demonstrated to be related to any other language, in spite of countless proposals (Korean, Altaic/Transeurasian, Ainu, Uralic, Austronesian, Sino-Tibetan, Dravidian, Basque, Sumerian, Indo-European, etc.). However, this view considers neither the Ryukyuan languages nor the language of Hachijō Island, whose relationship with Japanese is beyond any doubt, to the point that they are often treated as Japanese dialects. Though the recognition of several "Japonic" languages does not solve the problem of their relationship with other languages, it opens new perspectives. A systematic comparison of Ryukyuan and Japanese and the reconstruction of their common ancestor is a necessary preliminary step in the search for external relatives:

• Ryukyuan can be shown to be a sister family of Japanese that split from it before the 8 th c. ce • Ryukyuan preserves many features already lost or obsolescent in Old Japanese

What, if anything, is Ryukyuan?

Ryukyuan languages:

• generic name given to the native languages spoken in the Ryūkyū Islands, scattered across more than 800km between the south of Kyūshū and the northeast tip of Taiwan • this territory, delimited by the Kuroshio current, corresponds to that of the ancient Ryūkyū kingdom that was conquered by Japan in 1609 and officially annexed in 1872 • abundant correspondences within both the lexicon and the grammar leave no doubt concerning the genetic relationship between Japanese and Ryukyuan Languages or dialects?

• the Ryukyuan languages have been considered to be Japanese dialects since the rise of Japanese nationalism and the creation of a nation-state • but the differences between Japanese and Ryukyuan and within Ryukyuan are at least as great as between the different Slavic or Romance languages • no intercomprehension possible between Japanese and Ryukyuan, nor between the different Ryukyuan languages • it is thus preferable to consider there are at least 5 Ryukyuan languages, all highly endangered and still under-described: Amami, Okinawan, Miyako, Yaeyama and Yonaguni

Classification

The Ryukyuan languages have never been demonstrated to form a single branch coordinate with Japanese • they are spoken in the same area, share some surface similarities, but they could be a heterogeneous group resulting from several independent migrations (see Fig. 3) • most Japanese dialectologists base their tentative classifications on superficial features, such as the number and qualities of vowels

Dating the separation of Japanese and Ryukyuan

How old is Ryukyuan?

• very innovative in some aspects • the settlement of the Ryūkyū Islands probably happened quite late (see §5.1)

• but many lexical, phonological and grammatical features of Ryukyuan can only be explained if we assume Ryukyuan and Japanese split before the 8 th c. ce

Previous scholarship:

• relied on glottochronology, a mathematical method that measures the number of basic words in common between related languages in order to estimate when they separated • different formulas give different dates: [START_REF] Hattori | Nihongo no keitō[END_REF] 500 ce, Ōshiro (1972) 587 ce, [START_REF] Unger | The Role of contact in the origins of the Japanese and Korean languages[END_REF] 996 ce

• controversial method: based on the (unproved) assumption that in all languages words change at a fixed rate • a recent study [START_REF] Lee | Bayesian phylogenetic analysis supports an agricultural origin of Japonic languages[END_REF] based on a more sophisticated statistical method gives 2 nd c. bce as an estimate, but there are many problems with both the data and the method involved (cognacy assessment, chronological calibration)

Alternative method: relative chronology compared to the oldest written records.

If we can show Ryukyuan has not undergone some changes attested in Japanese, we can conclude Ryukyuan and Japanese split before those changes happened. For example, we know from the written records the distinctions between e/we/je, o/wo and i/wi were lost in Japanese during the 10 th -11 th c. ce, but these generally remain distinct in Ryukyuan (Table 1).

More important, Ryukyuan preserves some phonological distinctions already lost in Old Japanese, but which we can recover thanks to some alternations. For instance, the same Old Japanese vowel i 2 alternates with the vowel u in some cases (ex: 'moon' tuki 2 ∼ 'moon night' tuku-yo) but with o 2 in other cases (ex: 'tree' ki 2 ∼ 'tree leaf' ko 2 -no 2 -pa). It is thus possible to conclude there were earlier two different sounds (usually reconstructed as *ui and *əi) that merged in Old Japanese as i 2 . This is confirmed by the fact that they remain distinct in Ryukyuan (Table 2).

PJ OJ Amami Okinawa Miyako Yaeyama Yonaguni *ui i 2 (∼ u) ˀi ʲi ɿ ɿ i, Ø *əi i 2 (∼ o 2 ) ʰɨ i i i i
Ryukyuan also preserves several archaic grammatical features lost in the central dialect of Old Japanese:

• traces of a verbal adnominal suffix *o, which is also attested in the Eastern Old Japanese dialectal poems and survives in the Hachijō language (Pellard 2008) • negative converb suffix *-ada/-ana (Kametsu -ada, Ōgami -ata, Ishigaki -ana), cognate with the Eastern Old Japanese -ana suffix 4. The importance of Ryukyuan for Japanese historical linguistics

Philology and the comparative method

Since Ryukyuan is not a daughter of Old Japanese but a sister branch to it, the logical conclusion is that the Ryukyuan data is at least as important as the Old Japanese texts for Japanese historical linguistics.

Traditionally:

• most studies have exclusively relied on philology and the internal reconstruction of Old Japanese • the vast data mine of the Ryukyuan languages remains largely untapped • sometimes the comparative method has been misunderstood or just rejected • 'dialectal' data has generally been considered suspect and the prestigious literary tradition of the capital has been favored • Ryukyuan features not attested in Japanese are sometimes ignored as being the result of dialect mixing -not supported by direct evidence -not falsifiable -one could reverse the argument and propose that the Japanese features not attested in Ryukyuan are due to contact, since there are more contacts within Mainland Japan than within the Ryukyus It thus seems that a proper comparative reconstruction of Proto-Japonic taking into account data from the whole family is needed more than ever as a preliminary step for further research on the prehistory of the Japanese language. Indeed, a thorough comparison of Ryukyuan and Japanese leads to modifications in the reconstruction of Proto-Japonic phonology, morphology and lexicon, and is thus important in the search for external relatives of Japonic.

Some Ryukyuan contributions to the reconstruction of Proto-Japonic

One of the most important Ryukyuan contributions to the reconstruction of Proto-Japonic concerns the vowel system:

• most reconstructions have posited only 4 vowels [START_REF] Miller | The Japanese language[END_REF][START_REF] Matsumoto | Kodai nihongo boin soshiki kō: Naiteki saiken no kokoromi[END_REF][START_REF] Starostin | K voprosu o rekonstrukcii prajaponskoj fonologičeskoj sistemy. [On the question of the reconstruction of the Proto-Japanese phonological system[END_REF][START_REF] Ōno | On'in no hensen[END_REF][START_REF] Whitman | The phonological basis for the comparison of Japanese and Korean[END_REF][START_REF] Martin | The Japanese language through time[END_REF][START_REF] Starostin | Etymological dictionary of the Altaic languages[END_REF]) • but Ryukyuan evidence (Hattori 1978-1979[START_REF] Thorpe | Ryūkyūan language history[END_REF][START_REF] Serafim | The uses of Ryukyuan in understanding Japanese language history[END_REF], Pellard 2011b) requires a reconstruction of at least 6 vowels (Figure 5, Table 3) One other great advance based on Ryukyuan is the reconstruction of the tone (or pitch-accent) system (Table 4):

