. From the information on fur returns and their availability,

however, it is possible to assess the degree of involvement of Indians and

hence their dependence upon European goods. Rather, the study presents

an overview of the history of developments over a sixty year period.

Most of the evidence upon which the study is based comes from the

unpublished Archives of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Having read most

of these same materials some twenty years ago, I can say unhesitatingly

that Lytwyn has done a superb job. With the skill of a detective and a

much better understanding of the geography than I had, he has been able to

pinpoint the location of numerous rivers, lakes and temporary trading posts

many of which appeared to be impossible to locate. This is all the more

remarkable considering the general ignorance of geography two centuries

ago and the fact that present names of places are often different from the

ones originally given them by the fur traders. To assist the reader, twenty

seven maps (of the thirty-two figures in the text), some which are copies of

originals made by fur traders, are included. Lytwyn illustrates his methods

through a careful analysis of John Long’s published journals which contain

confusing and erroneous information. This example and numerous others

throughout the study illustrate Lytwyn’s method of using every available

scrap of evidence to trace the location of trading posts. By using a variety

of clues, such as travel time to and from places and accounts of voyages

that describe geographic features and local landmarks, Lytwyn is able to

follow the movements of traders to what were then perceived to be the

most productive fur areas. As events are followed, the focus increasingly

becomes the area just east of Lake Winnipeg. This was an extremely con-

fusing area and it is remarkable that so many of these short-lived posts can

be located at all. Nevertheless, despite the excellent sleuthing, areas once

bypassed receive little farther attention. Thus, rivalry in the Lake Nipigon

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area or near Osnaburgh are not mentioned once competing traders come

to occupy the region further west.

Materials are presented in chronological order, beginning with a

chapter that outlines the European fur trade from its origins to the fall

of New France. Interesting tidbits are given such as, James Sutherland’s

late eighteenth-century account of the remains of a French post, dating to

circa 1730 at Escabitchewan. After 1760 peddlers from Montreal quickly

gained control of the fur trade in the Little North, ending the Hudson’s

Bay Company’s short-lived monopoly. The Hudson’s Bay Company was

slow to respond partly because it lacked persons capable of settling inland.

When figures such as George Sutherland make exploratory forays into the

interior we gain some insight into their character. For instance, Sutherland

exhibited humour in the face of extreme deprivation. By the late 1780s the

Little North is dotted with competing trading stores belonging to either

the newly formed North West Company or the Hudson’s Bay Company.

Thereafter, the rivalry intensifies and comes to include still a third group,

the short-lived (1799-1804) XY Company. Key figures in the Hudson’s

Bay Company include James Sutherland, David Sanderson, John Best

and Robert Goodwin, and in the North West Company the tough but

gentlemanly little Scot, Duncan Cameron. By the end of the eighteenth

century most productive fur areas had been searched out and occupied. It

was at this time that rivalry was keenest. The final results of this desperate

struggle were evident long before the union of the two great companies

in 1821. As early as the 1790s traders were commenting that fur bearers,

especially beaver and other game, had become scarce through overhunt-

ing in some regions. As time passed and as the last pockets of game were

searched out and exploited, both companies were forced to tighten their

belts by reducing costs. This usually meant reducing personnel and trading

posts. The consequences for Indians were even graver. Lytwyn confirms

with additional data what I have described occurred in the Osnaburgh

House-Lac Seul area. The Indian population found it increasingly dif-

ficult to survive in an area depleted of key fur and game resources. Furs

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had become the main means of obtaining trade goods that were not mere

luxuries but basic necessities in meeting general subsistence needs. Life

became especially difficult after 1821 when there was a major reduction

in the number of posts and when new policies were introduced to improve

the trade. The most colorful and turbulent period in the history of the fur

trade was over: nothing like it would ever occur again. The “quiet years”

had begun.

