This year for Canadian Literature the kids and I read The Adventures of Sajo and Her Beaver People by Grey Owl. It’s a story of two Indigenous children and the two baby beavers they take in. I greatly enjoyed Grey Owl’s detailed description of the beaver’s behavior and living arrangements.
“If you look at the sketch you can see how it was all arranged, and will be able to realize how very important this dam was, and why the father spent so much of his time watching it and fixing any small leaks that appeared. He had, too, a pretty steady job keeping the trough, which you might call a regulator, clear of rubbish, so that the water could flow freely and not become too high, and so flood the house, but was always at exactly the right level. Between whiles, both he and the mother attended to their babies’ every want, changing their bedding every so often, bringing in small sprays of tender leaves for them to eat, combing and brushing their wool (you could hardly call it fur), while they made queer, soft sounds of affection and talked to them in that strange beaver language that, at a little distance, sounds almost as though human people were speaking together in low voices. And the shrill wailing cries of the little ones, and their chattering, and their little squawks and squeals, could be heard even through the thick walls of the lodge, so noisy were they when they were hungry, or pleased or in some small trouble, which, one way and another, was pretty nearly all the time. And when either their father or their mother returned (they were never away together; one or the other was always on guard) from a trip to the so-important dam, or brought in new bedding of sweet-grass, he or she would give a low, crooning sound of greeting, to be immediately answered by a very bedlam of loud shouts of welcome from the youngsters, that went on long after it was at all necessary. They were never still unless they were asleep, and were continually scrambling around, and tussling together, and clambering over everything, and by the noise they made, seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely. And altogether they were pretty much like any other family, and were very snug and happy in their home.”
When I mentioned the book to my dad he told me that Grey Owl was a white man who pretended to be an Indian. Of course I wanted to find out more! So I read the article “Grey Owl the Magnificent Fraud” from Maclean’s (August 1, 1951). Here is Grey Owl’s biography in a nutshell.
Grey Owl was born Archibald Stansfeld Belaney in England in 1888 to an English father and an American mother. After his father left for the U.S. he was raised by two aunts. In his teens he persuaded them to buy him a ticket to Canada and he worked first in a dry goods store in Toronto and then as a canoeman on hunting expeditions up north. Here he met Indigenous people (I’ll use that term though the article uses “Indian”) and learned about surviving in the woods. He spent a few years working as a guide, trapping, and carrying mail. He married but left his pregnant wife.
During the First World War Belaney served overseas. After being wounded and suffering the effects of mustard gas he stayed with his aunts in England and ended up “marrying” a childhood friend. She did not want to go to Canada so he returned alone. He lived with the Ojibways, avoiding white men and the English language, and after four years was officially adopted by them and took the name Grey Owl. Around this time it seems he began telling people that his father was Scottish.
Grey Owl continued trapping and was joined by an Iroquois woman, Anahareo. During the years that followed they moved from one cabin to another, but more importantly began to tame orphaned beavers and in the winter of 1928-29 Grey Owl began writing. He sent an article to Country Life and then wrote a book called The Vanishing Frontier. J. H. Campbell of the National Parks came to see him and they discussed plans to create a movie of him and his beaver that the Canadian government could use as publicity and also Grey Owl’s dream of creating a beaver sanctuary.
In 1932 a sanctuary was set up in Prince Albert National Park in Saskatchewan. Grey Owl published more books and in 1935 went on a lecture tour of England. He continued to work on the conservation of beavers and by persuading four provinces to have closed seasons he is said to have saved hundreds of thousands of beavers. He and Anahareo parted ways (although she had a baby) and he “married” Silver Moon. He did another lecture tour of England and when he returned to Prince Albert he became ill and died in hospital on April 13, 1938.
“Grey Owl, as the newspapers of two continents reminded all that day, was the half-breed son of an Apache mother and a Scottish father, who had saved the Canadian beaver from extinction, who had won an international reputation as an author and lecturer, who had animated and romanticized the wilderness of northern Canada for millions of people in England, the United States and even Canada, his adopted country.”
Then the plot twist — “His success story was recalled in glowing obituaries that April day in 1938 and then, the day after his death, the Toronto Star shouted in a three-line heading on its front page that Grey Owl was really an Englishman who had perpetrated the greatest literary hoax of the century. The London papers picked up the story, calling Grey Owl a fraud, insisting he had four wives.”
Grey Owl’s publisher spent eighteen months trying to find out the true story of his life; eventually he “discovered unalterable evidence that the fabulous benefactor of the Canadian north was, indeed, an Englishman.” Grey Owl was a hard-drinking, hot tempered man who was obviously unfaithful and played fast and loose with the truth. He certainly had a gift for understanding the natural world and putting it down on paper. I’m interested in reading more of his writings.
Update: I wish I’d left myself enough time to read more about Grey Owl. You might like to look up recent sources that give more details about his fraud (such as “Grey Owl’s Great Deception” in the Canadian Encyclopedia).