Department of English
Writing the Journey: June 1999
"Ethnographic classification and the role of the 'four stages theory' of social development in British travellers' accounts of the Aboriginal peoples of North America."
Susan Birkwood
Department of English
University of Saskatchewan
birkwood@duke.usask.ca
What Ronald Meek in Social Science and the Ignoble Savage calls the "four stages theory" (2) of social development proved to have a profound influence on British travellers' perceptions not only of the First Nations people, but also of the French Canadians and Americans. The works of such proponents of the theory as John Millar (The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks,1771), William Robertson (The History of America, 1777), and Adam Smith (An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776) often lie behind those descriptions of North Americans that ultimately reinforce the notion of British cultural superiority. My paper will focus on the depictions of Aboriginal peoples in works such as Isaac Weld's Travels through the States of North America and the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada during the years 1795, 1796, and 1797 (1799), Frances Wright's Views of Society and Manners in America (1821), and Anna Jameson's Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada (1838). As Meek explains, the four stages theory in its most general form, was simply that the key factor in the process of development was the mode of subsistence. . . . In its most specific form, the theory was that society 'naturally' or 'normally' progressed over time throughout four more or less distinct and consecutive states, each corresponding to a different mode of subsistence, these stages being defined as hunting, pasturage, agriculture, and commerce. To each of these modes of subsistence, it came to be argued, there corresponded different sets of ideas and institutions relating to law, property, and government, and also different sets of customs, manners and morals. (2)
Meek suggests that "to demonstrate the great power" (129) of the innate tendency of societies to advance, proponents of the four stages theory "postulate[d] a starting-point as far removed from contemporary society as possible" (129); that starting point was often Native North American society. Smith, for instance, refers to "the lowest and rudest state of society, such as [is found] among the native tribes of North America . . ." (2: 275). The hierarchizing of differences between Aboriginal and European societies and the construction of such oppositions between them as "rude" and "polished," "civilized" and "savage" provided a framework within which to place Aboriginal culture. The Aboriginal peoples were seen to be governed by no law, but ruled by the passion of revenge. Though praised for certain "noble" virtues such as courage and generosity, they were condemned for the great cruelty of their warfare. Of special importance in the context of colonization, the Native peoples were deemed "wandering savages" with no claim to the land from which they derived their subsistence.
Travellers writing of the Native peoples in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries did so using the language of the "four stages theory." Although many both expressed their outrage at the white population's methods of removing Native communities from areas chosen for settlement and voiced their sympathy for the peoples driven from their homelands, all believed in the advancement of society and the "improvement" of lands that would come with European forms of agricultural development-and in the superiority of their own level of "civilization." In this paper I will examine travellers' depictions of "savage" society, focussing on such issues as property rights, the condition of Aboriginal women, and on the notion of the "vanishing race."
Susan Birkwood
Department of English
University of Saskatchewan
9 Campus Drive
Saskatoon, SK, Canada
S7N 5A5
birkwood@duke.usask.ca
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