While important changes did take place gradually over the next cen-

tury, the opinion of later writers unfamiliar with earlier events was that

the Little North was a backwater, an area bypassed by the main thrust of

the early fur trade. This is because most attention has been given to the

more sensational exploratory trips that made Canada a British possession.

This study makes it evident that the Little North had once been a hotly

contested area, one that had undergone considerable change to which

fur traders and Indians alike had been forced to accommodate. It is the

accommodation that creates the illusion of isolation.

In addition to the maps and tables, two appendices are provided. The

first lists the Hudson’s Bay Company posts and their managers between

1760 and 1821, while the second provides a yearly itinerary of HBC fur

returns at each post. It is unfortunate that comparable data do not exist

for North West Company posts. Finally, Lytwyn has provided an excel-

lent index which is especially useful in checking and cross-checking

information.

In sum, this is an excellent account of the fur trade in a still poorly

known area of Canada and at the same time a valuable reference source

for those interested in focussing on a particular settlement.

Charles A. Bishop

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Paul Driben. Aroland is Our Home: An Incomplete Victory in Applied

Anthropology. New York: AMS Press, 1986.

Land tenure has been, and continues to be, an important issue for many

Canadian Native communities. In the wake of the large-scale media and

academic attention which has focussed upon the claims being negotiated

in the North West Territories, or in James Bay, it is easy to forget that

there have been and continue to be questions of land tenure of a much

more modest nature. For the communities involved, their concerns for

permanent tenure are as vital as those represented by the more compre-

hensive claims.

Paul Driben, in the book Aroland is Our Home: An Incomplete Vic-

tory in Applied Anthropology, provides a description of the efforts of

the community of Aroland, an Ojibwa village in Northern Ontario, to

secure land tenure. Its tenure was complicated by a number of factors,

including the fact that the population was made up of both status and

non-status residents.

The book is an adaptation of a consulting report which Driben pre-

pared for the community to further their claim. It is composed of nine

chapters and an epilogue. These chapters are organized into four divisions.

Part one concerns the problems associated with obtaining tenure. Part two

presents a short history of the village, its demographic, social, economic

and political structure. Part three identifies the possible tenure options

available to Aroland, the potential ramification of each option and the

possible means to acquire tenure. The last part of the book is intended to

be, in the author’s words … “more personal than analytical, and hopefully

will provide some insight into what is involved when an anthropologist

tries to help a Native community obtain land” (p. xi).

Like many Canadian communities, Aroland emerged as a permanent set-

tlement as the result of historical happenstance rather than formal planning.

During the nineteenth-century, Ojibwa peoples engaged in the fur trade and

camped in the area that was later to become a permanent settlement. Established

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first as a part of the seasonal cycle, the camp later was to become a centre for a saw mill company’s operation and still later a residential area for people who worked elsewhere.

At the time of Driben’s involvement with the community it was con-sidered by the government to be an unorganized community on crown land or in the vernacular, a community of squatters. Their precarious legal position was of considerable concern to the community. They were aware that by the power vested in it, the government through the Public Land Act could evict the people within fifteen days, selling or destroying all building in the process (p. 12).

Concern about residency status apparently began to emerge in the late 1940s. Over time considerable discussion took place both within the community and with government officials. Three community referenda were held, two in the 1960s and one in 1974. Residents were presented with options and asked to decide which of several options they chose. Their choice of options was influenced by the mixed composition of the population: the village contained both status and non-status Indians. The manner in which leaders of the community chose to handle the issue is of particular interest to those communities facing similar issues.

Of central concern to the residents was to find an option which would not split the community. The mixed composition of the community meant that leaders had the doubly difficult job of negotiating with both federal and provincial bureaucracies.

Driben was requested by a government representative, who had been working with the community for two years, to meet with the residents and “explain what I could do to help” (p. 14). He agreed, with the provision that both he and the residents agreed that he could do the job. Research monies were obtained and during 1976 and 1977 Driben and local re-searchers collected data.

