Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T20:57:02.108Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Representing Akaitcho: European vision and revision in the writing of John Franklin's Narrative of a journey to the shores of the polar sea. . .

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2008

Janice Cavell
Janice Cavell*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, Ontario K1S 5B6, Canada
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article compares the representations of aboriginal people, and especially the Yellowknife leader Akaitcho, in the journal written by John Franklin during his first expedition (1819–1822) and the narrative he published in 1823. In the introduction to his 1995 Champlain Society edition of Franklin's journal, Richard Davis claims that when revising the journal for publication, Franklin changed his original entries so as to present an unfavourable, stereotyped image of Akaitcho to the British reading public. However, comparison of the relevant passages shows that, while Franklin evidently viewed Akaitcho with distrust during much of the expedition, he later, and on reflection, changed his opinion so that it became much more favourable, and accordingly altered the journal entries in order to do Akaitcho justice. These facts cast doubt on the interpretation of the first Franklin expedition put forward by Davis and others.

Type
Research Article
Information
Polar Record , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , January 2008 , pp. 25 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abel, K. 1993. Drum songs: glimpses of Dene history. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Atwood, M. 1995. Concerning Franklin and his gallant crew. In: Atwood, M. (editor). Strange things: the malevolent north in Canadian literature. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Back, G. 1994. Arctic artist: the journal and paintings of George Back, midshipman with Franklin, 1819–1822 (Editor Houston, C.S.). Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press.Google Scholar
Belyea, B. 1990. Captain Franklin in search of the picturesque. Essays on Canadian Writing 40: 1–24.Google Scholar
Berton, P. 1988. The Arctic grail. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.Google Scholar
Bhabha, H.K. 1994. The location of culture. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Brown, J. 1980. Strangers in blood: fur trade company families in Indian country. Vancouver: UBC Press.Google Scholar
Collis, C. 1996. The voyage of the episteme: narrating the north. Essays on Canadian Writing 59: 26–45.Google Scholar
Cooper, F. 1994. Conflict and connection: rethinking colonial African history. American Historical Review 99: 1516–1545.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, R. 1989. Thrice-told tales: the exploration writing of John Franklin. In: Carlsen, J., and Streijffert, B. (editors). The Canadian north: essays on culture and literature. Lund: Nordic Association for Canadian Studies.Google Scholar
Davis, R. 1991. History or his/story? The explorer cum author. Studies in Canadian Literature 16 (2): 93–111.Google ScholarPubMed
Fanon, F. 1963. The wretched of the earth. New York: Grove.Google Scholar
Franklin, J. 1823. Narrative of a journey to the shores of the polar sea in the years 1819, 20, 21 and 22. London: John Murray, 1st edition.Google Scholar
Franklin, J. 1995. Sir John Franklin's journals and correspondence: the first Arctic land expedition, 1819–1822. (Editor Davis, R.). Toronto: Champlain Society.Google Scholar
Hearne, S. 1958. A journey from Prince of Wales's Fort in Hudson's Bay to the northern ocean in 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772. (Editor Glover, R.). Toronto: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Helm, J. (editor). 1981. Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 6, the subarctic. Washington: Smithsonian Institution.Google Scholar
Holland, C. 1988. John Franklin and the fur trade, 1819–22. In: Davis, R. (editor). Rupert's Land: a cultural tapestry. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press: 97–111.Google Scholar
Hood, R. 1974. To the Arctic by canoe, 1819–1821: the journal and paintings of Robert Hood, midshipman with Franklin. (Editor Houston, C.S.). Montreal and Kingston: Arctic Institute of North America/ McGill-Queen's University Press.Google Scholar
Huntford, R. 1979. Scott and Amundsen. London: Hodder and Stoughton.Google Scholar
Klotz, O. (editor). 1899. Certain correspondence of the Foreign Office and of the Hudson's Bay Company, copied from original documents. Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau (London 1898, Part I0).Google Scholar
Krans, M. 1999. Writing for an elsewhere: author(ity) and authenticity in the texts of the first Franklin Expedition (1819–1822). Studies in Canadian Literature 24 (1): 70–92.Google Scholar
Larsen, P. 1997. Capacities and modes of thinking: intellectual engagements and subaltern hegemony in the early history of Malagasy Christianity. American Historical Review 102: 969–1002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacLaren, I.S. 1984. Retaining captaincy of the soul: response to nature in the first Franklin expedition. Essays on Canadian Writing 28: 57–92.Google Scholar
MacLaren, I.S. 1985. The aesthetic mapping of nature in the second Franklin expedition. Journal of Canadian Studies 20 (1): 39–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacLaren, I.S. 1989. The aesthetic map of the north, 1845–1859. In: Coates, K., and Morrison, W.R. (editors). Interpreting Canada's north. Toronto: Copp Clark:18–47.Google Scholar
MacLaren, I.S. 1994. From exploration to publication: the evolution of a 19th-century Arctic narrative. Arctic 47 (1): 43–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGhee, R. 2005. The last imaginary place: a human history of the Arctic world. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
McGoogan, K. 2001. Fatal passage: the untold story of John Rae, the Arctic adventurer who discovered the fate of Franklin. Toronto: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Mowat, F. 1960. Ordeal by ice. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.Google Scholar
Newman, P. 1985. Company of adventurers. Markham: Viking Penguin.Google Scholar
Parkinson, E. 1995. ‘All well’: narrating the third Franklin expedition. In: Moss, J. (editor). Echoing silence: essays on Arctic narrative. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press: 43–52.Google Scholar
Ray, A.J. 1974. Indians in the fur trade. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Ray, A.J., and Freeman, D.B.. 1978. ‘Give us good measure’: an economic analysis of relations between the Indians and the Hudson's Bay Company before 1763. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richardson, J. 1984. Arctic ordeal: the journal of John Richardson, surgeon-naturalist with Franklin, 1820–22. (Editor Houston, C.S.). Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press.Google Scholar
Said, E. 1979. Orientalism. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Seeley, J.R. 1971. The expansion of England. (Editor Gross, J.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press (reprint of 1883 original).Google Scholar
Stefansson, V. 1938. Unsolved mysteries of the Arctic. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Stoler, A.L., and Cooper, F.. 1997. Between metropole and colony: rethinking a research agenda.’ In: Stoler, A.L., and Cooper, F. (editors). Tensions of empire: colonial cultures in a bourgeois world. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Struzik, E. 1991. Northwest passage. Toronto: Key Porter.Google Scholar
Trigger, B. 1985. Natives and newcomers. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press.Google Scholar
Van Kirk, S. 1980. ‘Many tender ties’: women in fur-trade society, 1670–1870. Winnipeg: Watson and Dwyer.Google Scholar
Wallace, H.N. 1980. The navy, the company, and Richard King. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press.Google Scholar
Warkentin, G. 1990. Introduction. In: Warkentin, G. (editor). Canadian exploration literature. Toronto: Oxford University Press: ix–xxi.Google Scholar
Wiebe, R. 1989. Playing dead: a contemplation concerning the Arctic. Edmonton: NeWest.Google Scholar
Wiebe, R. 1994. A discovery of strangers. Toronto: Knopf.Google Scholar
Wiebe, R. 1995. Coursing a naked country. In: Moss, J. (editor). Echoing silence: essays on Arctic narrative. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press: 23–32.Google Scholar
Woodman, D. 1991. Unravelling the Franklin mystery: Inuit testimony. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press.Google Scholar
Young, R.J.C. 1995. Colonial desire: hybridity in theory, culture and race. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar