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Chapter 8
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Sign of the Beaver, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Survival and Indigenous Knowledge
Colonialism, Land Rights, and Entitlement
Nature
Friendship and Respect
Coming of Age and Manhood
Summary
Analysis
A few days later, Matt asks Attean how he killed the rabbit, since there’s no hole from a bullet or an arrow. Scornfully, Attean says Native Americans don’t use bullets for rabbits, but then he tells Matt to come out so he can show him. At the edge of the clearing, Attean pulls up a long, thin root, which he splits in half lengthwise and then splices together. He then finds two forked saplings a few feet apart and balances a bigger stick between them, with the root hanging down like a noose from the stick. The rabbit, Attean explains, gets caught in the noose and then stuck when it pulls the stick into a bush. Matt is impressed—he didn’t know you could make a snare without wire or string.
Matt is becoming more interested in indigenous survival methods, and he finds them impressive. His reaction to the snare made of a root suggests that it never occurred to him that he could make a snare without manufactured supplies. For his part, Attean finds Matt pretty silly: it’s not very useful, he believes, to rely on manufactured items when the forest has everything a person needs to survive. But he’s willing to share his knowledge with Matt, which suggests their relationship is beginning to thaw.
Themes
Attean tells Matt to make more, so Matt spends the afternoon making two more. They’re crude, and the next day, Attean gives no sign of approval. However, when there’s a partridge in one of the snares two days later, Attean does grunt something that sounds like “good.” Matt insists Attean won’t need to bring him more meat now, but Attean continues to bring meat as well as corncakes, nuts, or maple sugar. Matt also keeps his end of the bargain, though he knows he’s a terrible teacher. Attean can soon spell simple words, but he still seems to find the whole process useless and beneath him. He does, however, enjoy Robinson Crusoe, and Matt suspects Attean returns each day just to hear more of the story.
Matt quickly begins to see the use in learning indigenous survival and hunting skills, though his insistence that he no longer needs Attean reads as immature and premature. There is, no doubt, a whole lot more for Attean to teach Matt. And while Attean clearly has no interest in learning to read, he and Matt begin to bond over Robinson Crusoe. This highlights that they are both boys who are equally capable of enjoying an adventure story. The book thus becomes something for them to share.
Themes
Matt chooses only the most exciting passages and soon, they get to the part where Crusoe rescues the man Friday. It’s one of Matt’s favorite scenes, and when he notices Attean’s eyes glittering, he loses himself in the narrative. Crusoe watches the “savages” slaughter one captive for a cannibal feast, but then the other captive runs toward Crusoe. Crusoe kills the cannibals and then, slowly, the saved man approaches, clearly afraid of Crusoe and his gun. Finally, the man kneels down, kisses the ground, and puts Crusoe’s foot on his head—“a token of swearing to be [his] slave forever.” At this, Attean leaps up, enraged, and says Native people would never kneel down and become a white man’s slave. It’d be better to die.
Matt clearly has never considered how reading about a Native person swearing to be a white man’s slave would go over with an actual Native person. Perhaps unsurprisingly to readers, Attean is very offended. Aside from the very clear prejudice that the book has toward indigenous peoples, Attean may also take issue because Matt—a white settler like Crusoe—is, to Attean, helpless and inefficient when it comes to simply surviving in the woods.
Themes
After Attean storms out of the cabin, Matt considers Robinson Crusoe. He’s always thought it was right and normal that “wild” native peoples would become slaves to white men, but is it possible things could be different? This line of thinking concerns Matt.
Matt is beginning to think that perhaps Robinson Crusoe doesn’t represent the truth about white settlers being superior to Native people. Attean, after all, is better at surviving in the forest than Matt is. Matt thus begins to question his own prejudices, though he doesn’t take this line of thinking much further. This in turn reflects Matt’s privilege, as he doesn’t necessarily have to think very hard about these things if he doesn’t want to.
Themes
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