Driben’s analysis of the situation indicated to him that land ownership hinged on overcoming four problems: firstly, a lack of media attention in comparison with other groups, such as the Dene or the Nishga; secondly, lack of effective political control (that is lack of information about what the options available); and thirdly,

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legal problems which arise as a result of the mixed population of the com-munity. Since the residents were both status and non-status Indians, two levels of government were necessarily involved. The final problem lay with the provincial government and its regional plan. The government’s provincial plan for the economic development of northwestern Ontario specified that development take place only in areas that had already demonstrated a potential for growth. The Town of Nakena, twenty-five kilometers from Aroland, had already been identified as a centre for growth.

Eventually the community’s case was presented to government. The provincial government was asked to determine a value on the land. After nearly a year and considerable intergovernmental confusion, the land was assessed at approximately $160,000, not including the cost of survey. The people of Aroland were floored by the price and angry that they should have to pay anything for land which they felt they already owned. Negotiations ceased.

Seven years later, with the passage of Bill C-3 1, the political climate became more favorable for tenure negotiation. The people of Aroland applied for reinstatement of the non-status residents. The residents of Aroland became a band and negotiations for a reserve began.

That the final resolution of the land tenure question came about as a result of independent political processes is not to say that Driben’s strategy did not yield benefits for the community, because it did. The primary ben-efits, according to Driben, were increased political sophistication within Aroland and an increased public awareness of Aroland’s plight without. The issue which is never squarely faced, in an analytical sense, is that his applied anthropological strategy failed to achieve its real objective, the resolution of the land tenure issue.

In the first part of the book, Driben ties his activities into the applied anthropological mainstream by quoting Clifton’s (1970:vii) foreword concerning the interrelatedness of applied and “pure” research. He further distinguishes his applied role as “… not to become their champion but to provide the community and

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the government with the information they both needed to make a meaning-ful decision about the land” (p. xi). What is unfortunate from an academic point of view is not the role he selected but that he chose not to subject his strategy to careful analysis.

To borrow a line from its title, this book is an “incomplete victory in applied anthropology.” It lacks both a detailed analysis of the applied anthropological strategy employed, as well as discussion of the wider theoretical implication of the project.

This book is useful for its description of events but not as a contribu-tion to the literature on applied anthropology.

R. Bruce MorrisonREFERENCES Clifton, James A.1970 Applied Anthropology: Readings in the Uses of the Sci-

ences of Man. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co.

Paul C. Thistle. Indian-European Trade Relations in the Lower Saskatch-ewan River Region to 1840. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1986.

The intent of the author of this slim, narrowly focussed book is to explicate the history of cultural contact between the Western Woods Cree and traders for the Hudson’s Bay and other companies, in the delimited geographical region between Cumberland House and The Pas in Manitoba, between the mid-seventeenth and midnineteenth centuries. An adaptation of a Master’s thesis, this work is a valuable case study for those interested more generally in the fur trade in the North American subarctic as well as in how ethnohistorical methodology can illuminate cultural processes. Thistle’s particular brand of ethnohistory depends almost exclusively on documentary sources—and heavily on the archives of the Hudson’s Bay Company—and is informed by anthropological approaches to economic exchange and mercantilism.

The book consists of four chapters. The first two discuss the period of “early contact” from 1611 to 1773, the third the

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“competitive fur trade era” from 1774 to 182Q and the last the first two

decades of the period of trading company monopoly. In 1840, the date

which marks the conclusion of the analysis, Church Missionary Society

missionaries arrived. Thistle argues that throughout this 200-year period,

the Western Woods Cree were not significantly affected by the trade and

did not become dependent upon it. Indeed, to some extent, Thistle states,

the Europeans who sought to extend their mercantilistic enterprises over

the Indians—and who in most instances eventually succeeded in do-

ing so—themselves became dependent on Indian provisioners, guides,

canoe-makers, interpreters, and trappers, who provided the rationale for

the exchange. In arguing thusly, Thistle joins many other scholars who,

over the past twenty years, have called for more balanced assessments of

Indian roles in the history of European-Indian interactions. He also adds

his voice to those who have argued recently, against received wisdom,

that subarctic Indian cultures did not all suddenly undergo substantial

structural change when European fur-traders arrived and that Indians did

not all automatically and rapidly become dependent or forget how to use

(or make) traditional technology.

