In 1812, Thomas McKeevor, a young Dublin obstetrician, crossed the Atlantic as physician to around 70 Irish and Hebridean migrants to the Red River Colony or “Selkirk Settlement” in Canada. In 1819, he published a short, 76-page account of the journey, describing Canadian natural history and the Inuit and First Nations. The book bore a long, descriptive title typical of the period: A Voyage to Hudson’s Bay, during the Summer of 1812. Containing a Particular Account of the Icebergs and Other Phenomena which Present themselves in those Regions. Also, a Description of the Esquimeaux and North American Indians, their Manners, Customs, Dress, Language, &c. &c. &c.
Details of McKeevor’s life are sketchy. He received his training at the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland and was afterwards employed as an assistant at Dublin’s Rotunda hospital. The preface to his published account describes the journey to Hudson Bay as “a few months relaxation from professional studies.” It appears, however, that he did not return to Ireland until 1819. In 1827 he was referred to as “formerly Assistant to the Lying-In Hospital” and was employed in giving lectures on midwifery and diseases particular to women and children at Trinity College Dublin.[1] He also gave a course of lectures in Dublin’s Mechanics’ Institute on “the structures functions, and diseases of the human body” in which he was said to have proven that he had “studied his profession with those enlarged views, without which no medical man can now hope to attain celebrity.”[2]
For me, one of the most interesting aspects of McKeevor’s Voyage to Hudson Bay is his portrayal of the Inuit and First Nations, against the backdrop of colonisation and the consolidation of British control of trade, settlement and natural resources in the lands we now call Canada. The Red River Colony experienced many difficulties and its population grew only slowly, but the annexation of Rupert’s Land by the Canadian Confederation in 1870 marked a significant westward expansion in British North America’s territories. Later, the Red River settlers would be portrayed as pioneers and guardians of the West.
Alongside his personal record of his voyage to Rupert’s Land in June–August 1812 and his impressions of Inuit life on Hudson Bay, McKeevor’s book also refers to the writings of celebrated Northern travellers, including Samuel Hearne, David Crantz, William Wales, and Henry Ellis. McKeevor thereby situates his own account centrally within the mainstream discourse on northern regions, and demonstrates his familiarity with the most important publications.
McKeevor Meets ‘Ideal Man’
The travellers did not meet with the Inuit until 1 August, “an event long and anxiously wished for.” (27) McKeevor provides a commentary on early nineteenth-century notions of ‘savagery’ and ‘civilisation,’ engaging critically with Rousseau’s influential philosophy of the ‘natural man.’ Rousseau’s ideas infiltrated debates on the treatment of, and the role for, indigenous peoples in expanding European empires. From the mid-eighteenth century, increasing European contact with indigenous cultures on a global scale forced a rethinking of cultural difference. The early-modern concept of the ‘noble savage’ was first documented in Columbus’s Diary (1492) and was reinvigorated by Enlightenment thinkers like Rousseau. The notion came to dominate much of the writing about European–indigenous encounters, exerting considerable influence over European perceptions of global indigenous peoples and societies. These ideas were rooted in a strain of Enlightenment thought that was critical of ‘developed’ European society and Christian ‘civilisation,’ as immorally decadent and disconnected from nature. Rousseau presented the ‘noble savage’ as, in the words of Stelio Cro, “the only alternative to tyranny, feudalism, despotism, debauchery, luxury, hypocrisy, cynicism, empty wit (esprit) and materialism.”[3]
Citing other recent observers of northern cultures, McKeevor portrays Inuit culture as a complex, developed society that challenged the decadence of European life. He describes his first encounter with the Inuit:
“It would be difficult to give expression to the feelings of gratification, delight, and surprise, which, in hurried succession, passed through my mind on first getting a view of these untutored savages; their manners, persons, dress, language, every thing, in short, so completely different from what we were accustomed to in civilized life, that one would almost fancy them the natives of a different planet altogether.”
