Did they go native? Representations of first encounters and personal interrelations with First Nations Canadians in the writings of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill

Abstract

Between 1836 and 1852, Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill, two British gentlewomen who had emigrated to Canada, published accounts of their lives in the backwoods of Canada for a British audience. Descriptions of their encounters with their Native neighbours, more particularly women, are prominent in their texts. A gradual sense of intimacy permeates the writings, battling with the prejudices of the times. I propose to read Traill’s main work, The Backwoods of Canada, her 1848 sketch, “A Visit to the Camp of the Chippewa Indians”, and Susanna Moodie’s Roughing it in the Bush as emblematic of the “discourses of difference” that Sara Mills identifies in nineteenth century texts by female travel writers. I would like to suggest that Moodie and Traill, in their own way, “went native”. Echoes with later texts such as Canadian Crusoes and Pearls and Pebbles will also be traced to show how the texts admit to an Indian presence that is more than merely exotic, and allow the voice of the First Nations Canadians to be heard, albeit on a small scale. Simultaneously, the texts also inscribe their empowerment.

In 1832, Catharine Parr Traill and her sister Susanna Moodie left England for the colony of Upper Canada where their husbands, both half pay officers, were entitled to claim land. By 1834 both families were living on the banks of Lake Katchewanook, north of Peterborough, in present day Ontario. Both women were professional writers before they emigrated. By 1831, Catharine Parr Traill had published books for children (Gray, 1999: 24; Peterman, 2007: 31) including The Young Emigrants; or Pictures of Canada (1826) as well as poems and stories (James, 2003: 18). Susanna Moodie had had many poems and stories published in magazines before her book of poems was published in 1831. ¹ It was only natural that both women would record their impressions from their first sight of Canada to their experience in the backwoods in letters, journals or sketches, and would try to get them published. As James explains (2003: 19), Traill drew from her journals and the drafts of letters she had sent her family during her first year of living in the bush to compose The Backwoods of Canada, which was published in London in 1836. “A Visit to the Camp of the Chippewa Indians”, which was intended to be published in a sequel to The Backwoods, was published in Sharpe’s London Magazine in 1848. Moodie’s Roughing in the Bush was published in London in 1852, twelve years after the Moodies had left their home in the bush and some seventeen years after the publication of The Backwoods of Canada. Both sisters were looking for subjects that might appeal to their British audience who were keen on anecdotes from the New World, ² and to some extent, they were competing with each other as reporters from this New World. Roughing it in the Bush, The Backwoods of Canada and “A Visit to the Camp of the Chippewa Indians” recount the sisters’ encounters with Native peoples, as these subjects were expected from those who went to the Americas. Their accounts of these encounters were very stereotypical at first, yet, as Carole Gerson (1997) has demonstrated, they eventually came to articulate a more personal vision. Later texts by Traill such as Canadian Crusoes (1852) and Pearls and Pebbles (1894) confirm this. Both Moodie and Traill came into contact with Chippewa families who set up their winter encampment across the lake from both their homes. Although she had to leave her log-house in the backwoods, Traill remained in the Lake Rice–Lakefield area, and she repeatedly mentions her Indian “friends” in her 1894 memoirs, Pearls and Pebbles. Moodie’s connection with Native people was not as sustained as Traill’s since she left the bush for the town of Belleville in 1840, and her anecdotes are gathered in one chapter, independently of their chronology. In Discourses of Difference, Sara Mills argues that tension characterized many nineteenth–century female travellers’ texts which came to “demand a recognition of the importance of interaction” with the Native people they met (Mills, 1991: 99). I would like to reclaim Mill’s phrase in a slightly different way to describe the way Traill’s and Moodie’s “more personalised form of writing” (Mills, 1991: 99). This writing, fraught with tension, at once reflected the women’s own empowerment and inscribed the presence of First Nations Canadians in the “contact zone” (Pratt, 1992) of the Canadian backwoods.

