The Sign of the Beaver tracks the budding friendship between Matt and Attean. At first, Matt and Attean don’t even want to be in the same room as each other—while Matt believes Attean is laughing at and judging him constantly, Attean does seem to look down on Matt and white settlers in general. But as the boys’ relationship thaws and eventually morphs into a friendship, the novel suggests that this can only happen as Matt and Attean learn to respect each other and, to some degree, to respect each other’s culture. Matt’s journey of learning to respect Attean is the most dramatic. He begins the novel referring to Attean as a “savage” and sees Attean, as a Native American, as unintelligent and beneath him. At one point, Matt even realizes that he came to Maine genuinely and uncritically believing that Native peoples exist to be subjugated by white settlers. But as Attean teaches Matt to survive and more generally demonstrates that he’s smart and knowledgeable about the Maine wilderness, Matt realizes his initial perception was incorrect. Matt’s superiority gradually gives way to respect—and a desire for Attean to respect Matt in return.
Attean doesn’t come to fully respect Matt until much later in the winter, when Matt refuses to join Attean’s tribe and head west—Matt insists he must stay at the cabin and wait for his family. Matt’s loyalty to his family, something that Attean recognizes and thinks very highly of, finally endears Matt to him, and it’s only at this point that Attean is willing to refer to Matt as his “brother.” Respect and friendship, Matt and Attean’s slowly-developing relationship shows, aren’t inevitable—they’re something a person must earn.
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Friendship and Respect Quotes in The Sign of the Beaver
“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.
“Sign show beaver house belong to people of beaver,” Attean explained. “By and by, when young beaver all grown, people of beaver hunt here. No one hunt but people of beaver.”
“You mean, just from that mark on the tree, another hunter would not shoot here?”
“That our way,” Attean said gravely. “All Indian understand.”
Would a white man understand? Matt wondered. He thought of Ben with his stolen rifle. It wasn’t likely Ben would respect an Indian sign. But he must remember to warn his father.
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.
Wherever he went now, Matt watched for Indian signs. Sometimes he could not be sure whether a branch had broken in the wind or whether an animal had scratched a queer-shaped mark on a tree trunk. Once or twice he was certain he had discovered the sign of the beaver. It was a game he played with himself. That it was not a game to Attean he was still to learn.
Matt was puzzled. He had heard that the Indians worshipped the Great Spirit. This Gluskabe did not sound like a Great Spirit. He sounded more like one of the heroes in the old folk tales his mother had told him when he was a child. He decided it would be impolite to ask more. He wondered if the Indians had many stories like that. And how could it be that here in the forest they had learned about the flood?
This was noisier than any celebration Matt had ever seen in Quincy, even on Muster Day. Why had he ever had the idea that the Indians were a dull lot?
Matt was speechless. He had never dreamed that anything like this lay behind Attean’s carefree life. He had never wondered about Attean’s parents at all, only accepted without question that the boy followed his grandfather and obeyed him.
But to his surprise, deep inside he felt content. Was it because Attean’s dog had finally trusted him? No, more than that had changed. He had passed some sort of test. Not by any means with flying colors; he had plenty of bruises to remind him of that. But at least he had not disgraced Attean. He felt satisfied. And for the first time since his father had left him, he did not feel alone in the forest.
Even though he dreaded that it would mean the end of all their adventures, Matt hoped that Attean would find his manitou.
He was proud that they had wanted him to live with them. But he knew that he could never be really proud, as Attean was proud, of being a hunter. He belonged to his own people. He was bound to his own family, as Attean was bound to his grandfather. The thought he might never see his mother again was sharper than hunger or loneliness. This was the land his father had cleared to make a home for them all. It was his own land, too. He could not run away.
His father would never understand. Before he could think about it another minute, Matt hurried back to where Attean stood waiting.
“I have a gift for you,” he said. “It tells the time of day. I’ll show you how to wind it up.”
Attean held the watch even more carefully. There was no mistaking that he was pleased and impressed. Probably, Matt thought, Attean would never learn to use it. The sun and the shadows of the trees told him all he needed to know about the time of day. But Attean knew that Matt’s gift was important.
“Fine gift,” he said.
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.