*i *u *ə *a → *i *u *e *ə *o *a
• Ryukyuan has lost many tonal distinctions, and many Ryukyuan tone systems superficially resemble those of the southern Kyūshū Japanese dialects • if Ryukyuan has a simpler system than most Japanese dialects, it exhibits several distinctions absent from Japanese [START_REF] Hattori | Amami guntō no shohōgen ni tsuite: Okinawa/Sakishima shohōgen to no hikaku[END_REF], 1978-1979[START_REF] Matsumori | Ryūkyū akusento no rekishiteki keisei katei: Ruibetsu goi 2-hakugo no tokui na gōryū no shikata o tegakari ni[END_REF][START_REF] Matsumori | Ryūkyū no takei akusento taikei ni tsuite no ichi kōsatsu: Ryūkyū sogo ni okeru ruibetsu goi 3-paku go no gōryū no shikata[END_REF][START_REF] Igarashi | The three-tone system of Ikema Ryukyuan and its implications for historical studies[END_REF] Ryukyuan data also allows the identification of Korean loanwords in Old Japanese, as several words that resemble Korean are only found in Old Japanese and do not exist in Ryukyuan [START_REF] Vovin | Once again on doublets in Western Old Japanese[END_REF][START_REF] Vovin | Koreo-Japonica: A critical study in the proposed language relationship[END_REF], e.g., 'father' kaso 2 (Paekche kaso), 'precious bracelet' kusiro 2 (MK kwusul 'treasure'), 'arrow' sa (MK sal), etc.

Reconstructing the linguistic prehistory of the Ryūkyū Islands

The settlement of the Ryūkyū Islands

Linguistics:

• Ryukyuan and Japanese split before the 8 th c. ce

• however, Ryukyuan exhibits some features, like the presence of Sino-Japanese words and other borrowings from Middle Japanese, that suggest close contact with Japanese until a recent date; the presence of such features even in Southern Ryukyuan suggests that contacts occured at the Proto-Ryukyuan stage • similarities exist between Ryukyuan and the Kyūshū dialects [START_REF] Serafim | When and from where did the Japonic language enter the Ryukyus? In Nihongo keitōron no genzai[END_REF] • the existence of a common vocabulary for agriculture, pottery and metallurgy suggests that Proto-Ryukyuan speakers were probably farmers Archaeology and anthropology [START_REF] Asato | Okinawa-jin wa doko kara kita ka? Ryūkyū= Okinawa-jin no kigen to seiritsu[END_REF]Dohi 1999, Takamiya 2005):

• no Yayoi culture in the Ryukyus • major physiological differences between the direct ancestors of the modern Ryukyuans and their Jōmon predecessors • on the other hand, the direct ancestors of the modern Ryukyuans are close to Mainland Japanese • Southern Ryukyus were isolated: no Jōmon culture, no contacts with the North before the 13 th c. ce, major cultural and anthropological differences • 8-10 th c. ce: abrupt transition from foraging to agriculture and demographic explosion in the Northern Ryukyus • 12 th c. ce: Gusuku period, cultivated plant remains become common, emergence of a complex and stratified society based on agriculture, pottery and metallurgy • the most probable explanation is that of a migration wave from Kyūshū A tentative unified scenario:

• Ryukyuan and Japanese split sometime before the 8 th c. ce, probably during the Kofun period (3 rd -6 th c. ce), which saw the formation of the Yamato state • Proto-Ryukyuan is spoken in Kyūshū and is in contact with Japanese • 8-10 th c. ce: Proto-Ryukyuan speakers start to move in the Northern Ryukyus • 12 th c. ce: the Northern Ryukyus are now settled by Proto-Ryukyuan speakers, who supplant the foragers living there • 13 th c. ce: the Ryukyuan Gusuku culture reaches the Southern Ryukyus through colonization • in the meantime, the para-Ryukyuan languages that had remained in Kyūshū are gradually wiped out by Japanese

Explaining the Ryukyuan diversity: an island effect

Ryukyuan and Japanese:

• great linguistic, as well as cultural and anthopological, differences • why?

Hypothesis of an Austronesian substratum:

• Taiwan, the Austronesian homeland, is only 100+km away from Yonaguni and can be seen with the naked eye several times a year from there • archaeological traces of the presence of Austronesians in the Southern Ryukyus [START_REF] Summerhayes | An Austronesian presence in southern Japan: Early occupation in the Yaeyama Islands[END_REF] However:

• no Austronesian presence attested in the Northern Ryukyus • DNA studies reveal Southern Ryukyuans have no relationship with the Taiwan aborigenes but are closely related to Mainland Japanese [START_REF] Matsukusa | A genetic analysis of the Sakishima islanders reveals no relationship with Taiwan aborigines but shared ancestry with Ainu and main-island Japanese[END_REF]) • archaeological remains in the Yaeyama Islands show Austronesians from Taiwan occupied the Southern Ryukyus for a short period of time 4500-3900 years ago [START_REF] Summerhayes | An Austronesian presence in southern Japan: Early occupation in the Yaeyama Islands[END_REF], but there is a gap of several millennia between the end of the Austronesian presence and the arrival of the modern Ryukyuans' ancestors • islands cannot sustain a large population of foragers [START_REF] Takamiya | Shima no senshigaku: Paradaisu dewanakatta Okinawa shotō no senshi jidai[END_REF], so the Jōmon foragers of the Northern Ryukyus were probably few in numbers and many islands were unoccupied • no actual Ryukyuan linguistic material can be convincingly linked to Austronesian or any other language Explaining the Ryukyuan diversity:

• linguistic diversity increases as we go further southwest in the Japanese Islands • the area of greatest linguistic diversity is often the homeland of the language family, however, for Japonic, this is clearly wrong • languages evolve in punctuational bursts [START_REF] Atkinson | Languages evolve in punctuational bursts[END_REF], and colonization of new locations by small groups constitutes founder effects that cause rapid changes • insular geography favors isolation and diversification

Last words: Non-everlasting languages

The Ryukyuan languages, besides their many interesting synchronic features, play a key role in the reconstruction of the linguistic prehistory of the Japanese islands, and they cannot be neglected if we are ever to resolve the question of the origin of the Japonic language family. This is also probably the case of many lesser-known Japanese dialects, which remain, like most Ryukyuan languages, under-described. The importance of the study of the diverse Japanese and Ryukyuan linguistic varieties has been repeatedly argued by the eminent Japanese linguist Hattori Shirō, who already regretted in the 70's the paucity of good and sufficient descriptions. Though Hattori rightfully warned us of the coming extinction of those varieties and of the urge for detailed and extensive descriptions, little has been done in 40 years.

The recent disaster in Northeast Japan left thousands deads. Besides the human tragedy, several dialects are probably gone forever with the giant tsunami. Had it happened in the Ryukyus, little would have been left of the Ryukyuan languages. We should remember that actually an earthquake and a tsunami of similar magnitude struck the Ryūkyūs in the 18 th c ce. In 1771, a magnitude 8 earthquake followed by a 40-80m high tsunami reduced by two-thirds the population of the Southern Ryukyus. With more than 10,000 deaths, most of the linguistic diversity of the area was wiped out, and who knows how many pieces of the puzzle of the Japonic linguistic history disappeared with it.

The most important and urgent task in Japanese linguistics -perhaps the only really urgent task -remains the description and documentation of the Ryukyuan languages and the Japanese dialects.

  Figure 1. The Japanese Islands and East Asia

  Figure 2. The Ryūkyū Islands

Figure 4 .

 4 Figure 4. The Japonic language family tree

Figure 5 .