As Janet Giltrow argues (1981: 133), the influence of travel writings ³ is key to understanding Moodie’s stance, while Traill’s “enthusiastic engagement with the topos of travel” in The Backwoods has been demonstrated by James (2003: 97–118). Even before they left home the sisters’ imaginations, like those of their contemporaries, were filled with images of the Indians. When they arrived, Upper Canada was already a topos, a set of references, and the Indians a construction, drawn from books, paintings, or travellers’ accounts. Moodie’s first encounter with her Chippewa neighbours results in disappointment (1995: 298). ⁴ Gerson has shown the influence of poetry in the sisters’ vision and representation of the figure of the noble savage (1997: 5) — a vision that had long been circulating in Europe, as documented by Hugh Honour in The New Golden Land (1975: 54–83; 117–37; 219–47). Moodie’s praise of her Native friend Susan shows her vision was also inherited from the visual arts since she imagines that “Sir Joshua Reynolds ⁵ would have rejoiced in such a model” (1995: 314).

Moodie and Traill were bound to contribute to what Catherine Hall calls the “imaginative products of the colonial encounter” (Hall, 1998: 180). Moodie’s description of the men of the Chippewa tribe reflects the period’s interests in the new theories of physiognomy, phrenology, and anthropology (1995: 298–9). As Grewal (1996: 27) underscores, physiognomy is “a discourse of knowledge as power” and Moodie’s description shows she believes she has the power and knowledge to scan and interpret the face of the other, from her superior position as the white observer. As several of her letters show, Moodie was a firm believer in the popular pseudoscience of phrenology. ⁶ She attempts to recognize the Indians’ faculties thanks to her reading of their facial features, but she only “sees” the traits that confirm what she already “knows”. They all concur to the stereotype of the savage (the jaw-bone is “projective, massy, and brutal”, the mouth expresses “ferocity” [1995: 298–9]) whose gifts for observation preclude reasoning capacity: “the forehead is low and retreating, the observing faculties large, the intellectual ones scarcely developed”. What is at stake is a process of “othering” as Moodie reproduces a stereotype that she, as a settler’s wife, needs to believe in. In this description, as in other contemporary texts, the Indian she claims to describe is “visible as a generalization but […] invisible as an individual human being” (Gerson, 1997: 7). In Imperial Eyes, Mary Louise Pratt argues that “othering” and the production of native people as “subjects” in travellers’ accounts are achieved through language choices such as “they” and “he” (1992: 64). Traill’s repeated use of the phrase “these singular people” (1997: 153) ⁷ shows she found it difficult to challenge the construction of a singular Other.

Their first accounts of contact with Native women also emphasize cultural differences and misunderstanding. Traill recounts how difficult it is for her to understand them without an interpreter, citing a woman who came to borrow her washing tub (1997: 117). Moodie concludes her scene of misunderstanding (she does not understand what a woman wants in payment for a basket) on a comic note as both women fight over Moodie’s husband’s trousers (1995: 303). The scene is vintage Moodie, but also reveals the influence of travel writing: Moodie constructs her persona in much the same way as Mungo Park did in his Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa (1799), ⁸ as the object of the other’s gaze and curiosity, a victim, almost, of her enterprising curiosity when the woman lifts her gown to point to Moodie’s petticoat (1995: 303). The sisters adopted the stance of the traveller, and their accounts are indeed typical scenes of the “contact zone”, a social space “where disparate cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination” (Pratt, 1992: 4).

However, although generalized statements pepper their narratives, each sister may focus on traits to which they can relate. For instance, Moodie’s comment on the Indians’ “intense admiration for the beauties of nature” (1995: 319) probably departs from the stereotype since this was a trait she could recognize and value, as the depiction of the canoe trip to Stony Lake shows (350–8). The sisters’ narratives gradually show an interest in their neighbours as individuals, which according to Sara Mills, was typical of nineteenth– century female travel writers who “concentrated on relationships with members of the other nation, foregrounding their individuality, rather than membership in another nation” (1991: 97).