Providing no real detail on Inuit life, the passage evokes the ‘savage’–’civilised’ dichotomy and instantly romanticises Inuit culture. Suggestions of the people’s appearance would call to the reader’s mind the descriptions of Inuit published elsewhere. The image of Inuit culture and the currency of established conceptions is prioritised. McKeevor tempered his portrayal of the ideal simplicity of Inuit life by detailing the ways in which they had adapted to their environment, including the hygienic and convenient plucking of beards (28); the neatness of their dress and canoes (30, 31); their use of an “ingenious kind of spectacles,” snow-blinds (31); and their mastery of the canoe even in “tempestuous whirlwinds, and driving snows” (32). This goes some way to rehabilitating and reconstituting the Arctic Inuit, from the Imagined Inuit.
McKeevor grapples with the contrasts between the simplicity of Hudson Bay Inuit life, and the relative comfort and security of European life. He reflects on whether ‘developed’ or ‘primitive’ economies were more conducive to happiness, a question that troubled many other writers. He attributed Europe’s social problems to “the unnatural and unequal distribution of property […] render[ing] the poor miserable, without augmenting the happiness of the rich” (43–4). This recalls Montesquieu’s contention in 1752 that peoples without monetary currency were “seldom acquainted with any other injustice than that which springs from violence […] where money is established, they are subject to that injustice which proceeds from craft; an injustice that may be exercised a thousand ways”.[4] Specifically, M’Keevor attacked luxury:
“Mankind are then taught to connect the idea of happiness with those of dress, equipage, affluence, and all the various amusements which luxury has invented; thence they become slaves to a thousand imaginary wants, which become the source of envy, discontent, fraud, injustice, perjury, and violence. Thus man becomes the author of moral evil.”
Another important quality of the society within which the ‘natural man’ flourished was that of freedom or liberty. McKeevor noted that while the Inuit appeared deferent to authority, this stemmed from an appreciation for “the voice of wisdom”: “It is age which teaches experience, and experience is the only source of knowledge amongst a barbarous people” (35). Adding to the observations of dozens of others on the freedom enjoyed by Inuit and First Nations’ children, and the lack of parental discipline, he remarked that “Liberty is their darling passion; it is this which makes life supportable, and to it they are ready to sacrifice every thing” (35).
“… every kind of life has its peculiar advantages as well as evils …”
McKeevor’s short text is an example of Irish engagement with issues of international concern, of Irish participation in the British imperial project globally, and of the complexity of attitudes towards empire even by those involved in its establishment and maintenance. His understanding of human physiology and his interest in Enlightenment philosophy combined to produce an appreciation for the human condition. His inconclusiveness on the moral and material advantages and disadvantages of ‘civilised’ and ‘primitive’ societies reflects a real, internal, moral struggle.
His text is also a cosmopolitan artefact. It bears traces of Enlightenment philosophy, the Romantic sublime, imperialism, imagined geographies, and the emerging human sciences. It bears the traces of his medical training and practice in Dublin, his travels in Rupert’s Land, his experience of ‘primitive’ life and his return to ‘civilised’ life. The multiplicity of themes and influences in this short text reflect the complexity of contemporary attitudes towards imperial expansion, indigenous peoples, and traditional cultures. It is a voice from the margins of participation in the British imperial project from a man whose primary concern was the well-being of the immigrants in his care, but who did not shy from the moral dilemma of white settlement in Rupert’s Land.
References:
[1] Freeman’s Journal, 12 Nov. 1827.
[2] Freeman’s Journal, 19 July 1826.
[3] Stelio Cro. Noble Savage: Allegory of Freedom, Wilfrid Laurier University Pree, 1990, p. 1.
[4] Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu. The Spirit of Laws. Translated from the French … by Mr Nugent, J. Nourse and P. Vaillant, 1752, Book XVIII, Chapter 14, pp. 395–6; Book XVIII, Chapter 16, pp. 396–7; Chapter 17, p. 397.