 5 Figure 5. The Proto-Japonic vowel system

A theoretically possible tree of the Japonic language family

					. . . Japonic
					. ?
			. . . . . . . Ryukyuan	. . . Japanese .	. . . Hachijō .
	• but it is widely known such phonological features can easily
	-spread geographically through language boundaries, by contact . . . . Northern Ryukyuan . . . Southern Ryukyuan
	-arise independently
					Japonic
	. . . . . Macro-Yaeyama	. . . Miyako .	. . . . . . Okinawa . . . .	. . . . Amami
	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Yonaguni . . . .	. . . Yaeyama .			Ryukyuan
		Yonaguni	Yaeyama	Amami	Okinawa
					Miyako	Japanese
		Hachijō	Kyūshū	Central	Eastern
					Japanese	Japanese
	Figure 3. Genetic classification:
	• should be based on the sole criterion of shared innovations, as done in modern
	biology (phylogenetics)
	• subgroups are established if they share innovations that are not present in other
	species/languages/dialects
	• the common retention of an old feature or the lack of an innovation is not indicative
	of subgrouping
	A detailed comparison of Japanese and Ryukyuan reveals:
	• they do exhibit mutually exclusive innovations, and thus form two sister branches
	(Pellard 2009)
	• but the exact position of the Hachijō language is still unclear
	• important consequences for the reconstruction of the linguistic prehistory of the
	Japanese islands (see §4)
	Ryukyuan is defined by several innovations, e.g.,
	• semantic change: 'intestines' > 'belly' for *wata
	• adversative marker: *soga (including nominalizer *so)
	• instrumental marker: *se (< 'do')
	• interrogative pronoun: *nawo ∼ *nowo 'what?'
	• plural markers: *kja and *ta
	• reflexive pronoun: *du (< 'body')

On the other hand, all Japanese dialects seem to share the forms otoko 'man', kami 'hair (of the head)' and tabe 'eat' (< honorific), all innovations absent from Ryukyuan.

Table 1 . Pre-Middle Japanese distinctions preserved in Ryukyuan

 1

	OJ MJ Amami Okinawa Miyako Yaeyama Yonaguni
	o wo	o	ʔu wu	ʔu wu	u bu	u bu	u bu
	i wi	i	ʔi ji	ʔi ji	ɿ, i bɿ	ɿ, i bɿ	i bi
	e je we	e	ʔi ji	ʔi wi	i bi	i bi	i bi

Table 2 . Pre-Old Japanese distinctions preserved in Ryukyuan

 2

Table 3 . Proto-Japonic vowel correspondences

 3

	PJ	OJ	Amami Okinawa Miyako Yaeyama Yonaguni
	*i *e	i 1	ˀi ʰɨ	ʲi i	ɿ i	ɿ i	i, Ø i
	*u *o u (o 1 ) ʰu, o u ˀu, Ø	u, Ø u	u, Ø u	u, Ø u	u, Ø u

Table 4 . Proto-Japonic tone correspondences for dissyllables

 4

	S. Kyūshū Makurazaki	E. Kyūshū Ōita	MJ	PJ	PR Amami Okinawa Onotsu Nakijin	Miyako Ikema	Yonaguni
	LH HL	              	LH(=H) HL LH(=L)	{ {	. . 2.1 . . 2.2 . . 2.5 . . 2.4 . . 2.3	. . 2.1 . . 2.2 . . 2.5b . . 2.5a . . 2.4b . . 2.4a . . 2.3b . . 2.3a	. . A . . C . . B	. . LH HL	. . LH HL LR	HH-LL-LL HH-HH-LL HH-LL-HH	. . LH LH(L) LL	.

Abbreviations

MJ Early Middle Japanese (9-12th c. ce)

H high tone MK Middle Korean L low tone PJ Proto-Japonic R rising tone PR Proto-Ryukyuan OJ Old Japanese (8 th c. ce)


W Liebig

P Calafiura

W Lavrijsen

Physics-level Job Configuration

The offline and high-level trigger software for the Atlas experiment has now fully migrated to a scheme which allows large tasks to be broken down into many functionally independent components. These components can focus, for example, on conditions or physics data access, on purely mathematical or combinatorial algorithms or on providing detector-specific geometry and calibration information. In addition to other advantages, the software components can be heavily re-used at different levels (subdetector tasks, event reconstruction, physics analysis) and on different running conditions (LHC data, trigger regions, cosmics data) with only little adaptations. A default setting therefore has to be provided for each component allowing these adaptations to be made. End-user jobs contain many of these small components, most of which the end-user is totally unaware. There is therefore a big semantic discrepancy between how the end-user thinks about a specific job's configuration and how the configuration is packaged with the individual components making up the job. This paper presents a partly automated system which allows component developers and aggregators to build a configuration ranging over all the above levels, such that e.g. component developers can use a low-level configuration, sub-detector coordinates work with functional sequences and the end user can think in physics processes. This system of pythonbased job configurations is flexible but easy to keep internally consistent and avoids possible clashes when a component is re-used in a different context. The paper also presents a working system used to configure the new Atlas track reconstruction software.

ATLAS SOFTWARE CONFIGURATION

The offline and high-level trigger software for the Atlas experiment use the ATHENA/GAUDI component architecture [1], which has allowed for the development of a large selection of functionally independent components. There are three main kinds of components as far as the framework is concerned: Algorithms, which implement a particular strategy to process event data, for example "find all jets in the calorimeter." Services, which provide facilities to Algorithms in performing their tasks, for example "write this object to file." And AlgTools, which are close in purpose to Services, but can be made private to a specific Algorithm. Functionally, however, there are as many kinds of components as there are tasks to perform. * WLavrijsen@lbl.gov All users of the framework, from physicists to component developers, utilize a python [2] user interface to assemble an ATHENA job by choosing from hundreds of components, defining their intercomponent relations, and setting their attributes (referred to as properties in GAUDI). Properties are a run-time construct, are developer-defined, and are generally not guaranteed by the interfaces that a component implements.

Athena Job Configuration

Components typically come with two kinds of configuration: the defaults as set in the source code of the component and compiled into it; and predefined, self-consistent job options fragments, written in python, that are bundled in a package with the component. Note that it isn't always possible to set proper defaults in the compiled code, without knowledge of the context in which the component is going to be used. In those cases, usage of the component is always done through selection of a context-specific job options fragment, and it is up to the user to find and load the right one.

Usually, such python fragments consist of settings that are collected into a proxy, to be applied to the component at the time of its initialization. For example: ktJets = Algorithm("JetAlgorithm/KtJets") ktJets.OutputLevel = VERBOSE ktJets.AlgTools += ["JetKtFinder/KtFinder"] ktJets.KtFinder.BeamType = "PP" Note that this fragment contains both simple property settings as well the setup of an intercomponent relation between KtJets and its private tool KtFinder.

The usage of python as the job configuration language has many advantages: its rich, standardized, and welldocumented syntax allows for simple, expressive fragments like the one above, and component developers can exploit python's logical constructs to deal with settings given a job context. In effect, this allows the combination of several configuration fragments into one file.

There are, however, three immediate problems: since the properties are defined for a component that is not yet loaded, they can not be verified for syntax or value errors; the names of the components are hardwired in this fragment, making it impossible to be re-used by derived classes or in jobs involving multiple instances of the algorithm; and the component-centric model leaves it up in the air how to either find the right fragment to load, or how to provide the proper logic settings for a combined fragment, when constructing a complex job. [START_REF] Leggett | The Athena Control Framework in Production, New Developments and Lessons Learned[END_REF]

User-centric Job Configuration

It is less than two years before data-taking, and the Atlas software system is now used more by physicists building their analysis codes in anticipation of collisions, than by developers constructing new algorithms. The software has to make a transition from a system that mainly served developers, to one that serves both developers and end-users well. This is particularly evident in the job configuration.

