I just wrapped up a revisit of a children’s book from the fifth grade. The novel is called The Sign of the Beaver, published in 1982 and written by Elizabeth George Speare. The story features a boy, Matt, left to his own devices in the Maine wilderness while his father travels south to pick up Matt’s mother and sister. The story is a modern Robinsonade in the vein of My Side of the Mountain (Jean George) in that, rather than a shipwreck, the Crusoe figure’s remote situation is entered into in-part voluntarily. Matt is left to care for a cabin that he and his father constructed together in the spring. There are corn and pumpkins growing in the backyard, Matt has a kitchen with some flour and molasses, and he was even left with the family rifle. Of course, inexperience leads Matt to make a number of errors that ultimately leave him with a sprained foot, a face full of bee stings, and no gun!
Matt does not survive and thrive by his white man’s grit and cunning like in some of the older stories. No, he learns to live in the wilderness with the help of the local Indians that had been secretly watching him from the forest. Attean, the grandson of the chief, visits Matt every day to learn to read “the white man’s signs.”
“White man come more and more to Indian land. White man not make treaty with pipe. White man make signs on paper, signs Indian not know. Indian put mark on paper to show him friend of white man. Then white man take land. Attean learn to read white man’s signs. Attean not give away hunting grounds.”
I’ve read a lot about the didactics, or teaching capability, of Robinsonade stories, so I was intrigued when Matt decides to use his own copy of Robinson Crusoe to teach Attean to read. Throughout their lessons, Matt’s perspective on Crusoe changes in relation to the reality of wilderness survival that he lives every day. For example, Crusoe relies upon the wreckage of a ship to supply him with the tools he needs to survive. When Matt loses his fishing hook to a snapped line, he thinks he is screwed. Attean shows him, however, that a new fish hook can be carved from scraps of wood in no time at all.
“”White man not smart like Indian,” [Attean] said scornfully. “Indian not need thing from ship. Indian make all thing he need.”
[…]
After Attean has gone, Matt kept thinking about Robinson Crusoe and all the useful things he had managed to salvage from that ship. He had found a carpenter’s chest, for instance. Bags of nails. Two barrels of bullets. And a dozen hatchets — a dozen! Why, Matt and his father had come up here to Maine with one axe and an adz. […] He could see now how it must have sounded to Attean. Come to think of it, Robinson Crusoe had lived like a king on that desert island!””
The analysis of novel within a novel gets even more intriguing when Matt and Attean reach the part where Crusoe recruits his native servant Friday. Attean is immediately offended by Friday’s depiction as a submissive servant:
“”Nda!” [Attean] shouted. “Not so.”
Matt stopped, bewildered.
“Him never do that!”
“Never do what?”
“Never kneel down to white man!”
“But Crusoe had saved his life.”
“Not kneel down,” Attean repeated fiercely. “Not be slave. Better die.””
In the scene they had just read, Friday places Crusoe’s foot upon his head and swears to be Crusoe’s “slave” forever. Attean storms off, leaving Matt to wonder at how they will possibly complete the book. Matt decides to skip future portions of the story that contain demeaning representations of Friday, like the part where the first English word that Crusoe teaches Friday is “master.” Matt laments that the novel does not make this task easy:
“…it would have been better perhaps if Friday hadn’t been quite so thickheaded. After all, there must have been a thing or two about that desert island that a native who had lived there all his life could have taught Robinson Crusoe.”
So, therein lies the thesis (in a way) of Matt’s impromptu textual analysis–why does Friday, an Indian that in theory possesses all the superior ability and knowledge that Attean demonstrates to Matt daily, have to play student to Crusoe? From here, the novel expands outward beyond Matt’s safe cabin clearing into the wild forest. There, real experience fills in Crusoe’s gaps. Attean teaches Matt how to snare animals with root fibers. Attean teaches Matt how to shoot a bow so that he does not need to rely on bullets for meat. Attean saves Matt from a bear attack. Attean shows Matt the secret to navigating the woods via Indian Sign. Matt faces again and again the fact that the Indians have long ago figured out the most efficient methods of surviving the Maine wilderness. When Matt is finally brought to see the native village, Attean’s home, for himself, he scrambles to take in as much of their labor practices as possible. Every little trick catches his attention. He admires the work of the women processing grain, even though Attean dismisses it as squaw work. (The indians are sexist)
Matt realizes, also, that the white men like himself that had been colonizing America were not employing a Native American degree of foresight. The beavers, once plentiful, were just about gone. The wildlife was thinning. The metal traps they used were barbaric and wasteful, leaving animals to die or escape maimed. Throughout The Sign of the Beaver, Matt is made to see himself from the perspective of the other. It is a pleasant fantasy to think of the world we might live in today if Friday had taught Crusoe to live sustainably. Unfortunately, the original myth of expansion was based on a narrative of opulence. Colonizers assumed an endless blank slate to impose themselves upon. Alas, the frontier was not empty, and it certainly was a bottomless well of resources.
I love that Speare’s novel includes its own mini-textual analysis of the founding Robinsonade. Of course, she wasn’t the only person to do this. Robinsonades have been interpreting and reinterpreting Defoe’s original novel for literally over two centuries. With each iteration, authors have weigh the wonder of Crusoe’s myth against the reality of a shrinking world.
