The Sign of the Beaver follows 13-year-old Matt as he singlehandedly maintains his family’s homestead in 1768 rural Maine while his father returns to Massachusetts for the rest of the family. For the first few weeks, Matt manages to care for and feed himself: he has a rifle, a fishing pole, sturdy boots, and food to last until his family’s return. However, when various disasters strike—a passing man steals the rifle, a bear eats Matt’s rations, and Matt loses a boot trying to escape attacking bees—Matt feels he has no choice but to accept help from Saknis and his grandson Attean, Native Americans who live nearby. Attean teaches Matt how to survive without “white man’s tools” like guns and metal fishhooks. Overwhelmingly, the novel presents Attean’s way of life as superior to Matt’s in that Attean always has what he needs to take care of himself. There are always tree roots to fashion into snares to catch rabbits, and he can use a bow and arrows made from trees, sinew, and animal fat to hunt bigger game. Breaking a fishhook is no big deal for Attean, as making another one from a twig is easy. If the goal is simply surviving in the Maine wilderness, the novel suggests, indigenous survival methods are the most available, economical choice.
However, the novel is careful to highlight that for the Native characters, subsistence isn’t the goal: Native peoples are trying to navigate a changing world, where white settlers push them off their lands and employ them to hunt and trap animals for pelts. This necessitates embracing European technology like rifles and steel traps, and hunting as a commercial endeavor, rather than just a means to feed one’s tribe. Ultimately—and ironically—Attean teaches Matt to survive on land that once belonged to Attean’s tribe, while the tribe moves west in search of more game and fewer settlers. With this ending, The Sign of the Beaver illustrates how indigenous knowledge benefited settlers and ultimately contributed to tribes’ continued displacement.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Survival and Indigenous Knowledge ThemeTracker
Survival and Indigenous Knowledge Quotes in The Sign of the Beaver
He was still proud of that gun, but no longer in awe of it. Carrying it over his shoulder, he set out confidently into the forest, venturing farther each day, certain of bringing home a duck or a rabbit for his dinner. For a change of diet he could take his fish pole and follow the twisting course of the creek or walk the trail his father had blazed to a pond some distance away. In no time he could catch all the fish he could eat.
But even if Matt had had it in his hands, could he have held out against those burly arms? And to keep his gun, could he actually have shot a man—even a criminal?
It was only later, when his rage began to die down, that he felt a prickle of fear. Now he had no protection. And no way to get meat. Sick with anger, he sat staring at his row of notched sticks. It would be a month at least before his father returned. A month of nothing but fish! And what would his father say?
“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.
“My grandfather not allow beaver people to buy iron trap. Some Indian hunt like white man now. One time many moose and beaver. Plenty for all Indians and for white man too. But white man not hunt to eat, only for skin. Him pay Indian to get skin. So Indian use white man’s trap.”
Matt looked with distaste at the rabbit, almost covered by the bear’s heavy paw, the fur matted and bloody. He would rather not have touched it, but obediently he pulled it out. It was his dinner, after all. And he knew that in Attean’s world everything that was killed must be used. The Indians did not kill for sport.
“Not take me,” he admitted finally. “I not have gun.”
“You’re a good shot with a bow and arrow.”
Attean scowled. “That old way,” he said. “Good for children. Indian hunt now with white man’s gun. Someday my grandfather buy me gun. Need many beaver skins. Beaver not so many now.”
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.
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.