The organization of job configuration in file fragments has followed the package structure of the components. While this makes sense from the developer point of view, it has the wrong granularity for an end-user of the component: localizing the right fragment for the job, if one exists, in the code repository can be rather challenging. More complex tasks that involve mixing, matching, and/or including in the right order, fragments originating from different contexts (e.g. detector commissioning and reconstruction of simulated data) do seldom work out, because the original fragment authors did not foresee the resulting combinatorics.

The end result is that the user has to do a lot of guessing as to what will work, and why, as well as what tweaks are necessary and how to apply those. The goal of an improved configuration from the point of view of the end-user, is to take that guesswork out of the equation. Doing so is a straightforward three step process:

1. Provide smarter, low-level building blocks that are automatically generated for all components, and while they fulfill the role of proxies, they should contain the component defaults as compiled in, and carry sufficient information to verify property settings.

2. Provide structuring support to standardize the setup of intercomponent relations, to ensure that they can be modified or even undone, and to remove custom logic constructs from job options fragments.

3. Build higher level structures, following the direction of the physics and developer communities, that correspond to elements in the same terms as the end-user likes to think (e.g. physics processes).

These steps can be summarized as: automate, reduce entropy, and improve the user interface.

CONFIGURABLES

A Configurable class is a python class that corresponds one-to-one to a GAUDI component class and carries the complete information of property names, types, documentation, and default values. A Configurable instance is an instance of a Configurable class, and corresponds with a GAUDI component instance that may exist at some point in the execution of the ATHENA job. It has access to the component property information from its class, and in addition keeps the actual values as set in the configuration. 2 A schematic example, based on the "HelloWorld" Algorithm, is provided in Fig. 1.

A Configurable is identified by a name, which is the class name by default. This immediately solves the multiple instance problem mentioned above: the defaults are now associated at the class level, rather than with any particular instance, and will be set for all instances that are selected for the job. Thus, instead of loading a fragment that explicitly uses a name in the Algorithm declaration, the user loads a module with a class and decides herself on the name, when instantiating the class.

Configurable classes are generated automatically by querying each component for its properties, their default values (which automatically yields the types), and the optional3 documentation string. Note that if the defaults as set in the generated code are not complete, the developer can implement a derived class from the generated class and override the conventional setUserDefaults() member function, to take care of any left-over details, or to package the same component with different defaults for different uses. This is particularly useful for AlgTools.

The availability of the name and type information of all properties, allows ATHENA to check as early as during configuration for attribute and type errors in the python fragments. The alternative is to wait until much later in the program, when the libraries are loaded and the matching C++ component is created and initialized. The major problem with the latter approach is that in a given job, the component may never be loaded during development/testing, and hence its configuration would never be checked.

In addition, the availability of the documentation and the history of values set, allows for new debugging tools: it is now possible to browse, build, validate, and store a configuration without having to start ATHENA.

Finally, since the Configurable is really the proverbial extra intermediate layer that buys flexibility, it is also possible for developers to customize access and tracking for their specific components. For example, the default property descriptors can be replaced by ones that flag unintentional overwrites, or provide verification of certain semantical aspects of property settings: property boundaries and constraints, validity of a file identifier, etc.

Property Repository

The python modules containing Configurable classes are automatically generated during the build process of an Atlas software release. They can be collected and the ensem-Figure 1: Schematic example of a Configurable: an instance of a generated Configurable class, labeled with name "My-Hello", corresponds to an instance of the GAUDI component "HelloWorld/MyHello." It carries all the information that is available about the component from its class (name, type, default, and documentation of each of its properties) as well as the actual values from settings in the job configuration. ble of these modules defines the Property Repository. The repository can also be used by a variety of job configuration tools (editors, browsers, documentation generators) to extract the property settings of any given component. The high level trigger community is interested in using this to fill a database, allowing easy and effective logging of job configurations used in the various trigger menus.

Structuring Job Configuration

Configurable instances can be chained as Composites [3]: they can contain a sequence of other Configurables, etc. The typical use case is an Algorithm using a number of AlgTools: the AlgTools, and therefore their configuration, do not have full meaning until the Algorithm requests their instantiation in a certain context. For example, particle propagation codes are different, for different magnetic fields. The field in the Atlas inner detector can be approximated with a solenoid, or a field map can be used. Based on the event structure and required precision, a tracking algorithm can favor one propagator tool over another, and the properties of that tool, such as minimum step size and particle cut-off energy.

Taking advantage of subclassing and sequences, the job configuration fragment given above can now be rewritten: class KtJets(JetAlgorithmConfig):

def __init__(self, name, finder=None): JetAlgorithmConfig.__init__(self, name) if not finder: self += JetKtFinderConfig("KtFinder") else:

self.KtFinder = finder def setUserDefaults( self, ktJets ): ktJets.OutputLevel = VERBOSE ktJets.KtFinder.BeamType = "PP"

which is then subsequently used by the end-user (or in any another fragment) like so: topSeq = AlgSequence( "myJob" ) topSeq += KtJets("KtJets")

Notice how JetAlgorithm and JetKtFinder tool are now instances of the auto-generated concrete Configurable classes, rather than generic Algorithm and AlgTool handles. Notice also how the JetAlgorithm Configurable instance now manages directly a sequence of "private" tools, nicely packaged in a class written by the component developer. Finally, notice that the sequences can be modified even after the fact: the user can remove/add complete sequences at a granularity that makes sense from the job configuration perspective. For example, removing KtJets from the top sequence will also immediately discard the settings for the finder tool.

Thus, sequences of Configurables are the foundation for task-oriented rather than component-oriented job configuration: they immediately provide a higher level structure that hides details in an easy to find location. Furthermore, they also help to handle a job configuration issue known as "key propagation," which is particularly hard to nail in the increasingly complex reconstruction jobs: most every Algorithm result in ATHENA is identified using a unique "well-known" name. 4 These well-known names are usually set as string properties of an Algorithm or an Al-gTool, which allows control at the job configuration stage, as to which of several possible strategies to produce, say, a jet collection should be used. For all its flexibility, this string-based implementation of the Strategy pattern [3] creates long-range couplings between properties of several ATHENA components. These names can now be associated with sequences, or the selection of certain sequences, and these can propagate the names to their children, preventing ordering problems and settings in multiple locations, while allowing value checking.

Physics-level Job Configuration

What constitutes an appropriate sequence granularity depends on the user: it is different for a subdetector developer, than for a reconstruction coordinator, than for a member of the heavy Higgs analysis group. But the ingredients are always the same, and since different sequences can peacefully coexistent (sequence instantiations do not cause their configuration to be used: only those selected by adding them to a top sequence are considered), it is now possible to write sequences for each developer-user relation, including the three mentioned above.

To support these developer-user relations, any properties that are set directly to the Configurable instance, e.g.: topSeq.KtJets.OutputLevel = ERROR will always, regardless of ordering,5 take precedence over those that are set in setUserDefaults(), which in turn will always take precedence over the generated defaults. This way, a user can start experimenting with different settings, and once satisfied that a block of settings deserves its own fragment, collect them all in a new derived class.

All the tools are now in place, the physics level job configuration is now steered by their consumers: the developers and physicists doing the actual work. Two, more or less independent, implementations are underway: in the Atlas tracker software, which makes heavy use of AlgTool selection based on, among others, the subdetector that it is used in; and in the full reconstruction, which makes heavy use of Algorithm selection, based on the physics in the provided events. The initial prototypes are very promising, do considerably cut down turnaround time for users, and will be used in the next major Atlas software release.

