A.M.Klein
The lamenting tone is dramatic with an abrupt beginning to captivate the attention of the readers. It means a sense of loss. Men were of different kinds like warriors and chieftains, wherein brave means warriors which has two semantic differences “where and brave”. It tells us that they are no more brave. The early natives lived in a bound state having a vast land. Being colonised they lost their identity and their mind power. They were not able to express themselves as the sons of the soil and were treated like animals to be tamed. The autumn front symbolises the old age and a season of death and also the beginning of the race. The poem is narrated from the middle with an extrinsic information.
“Indian Reservation: Caughnawaga” is a poem about the fall of an Indian and what happened after he fell. It narrates who is responsible for the fall which is basically a ‘sense of fear’. The poet A.M.Klien is a Jewish Canadian writer, yet talks about the Indians. He is an insider as a Jewish who suffered in the hands of whites. His poem “Indian Reservation: Caughnawaga” is about the story of the Indians which starts with a melancholic tone.
The child here refers to the poet himself who feels nostalgic about the flown away bravery of the Indians. It has two perspectives – the child’s and the adult’s. The child looks at the “coloured frontpiece” which his the front-page of a book. It has the picture of the braves and the “monosyllabic chief” who has dignit and never wasted time in speaking; compared to the Indian God Manito, known for courage, grandeour and greatness which is seen in the coloured frontpiece. He is standing arms akimbo showing his self-esteem, dignity and pride which is now only an analepsis.
The poet says that in his childhood he wished he were an Indian, a kind of exclamation, fancy, illusion. “The classroom chalk” is a symbolnof symbolisation; “varnish smell”, “the watered dust of the street”, where he wanted to enter a life of naturally; an escape from the problems of reality and goes to nature. He mentions the Iroquois which was the chief tribe invaded by French. It had sub-tribes and many dialects in their path. They never go in the same for the sale of security which also has adventurous experience in it. He says that this is what his illusion was but in reality it never came through. And he tells that the chief stands his arms akimbo who awaits “the runaway mascot” which is a symbol of good omen and luck changing. Cultural changes usually come very quietly he says.
Later, a drastic change has happened where moccasin, a shoe without heels which protected the feet of Indians and made no sound is now used by the robbers which was vulnerable and had a glorious past. Feeling is one way of learning in the lap of nature. He wanted many adventures by taking different paths. There he can see what others have not seen and experienced like the Indians. He says that Indians are dying, what we see now is the remembrance of the chief, living in the world of illusion and experiencing reality. The change of western culture is visible in the names we choose and the dress we use. When the names change, the identity also changes. Still braves are there by it not with the indianess, completely changed to western culture.
He says that indiqn has become pale, lost his colour of health and nobility and vulnerable nature. He is ironic. The women were inside the “elementary shawls’ being inactive who also have lost their identities. Children were playful but now they have become least worthy. Tourists, white men had pleasure in throwing money to those children “at the old church door” who had been defeated.
Their past is sold in shops which means that their tradition isnlost because of the colonisers. They fell on the ground, dust. The old church door symbolises love, giving and brotherhood but now has become the sight of cultural humiliation. Children being transformed to beggars. In the poem “The Dying Eagle”, man fell internally in his mind, spiritually. But here it is visible through tradition.
It is the selling of the character of an individual amongst the selling of a tradition. They are made by o sell themselves and white men make themselves sold. Exploiting Anand can also be done by destroying a land. Man is the cause of exploitation as wel as the judge and becomes the top predator in food chain. Justice not denied but deranged.
Nature is shrinking as we are expanding, thereby by killing tradition and make momentous out of it which is an insult to the Indians. The worst was the white men selling Indian tradition. White men scalped Indian’s tradition and we live with dead things. We have become savages of civilisation. The irony is made to generate the Indians.
The last stanza is very pathetic, ironically presents the promises made and the betrayals, illusions and realities, the desires of Indians as a “grassy-ghetto”, an oxymoron
There is a composition of both freedom and bondage. They were promised freedom but bound in bondage. The entire poem seems to be about reservation. A “ghetto” is a synonym for reservation. Through a positive commotion of the culture, the white men destroyed them and used them. “And these are fauna on a museum kept”. Fauna is associated with the animal like Indian; the savage is now imprisoned in museum. The irony is that the hunter has now become the hunter. “The better hunters have prevailed”. The Indian has transformed from a golden position to a civilized poverty and humility. The poet calls the hunting as a game which is a very significant statement. He says that both are hunters, the Indian hunts for his survival, but the white men hunt for the destruction in one way. This goes by the theory of Darwinism. He hits at the sore of the white men’s civilisation. Indians lose their blood which empathetically means “passions and emotions” that “makes the grounds it’s crypt”, “bleached are their living”. Indian is dead, in becoming the subservient servant of the whites. He has lost his life and lives like a “living vegetable”. The whites are referred to as “pious prosperous ghosts”, an oxymoron which means they are materially prosperous.
The poet concludes by saying that the ruler and the ruled, higher and lower, the rich and the poor are the marginals. He uses the metaphor “hunting” to show their lives. The analogy is that the individual hunts for the sake of survival whereas whites do it for fun and sport. Human rights have it’s boundaries as per P.G.Wodehouse, “the sons of the toil are buried beneath tonnes of soil”. Indian for his sake of survival has lost his identity. If Indian is the dead living, then the white man is the living dead, concludes the poet.