Duncan Campbell Scott (1862-1947)

Mania Nematifar

September 28, 2010

Who is D. C. ScottDuncan Campbell Scott, poet and short story writer was born in Ottawa in 1862, where he lived for his entire life . After leaving Stanstead junior college in 1879 due to financial difficulties, Scott joined Department of Indian Affairs. Scott remained in the Department of Indian Affairs for the rest of his career and was eventually selected as the deputy superintendent of Indian Affairs . Scott was inspired to write by Lampman, a friend that later in life Scott dedicated many years to editing and publishing his works. Scott began publishing poetry and prose in 1887, but his work began to gain popularity in 1890’s, the period during which he published his first book, The Magic House and Other Poems.

Scott’s wife died in 1929, two years later Scott married his fellow poet Elise Aylen. Scott and Aylenspent most of their married life travelling in Europe, Canada and United StatesThe Circle of Affection, and Other Pieces in Prose and Verse (1947) was the last work by Scott published during his life time. Two months after its publication, Scott died in December 1947 at the age of 85.

Influential works and Honorary Mentions

• Scott’s major works include:

Poetry• The Magic House and Other Poems (1893)• Labor and the Angel (1898)• New World Lyrics and Ballads (1905)• Lundy's Lane and Other Poems (1916)• Beauty and Life (1921)• The Poems of Duncan Campbell Scott (1926)• The Green Cloister, Later Poems (1935)

Fiction• The Witching of Elspie, A Book of Stories (1923)• In the Village of Viger (1896; 1945)• The Circle of Affection and Other Pieces in Prose and Verse (1947)• Untitled Novel; ca. 1905 (1979)

Scott as a Confederation Poet

• Scott, along with Charles G. D. Roberts, Bliss Carman and Archibald Lampman are considered Confederation poets

• As a confederation poet Scott’s work is influenced by Canadian landscape and its people.

• Scott, Lampman and Wilfred were all interested about Canadian identity. Their ideas about post confederation Canada, Canadian Cultural milieu and their literary theories were published in a column titled ‘At the Mermaid Inn’ in Toronto Globe and has influenced the landscape of Canadian writing.

• By 1989 Scott began to focus on First Nations and the conflict between settlers and natives.

• Although Scott was interested in native culture from his early life and many of his poems are considered sympathetic to native people, patronizing tone of Department of Indian Affair echoes in Scott’s poetry and speaks loudly of Scott’s biases in understanding and managing “the Indians”.

• When reading Scott’s work we begin to see him as an inspired writer but also as a subject of department of Indian Affair.

• Recognizing Scott’s bias does not reduce from the value of his work as a confederation poet but instead enables us to locate him within his poems. By understanding his standpoint and his subjectivity we gain a new understanding of those described in Scott’s work.

• We are going to read and discuss two of Scott’s poems both poems are centered around first nations’ women

• As a future feminist sociologist I am interested in the ways in which Scott’s poetry place First Nations women in the context of power struggle within Canadian post confederation era.

• I feel that by looking closely at women in Scott’s poetry, we begin to understand the historical back ground of institutional inferiorization of Indian women within Canadian society which began with the birth of Department of Indian Affair and continues today.

The Onondaga Madonna1898

She stands full-throated and with careless pose, This woman of a weird and waning race, The tragic savage lurking in her face, Where all her pagan passion burns and glows; Her blood is mingled with her ancient foes,And thrills with war and wildness in her veins; Her rebel lips are dabbled with the stainsOf feuds and forays and her father's woes.

And closer in the shawl about her breast, The latest promise of her nation's doom, Paler than she her baby clings and lies, The primal warrior gleaming from his eyes; He sulks, and burdened with his infant gloom,He draws his heavy brows and will not rest.

Who is Madonna Onondaga

The Forsaken

1Once in the winter2Out on a lake3In the heart of the north-land,4Far from the Fort5And far from the hunters,6A Chippewa woman7With her sick baby,8Crouched in the last hours9Of a great storm.

10Frozen and hungry,11She fished through the ice12With a line of the twisted13Bark of the cedar,14And a rabbit-bone hook15Polished and barbed;16Fished with the bare hook17All through the wild day,18Fished and caught nothing;19While the young chieftain20Tugged at her breasts,21Or slept in the lacings22Of the warm tikanagan.23All the lake-surface24Streamed with the hissing

25Of millions of iceflakes26Hurled by the wind;27Behind her the round28Of a lonely island29Roared like a fire30With the voice of the storm31In the deeps of the cedars.32Valiant, unshaken,33She took of her own flesh,34Baited the fish-hook,35Drew in a gray-trout,36Drew in his fellows,37Heaped them beside her,38Dead in the snow.39Valiant, unshaken,40She faced the long distance,41Wolf-haunted and lonely,42Sure of her goal43And the life of her dear one:44Tramped for two days,45On the third in the morning,46Saw the strong bulk47Of the Fort by the river,48Saw the wood-smoke49Hand soft in the spruces,50Heard the keen yelp51Of the ravenous huskies52Fighting for whitefish:53Then she had rest.

77Saw two days go by filled with the tranquil sunshine,

78Saw, without pain, or dread, or even a moment of longing:

79Then on the third great night there came thronging and thronging

80Millions of snowflakes out of a windless cloud;

81They covered her close with a beautiful crystal shroud,

82Covered her deep and silent.83But in the frost of the dawn,84Up from the life below,85Rose a column of breath86Through a tiny cleft in the snow,87Fragile, delicately drawn,88Wavering with its own weakness,89In the wilderness a sign of the spirit,90Persisting still in the sight of the sun91Till day was done.92Then all light was gathered up by the hand

of God and hid in His breast,93Then there was born a silence deeper than

silence,94Then she had rest.

