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JOHN FRANKLIN’S FIRST ARCTIC LAND EXPEDITION THROUGH A DOUBLE LENS
explorers and the aboriginal dwellers, which often ends ina misunderstanding:
the travellers would like to draw out as much knowledge of the natural resources
as possible, and the indigenous people never rush to break the mythopoetic
taboos that they abide by. To the Tetsot’ine, the myth of the melting mountain
(Wiebe 17) is a story of caution before nature’s might, and to the Whites, that
is a certain geological sign that the area can contain copper or other profitable
ores. When they are given names, more often than not, the newcomers do not
seem too bright-minded to the Natives:
These English. Who also tried to name every lake and river with whatever sound
slips from their mouths: Singing Lake and Aurora and Grizzle Bear and Snare lakes
and Starvation River, or the names of hunters, Longleg, Baldhead, Humpy, Little
Forehead, and a hundred other things, or a thousand - it is truly difficult for a few
men who glance at it once to name an entire country (Wiebe 22).
Even Greenstockings’ original name has fallen into oblivion since the English
met her and altered her identity in their own fashion.
The clash of the two cultures is well exemplified in an episode when the
explorers want to send a signal to their party camping on a lake island, but a
huge fire engulfs a few square miles of littoral growth; once again, the colonisers
did not interpret the meteorological signs of the higher winds in the evening:
“But the wind began to lift dangerously from the west. By midnight, when Back
and the two men finally returned, the entire ridge south of the river was burn¬
ing like an immense, long city” (Wiebe 69). The destruction of lush nature
stands out as an interdiction in the Native myths, as exemplified in one of
Keskarrah’s stories, this time about the culture hero Blackfire, who amply
availed himself of rabbits without eating them, on the track for his abducted
wife: “He skinned it with a cracked stone but, hungry as he was, he couldn’t
eat raw rabbit. Since then every Person knows, no matter how hungry you are,
you can’t keep raw rabbit down, you'll just vomit and become weaker” (Wiebe
187). On the other hand, when they are not undermining the ecosystem, the
English researchers unknowingly obstruct the natural flow of life’s energy, like
in Winter Lake, which Keskarrah considers to be a huge fish, but the trees
prevent it from getting out. Now with a lot of trees burned, the escape is an
unwelcome possibility (Wiebe 86).
Perhaps the most fundamental titular connection between the two works
lies in the love relationship between Hood and Greenstockings, but it also
connotes the cosmic principle of chance encounters of mythical progenitors,
like mammals, birds or humans in the constant natural paradigm of everlast¬
ing urge. The power of narrativisation to unite such dissimilar entities as the
Englishman and the Tetsot’ine girl confirms the oft-repeated thesis in post¬
colonial studies that Canadian history is essentially hybrid, and, moreover,
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