The Massacre At Fort Michilimackinac Analysis

In Alexander Henry’s “The Massacre at Fort Michilimackinac”, he describes how the Indians massacred the soldiers and people at Fort Michilimackinac, he characterizes the Indians in the retelling differently — some as positive and some as negative. In Terry Goldie’s article “Semiotic Control: Native People in Canadian Literature”, Goldie discusses the characterization of Native people using 5 techniques: violence, sexuality, orality, mysticism, and prehistoric-ness — he discusses how these techniques are used to portray Native people in a negative light. In the paragraph where we see Wa’wa’tam for the second time (after twelve months have elapsed), his behaviour is off and he is acting odd— Henry shrugs this off are simply “the peculiarities

of the Indian character” — this ties in with the idea of mysticism of the Native people, how outsiders look upon their behaviours as normal to them and that it is part of the Native mystery. Henry makes a comment about the language that Wa’wa’tam uses, and says that only a master could understand it —although in Goldie’s article orality is used in derogatory terms, here it is used in admiration of the Indians. Violence is often used to show the Natives as animalistic, in Henry’s retelling that shines through — when he is describing the massacre he uses words like slaughter and scalping, these words invoke a sense of fear among the reader.