54Years and years after,55When she was old and withered,56When her son was an old man57And his children filled with vigour,58They came in their northern tour on the

verge of winter,59To an island in a lonely lake.60There one night they camped, and on the

morrow61Gathered their kettles and birch-bark62Their rabbit-skin robes and their mink-traps,63Launched their canoes and slunk away

through the islands,64Left her alone forever,65Without a word of farewell,66Because she was old and useless,67Like a paddle broken and warped,68Or a pole that was splintered.69Then, without a sigh,70Valiant, unshaken,71She smoothed her dark locks under her

kerchief,72Composed her shawl in state,73Then folded her hands ridged with sinews

and corded with veins,74Folded them across her breasts spent with

the nourishment of children,75Gazed at the sky past the tops of the cedars,76Saw two spangled nights arise out of the

twilight,

The Women in Scott’s work

• As in this presentation I do not have time to fully interrogate the two poems, I focus on the Imagery and diction of poems in regard to the women, and discuss how it influences the over all tone of each Poem

• The imagery of Forsaken is very dark, Scott uses words such as “hissing”(24),and “roared”(29) instead of more neutral adjectives to achieve this dark tone. In The Onondaga Madonna, words such as “burn and glow”(4) achieve the same tone.

• In both poems negative adjectives are also used in describing the women. In the second part of the poem The forsaken she is described as “old and withered” (54). In The Onondaga Madonna, the woman is described as “tragic savage”(3) who “thrills with war and wilderness”(7).

• In both poems the tone and imagery also reflects conflicting position of First Nations women and their low status within hierarchy of womanhood in white Canada. In The Forsaken, this conflict is evident in contradictory adjectives used to describe the women. Originally referred to as “Valiant, Unshaken”, the unnamed woman eventually sinks into a “deep...silent”, and is “delicately drawn”. Words such as “stain”, “wildness”, “mingled with her ancient foes”(5) illustrate the same concept in The Onondaga Madonna.

• The titles of the poems also further expose conflict within these women’s livesi) The title The Forsaken refers to a first nations women who is literary forsaken and is left to die. Almost

illustrating her as something that is no longer wanted because she is done reproducing.ii)The Onondaga Madonna, is rather an ironic title further reflecting the clash of the two culture and its impact

on the status of native women. In the title the name of Jesus’ mother is used right beside Onondaga. Maybe because she is also having a fatherless baby. She is however short of proper woman as “carelessly”(1) posing and feeding a baby with an unknown father.

• The cleaver use of the colour “white” also reinforces this inevitable disappearance, in the forsaken the grandmother is covered in a layer of white snow and she is only “alive through a tiny cleft in snow” similarly Scott feels that Indian culture is barely alive and on the verge of dying. This notion is further reinforced in The onondoga Madonna by describing the baby “paler than her”(11) because he is half white.

Emerging Themes

• The conflict between the two cultures is often central to Scott’s poetry, Scott often introduces influence of European life really naturally in the poem, in The Forsaken in the morning the family gather “their Kettles and Birch-bark”(61) showing that now instead of taking a piece of their flesh to hunt, they have more modern equipment to warm water. This conflict is very central to The Onondaga Madonna whose blood is mixed with that of white people and now her baby is a complicated creature who is “burdened with his infant gloom”(10).

From Heroines to Whores Transformation of Indian Women

• It is certainly true that Women in Scott’s work are portrayed as heroines at the first glance but looking deeper it became evident that they are “savages” who are deemed useless(The forsaken 66) and are in a verge of disappearance.

• The portrayal of Indian women as useless is reinforced through the symbolic representation of Indian children. Scott almost sees nurturing an Indian children useless. In forsaken when left alone the mother folds her arms across her breast which was “spent with nourishment of Children”(74) who left her to die. Breast is also mentioned in The Onondaga Madonna where feeding her baby is viewed as feeding her nation’s doom. In the forsaken Scott opens the poem by describing a “sick baby ”(7), and in The Onondaga Madonna Scott closes the poem by describing a gloomy infant of mixed race. Both children are useless doing nothing to their mothers except being fed.

• The word choice of both poems illustrate the ways in which the author sees death an ultimate option for the Indian culture through the ways in which in forsaken the woman is “wavering with its own weakness”(88), and The Onondaga Madonna from is from a “weird and wanting race”(2) dealing with this destiny because of “her father’s woes”(8).

Questions to think about

• Do you feel that similar representation of Indian women as mothers to kids they don't care bout and women left to die was used in media coverage of Robert Pickton murder cases.

• How do literature pieces like the ones we read have contributed to our perception of First nations’ women within Canadian culture as welfare mom’s and drug addicts living off street sex trade.

Works Cited

Meckler, Lee B. "Rabbit-Skin Robes and Mink-Traps: Indian and European in "The Forsaken"." University of Waterloo, Canadian Poetry . 28 September 2010 <http://www.uwo.ca/english/canadianpoetry/cpjrn/vol01/meckler.htm>.

• Minler, Nina. "Duncan Campbell Scott (1862-1947)." Collections Canada. 28 September 2010 <http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/wapp/canvers/bios/escott.htm>.

• Scott, Duncan C. “The Forsaken”. An Anthology of Canadian Literature in English. Ed. Donna Bennett, Russell Brown. 3rd Edition. Oxford, 2010. 249-276. Print

• Scott, Duncan. C. “The Onondaga Madonna”. An Anthology of Canadian Literature in English. Ed. Donna Bennett, Russell Brown. 3rd Edition. Oxford, 2010. 192-195. Print