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Devil In Deerskins: My Life With Grey Owl
Anahareo (1906-1985) was a Mohawk writer, environmentalist, and activist. She was also the wife of Grey Owl, aka Archie Belaney, the internationally celebrated writer and speaker who claimed to be of Scottish and Apache descent, but whose true ancestry as a white Englishman only became known after his death.
Devil in Deerskins is Anahareo’s autobiography up to and including her marriage to Grey Owl. In vivid prose she captures their extensive travels through the bush and their work towards environmental and wildlife protection. Here we see the daily life of an extraordinary Mohawk woman whose independence, intellect and moral conviction had direct influence on Grey Owl’s conversion from trapper to conservationist. Though first published in 1972, Devil in Deerskins’s observations on indigeneity, culture, and land speak directly to contemporary audiences.
Devil in Deerskins is the first book in the First Voices, First Texts series. This new edition includes forewords by Anahareo’s daughters, Katherine Swartile and Anne Gaskell, an afterword by Sophie McCall, and reintroduces readers to a very important but largely forgotten text by one of Canada’s most talented Aboriginal writers.
Devil in Deerskins is Anahareo’s autobiography up to and including her marriage to Grey Owl. In vivid prose she captures their extensive travels through the bush and their work towards environmental and wildlife protection. Here we see the daily life of an extraordinary Mohawk woman whose independence, intellect and moral conviction had direct influence on Grey Owl’s conversion from trapper to conservationist. Though first published in 1972, Devil in Deerskins’s observations on indigeneity, culture, and land speak directly to contemporary audiences.
Devil in Deerskins is the first book in the First Voices, First Texts series. This new edition includes forewords by Anahareo’s daughters, Katherine Swartile and Anne Gaskell, an afterword by Sophie McCall, and reintroduces readers to a very important but largely forgotten text by one of Canada’s most talented Aboriginal writers.
Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 12, 2020
I am left wanting to know more about Anahareo. She gave you a solid start here but wow, what an incredible indigenous canadian early 20th century woman!!
July 5, 2016
If as Professor Ulrich notes, “well-behaved women seldom make history,” Anahareo was not one of them. Future gold prospector and conservationist Gertrude Bernard started off at the age of nineteen accompanying her new boyfriend trapper Archie Belaney in February 1926 to his camp in in the deep woods of Quebec, greatly scandalizing her pious Algonquin-Mohawk family. Archie claimed to have come north from Mexico where he had been born to a Scotch father and an Apache mother. Actually he was an Englishman who had originally immigrated to Canada in 1906, and returned to Europe to fight in the Great War before returning to Canada. Gertrude was smitten at first sight: “In my imagination this this man looked every so thrilling hero of my youth, Jesse James, that mad, dashing, and romantic Robin Hood of America.”
In addition to romantic and adventurous, life with Archie was sometimes strenuous and exhausting, sometimes frustrating, and occasionally boring. She tried trapping, but found she didn’t have the heart for it. Then she acquired two kitten beaver. They were the orphan offspring of a beaver that Archie had trapped. After a long argument about their fate, he conceded that Gertrude could keep them as pets. This was a turning point. The beaver gradually won over Archie and he turned from trapper to conservationist. But the ex-trapper was in need of a new source of income. He was a natural storyteller, and so Gertrude encouraged him to starting writing. A few published articles on life in the wilds of Canada and the need to conserve the wilderness and its inhabitants led to a lecture, and then books and lecture tours, and by 1931 a Toronto newspaper published a picture of the couple, Grey Owl and Anahareo, names Archie had given to himself and Gertrude respectively in his writings, under the headline FULL-BLOODED INDIAN GIVES LECTURE ON WILDLIFE. Archie did nothing to “spoil their little old story.”
Life as the wife of writer, who spent his days scribbling away quietly, became boring, and soon using her knowledge of geology from a mail order course, and Anahareo was off prospecting for gold. Eventually they drifted apart, and remarried others. Then in 1938, Archie died, and the truth of his ancestry as an Englishman born and raised in England soon became public knowledge. It surprised and shocked many, including Anahareo. “Never once did I suspect that Archie was anything but what he said he was, Scotch and Indian, born in Mexico.”
Anahareo’s memoir is a fascinating portrait of life in the wilds of Canada in the early twentieth century. It was first published in 1940, and then revised and republished in 1972 is supplemented in this 2014 edition with critical notes and a bibliography.
In addition to romantic and adventurous, life with Archie was sometimes strenuous and exhausting, sometimes frustrating, and occasionally boring. She tried trapping, but found she didn’t have the heart for it. Then she acquired two kitten beaver. They were the orphan offspring of a beaver that Archie had trapped. After a long argument about their fate, he conceded that Gertrude could keep them as pets. This was a turning point. The beaver gradually won over Archie and he turned from trapper to conservationist. But the ex-trapper was in need of a new source of income. He was a natural storyteller, and so Gertrude encouraged him to starting writing. A few published articles on life in the wilds of Canada and the need to conserve the wilderness and its inhabitants led to a lecture, and then books and lecture tours, and by 1931 a Toronto newspaper published a picture of the couple, Grey Owl and Anahareo, names Archie had given to himself and Gertrude respectively in his writings, under the headline FULL-BLOODED INDIAN GIVES LECTURE ON WILDLIFE. Archie did nothing to “spoil their little old story.”
Life as the wife of writer, who spent his days scribbling away quietly, became boring, and soon using her knowledge of geology from a mail order course, and Anahareo was off prospecting for gold. Eventually they drifted apart, and remarried others. Then in 1938, Archie died, and the truth of his ancestry as an Englishman born and raised in England soon became public knowledge. It surprised and shocked many, including Anahareo. “Never once did I suspect that Archie was anything but what he said he was, Scotch and Indian, born in Mexico.”
Anahareo’s memoir is a fascinating portrait of life in the wilds of Canada in the early twentieth century. It was first published in 1940, and then revised and republished in 1972 is supplemented in this 2014 edition with critical notes and a bibliography.
August 23, 2019
Felt like a diary or a journal entry and never really felt like I was learning anything about Grey Owl or Anahareo.
September 13, 2024
Interesting!
October 24, 2023
i love the book , a rare book ,1972.Anahareo, did
a good job with this book
fascinating man we need more of him
Grey Owl should be accepted for the nature lover
which he undoubtedly as unnecessary gossip.
a good job with this book
fascinating man we need more of him
Grey Owl should be accepted for the nature lover
which he undoubtedly as unnecessary gossip.
December 10, 2021
Grey Owl and Anahareo are a couple more heroes of mine, and I loved reading this memoir about their life from Anahareo's perspective, as she is often overshadowed, both in her work and as a writer by Grey Owl. I have the collected works of Grey Owl and I can't wait for long winter evenings to work my way through them.
February 18, 2016
I found Anahareo writing much more my style than Grey Owls true writing.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews