River Thieves

R. Gordon Moyles is professor emeritus of English at the University of
Alberta, the co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities:
British Views of Canada, 1880–1914, and the author of The Salvation
Army and the Public.

The last known Beothuck, Shawnadithit, died in St. John’s in 1829. The
extinction of her people, the Aboriginal inhabitants of Newfoundland,
has been the subject of much archeological investigation, historical
commentary, and artistic speculation. Such writers as Peter Such and
Kevin Major have tried to visualize the lifestyle of the “red ochre”
people and their meagre resistance in the face of white aggression and
indifference. Michael Crummey takes a different tack, offering fictional
stories of John Peyton Jr. and Captain John Buchan, two of the men
involved in confrontations with and searches for the “Red Indians”
between 1810 and 1820.

The tensions of the novel are neatly expressed in its title. To the
English interlopers, the Beothucks are “river thieves” because they
steal their boats, utensils, and anything they can lay their hands on.
In reality, it is the English who are the thieves, having usurped the
Natives’ rivers, building weirs to trap the salmon and claiming rights
to them. For Buchan, seeking to establish friendly relations with the
Natives, and for Peyton, caught between the merciless attitudes of his
father and his desire to build a more civilized society, those tensions
cut deep and reveal powerful personalities. It all results in a very
fine novel, a convincing psychological drama not so far removed from the
historical truth as to obscure the facts. Crummey, already praised for
his earlier books, has by this effort launched himself into the
mainstream of Canadian literature.