A typical Atlas reconstruction job uses hundreds of components, configured in more than 10K lines of python distributed over hundreds of file fragments.

The actual "value" is actually a history list of changes as applied to the Configurable instance.

Often, the use of a property is obvious and doesn't require any additional documentation: e.g. a property such as "minPt" for a track reconstruction algorithm is clear enough.

Plus a numeric type identifier.

User settings among themselves do follow normal flow ordering.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We gratefully acknowledge the contribution of all members of the Atlas Users and Usability Task Forces. Special thanks to Pere Mato from CERN who initiated the autogeneration of concrete Configurable classes starting from the information in ATHENA/GAUDI component libraries.


Susanna Moodie

Catharine Parr

Pauline Johnson

Corinne Florence Bigot

Pauline Johnson Corinne

Catharine Parr Traill

INTERRACIAL RELATIONS -(RE)WRITING THE STEREOTYPE IN NATIVE AND NON-NATIVE LITERATURES

niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Introduction

Pauline Johnson (1861[START_REF] Johnson | The Moccasin Maker[END_REF] was born in Ontario, to an English mother and a Mohawk father. By Canadian law she was Mohawk and although she had very limited knowledge of the Mohawk language, she was taught the traditions and culture of both heritages and during her career as a poet, writer, and entertainer she adopted her grandfather's Mohawk name to highlight her aboriginal descent. Several of her stories featured Native characters, and although some were very idealistic, her depictions of aboriginal people were more realistic than those written by her contemporaries and by previous Canadian writers. Such stereotypical depictions can be found in the works of earlier writers Susanna Moodie and her sister Catharine Parr Traill. Traill and Moodie left England in 1832 to settle in the colony of Upper Canada where their husbands had been granted land. There, as was expected of those who settled in the new world, they wrote accounts of their lives and of their encounters with their Native neighbours, three Chippewa families. Their narratives, which reveal the influence of travel writing aimed at a British audience 1 , have been called "settlement narrative" or "contact narratives" [START_REF] Gerson | Nobler Savages: Representations of Native Women in the Writings of Susanna Moodie and Cath Parr Traill[END_REF] to emphasize the fact that they are centrally concerned with settler/Native encounters in the 'contact zone' [START_REF] Pratt | Imperial Eye. Travel Writing and Transculturation[END_REF] of the Canadian backwoods. Peter Hulme defines colonial discourse as an ensemble of texts, from bureaucratic documents, to fiction, to personal memoirs. Underlying the idea of colonial discourse, he argues, is "the presumption that during the colonial period, large parts of the non European world were produced for Europe" (Hulme, 1986: 2). Moodie and Traill were expected to produce their own version of the colonial encounter, and they expressed the dominant view of their times. Their accounts are filled with stereotypes and generalizing statements about "the Indians". Replicating stereotypes of Native peoples played a key role in colonial discourse since the stereotype, as a major discourse strategy, is also a form of knowledge and identification that vacillates between what is always in place, already known and something that must be anxiously repeated (Bhabha, 1994: 95). A generation later, when Canada was no longer a colony, the stereotypes about Native Canadians were still prevalent in the dominant discourse and Johnson constantly challenged them in her stories and essays. The paper will focus on the way these three women writers negotiated with stereotypes and issues of identities and selfperception. I propose to analyse the strategies Johnson used to write back to the dominant culture, and the changes in perspective and visions to be found in the earlier texts which reflected the ambivalence of colonial discourse, or its "hybridity", which Bhabha defines as the moment when "traces of the other denied culture" appear in colonial discourse (Bhabha, 1995: 162).

These accounts of nineteenth century and early twentieth century Canada, which were also concerned with "the intricate processes of cultural contact, intrusion, fusion (…) disjunction (…) interaction and counteraction" (Young, 1995: 5) of the contact zone, ultimately revealed contradictory visions of Canada.

Depictions of first encounters with Native Canadians

When they settled in Upper Ontario in 1832, Catharine Parr Traill and Susanna Moodie expected to see "Indians", and their minds and imaginations were filled with pictures of what they would be like. As Hugh Honour's The Golden Land shows, by the early nineteenth century, in European literature, painting and sculpture, the image of the bloodthirsty savage survived alongside that of the gentle, dispossessed Indian (Honour, 1975: 54-83;117-137;219-247). Moodie's depiction of her Native friend Susan Moore as "the very beau idéal of savage life and unadorned nature" (Moodie 196;197) shows that the stereotype of the noble savage was very much in her mind when she wrote. As her first description of her Chippewa neighbours makes it clear, she could not avoid duplicating the stereotype which comforted her vision of Native peoples as others and as an inferior race: the men of this tribe are generally small of stature (...) The forehead is low and retreating, the observing faculties large, the intellectual ones scarcely developed (...) the eyes looking towards the temples, keen, snake-like and far apart; (... ) the jaw-bone projective, massy, and brutal; the mouth expressing ferocity and sullen determination; the teeth large, even, and dazzlingly white.

(186-7)

In colonial discourse, the construction of the colonized subject demands an articulation of forms of difference (Bhabha, 1994: 96), and Moodie's description clearly underscores differences and otherness, and racial disparagement is sharp. Moodie focuses on traits that supposedly prove Indian ferocity and lack of intellectual capacities, a vision that she, as a white settler, needed to believe in. The depiction of the eyes that suggests a close kinship to animals also reinforces the stereotypical vision of the savage.

Moodie's description and her repeated use of the singular "the Indian" show that the Natives are as invisible in her accounts as they were in texts by her contemporaries (Gerson 1997: 7). Interestingly, when Traill describes the first encounter between her white and Indian heroes in her children's book, Canadian Crusoes, she reduces her Indian heroine to a "shrinking figure", whose face is concealed by her "raven black hair, which falls like a dark veil over her features" (Traill, 1986: 107), avoiding the problem of depicting the girl's features. Traill reduces her instead to one recognizable trait, her "raven black" hair -a detail which also reveals that, once more, the savage race is depicted as entertaining a close kinship to animals.

Both Traill and Moodie refer to painters or describe Indian scenes as pictures, Moodie cites Reynolds when she describes her friend Susan to suggest she could have served as a model (197). Traill describes the Native children singing hymns in the wigwam as "a study for a painter (Traill, 1997: 157). Anna Jameson, a contemporary of the Strickland sisters, shared their tendency to anesthetize her Indian scenes. For instance, her description of a hunter who stands "leaning on his rifle, haughty and silent", with a dead deer at his feet (Jameson 351) is, to her own admission, a "picture", "just such as one Edwin Landseer would have delighted to paint" (351). Such pictures and vignettes would appeal to the British audience, but instead of offering a new or even personal vision of the New World, they duplicated existing stereotypical visions. In her fishing vignette for instance Traill depicts an Indian in full regalia, whose accessories make him both exotic and recognizable as an Indian:

The Indian, provided with his tomahawk, with which he makes an opening in the ice, a spear, his blanket, and a decoy-fish of wood, proceeds to the place he has fixed upon. (...) he will remain for hours, patiently watching the approach of his prey, which he strikes (...) as soon as it appears within the reach of his spear. (Traill, 1997: 116) Traill's use of the present tense and of the singular "the Indian" merely fixes the object of her observation in a timeless present. We might also argue that such scenes served as postcards. In these early descriptions, the Indians are an extension of the landscape, an item in the postcard designed to illustrate life in Canada.