Gradually, a sense of intimacy permeates their narratives, and as Gerson has shown (1997: 12), the fact that the sisters refer to the Natives by their names ⁹ plays a key role. Native children, who were at first an object of curiosity (both Traill and Moodie refer to them as “papouse”, often with the modifier “brown”, clearly marking distance as well as providing exotica), become individuals in their own rights as they too are called by their names. Traill and Moodie also take pains to explain their neighbours’ connections such as father and son, husband and wife, sister, or cousin (Moodie, 1995: 302; Traill, 1997: 155; 1981: 33). ¹⁰ With these explanations the Natives are both identified as individuals and as part of a family, which is of central importance to a Native view of the world although the sisters may not have known this. In their accounts of visits to the Indian encampment or visits by their Indian friends, both women mention their own families: Traill mentions taking her son with her, Moodie often mentions her husband (304) and both women mention their brother, ¹¹ insisting on his friendship with the Natives. They explain that he was given the name “Chippewa” (the name of the tribe), as a token of affection (Moodie, 1995: 315; Traill, 1997: 117; 153) In his sisters’ narratives, Strickland is far more than a go-between. In the wigwam scene, Traill refers to him as “Chippewa” (156) using both inverted commas and italics. They draw attention to the word, and to Strickland’s changed nature — he is no longer just a white settler as he is endowed with this hybrid identity.

Identifying Indian families, commenting on their affections for their children (Moodie, 1995: 306; Traill, 1997: 120; 157; 207), Traill and Moodie implicitly admit to the fact that their Indian friends are more like them than they had first suggested. Although motherhood often turns into maternalism in Traill’s prose (James, 2003: 152–3), it is also a point of connection between the two groups, and ultimately a point of resemblance. One scene in “A Visit to the Camp” epitomizes the ambivalence as Traill describes herself benevolently looking at an Indian mother disciplining a child — she passes judgement but responds to the scene as a mother (1981: 37). Traill’s response to her neighbours’ Christian faith is also striking. The families had been converted, probably by Methodist ministers near Rice Lake (Peterman, 2007: 83). Maternalism is apparent when Traill mentions “the simplicity and fervour of their hearts” and states that she is pleased with Peter’s wife’s “simple piety” (1997: 119). As James demonstrates, Traill’s depiction of Peter’s wife is striking since the “stout matron”, who is also given childish qualities and embodies Traill’s ideal of feminine behaviour, is then depicted as a Native Virgin Mother with child (James, 2003: 159), which bridges the distance between them. However, Traill later refers to Peter’s wife as “squaw Peter” (155), once more marking distance. The description of a visit to the Indian camp by the Strickland–Traill family offers yet another instance of tensions within her discourse. She underlines both contrast and friendship as she describes the “motley group of the dark skins and the pale faces”, noting that the “swarthy complexions” and “singular costume” form “a striking contrast with the fair-faced Europeans” (155). Traill’s various remarks on her pleasure at listening to the Natives singing hymns suggest that her friends’ faith helped forge bonds and overcome racial divide (157). In the wigwam scene, she offers a symbol of communion as the white visitors and the Indian elders listen together to the Indian children singing the hymns. Although they are sung in the Indian tongue, which “adds a safely exotic quality to their performance” (James, 2003: 164), Traill’s choice of words suggest that their faith had more than just charm for her, it touched her: “a melody that thrilled to our very heart” (157; emphasis added).

For her part, Moodie gives the lie to her generalized statement that “Indians never forget a kindness” (200) by focusing on the personal: “John Nogan, who was much attached to us, would bring a fine bunch of ducks” (200). The hero of the anecdote is a male Native friend who helped them when the Moodies had neither food nor money. Interestingly, Moodie admits that John Nogan had feelings of affection for them and felt their shame: he leaves the food on the doorstep “thinking that receiving a present from a poor Indian might hurt our feelings” (200).

