American Progress by John Gast
Reading through Susanna Moodie’s introduction, I had the sense the underlying narrative in her words reflects a combination of two different Christian stories: the Garden of Eden (and subsequent expulsion) and the journey of the Israelites from Egypt to Canaan. (I apologize for how rooted in Christian narratives this reading is, when I’m supposed to be extracting myself from that framework, but the draw was too strong and I am so weak.)
Journey Through the Wilderness
(A Gift from God / The Magical Map)
Biblically, the Israelites are referred to as God’s chosen people, much like the “high-souled children of a glorious land” that Moodie separates from ordinary emigrants because of their “higher motive.” Like the Israelites, these people “go forth to make for themselves a new name and to find another country…to exult in the prospect of their children being free and the land of their adoption great” (Moodie).
Canada, “lauded beyond all praise” for its “salubrious climate, its fertile soil, commercial advantages, great water privileges, its proximity to the mother country, and last, not least, its almost total from taxation” (Moodie) sounds like the Promised Land God offers the Israelites—the fertile Canaan (which, hey, coincidentally sounds similar to Canada).
Then Moodie writes this passage:
“It is not by such instruments as those I have just mentioned, that Providence works when it would reclaim the waste places of the earth, and make them subservient to the wants and happiness of its creatures. The Great Father of the souls and bodies of men knows the arm which wholesome labour from infancy has made strong, the nerves which have become iron by patient endurance, by exposure to weather, coarse fare, and rude shelter; and He chooses such, to send forth into the forest to hew out the rough paths for the advance of civilization. These men become wealthy and prosperous, and form the bones and sinews of a great and rising country. Their labour is wealth, not exhaustion; its produce independence and content, not home-sickness and despair.”
Beyond the explicit depiction of emigration and colonization as a path set forth by God (a magical map, if you will), Moodie states there is a certain kind of person God has chosen to reap the benefits of their toiling.
This brings me back to the Israelites during their first encounter with Canaan. The people have endured “exposure to weather, coarse fare, and rude shelter” over the course of their journey through the desert to get there. The scouts Moses sends come back with proof of the land’s fertility but are afraid to take the land because of the powerful and fortified people already living there. All but two, Joshua and Caleb, lament this fact, and consider returning to Egypt. Joshua and Caleb say, ““The land we passed through and explored is exceedingly good. If the Lord is pleased with us, he will lead us into that land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and will give it to us” (New International Version, Num. 14:7-8). Because they have faith in God plan or “map,” Caleb and Joshua are allowed entry into Canaan later on, to reap the benefits they struggled for. The rest of the Israelites over twenty who doubted and despaired are not.
Is it just me, or does this story echo much of what Moodie claims is happening as the English settle into already occupied lands, as if they were sent by God to “hew out the rough paths for the advance of civilization” (Moodie) in an already occupied land? As well as the assertion the land is a gift from God?
The Second Expulsion
(A Second Garden of Eden)
As I’ve mentioned, just as Canaan is described by the scouts, Canada is touted as a fertile paradise where “sheep and oxen…ran about the streets, ready roasted, and with knives and forks upon their backs” and “if it did not actually rain gold… precious metal could be obtained…by stooping to pick it up” (Moodie). Indeed, it sounds like another Garden of Eden, but in reality, the story of the settlers is one of a second expulsion from the Garden—complete with the seductive snake, the “artful seducers.”
Moodie states the chosen “high-souled children” are “born and educated to command” their country and thus cannot labour in it. This to me sounds similar the position Adam and Eve were in during their time in the Garden of Eden, as they were put in charge of all the living creatures in it. Then these children, deceived by words of the “hired orators,” leave their “glorious land” (Moodie).
The Devouring Land
(An Empty / Wasted Land)
Just as Adam and Eve toiled after their banishment from the Garden, so do the settlers have to labour. The land the settlers thought to be Eden, is an empty, wasted land to them, “the waste places” (Moodie) to be reclaimed. Moodie describes Canada as lonely, almost Sisyphean, and barren, citing the “years when these lands, with the most careful cultivation, would barely return fifteen [bushels],” the “rust and smut…[that] would blast the fruits of the poor emigrant’s labour” and “remote bush settlements, often twenty miles from a market town, and some of them even that distance from the nearest building.” It is also clear that the lands are treated as ownerless, dead commodities, sold by the “dealers in wild lands.”
And yet, the lands fight back, as the language Moodie uses to illustrate the settlers’ taming of the land is oddly violent, whether they must “try [their] strength against the stubborn trees of the forest” or navigate a “blazed forest road.” The word blazed here obviously means a marked out path, but I find it interesting that its other definitions (to burn fiercely or to fire repeatedly/indiscriminately) impacted my reading more.
(I’d also like to note, the settler’s struggles seem to parallel the Israelite’s journey through the desert as discussed above, in that, only after toiling are they granted access to the Promised Land.)
And Where are the Nephilim?
(The Noble but Vanishing Indian)
A large part of the connection I made between the Israelites’ story and Moodie’s emigrant story is the fact that both of their “promised lands” are occupied before their settlement. Yet Moodie, for all her later mentions of them, erases them completely from her introduction, a summary of the settler story she seeks to tell. There are no other characters but the white man and God, and the plot is solely about the destiny God has laid out for them.
I do think Moodie was aware of the Christian stories she imbibes her own with. Her introduction reads suspiciously like a sermon, detailing the troubles of (white) man and ultimately bringing it all back to God and God’s Plan. If these are the stories she grew up with, wouldn’t she then make sense of her own situation through them?
Perhaps this would be painting Moodie as too much of a manipulator, but she could have been cunning, in which case I think her level of awareness would have been high enough that she intentionally mirrored biblical stories and placed the white settler in the role of the sympathetic protagonist. After all, the parallels between Canada and Canaan would be a good candidate for the basis of her idea of a “mysterious destiny” (qtd. in Paterson) forcing the Indians from the land—just as the Canaanites were overtaken because of God’s plan for the Israelites.
Now whether or not Moodie’s erasure of the Indian in the Introduction was an intentional decision to create further sympathy for the white settler (effectively painting them in a better, more innocent light) or for some other (potentially insidious reason)… I’m still debating that question.
References:
Alba, Avril. Israel’s Exodus From Egypt and Entry Into Canaan. Digital image. Israel & Judaism Studies. NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, n.d. Web. 02 July 2014.
Gast, John. American Progress. Digital image. Annals of Americus. Annals of Americus, 16 Oct. 2012. Web. 6 July 2014.
Moodie, Susanna. Roughing it in the Bush.. Project Gutenburg, 18 January 2004. Web. 2 July 2014.
Numbers. Bible Gateway NIV. Biblica, 2011. Web. 2 July 2014.
Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 2.3.” ENGL 470A Canadian Studies Canadian Literary Genre 98A May 2014. UBC Blogs, n.d. Web. 2 July 2014.
Pratt, Julius W. “The Origin of “Manifest Destiny”” The American Historical Review 32.4 (1927): 795. JSTOR. Web. 2 July 2014.