I could hear, far below,the sound of two streams coming together
(both were frozen over)^25The poem begins with a winter landscape and the image of ëtwo
streams coming togetherí. But the encounter is imagined as a moment
of breaking ice between two different cultures; the image of the frozen
stream between the natives and the British indicates that there are
barriers between the races from the start. This meeting illustrates
differences in cultural tastes in terms of smell: ëNeither General
Jeffrey Amherst// nor Colonel Henry Bouquet/ could stomach our
willow-tobaccoí, while the lavender scent coming from the colonelís
handkerchief is equally strange to the nativesí noses.
Although associated with what is natural to the place, the scent is
artificial and used to cover the smell of infection or the ësmallpoxí that
the British give to the natives. The encounter is one of disease: as soon
as the British come into contact with the natives they suffer from ill
health. Alfred W. Crosby in Ecological Imperialism (1986) has drawn
attention to how the way in which Europeans displaced and replaced
natives was often more a matter of biology than of military conquest.^26
Crosby argues that imperialism operates as much by the transportation
of germs, bugs and seeds, as it does by epistemological and military
violence. Comparably, in ëMeeting the Britishí we are presented with
a meeting where imperialists abuse the nativesí trust and their health.
In return for their hospitality, the colonists give the natives ësix
fishhooks// and two blankets embroidered with smallpoxí. This is the
extent of the generosity of the so-called civilizing mission. The
colonials are shown to be corrupt, rotten with disease and the story of
the encounter is that the blankets were deliberately infected with small
pox before being handed over as ëgiftsí in an act of genocide. In the
poem boundaries between bodies are transgressed by the disease, but
the infection is not a two way process since the natives are initially
25 Muldoon, ëMeeting the Britishí, Meeting the British (London: Faber, 1987),
p.16.
26 Cf. Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of
Europe 900ñ1900 (Cambridge: University Press, 1986).