However, as Gerson has shown (1997: 5), Roughing it in the Bush, The Backwoods of Canada, and “A Visit to the Camp of the Chippewa Indians” all underline the importance of woman to woman engagement and highlight the possibility for the women to overcome language barriers. In the wigwam, the women often sit together — including, on the Indian women’s invitation, on the same blanket (Traill, 1997: 155; 207) — suggesting that inside the wigwam, gender relationships are more important than race differences. Moodie openly acknowledges feelings of affection for Susan, who “attracted [her] attention and sympathy” (1995: 312). Although she praises Susan’s beauty in conventional terms (as a model a painter would have rejoiced in), her comments on her “loving” eyes, which are full of “sensibility” (312), show that she sees that the girl can feel affection for and be touched by the stranger. She shows her belief in wordless communication when she writes “a hearty feeling of good will sprang up between us” (312) or “a smile of recognition passed between us” (314).

Strikingly, the sisters seemed to have no hesitation in mentioning feelings of affection or in depicting scenes of intimacy and physical contact, as when Traill describes how Anne Muskrat fell asleep on her lap (1981: 38) or when Moodie mentions being kissed by an old woman (1995: 309). Margaret Rubik argues that many early women travellers seemed to have had fewer problems than men accepting physical nearness or were less restrained by taboos when describing it, while shying away from touch was a recurring motif in male travel narratives (Rubik, 2008: 44). In her essay on touching, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick argues that touching helps to reach out and understand other people: “to touch is already to reach out, to fondle […] or to enfold” (2003: 14). Touching, she points out, refers to both tactile and emotional perceptions (2003: 17). In the sisters’ accounts, physical contact and emotion are often to be found together. For instance in the chapter entitled “Adieu to the Woods”, Moodie mentions being kissed by Native women and she highlights shared emotions: “the squaws kissed me and the little ones with tearful eyes […] and I returned their mute farewell from my very heart” (1995: 506). In Pearls and Pebbles, Traill recalls her Native friends’ letters with affection: “I like the words they close their letters with / I kiss you in my heart” (1999: 135). ¹² Here, virtual physical touch is associated with Traill’s frank admission of liking these tokens of affection. Traill’s and Moodie’s writings eventually came to foreground what can be termed an ethics of touch ¹³ as both women frankly admit to being touched, emotionally and physically, by Native women.

In Pearls and Pebbles Traill’s mention of the presents she has received does not only serve as a symbol of friendship, but is presented as a symbol of the knowledge she has gained: “these little offerings are very sweet to me. They are genuine tokens of simple gratitude and affection, and for which I never offer any payment, knowing it would be at once rejected” (1999: 128). The writings of Moodie and Traill suggest that their relationships with their Native neighbours influenced them as they reveal a change in their visions.

With the term “contact zone”, Pratt aims to “foreground the interactive, improvisational dimensions of colonial encounters” (1992: 7), taking into account how subjects (colonizer and colonized) are “constituted in and by their relations to each other” (1992: 7). Moodie’s and Traill’s texts, which were supposed to be informative about “Indians” and provide their British audience with exotic anecdotes, actually reveal how the sisters were also influenced by these encounters. Their texts admit to an Indian presence that is more than merely exotic. This was achieved through Traill’s passion for Native plants and Moodie’s romantic taste for the poetical. Their interest also resulted in their empowerment. This is how I would like to reclaim Mills’ concept of “going native”, which she uses to describe the way female travel writers seemed to be positioned “not only in alignment with imperial discourse but also affiliated to the Natives” (Mills, 1991: 99). Moodie and Traill gave meaning and value to Indian knowledge, which they either attempted to imitate or pass on. Through their interest in technology, language, or plants, a vision of the backwoods as a liminal space emerges: the co-existence of “knowledges” is suggested.

