Reviews

The Moccasin Maker by A. Lavonne Brown Ruoff, E. Pauline Johnson

chelzabeth's review against another edition

3.0

Okay, so Johnson didn’t call people on their shit as much as I’d like her to, but these stories were written in the late 1800s, and there’s only so much a First Nations woman could do in the late 1800s. There’s only so much First Nations and other Indigenous women can do today, as a matter of fact.

Full review here. tw for sexual assault, murder, racism, and sexism.

christytidwell's review

3.0

A collection of short stories (and an essay) that primarily deal with issues surrounding mixed-race marriages and individuals (Indian and white European/Canadian), The Moccasin Maker is not great literature, but it is historically significant as a reflection on elements of 19th century Canadian culture and racial ideology as well as of popular tastes of the same period, for Pauline Johnson's performances and stories were immensely popular in Canada and in England during her lifetime. The narrative style is old-fashioned and thus the stories can be a little hard for a modern reader to fully embrace, tending as they do toward romance and sentiment, and Johnson is no feminist (although her work is centered on women's lives, which places her nicely in the tradition of women's literature), but these stories are interesting and remain relevant for their exploration of the clash between native and colonizing cultures. Over and over again in these stories, a white man falls in love with an Indian or half-Indian girl and the lovers must face the challenges of family disapproval, perceived disgrace because of cultural differences, and misunderstandings of alternative traditions. In most cases, the true love of the two individuals trumps these difficulties, but in at least one notable story (which might be a good candidate for introduction into a sophomore literature class), "A Red Girl's Reasoning," the prejudices and differences in values stand in the way of the triumph of love. These stories are also interesting for their overt criticism of Christian missionaries and the hypocrisy that must accompany a joint conversion/colonization mission, one that sees the Christianization of pagans as the humanization of savages. In Johnson's attempts to counter these stereotypes of Indians, she reinforces another set of stereotypes, however. Lavonne Ruoff writes, in the introduction to the text, "To counteract the stereotypes of the 'bloodthirsty savage' and the venial mixed blood, stock figures in the westerns of the period, Pauline creates idealized portraits of Indian and mixed-blood women who possess far more goodness and morality than do the whites who betray them or who are slow to recognize their virtues. However, as Shrive points out, Pauline ironically became part of the artificiality against which she protested in her writing. Although she protested against stereotypical 'noble Savages,' she also used them in her work. For example, her young mixed-blood heroines are unfailingly beautiful, possessing the best qualities of both the red and white races" (32).