So much for the general thesis, with which I have no substantial

disagreement, and if Thistle had stopped here, this review would have

been nothing but complimentary. However, Thistle often overstates his

case in this book. He throws caution to the wind and risks losing sight

of the complexity and substantial variation within any single population

of Indian reactions to the trade (although at least twice he acknowledges

the dangers of overgeneralization). In the chapters on early contact, for

example, Thistle, following Cornelius Jaenen in part, contends that the

Western Woods Cree did not assume that Europeans were superior be-

ings; that alliance, reciprocity, and partnership were important aspects

of trade relationships; that dependency must be clearly defined; that a

heightened value of goods traded need not necessarily indicate heightened

dependence; that certain statements regarding “cultural amnesia”—not

using a bow and arrow for example—should be examined critically; and

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that we must attempt to understand (as Mary Black-Rogers has in a recent

analysis in Ethnohistory) the rhetoric of trade language.

While these are all admirable points to argue and develop, in these

same chapters, Thistle also shows some inconsistency and confusion.

He confuses, for instance, the trade of provisions at the post and subse-

quent dependent requests for provisions by starving Indians, who were

not necessarily the same in both cases, with reciprocal and symbiotic

understandings. Furthermore, Thistle accounts for the attack in 1712 on

Jeremie’s men by finding the latter guilty of failing to share food, without

considering critically other cases where lack of sharing at posts did not

lead to bloodshed. He argues for Cree independence, and while there

may have been independence from the Hudson’s Bay Company, both the

degree of dependence on (or independence from) the French, and there-

fore the total degree of dependence, are difficult to ascertain. Thistle also

argues that because middlemen were not trapping, they were independent,

which seems to beg the question of how much these people were caught

up in and affected by the trade. Dependence needs to be defined closely,

to be set against interdependence rather than independence, and to be

distinguished conceptually from dependency (I would argue). Thistle

also draws a distinction between what he calls “core” society and culture

that is quite confusing and uses terms like “significant” and “minimal

adjustments” without precision. Finally, he seems not to consider seri-

ously the considerable gulf between the Home Guard and the hinterland

or upland—sometimes, “backwash”—Cree, or between various groups

of Chipewyans in a brief discussion of these Athapaskan people.

The third chapter, which focuses on the “competitive fur trade era”—a

bit misleading because there had also been competition in the early fur

trade era—discusses interethnic relations during the last quarter of the

eighteenth century and the first two decades of the nineteenth. During this

period, Crees were aggressive, demanded tribute, transported goods—sug-

gesting a deep involvement in the trade—constructed canoes, demanded

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alcohol and higher prices for their labour, played English off against

Canadians, incorporated Iroquois and Freemen into their territory and

society, and died from a variety of introduced diseases. Thistle argues

unconvincingly in this chapter for continued independence or, at the most,

for a “symbiotic” relationship—even going so far as to say that because

Cree may not have regarded the dole of food in time of starvation as a

dependent act, it was not. It seems clear, however, that because of the

presence of the trade, many Crees died, some became totally dependent on

food supplied at the post when starving, and some altered their lifestyles

to maximize participation in trade-related activities; some also, one can

fully admit, remained aloof.

The last chapter is on the first twenty years of the monopoly that

resulted from the amalgamation of the Hudson’s Bay and North West

companies. During this period, Crees received nets, ammunition, potatoes

and fish, barley, and other goods; beaver populations became depleted;

and, according to Thistle, the Cree of this region continued to have sym-

biotic relationships with Whites. Crees responded to the trade, he says,

by a “principle of least effort’ strategy” and followed “Zen road to afflu-

ence” philosophy (simply put, desires are limited as is the expenditure

of energy), ideas initially made popular by Marshall Sahlins but repeated

here ad nauseam.