Johnson was aware of such expectations and stereotypes. She openly challenged them in her essays-for instance in "A Strong Race Opinion" (Toronto Sunday Globe, 1892), she derided the stereotypical Indian heroine of Canadian fiction, in "Mothers of a Great Red Race" (Mother's Magazine, 1908) she celebrated Iroquois women, attacking the notion of the so-called "savagery" of Native Canadians in the processbut she questioned them more subtly in her fiction, using them as material. She often adopted the point of view of the dominant culture, situating the Indian as other, which enabled her to destabilize the dominant discourse from within. Thus in the story entitled "My Mother" she used the English girl as focalizer to depict the encounter between a young Mohawk boy and a young English girl, which enabled her to expose the girl's preconceived notions of what an Indian should be like: She had never seen an Indian, consequently, was trying to reform her ideas regarding them (…) she thought all Indians wore savage-looking clothes, had fierce eyes and stern, set mouths. The boy's eyes were narrow and shrewd, but warm and kindly, his lips were like a Cupid's bow. (Johnson, 1987: 32) Johnson focuses on the same traits as Moodie did, in order to subtly challenge the stereotype. She also notes that the boy has fine features, a direct challenge to depictions of Indian animal-like faces. Here, the reference to Cupid, for instance, destabilizes this discourse by giving a European (and sexualised) trait to the young Indian boy. Clearly, the much-repeated encounter scene between Europe and Native America intersects with another literary topos, the romantic encounter. Johnson concludes the meeting scene by comparing George to "a brown gem" (33), a comparison that brings together both worlds. Johnson depicts George as some one who is at ease in both worlds, his English is as perfect as his table manners (32; 33) and he wears his white clothes and Indian clothing with the same ease: indeed, his clothes are said to "make but slight impression on him" ( 35).

For her theatrical performances Johnson put together an "Indian" costume, making no effort to replicate the actual clothing of any specific tribe (Gerson and Hoag, 2000: 110). However, she knew that the buckskin dress she wore and had accessorized with symbols of Indian culture such as fur pelts, medallions, a teeth necklace, and a hunting knife, would look very "Indian" to her audience. As a performer, Johnson recognized that the truth of identity is created by the costume, as a writer she challenged these beliefs. . In her depiction of George in his Mohawk costume, Johnson mentions his buckskin tunic, embroidered leggings, moccasins and a feather (34) but the conclusion of the portrait destabilizes the exotic trait by firmly asserting "he was every inch a man, a gentleman, a warrior" (34). Interestingly, "a man" comes first, so that the word order in the sentence re-establishes natural order.

Johnson uses various strategies to challenge the dominant views of Native

Canadians. For instance she might employ the vocabulary used by the British to refer to themselves, applying it to her Native characters, ultimately eroding the racial differences she pretends to underscore. George, the Mohawk boy, is seen by his white fiancée as: a man, young, stalwart, handsome with an aristocratic lineage that bred him a Native gentleman, with a grand old title that had come down to him through six hundred years of honor in warfare and the high places of his people. (Johnson, 1913: 48, italics added).

The phrase "Native gentleman" is reminiscent of the cliché "nature's gentleman"-a favorite phrase of Moodie's (197)-but Johnson proves the cliché right by assimilating her blue-blooded Indian to white aristocracy since the cliché is placed within a web of words that were likely to be used by the English elite to refer to themselves. However, once more, the word that comes first is "man", implying that clothing or skin color matter little.

Johnson frequently uses the racialised vocabulary of her times, but she reclaims it by embellishing it with adjectives, which enables her to destabilize the racial discourse and visions the words connoted. For instance George is said to be "a magnificent type of Mohawk manhood" ( 33) and his Mixed-race son to "show the undeniable physique of the two great races from whence he came"(62). Notions of white superiority are thus repeatedly challenged for instance the Indian race is said to be "older than the composite English could ever boast" (62), reminding white readers that the English too were a composite race.

Johnson also plays with the idea that a character's disposition could be explained by his or her "race". In "A Red Girl's Reasoning", Christine's father warns the white boy she is about to marry that Christine's disposition is "as Native as her mother's" (Johnson, 1987: 102), explaining her passionate behaviour by her Indian disposition, in other words, her Indian nature. The title of the story seems to reduce Christine to her race, however it also reads as an oxymoron since in the dominant discourse, Indians were frequently referred to as "children" -as Traill did in "Children of the Forest" (Traill, 1999: 103). Johnson's white protagonist sees his wife as a "childish" "ignorant" and "simple-minded" girl (120) however, the story reverses the vision of the "wild" red girl whose actions are governed by instinct and overturns the position of the superior white man. The young Englishman has "a fit of ridiculously childish temper" (119) while Christine is the one who uses logic when Charlie claims she disgraced him by revealing that her parents were married under Indian rites. Christine speaks up, challenging Charlie: "Why should I recognize the rites of your nation when you do not acknowledge the rites of mine? [...] "If their union is illegal, so is ours." (117)

The story, which depicts the troubles of an inter-racial marriage, also challenges the stereotypical depictions of Indian heroines in Canadian fiction.

Interracial marriage: rewriting the stereotype of the submissive Indian heroine

In her 1892 essay, "A Strong Race Opinion: On the Indian Girl in Modern Fiction" Johnson bemoaned the fact that Canadian authors depicting an Indian heroine merely duplicated existing fiction, resulting in the fact that there was only one "Indian" heroine in Canadian literature. As Johnson pointed out, this Indian heroine did not belong to any tribe, never had a surname, was always a chief's daughter, was "always desperately in love with the young white hero" (Johnson, 2002: 179). There was only one plot as the white hero never married the Indian princess, marrying instead the inevitable white girl, so that there was only one fate for the Indian girl: suicide. Proposing other heroines and other plots, in other words, writing back, was all the more important to Johnson that literature served as a vehicle for the stereotype. The stereotypical plot that Johnson denounced was already a duplicate: it repeated the story of Inkle and Yarico that had been very popular in the eighteenth century (Hulme, 1986: 225-257) and reinforced the stereotype of the Indian as a noble savage whose innocence was taken advantage of. In "My Mother" Johnson rewrites the stereotype by having the white girl marry a Native boy and offering a very positive version of interracial marriage. In stories such as "A Red Girl's Reasoning" , "As it was at the Beginning" and "The Derelict", she wrote her own versions of the Indian heroine. The heroine of "A Red Girl's Reasoning" is a young Mixedrace woman (she has a Native mother and an English father) who marries a young Englishman who is said to be "pathetically in love" with her (Johnson, 1913: 104) but who is incapable of seeing his wife. He becomes "blind with passion" when the crisis occurs (119) but an earlier passage suggests he has always been blind, as his feelings for her are not those of a lover, but of a collector of Indian things. In Charlie's eyes, Christine is just an artefact that he, as a collector, desires: "As a boy he had had the Indian relic-hunting craze (…) as a man he consummated his predilections for Indianology by loving, winning and marrying the quiet little daughter of the English trader" (103).

Gerson and Strong Boag argue that in this story marriage serves as a metaphor for mutual incomprehensibility of races (2000: 86) but this plot also enables Johnson to denounce the relations of power that interracial marriages could be based on or result in. Insisting that Christine worships her husband with an "almost abject devotion" (Johnson, 1987: 106), Johnson seems to present her readers with the stereotypical "dog-like", "crouching", "submissive" Indian heroine she derides in her essay (Johnson, 2002: 183).

