Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe symbolizes Matt’s view of his relationship with Native Americans and with the natural world. Robinson Crusoe follows its titular character as a shipwreck strands him on an island, where he tames the natural world and eventually enslaves a Native man whom he rescues from cannibals. The novel encapsulates Matt’s initial, uncomplicated beliefs about his relationship to nature and to Native peoples: both exist for him, as a white settler, to conquer and subjugate as Crusoe does. Matt’s unexamined views are on full display when he begins reading the book to Attean and excitedly reads the passage where Crusoe saves the Native man, Friday, who then voluntarily agrees to be Crusoe’s slave. Attean vocally objects to this racist portrayal of a Native person, which he finds deeply offensive. Before this, Matt had never considered that it wasn’t right for Crusoe to enslave a Native person. But as Attean teaches Matt how to survive in nature, and as Matt comes to respect Attean, Matt begins to see problems with his favorite novel. It’s silly, he acknowledges, that Friday is portrayed as being so unintelligent, as Matt knows by then that Native Americans aren’t unintelligent at all. And after learning so much from Attean, Matt thinks that Friday could certainly have taught Crusoe something about how to live on the island.
However, Matt never comes around to rejecting Robinson Crusoe and its themes outright. Though he omits parts of the book that he knows for sure Attean will find offensive when he reads it aloud, he never considers, for instance, how dehumanizing it is that Crusoe gives the man Friday his name. Friday surely already had a name, but Crusoe never thought to ask it. Similarly, even when Matt becomes fully self-sufficient thanks to Attean’s willingness to share indigenous survival knowledge, Matt chooses not to question whether he and his father are actually right to build their cabin on what used to be Attean and Saknis’s tribe’s hunting land. The land exists, Matt still believes, for white settlers to take it, just as Crusoe does in the novel. Indeed, Matt’s happiness when he’s on his own in the cabin in the winter, happily reading Robinson Crusoe by the fire, illustrates just how little he has internalized Attean’s lessons. Even after all of his experiences with Attean, Matt still finds comfort in a narrative where a white settler like him is the hero for taming nature and subjugating indigenous peoples.
Robinson Crusoe Quotes in The Sign of the Beaver
“Attean learn,” he said. “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. Tell Indian cannot hunt on land. Attean learn to read white man’s signs. Attean not give away hunting grounds.”
“Nda!” he 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.”
Matt opened his mouth to protest, but Attean gave him no chance. In three steps he was out of the cabin.
Now he’ll never come back, Matt thought. He sat slowly turning over the pages. He had never questioned that story. Like Robinson Crusoe, he had thought it natural and right that the wild man should be the white man’s slave. Was there perhaps another possibility? The thought was new and troubling.
“Let me go on,” he pleaded. “It’s different from now on. Friday—that’s what Robinson Crusoe named him—doesn’t kneel anymore.”
“Not slave?”’
“No,” Matt lied. “After that they get to be—well—companions. They share everything together.”
[...] One of the first words Crusoe taught his man Friday was the word master. Luckily he caught that one in time. And it was true, Crusoe and his new companion did go about together, sharing their adventures. Only, Matt thought, it would have been better if perhaps 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.
It occurred to him that Attean knew this, that perhaps Attean had brought him so far just to show him how helpless he really was, how all the words in a white man’s book were of no use to him in the woods.
Yet he did not think this would happen. For some reason he could not explain to himself, he trusted Attean. He didn’t really like him. When the Indian got that disdainful look in his eyes, Matt hated him. But somehow, as they had sat side by side, day after day, doing the lessons that neither of them wanted to do, something had changed. Perhaps it had been Robinson Crusoe, or the tramping through the woods together. They didn’t like each other, but they were no longer enemies.
He and Attean had sure enough turned that story right round about. Whenever they went a few steps from the cabin, it was the brown savage who strode ahead, leading the way, knowing just what to do and doing it quickly and skillfully. And Matt, a puny sort of Robinson Crusoe, tagged along behind, grateful for the smallest sign that he could do anything right.
It wasn’t that he wanted to be a master. And the idea of Attean’s being anyone’s slave was not to be thought of. He just wished he could make Attean think a little better of him. He wanted Attean to look at him without that gleam of amusement in his eyes. He wished that it were possible for him to win Attean’s respect.
Afterwards, for the first time in weeks, he took down Robinson Crusoe. Reading by the firelight, he felt drowsy and contented. Life on a warm island in the Pacific might be easier, but tonight Matt thought that he wouldn’t for a moment have given up his snug cabin buried in the snow.
Robinson Crusoe Symbol Timeline in The Sign of the Beaver