Although critical of this work, I have also tried to be constructive.

Although I dispute some of Thistle’s particular attempts to support his

thesis, I do not argue with the general importance of that thesis. As a

result of the trade, both dependence and interdependence, symbiosis

and parasitism eventually developed. While it is important to generalize

about the trade, we ought to eschew simple explanations, whether they

focus on dependence, interdependence, or any other single factor. This

is a thought-provoking book, a serious attempt to construct an ethnohis-

tory of the Western Woods Cree of this region over a 200-year period. It

deserves to be read.

Shepard Krech III

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Peter C. Newman: Caesars of the Wilderness. Markham: Viking, Penguin

Books Canada Ltd., 1987. 450 pages.

Amidst considerable promotional hype and media coverage Penguin

Books has published Caesars of the Wilderness, volume two of Peter C.

Newman’s trilogy on the history of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Company

of Adventurers, the first volume of the series, covered the years from the

founding of the Company in 1670 to the formation of the rival North West

Company in 1783. Caesars begins in the period of fur trade competition,

moves through the era of consolidation and monopoly in the nineteenth

century, and ends with the sale of Rupertsland to Canada in 1869 and the

displacement of the fur trade by agricultural settlement.

Undaunted by the criticism of Company of Adventurers by fur trade

scholars, Native organizations and others across Canada, Newman has

continued his quest to “re-create the interplay of feisty characters and

remarkable circumstances that shaped the story of the Hudson’s Bay

Company during the middle century of is existence” (p. xii). An ambitious

undertaking, but what is the result? Ironically, Caesars of the Wilderness

and its highblown claims to “unroll a new map of the Canadian past for

contemporary readers” and to “extract live metaphors from the Dead Sea

Scrolls of Canadian history” (p. xii), degenerates into a badly flawed,

Eurocentric jumble of tired old cliches and stereotypes, factual inaccura-

cies and outdated interpretations. Eschewing any real primary research

(only a handful of the book’s endnotes refer to documentary sources)

Newman relies instead upon secondary works that are often outdated,

inaccurate or both. Like its predecessor, Caesars of the Wilderness largely

ignores the fur trade scholarship of the last fifteen years in favour of the

interpretations found in the works of an older generation of historians such

as Frederick Merk, John Gray, Grace Lee Nute and Douglas MacKay,

or in the anecdotal accounts of Grant MacEwen, Douglas Francis and

Frank Rasky.

Newman’s eclectic use of sources gets him into trouble

throughout the text. His account of the Battle of Seven Oaks, for

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example, repeats many of the traditional and racist interpretations of that

affair and characterizes the Metis as savage “marauders” (p. 173) and

“dupes of the North West Company [who] joyfully pulled the trigger” (p.

175) on the hapless but courageous settlers. A thoughtful and balanced

analysis of the battle is sacrificed in favour of vivid images of question-

able accuracy. According to Newman “the bodies of the dead [settlers]

were stripped and dismembered in an orgy of mutilation” (p. 175). The

fact that this version of events, as recorded in the biased accounts of the

Selkirk apologists, has been seriously questioned by Red River scholars

does not damper this author’s enthusiasm for his portrayal of the Metis

as bloodthirsty barbarians. In a long footnote on page 175 Newman even

relates Alexander Ross’ account of how many of the Metis combatants at

Seven Oaks were to meet violent deaths. More than just “strange coin-

cidence” this story betrays Newman’s satisfaction that in an odd sort of

way justice prevails and evil people are eventually punished.

On a broader scale, the difference between the Hudson’s Bay Com-

pany and the rival Nor’Westers are exaggerated by Newman to almost

the point of absurdity. In love with images of power he trots out many

of the old cliches, describing the Montreal-based Nor’Westers as the

“rampaging free enterprisers of the North American frontier” (p. xvii).

