{"id":49,"date":"2017-12-07T11:06:12","date_gmt":"2017-12-07T11:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/?p=49"},"modified":"2018-01-20T12:44:15","modified_gmt":"2018-01-20T12:44:15","slug":"spectacles-and-so-much-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/2017\/12\/07\/spectacles-and-so-much-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Spectacles and So Much More"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul class=\"kent-social-links\"><li><a href='http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/2017\/12\/07\/spectacles-and-so-much-more\/&amp;t=Spectacles and So Much More' target='_blank'><i class='ksocial-facebook' title='Share via Facebook'><\/i><\/a><\/li><li><a href='http:\/\/twitter.com\/home?status=Spectacles and So Much More%20https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/2017\/12\/07\/spectacles-and-so-much-more\/' target='_blank'><i class='ksocial-twitter' title='Share via Twitter'><\/i><\/a><\/li><li><a href='https:\/\/plus.google.com\/share?url=https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/2017\/12\/07\/spectacles-and-so-much-more\/' target='_blank'><i class='ksocial-google-plus' title='Share via Google Plus'><\/i><\/a><\/li><li><a href='http:\/\/linkedin.com\/shareArticle?mini=true&amp;url=https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/2017\/12\/07\/spectacles-and-so-much-more\/&amp;title=Spectacles and So Much More' target='_blank'><i class='ksocial-linkedin' title='Share via Linked In'><\/i><\/a><\/li><li><a href='mailto:content=https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/2017\/12\/07\/spectacles-and-so-much-more\/&amp;title=Spectacles and So Much More' target='_blank'><i class='ksocial-email' title='Share via Email'><\/i><\/a><\/li><\/ul><p class=\"lead\">Professor Cecilia Morgan (University of Toronto)<\/p>\n<p>A Cherokee-Scots soldier, interpreter, and journal-writer visited London in 1804.\u00a0 He arrived as an emissary for the Haudenosaunee Pine Tree Chief Captain Joseph Brant, hoping to settle Brant\u2019s claims to land at the Grand River Territory in southern Upper Canada (present-day Ontario).\u00a0 From the 1830s to the 1860s, a group of Anishinaabe men &#8211; and one woman &#8211; travelled from Upper Canada to Britain and Europe.\u00a0 They too hoped to settle land claims but also to raise funds for the Methodist church\u2019s missionary work among their people and advocate for temperance and international peace.\u00a0 Simultaneously, other Anishinaabe people appeared in Britain to perform in dance troupes for audiences in a number of British and European cities.\u00a0 Later in the nineteenth century, a Haudenosaunee writer, performer, and lecturer travelled to Britain and ended his days there, dying in a London hospital in 1914.\u00a0 His counterpart, a Mohawk-English poet visited London in 1896 and 1904, where she performed her poetry, wrote for the London press, and took tea on the House of Commons terrace.\u00a0 Throughout all these public displays and performances of Indigenous identity, culture, and history, these men and women also forged new families, entering into relationships that were often a direct result of their travels.\u00a0 In that respect, they were not alone.\u00a0 Cree-British children from the northwest fur trade and the new colony of Red River also voyaged across the ocean to be educated and meet members of their fathers\u2019 Scottish or English families.<\/p>\n<p>As other studies of Indigenous travel to Britain show, these men, women, and children were not alone, nor were their voyages merely historical curiosities without larger meaning and significance.\u00a0 Moreover, by the nineteenth century Indigenous people\u2019s presence in metropolitan centres was not a new phenomenon.\u00a0 The conclusion of the War of 1812, though, had long-lasting consequences for Indigenous people in British America: they were no longer seen as valuable military allies with whom diplomatic alliances were necessary.\u00a0 Instead, in the eyes of both the imperial and settler governments they were dependent subjects whose geographic containment and eventual assimilation were crucial in order to free up land for increasingly large numbers of British immigrants.\u00a0 It is in this context, then, that these travellers\u2019 voyages took place: travel was a form of resistance or, at the very least, a way of negotiating with changes that bought about growing restrictions on Indigenous peoples\u2019 mobility.<\/p>\n<p>These travellers met these challenges with determination and creativity, demonstrating savvy, strategic ways of dealing with both imperial and settler governments and societies.\u00a0 They formed alliances with humanitarian networks, appealing to the better nature of audiences throughout Britain for support, and cultivated political ties with prominent individuals.\u00a0 They also participated (if at times uneasily, well aware of the stakes of being a highly visible colonial body in the metropole) in celebrity culture in Britain, and seized the opportunity to lecture British audiences: not just about their own territories and ancestral homelands but also about Britain itself, crafting ethnographic portraits of British society, an entity they did not hesitate to criticize.\u00a0 They could be found in a wide range of places and sites: speaking in front of audiences in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Dublin, appearing at court in front of Queen Victoria, touring the House of Commons, performing in theatres around Britain, and travelling in railcars, lake steamers, and carriages throughout the country.\u00a0 Furthermore, their words and, at times, representations of their bodies could be found in the pages of British newspapers: the growth of the press and of transportation networks throughout Britain meant that these travellers reached an even greater mass audience than their early modern predecessors.