Referring to themselves as gentlewomen and writing in the context of the Empire where “gender roles were polarized” (Mills, 1991: 36; 2005: 55), the Strickland sisters were also writing within the constraints of the “discourses of femininity” (Mills, 1991). In her preface to The Backwoods and in the subtitle, “The domestic economy of British America”, Traill underlines her domestic role. She then dismisses her interest in botany as a “passion for flowers” (1997: 87). In “Knowledge, Gender, and Empire”, Mills notes that women travel writers “often produced knowledge within their texts of a very particular and safe feminine type such as information about flowers and butterflies” (1994: 41). Traill had been introduced to botany by her father but she claims that she has not properly studied botany (1997: 68) and laments her “scanty stock of knowledge” (168). However, in Pearls and Pebbles she cites naturalists such as Malpighi and Jussieu, whom she quotes (1999: 120), which suggests she had more knowledge than she admitted to. As James has convincingly argued, Traill was an “amateur” botanist in the original sense of the word. Although Traill lacked formal qualifications, her readings and knowledge enabled her to observe her environment carefully and write confidently about it (James, 2003: 192–3). In The Backwoods, Traill identifies plants and flowers with the help of Pursh’s North American Flora (1814) and her identifications reveal she had reasonable knowledge of the classificatory system (1997: 168). When she finds plants she cannot identify, Traill proposes to name them herself (88; 104), a gesture that Margaret and Neil Steffler read as a departure from “established systems and conventions” (2004: 145), supposing she abandoned the Linnean system. However, by referring to the woods as “the unsettled portions of the country” (87–8; emphasis added) and calling the plants “nameless” (88; emphasis added), Traill suggests she first sees Canada as a terra nullius waiting for European order. As Pratt has shown (1992: 15–37), there is no such thing as an innocent description if the identification relies on a European-based system of classification. In other words, Traill’s first descriptions produce a vision of the colonized country as a storehouse of Native flora waiting for the civilizing ordering of the narrator’s European science.

However, Traill soon takes pains to give the local names as well as the Latin names and order: “there is a plant in our woods, known by the names of man-drake, may-apple, and duck’s-foot: the botanical name of the plant is Podophyllum; it belongs to the class and order Polyandria monogynia” (1989 ed.: 202). Through her references, the local voice is heard, including the Native voice: “the blood-root, sanguinaria, or puccoon, as it is termed by some of the native tribes” (175; emphasis added). Traill will also frequently display indigenous knowledge of the virtues of the plants: “this juice is used by the Indians as a dye, and also in the cure of rheumatic, and cutaneous complaints” (1997: 175); “The Indians use the root as a medicine and also as an esculent” (174). Moodie, who does not demonstrate much interest in plants, nevertheless notes that the Natives “are very skilful in their treatment of wounds, and many diseases” (1995: 320). Her next words are even more striking, turning skills into knowledge and seeing the Indians as Natives: “their knowledge of the medicinal qualities of their plants and herbs is very great” (320; emphasis added). Moodie’s remark that the taste of one Indian remedy reminded her of quinine (321) is meant to suggest she speaks from experience, but this also reveals the extent of her adaptation to her surroundings.

Although the women’s remarks could be dismissed as unscientific feminine titbits, they eventually produce a different picture of the colony as they inscribe the plants within their native context and also prove the existence (and worth) of indigenous knowledge.

In this respect they can be said to “go native”. Boyd has argued that Moodie’s and Traill’s gardens are “permeable” gardens (2009: 52) that reflect the sisters’ adaptation to their surroundings. Following Boyd’s interesting comments on the sisters’ “accommodating vision” (2009: 51) and the “hybridization” of their gardens (2002: 49), I would like to suggest that Traill’s discourse on Native plants is also a moment when her text becomes a “hybrid” text, in Homi Bhabha’s reading. In Traill’s discourse on plants, languages and knowledges coexist, resulting in “a moment in which the discourse of colonial authority loses its unequivocal grip on meaning and finds itself open to the trace of the language of the other” (Young, 1995, 22). In Bhabha’s interpretation, such moments define hybridity in the colonial discourse, as “other ‘denied’ knowledges enter the dominant discourse and estrange the basis of its authority” (Bhabha, 1994: 162).