The Baymen, on the other hand, are “sober, persistent [and] concerned

with their own rightness” (p. 202). These are merely stereotypical, if

comfortable, images that provide no real insight into the personalities of

the fur trade or the way in which commerce actually evolved over nearly

a half-century of competition. Romantic images of corporate Darwinism

are used by the author to explain the collective identity of Canadians.

For example, Newman states in Caesars of the Wilderness that there can

be little doubt that “the North West Company was the forerunner of Ca-

nadian Confederation” (pp. 5-6). In Company of Adventurers, however,

this same claim was made for the Hudson’s Bay Company which, he

says, “determined the country’s political and physical shape, endowing

,the new nationality with a mentality that endures to this day” (p. 2). In

Newman’s rush for cliches to describe and define the nature of the Cana-

158


dian psyche (bureaucratic like the Baymen, proud and independent like the

Nor,Westers) consistency, it seems, is simply tossed out the window.

As with volume one, Newman continues his negative characterization

of the Indians, role in the fur trade, likening them to an “offstage Greek

chorus” in the unfolding drama of commercial conquest. Caesars of the

Wilderness is about “virile” white heroes, stock characters who by virtue

of their heroic deeds, triumph over all adversity. Native people, on the

other hand, play no part in the conduct of the trade and are treated as little

more than willing victims of exploitation. The existence of viable Native

cultures is given no real representation in this history of the fur trade.

In fact, Indians are presented as little more than barbaric oddities who,

when they are not providing a silent and sometimes sinister backdrop to

the adventures of intrepid traders and explorers, are being “debauched”

by alcohol. In his chapter entitled “Howling with the Wolves” Newman

declares that the liquor trade in the West, “decimated Indian culture” (p.

113) and “amounted to the anaesthetizing of the First Nations” (p. 115).

Lurid passages detail the various depredations performed by “drunken

Indians” who commit (according to the trader Daniel Harmon) “a thou-

sand abominations” (p. 114). Isolated and inflammatory quotes from a

handful of observers are used to reinforce the stereotype of the Native as

unwilling and unable to resist the temptations of alcohol. Accompanying

this discussion on the effects of liquor is an appallingly racist nineteenth

century American illustration depicting drunken plains Indians on their

hands and knees lapping up whiskey which has spilled from broken kegs.

Newman makes no attempt to analyze or critique this depiction, or to place

it within its historical context; he entitles the drawing simply “Liquor in

the fur trade” (p. 108).

The image of Native people in this book is more sinister than

their portrayal as simply passive victims, however. A survey of

the adjectives and modifiers used throughout the text to describe

Indians indicates a much deeper stereotyping, especially when

159


these are contrasted with the terminology used to characterize European

traders and explorers.

First let’s deal with Europeans. Newman’s white male heroes are

invariably described as “virile,” “proud” or “determined.” For instance,

Alexander MacKenzie (or “Big Mack” as Newman refers to him) is de-

scribed as a “legitimate Canadian hero [with] a sensitive, almost pious,

face” (p. 56). He is possessed of “virility and physical prowess [and] a mul-

ish intelligence” which enables him to engage in “superhuman struggles”

(p. 47). Dr. John McLoughlin, the former North West Company partner

who later became head of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Columbia De-

partment, is called “a born again Elijah. His stern jaw, the disciplined set

of his face and eyes, his grace of movement and careful speech,” writes

Newman, “all lent his presence natural authority” (p. 285). Where Simon

Fraser is “heroic” (p. 81), George Simpson is “masterly” and “charismatic”

(p. 221). Colin Robertson, the Company’s agent in Red River during the

early conflicts with the Nor’Westers, is described as the “Don Quixote of

the Fur Country” (p. 171), “proud and combative” (p. 134) and “six feet

tall and not afraid of any man’s shadow” (p. 171). James Douglas has

“glacial tenacity” and an “enduring romanticism.” At Cowichan on the

west coast, writes Newman, Douglas “sat stock-still on a campstool for

most of a day, staring down two hundred armed and angry Indians” (p.

