The Emigrant and the Noble Savage: Sir Francis Bond Head’s Romantic Approach to Aboriginal Policy in Upper Canada, 1836-1838

• Published in: Journal of Canadian Studies
• Main Authors: Binnema, Theodore, Hutchings, Kevin
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) 2004
• Subjects: History; Cultural Studies; anishina*
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/jcs.39.1.115; https://utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/jcs.39.1.115

Sir Francis Bond Head (1793-1875) was a respected man of letters and the Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada from January 1836 until March 1838. During that time he proposed to remove local Anishinaabeg peoples from their traditional territories in present-day southern Ontario and relocate them to Manitoulin Island. This article explores how Head used Romantic notions that exalted primitivism and the “noble savage” to justify this plan. In so doing it clarifies the relationship between European Romantic theory and Canadian colonial practice in the early nineteenth century. A careful analysis of Head’s Indian policy reveals that many Romantic perceptions of Aboriginal peoples, while seemingly benevolent, were consistent with colonial policies that sought to alienate Aboriginal peoples from their lands and to segregate them from contact with European settler societies