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ON ZO MAY 1771, two months before his date with history at the Coppermine River, Samuel Hearne records that during his party's stay at Clowey they were joined by more than two hundred other Indians. "Most of [them] built canoes at this place," he reports of the newcomers, and adds, "but as I was under the protection of a principal man, no one offered to molest me" (63). His report on the newcomers' behaviour is neither unnecessary nor unnecessarily dramatic. Unlike his first two attempts, only this third journey has not been plagued by self-serving guides, pillaging groups of passing travellers, and accidents to his surveying equipment. Hearne's description of his relative security at Clowey also accurately identifies the critical factor in this journey's success: the expedition's Chipewyan leader, Matonabbee. And Hearne's phrase clarifies the working reality of the situation: although the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) had engaged Matonabbee to guide "Hearne's" expedition (40-4 I), Matonabbee is clearly in charge. Matonabbee's leadership and cultural status, moreover, protect Hearne and make it possible for him to achieve the expedition's goals. Distinctly unlike the conventional male hero of exploration, travel, or adventure literature (MacKenzie 111-13; and Bassnett 49-54), Hearne's success depends not just on following but on making himself subservient to another man.
In light of recent examinations of gender and masculinity in imperialist texts,' this paper explores the unsettled gender-cultural power dynamics that result from Hearne's dependent role and that lead, arguably inexorably, to the gendered recuperation coded into the infamous massacre scene. Readers familiar with any part of Hearne's published text' are most likely to know its much-reproduced purple passage, Hearne's account of the Chipewyan attack on the Copper Inuit.3 The scene has been analyzed variously, in literary and narrative terms (Greenfield; Harrison; Hodgson; McCarthy; MacLaren, "Samuel Hearne"; and MacLulich), in terms of its textual provenance (MacLaren, "Notes," "Exploration," and "Samuel Hearne's Accounts"), and sometimes in primarily ethnographic, racial, and/ or sexual terms (Goldie, Fear; McGrath). Although readers typically understand the scene as the dramatic climax of Hearne's narrative, they only infrequently consider its relationship to the preceding portions of text. Because Hearne's Journey functions as one of the linchpins of the early Canadian literary canon - Germaine Warkentin calls it "the first great classic...