301). In the pages devoted to Lord Selkirk we discover that the Earl was

a “benevolent King” with “compassion and affinity for the land” (p. 138).

Possessed of “relentless determination” (p. 138), he “recruited himself as

an agent of destiny, determined to alter the course of history” (p. 137).

The heroic imagery continues. When on one occasion Chief Factor John

Rowand was confronted by “two hundred Blackfoot clearly on the warpath

he marched up to the chief and roared, ‘Stop, you villains’-then turned

his back and resumed his meal. Recognizing his opponent, the chief not

only called off the raiding party but was so abject in his apologies that …

many of the Indians ‘actually cried with vexation”’ (p. 240).

160


Contrast this type of positive, if romantic, imagery with the nega-

tive terminology reserved for Native people. On page 65 he tells us of “a

fierce tribe of Indian middlemen.” Two pages later we have a group of

“hostile natives whose chief menacingly recounted a mysterious tale.”

Describing the violence between Gros Ventres and traders along the South

Saskatchewan, Newman relates how the “menacing” Indians, “eager for

combat” “slaughtered” three of the resident traders and “unceremoniously

butchered” the local inhabitants. One of the fur traders who witnessed

the “conflagration” managed to reach safety with his “grisly report” (p.

119). Elsewhere, we have the “cowed Dogrib” (p. 61), the “rampaging

Blackfeet” (p. 276) and the “volatile Nez Perces” (p. 289). The “rampag-

ing” and “hooting” Metis riding “wild-eyed horses” and “marauders”

who at Seven Oaks precipitated an “orgy of mutilation” (p. 170). And in

one remarkable passage we learn that North West Company traders in

the West “left behind a legacy of alcoholism, syphilis [and] Mixed Blood

babies” (p. 5), leaving us to presume that, for this author at least, all three

are of equal consequence.

The above examples of negative stereotyping (and there are many

others) are not isolated or unrepresentative of Newman’s perception of

Native people. Time after time the author’s terminology betrays his view

of Indians and Metis as savage, barbaric and treacherous. Sadly, at a time

when historians are re-examining and discrediting many of the old ideas

and paradigms concerning Native North Americans, Peter Newman has

chosen to not only ignore the important role of Indians in Western Cana-

dian history, but has reproduced some of the worst cultural stereotypes

to be found in the traditional literature.

If the author feels that he is not bound by any of the newer interpreta-

tions, it is because he considers himself to be a “popular” historian who

has imbued the story of the Hudson Bay Company “with the bounce and

bravado [it] deserves” (p. xii). But whether he calls himself a popular his-

torian or a journalist, Newman writes about the past and presents a version

of events that obliges us to approach his work as critically as we would any

161


other. A close examination of Caesars of the Wilderness reveals more than

simply “a colourful, twisty yarn” (p. xii). Cardboard characterizations,

simplistic, cliche-ridden interpretation and hard-edged stereotyping make

this a nasty little book indeed.

Robert Coutts

Book Reviews and Review EssaysJulia D. Harrison et al. The Spirit Sings.Victor P. Lytwyn. The Fur Trade of the Little North Indians, Peddlers, and Englishmen East of Lake WPaul Driben. Aroland is Our Home: An Incomplete Victory in Applied Anthropology.Paul C. Thistle. Indian-European Trade Relations in the Lower Saskatchewan River Region to 1840. Peter C. Newman: Caesars of the Wilderness.

BOOK REVIEWS AND REVIEW ESSAYS - publications ...publications.usask.ca/nativestudiesreview/reviews/03-2...139 NATIVE STUDIES REVIEW 3, No. 2 (1987). BOOK REVIEWS AND REVIEW ESSAYS

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