\u00a0 Portrait painters and, increasingly, photographers also recorded their presence in the metropole.<\/p>\n<p><figure id=\"attachment_59\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-59\" style=\"width: 259px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-59\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1a-Fig.-1-Norton-LAC-C-123841-copy-2-1-259x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"259\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1a-Fig.-1-Norton-LAC-C-123841-copy-2-1-259x300.jpg 259w, https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1a-Fig.-1-Norton-LAC-C-123841-copy-2-1-768x891.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1a-Fig.-1-Norton-LAC-C-123841-copy-2-1-882x1024.jpg 882w, https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1a-Fig.-1-Norton-LAC-C-123841-copy-2-1.jpg 1496w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 259px) 100vw, 259px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-59\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>John Norton\/Teyoninhokarawen by Mary Ann Knight, 1805.<\/em><br \/>[Library and Archives Canada PA-2984984]<\/figcaption><\/figure><figure id=\"attachment_57\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-57\" style=\"width: 285px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-57\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1b-Fig.-2-Nahneebahweequa.-c.-1860--285x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"285\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1b-Fig.-2-Nahneebahweequa.-c.-1860--285x300.jpg 285w, https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1b-Fig.-2-Nahneebahweequa.-c.-1860--768x808.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1b-Fig.-2-Nahneebahweequa.-c.-1860--973x1024.jpg 973w, https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1b-Fig.-2-Nahneebahweequa.-c.-1860-.jpg 1440w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 285px) 100vw, 285px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-57\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Nahneebahweequa\/Catherine Sutton, c. 1860s.<\/em><br \/>[The Grey Roots Archival Collection, Owen Sound, Ontario]<\/figcaption><\/figure>As well as these public spaces, these travellers also frequented domestic, more intimate realms: drawing rooms, dining rooms, and, for some, bedrooms.\u00a0 In 1830 the Mississauga Methodist minister and chief Peter Jones, for example, met his future wife, Eliza Field, in her family\u2019s home in Lambeth; others visited newly-made friends in the latter\u2019s homes, taking tea and dining together.\u00a0 Throughout these encounters they made new emotional connections, relationships, and communities, ones that might persist even after they had returned home to Upper Canada.<\/p>\n<p><figure id=\"attachment_58\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-58\" style=\"width: 206px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-58\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1c-Fig.-3-Kahkewaquonaby-Peter-Jones-c.-1837-38.-copy-206x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"206\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1c-Fig.-3-Kahkewaquonaby-Peter-Jones-c.-1837-38.-copy-206x300.jpg 206w, https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1c-Fig.-3-Kahkewaquonaby-Peter-Jones-c.-1837-38.-copy-768x1118.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1c-Fig.-3-Kahkewaquonaby-Peter-Jones-c.-1837-38.-copy-704x1024.jpg 704w, https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1c-Fig.-3-Kahkewaquonaby-Peter-Jones-c.-1837-38.-copy-1920x2794.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 206px) 100vw, 206px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-58\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Kahkewaquonaby\/Peter Jones, c. 1837-38<\/em><br \/>[Victoria University Library, Toronto]<\/figcaption><\/figure><figure id=\"attachment_53\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-53\" style=\"width: 219px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-53\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1d-Fig.-4-Eliza-Field-Jones--219x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"219\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1d-Fig.-4-Eliza-Field-Jones--219x300.jpg 219w, https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1d-Fig.-4-Eliza-Field-Jones--768x1052.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1d-Fig.-4-Eliza-Field-Jones--747x1024.jpg 747w, https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1d-Fig.-4-Eliza-Field-Jones-.jpg 1750w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 219px) 100vw, 219px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-53\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Portrait of Eliza Field Jones by Matilda Field, 1833.<\/em><br \/>[Victoria University Library, Toronto]<\/figcaption><\/figure>In a related vein, the travels of children from the northwest fur trade were bound up with imperial commerce but also with the domains of intimacy and domesticity, the networks of families and friends that spanned the Atlantic.\u00a0 Unlike other travellers, though, these boys and girls, young men and women, did not have the same kind of public profile: no newspaper heralded their arrival in Liverpool, for example, or told of their voyages around Britain.\u00a0 Instead, their presence was registered in everyday encounters with British relatives and school teachers, in homes and schools from London to Inverness.