Traill’s “feminine” voice is slightly undermining the imperial discourse she supports as she questions binary oppositions between European knowledge and supposedly Native ignorance and challenges colonial discourse. In Pearls and Pebbles, Traill reveals interest in the beauty and meaning of the Native names, criticizing the European system in the same breath: “How much prettier is the Indian name for Spring Beauty, ‘Mis-ko-deed’, than the unmeaning Botanical one of Claytonia Virginica” (1999: 104; emphasis added). One passage in The Canadian Settler’s Guide (1855) presents Native knowledge on a par with the science of botany as she explains that some wild berries should only be “ventured upon by any but the natives, and botanists” (1969: 73). ¹⁴ In Traill’s representation of the Canadian woods, the wilderness becomes a “liminal space”, a “connective tissue” (Bhabha, 1994: 5) whose representation articulates contact between settlers and Natives. Traill often mentions Native knowledge of plants and settlers’ skills in the same breath, both in The Backwoods (174) or in the Guide, proposing that settlers who are skilled in the use of native plants may have obtained their knowledge from the Indians (207).

In Pearls and Pebbles, Traill cites and translates the Indian name that was given to her, using dashes to give an idea of its pronunciation: “Peta-wan-noo-ka, ‘red clouds of the dawn’” (1999: 104–5). In the same passage, she gives and translates Indian names of plants, rivers and lakes, suggesting that although they may not sound pleasing to “foreign ears” (102), they have both meaning and historical relevance as they “contain the germ of local […] history” (102–3). Not only does she inscribe an Indian presence onto the land, but her use of the adjective “foreign” to refer to new emigrants aligns her with the Natives and the settlers. Concluding the passage by wishing that the names and meanings could be better understood and by lamenting that too many of the Indian names have been replaced by European ones (105), she simultaneously inscribes Indian presence onto the Canadian land and testifies to its disappearance.

Moodie often expresses her interest in Indian names. Although her knowledge of the language is, by her own account, limited, she is clearly interested in the evocative power and relevance of Indian words. In “A Trip to Stony Lake”, which is narrated in a very Romantic mode, she explains:

The Indians call this lake Bessikάkoon, but I do not know the exact meaning of the word. Some say that it means “The Indian’s grave”, others “the lake of the one island”. It is certain that an Indian girl is buried beneath that blighted tree; but I never could learn the particulars of her story. (1995: 349)

Moodie also explains that Lake Katchawanook “being interpreted, means in English, ‘the Lake of the Waterfalls’, a very poetical meaning, which most Indian names have” (293; emphasis added). Although she focuses on the poetical, her remark inscribes Indian presence onto the topography and since she provides the translation as “meaning”, the Indian name she mentions is not just an empty exotic shell. Although the Moodies love their colonial map, which has suppressed First Nations names in favour of English ones (Stratton, 1999: 84), Moodie does not suppress Indian presence; rather she re-inscribes it since her Indian visitors rename the rivers, and Moodie refers to Lake Katchewanook as their lake (299). As she mentions Susan’s father’s story during the trip to Stony Lake (358), she inscribes Indian presence onto the landscape, both on a personal level (it is the island where he is known to be buried), and on a more spiritual level, since she has previously provided her readers with explanations about the burial rite (312). Moodie also likes to remark on the fact that Indian words hold meaning. Indian names for plants or insects, she explains, “illustrate [their] particular habits and qualities” (319). Moodie will thus quote and translate the Indian names that have been bestowed upon her neighbours to underline how well they fit the recipients (317), underscoring the sense of humour her Indian friends possess. As for the Indian names her children were given, she clearly delights in mentioning them: “My little Addie, who was a fair, lovely creature, they viewed with great approbation, and called Anoonk, ‘a star’; while the rosy Katie was Nogesigook, ‘the northern lights’” (317). Moodie’s own name, which refers to the fact that she paints birds (317) and which she claims to laugh at, will prove to be prophetic as the sale of these paintings will provide her family with much-needed money.