Yet very early in the narrative Christine indicates she will act if her husband "fails" her (108), a phrase that suggests possible deficiency or inadequacy in the boy, and the possibility that he might fall short of expectations. Christine is also asserting her right to punish him, which challenges their subaltern/dominant positions. She also challenges them when she tells Charlie's brother that he "might come in handy for an exchange some day as Charlie does always say when he hoards up duplicate relics" (108). In other words, she turns the tables on Charlie, turning him into an artefact, and quoting his own words back to him. In this story, the balance of power is reversed.

"A Red Girl's Reasoning" dramatizes the hostility met by Native or Mixed-race women who marry white men. Christine's Indian blood is what makes her "new" (Johnson, 1987: 106) or interesting in other people's eyes: "the ladies said she was 'just the sweetest wildflower" (105). The story exposes social hypocrisy when it is made apparent that her Native blood is also what cannot be mentioned. One of the women who professes to admire Christine and to find her "interesting" starts to question Christine but words soon fail her: "'I'm fully interested in the Ind-in your people-your mother's people, I mean, but it always seems so personal, I suppose; and-a-a-'" (109). The woman eventually stops speaking altogether as she cannot openly state what has so far been concealed under metaphors-admitting to the presence among them of a woman with Indian blood. Charlie too is proven to be hypocrite: although he professes to love his wife, the fact that he thinks she has "disgraced" him by revealing that her parents were not married under Christian rites suggests he desires her because she is Indian but also that he is ashamed of her because she is.

Johnson rewrites the stereotypical plot by having Christine purse

Charlie's own logic to its bitter end. Charlie claims he cannot recognize Indian rites and considers her parents' marriage invalid, so Christine declares their own marriage invalid and leaves him. When he begs for her forgiveness she will cling to her logic and refuse to forgive him, arguably, their separation seems to spell death for her, but she stands by her decision, which means that for this Indian girl, the mind wins over the heart, and logic over love. The story can also be read as an empowerment narrative since Christine asserts her right to repudiate her unworthy husband, an extraordinary gesture for a woman at the time. She also asserts herself as an Indian woman: when she speaks back she claims her own people, repeatedly saying "my people", "my race", "my forefathers" and "my ancestry" (115-6).

"At it was in the Beginning" offers yet another interesting variation of the doomed interracial union. The heroine, a young Cree girl, is also the narrator-a position which reinforces the tensions in the text. Although she is given a voice, she tells her story in the language she was forced to learn at the expense of her own language (she was made to give up Cree at the mission school). Johnson apparently follows the same plot as the novels she denounces: at the mission school the heroine falls in love with a white boy at the very moment when she decides it is time for her to go back to her people.

Esther, as she is known, is about to betray her own race, renouncing her people and her culture, including her tongue, out of love (Johnson, 1987: 149). When the boy tells his uncle (the priest at the mission) he wants to marry Esther, the man talks him out of it and suggests Laurence marry a white girl (151-4), which further recalls the stereotypical narrative. However Esther does not kill herself, instead killing the young man. In a narrative twist, she blames the old man for Laurence's death since his choice of words made her choose the weapon (an arrow head dipped in poison): "What had that terrible old man said I was like? A strange snake. A snake? The idea wound itself around me like the very coils of a serpent" (155-6). This heroine too can use the words that are either flung at her or used about her.

The end of the story indicates that Esther feels pain and remorse, dreaming every night of hell (156), which suggests she is not free of what she was taught at the mission school. She however blames the priest for this: "why did they teach me of it, only to fling me into it?" (156) and we might also argue that as a narrator she uses her knowledge to challenge the plot line.

In spite of the Canadian context, Johnson sets the stage for a literary encounter, where the stereotypical Canadian plot encounters the original text.

When Esther uses her position as narrator to revenge herself even further by writing the "seduction scene" (when the priest talks Laurence into abandoning her) she metaphorically turns the priest into an animal. He is first compared to a bird of prey about to pounce on a rat (153), then his eyes are said to "gr[o]w smaller, more glittering, more fascinating" (153) so that the priest turns into a snake, or rather Satan as the snake. Religious intertextuality is also suggested by numerous references to the priest's black book (144;150;151; 153;154) and by the title, which brings us back to "the beginning". However, the final words of the story suggest other intertextual possibilities connected with other canonical scripts. As the end makes it clear, Esther's story is not that of a revenge by an Indian woman, but by a woman (156). It is possible to see Johnson's heroine as an avatar of Medea, the Barbarian woman, who left her own people to follow Jason. She too took her revenge on him when he left her to marry one of his kind (a princess), using poison as a weapon. The plotline of Eurepides's play would equally fit Johnson's story: the revenge of a woman who has been betrayed by her husband. Johnson uses an apparently childish narrator and simple story to further question readers' expectations of a Canadian/Indian story. The story is also a critique of social and religious hypocrisy-the priest who rejects Esther on account of her Indian blood also professes to love her-and of mission schools (which paved the way for subsequent residential schools)

where Native children were forbidden to speak their language and taught to despise their culture. Moodie and Trailland this is also true of Jamesonadmitted from the start that they could be an object of curiosity, and would be gazed at by the Native tribes. They also took pride in the fact that they were recognized by their Indian acquaintances when they met again. This was also true of Jameson who noted that "all those whom [she] had seen at Mackinaw recognised [her] immediately and their dusky faces brightened" (Jameson: 541). Moodie notes that her Indian visitors "soon grew friendly and communicative" (Moodie,187). In their turn, Traill and Moodie identify Native individuals--by names, and by their relations to one another. Their narratives do evince an interest in the First Nations peoples they met as individuals, which, according to Sara Mills, was the case in nineteenth century travel narratives by women, which "demand[ed] a recognition of the importance of interaction with members of other nations, not as representatives of the race (...) but as individuals." (Mills, 1991: 97-9). As Gerson has pointed out, the focus in Moodie's and Traill's narratives was on Native women who received their affection, admiration and respect (Gerson, 1997: 12). Their narratives are rife with examples of friendly visits during which smiles and silent conversation overcome language barriers .

Encounters with

Traill seems bent on providing scenes that emblematize friendship and reciprocity. In The Backwoods of Canada, Traill notes that when she visits the Indian camp, Peter's wife invites her to sit down by her side, making room for her on her own blanket (Traill, 1997: 155;207). A dynamics of reciprocity organizes the narrative of "A Visit to the Camp of the Chippewa Indians", despite the emphasis on the exotic in the title. Traill is visited by Indian women who take her back with them to their camp and the story underscores the women's pleasure in being together. The story ends on a symbol of friendship when Traill is given a chain of perfumed grass which is placed around her neck, the Indian woman's words echoing the gesture: "'present for you; wear it for me'" (Traill, 1981: 40). A similar principal of reciprocity clearly organises Anna Jameson's description of her encounter with the Indian mother of her half-cast friends: "she called me Nindannis, daughter, and I called her Neengai, mother" (Jameson 491). Reciprocity is equally strong in Traill's Canadian Crusoes as the white heroine teaches "Indiana", her Indian friend, the English names of all the things that present themselves to view and Indiana soon begins "to enjoy in her turn the amusement arising from instructing Catharine and the boys" (Traill, 1986: 114, emphasis added).