\u00a0 This is not to say they were not the object of scrutiny and observation: relatives and schoolteachers\u2019 letters make it clear that these domestic spaces were every bit as much a \u201ctheatre of colonialism,\u201d in historian Margaret Jacobs\u2019 words, one in which they were expected to perform as proper, middle-class British children, to make new emotional bonds and connections with their fathers\u2019 families.\u00a0 Some, such as Matilda Davis, the daughter of Cree woman Nancy Hodgson and English trader John Davis, returned to Red River from her childhood and youth in London, where she opened a well-known school patronized by members of fur-trade society.\u00a0 Mary Finlayson Lamb, however, never returned to the north-west: educated in Scotland, she married a banker from Nairn and lived the rest of her life there as a respectable mother of a large family, her time devoted to domesticity and charitable works.\u00a0 Duncan and Donald McTavish, sent to Inverness as young boys after their Scottish fur-trader father died, hoped to remain in Britain but decided in the late 1830s that emigration to Australia promised a better future.<\/p>\n<p><figure id=\"attachment_54\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-54\" style=\"width: 196px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-54\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1e-Fig.-5-Matilda-Davis-196x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"196\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1e-Fig.-5-Matilda-Davis-196x300.jpg 196w, https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1e-Fig.-5-Matilda-Davis-768x1177.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1e-Fig.-5-Matilda-Davis-668x1024.jpg 668w, https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1e-Fig.-5-Matilda-Davis.jpg 1860w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 196px) 100vw, 196px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-54\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Matilda Davis, c. 1860s.<\/em><br \/>[Archives of Manitoba]<\/figcaption><\/figure><figure id=\"attachment_55\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-55\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-55\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1f-Fig.-6-Lamb-family-jpg-300x240.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"240\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1f-Fig.-6-Lamb-family-jpg-300x240.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1f-Fig.-6-Lamb-family-jpg-768x614.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1f-Fig.-6-Lamb-family-jpg-1024x818.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/files\/2017\/12\/CM1f-Fig.-6-Lamb-family-jpg-1920x1534.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-55\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>The Lamb Family, 1860s\/1870s. Mary Finlayson Lamb is seated, holding one of her children.<\/em><br \/>[Nairn Museum, Scotland]<\/figcaption><\/figure>These travelers\u2019 stories tell us much about the entangled nature of colonial and imperial histories.\u00a0 They also tell us that, far from being an \u201cisland nation,\u201d impregnable to outsiders and their influences, Britain has been a terrain traversed, inhabited, and claimed by many Indigenous people.\u00a0 And not all of them left.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Cecilia Morgan<\/strong> teaches history at the University of Toronto.\u00a0 Her most recent book is <em>Travellers Through Empire: Indigenous Voyages from Early Canada<\/em> (McGill-Queen\u2019s University Press, 2017) &#8211; available here: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Travellers-through-Empire-Indigenous-McGill-Queens-ebook\/dp\/B07624NGCH\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1512578063&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=cecilia+morgan+travellers+through+empire\">Amazon<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mqup.ca\/travellers-through-empire-products-9780773551343.php\">MQUP<\/a>.<\/p>\n<ul class=\"kent-social-links\"><li><a href='http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/2017\/12\/07\/spectacles-and-so-much-more\/&amp;t=Spectacles and So Much More' target='_blank'><i class='ksocial-facebook' title='Share via Facebook'><\/i><\/a><\/li><li><a href='http:\/\/twitter.com\/home?status=Spectacles and So Much More%20https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/2017\/12\/07\/spectacles-and-so-much-more\/' target='_blank'><i class='ksocial-twitter' title='Share via Twitter'><\/i><\/a><\/li><li><a href='https:\/\/plus.google.com\/share?url=https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/2017\/12\/07\/spectacles-and-so-much-more\/' target='_blank'><i class='ksocial-google-plus' title='Share via Google Plus'><\/i><\/a><\/li><li><a href='http:\/\/linkedin.com\/shareArticle?mini=true&amp;url=https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/2017\/12\/07\/spectacles-and-so-much-more\/&amp;title=Spectacles and So Much More' target='_blank'><i class='ksocial-linkedin' title='Share via Linked In'><\/i><\/a><\/li><li><a href='mailto:content=https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/2017\/12\/07\/spectacles-and-so-much-more\/&amp;title=Spectacles and So Much More' target='_blank'><i class='ksocial-email' title='Share via Email'><\/i><\/a><\/li><\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Professor Cecilia Morgan (University of Toronto) A Cherokee-Scots soldier, interpreter, and journal-writer visited London in 1804.\u00a0 He arrived as an emissary for the Haudenosaunee Pine &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/2017\/12\/07\/spectacles-and-so-much-more\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53579,"featured_media":55,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53579"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions\/61"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/bts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}