However timid their gestures were, what the sisters did in their small ways and within the constraints of “feminine” discourses (a romantic depiction of a trip, the story of an Indian girl, or descriptions of plants and flowers) was to give meaning and value to Indian knowledge and inscribe Indian presence. In the sisters’ accounts, Upper Canada is no longer a terra nullius waiting for European order. Traill was seemingly unaware of her contradiction when she stated that “if [Canada’s] volume of history is yet a blank, that of Nature is open, and eloquently marked by the finger of God” (1997: 112). She does, however, historicize Indian presence in her children’s book, Canadian Crusoes, as the story takes place on the shores of Lake Rice, in the 1770s.

Their narratives not only show that their visions of Native peoples changed, they also show how they were changed by their lives in the wilderness and by their encounters with the Native tribes. Recalling their encounters actually offered Traill the possibility of dwelling on topics that were viewed as masculine, such as her interest in technology. She usually starts with focusing on the domestic to counterbalance the unfeminine interest she evinces. Her “pots and pans” descriptions focus on how useful the articles are for “household purposes” (1997: 120) yet equally interesting to her is the technology: “they are sewn or rather stitched together with the tough roots of the tamarack or larch, or else with strips of cedar-bark” (120). One anecdote describing a visit to the Indian encampment enables her to launch on a rather technical lecture on how to build a canoe, which clearly reveals her interest in the technology itself (216). As she records and transcribes Indian knowledge in her text, hoping her readers will share her interest, she too can be said to “go native” in her representation of the Canadian wilds as a liminal space. Her position as regards gender is interesting for if the focus on interpersonal relationships counterbalances the unfeminine interest in technology, it also challenges gender roles: the canoe is shown to her by a woman (216). And it is the women’s skills — from their skills in manufacturing utensils (120) to their ability to repair a damaged birch canoe with great efficiency (1981 ed.: 35) — that Traill emphasizes. In The Backwoods her interest remains “intellectual” rather than experiential. However, in Canadian Crusoes she has her white heroes learn Native skills from their Indian companion, who is their instructor. Indiana not only uses the plants to make cures and ointments (1986: 116–17), ¹⁵ but she also shares her knowledge of plants with the white teenagers. She teaches them to value Native resources that can provide cures as well as food (147). Therefore in Canadian Crusoes, both traditional gender and subaltern/white positions are challenged (126). As Robert Fleming puts it, Catharine (and the heroine’s name is obviously significant) “is forced to address, even emulate her Indigenous Canadian Other” (1995: 208). The novel stresses how necessary it is for the white teenagers to change and become more like the Indian girl if they want to survive.

Roughing it in the Bush offers a similar version of “going native” with an experiential account of Susanna Moodie’s experience. She first refuses to sketch the over-written scene: “the skill of the Indian in procuring his game, either by land or water, has been too well described by better writers than I could ever hope to be to need any illustration from my pen” (322). Husband and wife first go fishing together (378) but Susanna and her daughter also venture out on their own in the canoe (379). When her husband is away, Moodie devises a trap to catch ducks adopting Native technology as she attaches “a slender rope made by braiding long strips of the inner bark of basswood together” to the stakes (444–5). The chapters in the book that describe the difficult years in the woods show that “going native” — using the canoe to go fishing — enabled the Moodies to get food (379). In later chapters, Moodie, who can still write of herself as an experiential anti-hero enduring a series of trials, also depicts herself crossing the lake in dangerous conditions: steering the canoe herself, she will brave a strong current and wind (496), then a sudden storm (498). Like her attempt to catch ducks with a trap she manufactures, her exploits with the canoe reveal that Moodie, who previously wrote of herself as a fragile woman prone to fainting and crying, could display resourcefulness. Gerson has proposed that Roughing it in the Bush be read as a narrative of female self-empowerment, in which Moodie’s “often painful acquisition of self-confidence, knowledge and survival skills develops within the context of abilities and attitudes already possessed by the women native to the land to which Moodie had immigrated” (Gerson, 1997: 13). Moodie expresses admiration for the strength and resourcefulness Indian women display. For instance an anecdote about a young woman who killed a bear inspires her to write: “what iron nerves these people must possess, when even a woman could dare and do a deed like this!” (304). Her female native women friends may indeed have been the inspiration that enabled her to become more independent and resourceful.

Towards the end of The Backwoods, Traill addresses the issue of what she has gained from her life in the backwoods. She insists she “prize[s] and enjoy[s] [her] present liberty in this country exceedingly” (193) and that bush-settlers are “more independent” (194). She explains that they are free of the constraints of fashion, they dress as they want, or rather, as they find “most suitable and convenient” (194). Her remark on clothes is more relevant than it may seem, as one of her descriptions shows that she adopted Indian clothing, from a buffalo robe to deer-skin moccasins (170), suggesting that adapting to the climate was more relevant than conforming to the idea that British gentlewomen should never wear native clothes. It is through Moodie that the reader learns that Traill’s Indian shoes afforded her freedom: “my sister […] was provided for her walk with Indian moccasins, which rendered her quite independent” (295). As the narratives of The Backwoods and of Roughing it in the Bush progress, a greater sense of freedom of movement is suggested. Both sisters describe visits to friends’ houses and to the Indian encampments when the women no longer feel the need to be taken there by their husbands or their brother. Roughing it in the Bush has Susanna proudly paddling her own canoe. In The Canadian Settler’s Guide, Traill seems to be constantly challenging the self-imposed limitations regarding the topics she as a woman should speak of. In the section on “Natural productions of the woods” (which expresses an idealized vision of self-sufficiency for those who have acquired the necessary knowledge), she mentions making canoes, tools and shingles as well as soap and brooms (46). Moodie’s and Traill’s texts can be read as narratives of empowerment, depicting the liminal zone of the Canadian frontier as a “liminal space of interacting cultures” (Vibert, 2000: 282) where the heroines gain agency and independence.

Moodie’s and Traill’s texts offer fascinating reading, in spite of, or possibly because of, their contradictions and contradictory voices. As women travelling to and settling in a faraway land, they were expected to write on certain topics and provide their audience at home with exotic vignettes. This is what they did. In doing so, they produced discourses which were riddled with contradictions since the vignettes they wrote could not always be contained within the discourses of femininity. Traill often counterbalanced her interest in unfeminine topics with domestic scenes or by depicting activities that could be labelled as feminine. Both women depicted their relationships with Native women, a topic that was safely feminine, although it resulted in another conflict of voices. At first, the sisters’ accounts were stereotypical, portraying the First Nations Canadians as Others, rendering them virtually invisible in the process. However, their accounts progressively made room for descriptions of personal encounters, acts of friendships, instances of woman to woman engagements and intimacy seemingly cutting across racial differences. As depicted in the Strickland sisters’ writings, the Canadian backwoods is a contact zone where the colonial encounter brings what Pratt calls “transculturation” (1992: 6) as both groups interact and influence one another. In the contact zone, the sisters gain independence and their narratives reflect their empowerment. As colonial texts, the sisters’ writings also find themselves open to the trace of the language of the other: they also inscribe the voices and the presence of their Native friends, albeit in naïve way, adding another layer of contradictions to their texts. The sisters’ writings also reflect how colonial discourses reveal a need for “going native”. In this respect, I would like to mention the miniature canoe that features in both The Backwoods and “A Visit to the Camp” as it epitomizes Traill’s relationship to Canada and Native Canadians. Traill collected articles of Indian workmanship that she sent home as curios, such as the canoe, of which she says: “you will prize it as a curiosity, and token of remembrance” (1997: 161). The canoe is described and seen as a curio but, as a gift from Traill, it also becomes a vehicle for a message that says that she wishes not to be forgotten by them. The curio is also a “token”, in other words, a symbol: the indigenous article will reside in the Strickland home, speaking for Traill, if not standing for her. In Goldie’s reading, it is a perfect example of “indigenization”, the impossible desire to become Native (Goldie, 1989: 13). Yet the canoe, Traill’s and Moodie’s favourite means of transportation, is also a token of Moodie’s empowerment in Roughing it in the Bush, while in The Backwoods of Canada, it stands as a symbol of Traill’s interest in Native technology and her desire to share it.