The mystique of reciprocity is reinforced when touching is foregrounded as when Catharine braids Indiana's hair while Indiana adorns Catharine's hair with feathers in return (119). Touching is frequently mentioned if not foregrounded in these narratives, which, according to Margarete Rubik, was frequent in women's travel narratives (Rubik 44). In "A Visit to the Camp of the Chippewa Indians", Traill mentions that young Anne fell asleep on her lap (Traill, 1981: 38); Anna Jameson describes how the mother of her halfcast friends took her in her arms when she was unwell, "soothing and caressing her" (491). In Roughing it, Moodie tells of an old woman who kisses her in return for her hospitality (194). Traill's and Moodie's narratives can be said to foreground an "ethics of touch"1 as the sisters admit to being touched, both physically and emotionally, by their Indian friends. Moodie describes a moving parting scene, with her Indian friends gathering to see her off with the women coming to kiss her (324).

Encounters in the contact zone affected both colonizers and colonized (Pratt, 1992: 7) and both Traill and Moodie admitted to the fact they could learn from their Indian friends. In Canadian Crusoes both the white girl and the Indian girl are given agency, they are never depicted as helpless females who have to be cared for by the boys. Traditional gender positions and the stereotypical subaltern/ white position are challenged as Indiana's hunting and fishing skills help the four teenagers to survive for two years in the woods. Indiana turns into the white teenagers' instructor as Hector and Louis learn to imitate her (126). In other words, the white teenagers have to change and become more like the Indian girl: "they learn how to manufacture utensils, clothes, moccasins and snow-shoes (159) and "like the Indians", they learn how to season their food with the vinegar they make (157).

Canadian Crusoes reveals Traill's admiration for Native ability to make use of nature's resources. In this respect, Canadian Crusoes differs greatly from the original text it evokes (which also tells of a first encounter between a white man and a Native): in Traill's text, Indian craft and technology are given prominence, secondly, technological knowledge and skills are passed from the Indian girl to the white teenagers.

Reclaiming hybridity

In "Signs Taken for Wonders", Bhabha argues that hybridity is "a problematic of colonial representation and individuation that reverses the effects of colonialist disavowal, so that other "denied knowledges" enter the dominant discourse and estrange the basis of its authority" (Bhabha, 1994: 162). Traill's and Moodie's narratives can be read as hybrid texts as they recognize Native knowledge in ways that slightly destabilize the colonial discourse they construct. As I have argued,2 3 Traill's representation of Native flora is a case in point. In The Backwoods, flowers and plants are first identified by botanical classifications, usually by their Latin names. Since Pratt has shown that descriptions of plants that rely on a European-based system of classification are not innocent (15-37) Traill's first descriptions can be said to express an attempt to create European order over Native chaos.

However, Traill 's use of local and Native names (Traill, 1997: 175) reveals a change in her vision, all the more so as she admits to Native 'knowledge' of plants. So does Moodie, who first refers to the Indians as being "skilful" in treating diseases and then comments on "their knowledge of the medicinal qualities of their plants" (202, my italics). Both women give concrete examples: (Moodie 202;Traill, 1997: 174;175). In Canadian Crusoes Indiana makes a tonic from the Canadian spice berry (Traill, 1986: 117) and an ointment from "the root of the dulçamara, or bitter-sweet" (117); she also teaches the white children to value Indian rice-the adjective is significant.

The references to Indian knowledge of native plants ultimately challenge the view of Canada as a terra nullius. Canadian Crusoes will further challenge this view since its opening page admits to the prior presence of First Nations Canadians whose claims to the land are also acknowledged: "this now highly cultivated spot was an unbroken wilderness (…) which owned no other 2 I have argued this point in a forthcoming essay: " Did they go native? Representations of First Encounters and Personal Interrelations with First Nations Canadians in the writings of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill",Journal of Commonwealth Literature,publication pending. possessors than the wandering hunting tribes of wild Indians, to whom the rights of the hunting grounds north of Lake Rice appertained, according to their forest laws" (1). Canadian Crusoes both historicizes the New World, setting her story in the 1770s, and provides a vision of its future. In Canadian Crusoes, the characters are referred to as "Canadians" (Traill, 1986: 162) and with the children's marriages (Indiana marries one of the white boys) the novel ends on a vision of Canada as a Mixed-raced nation. Interestingly, the structure of the last sentence cleverly suggests that Indiana and Hector had children without saying so since the possessive "their children" has to refer to the other couple, Louis and Catharine, who are the subject of the sentence (232).

At the time Johnson wrote, hybridity had long been, as Robert Young puts it, "a key issue for cultural debate" (Young, 1995: 6). "The Shagganappi" (1913), originally written for a boy's magazine, openly tackles the issue of miscegenation, and is an outspoken attack on prejudices, from within the dominant culture. A young Métis, Fireflint Larocque, is introduced to the Governor General as a "half-breed" (Johnson, 2002: 262) which angers the Governor General who retorts that the word "breed" cannot be used for human beings (262). With this story Johnson exposes the violence of the dominant discourse on Mixed-race people. Although the boy knows who his parents and his ancestry are (his father is half Cree and half French, and his mother is three-quarter Cree) the dominant discourse deprives the child-and therefore all Mixed-raced Canadians-of his identity, heritages and even of his humanity since he sees himself as "a thing": "he was born to be a thing apart, with no nationality in the world to claim as a blood heritage. All his young life he had been accustomed to hear his parents and himself referred to as 'half-breeds'."(262) Later, a boy at college will express a similar view, claiming that Larocque "isn't even a decent Indian" (281).

Not only had the place and identity of Mixed-raced people been critical from the beginning (Bayly, 1999: 20), but Mixed-race individuals were viewed as degenerate in the dominant discourse on miscegenation (Young, 1995: 15), it is for instance a view that Moodie expressed: "The mixture of European blood (…) produces a sad falling off from the original integrity of the Indian character. The half caste is generally a lying, vicious rogue, possessing the worst qualities of both parents in an eminent degree." (202) For her part, Johnson did not attempt to avoid the issue of prejudice or hostility. In "The Shagganappi", hostility towards Mixed-raced people is expressed through the voice of the white boy who refuses to befriend Larocque because he "hate[s] a mongrel" (271). However other voices challenge this view, from within the dominant discourse. First, the most popular boy in college reminds his friends that Larocque's skin is "tinted not tainted" (271). Furthermore, Johnson gives prominent role to the Governor General (the highest authority in Canada): he is the one who gives the Métis boy pride of his heritages. The General Governor first addresses the issue of the boy's Indian blood in words that clearly evoke the strategies at work in "My Mother" as he uses racialized vocabulary as well as words such as "lineage": 'then you have blood in your veins the whole world might envy (...) The blood of old France and the blood of a great aboriginal race that is the offshoot of no other race in the world. The Indian blood is (…) unmixed for thousands of years, a blood that is distinct and exclusive. Few white people can claim such a lineage. Boy, try and remember that as you come of Red Indian blood, dashed with that of the first great soldiers, settlers and pioneers in this vast Dominion, that you have one of the proudest places and heritages in the world' (262-3, my emphasis).

The Governor General insists that this heritage is to be envied and has to be claimed. Secondly, he tells Fireflint Larocque that far from having no heritage at all, or from being a lesser human being as suggested by words such as "half-race", half-blood" or "half-breed", he is all the richer from having two "great" heritages. The first time his double heritage is mentioned, his white blood is mentioned first, the second time, the Governor General reverses the order by citing his Indian blood first, and he also uses the same adjective, "great" for each race, making it impossible to see his Indian blood as tainting his white blood. However, the fact that Larocque keeps silent about Lady Bennington's Indian blood shows that he still feels some people might be ashamed of it. Hal Bennington is the one who tells his friends that his mother is half Indian, and that he is as proud of their ancestry as she is (281)(282). With the character of Lady Bennington Johnson also suggests that there is no such thing as fixed white/ Native identities in Canadian society. She does not aim to overthrow the establishment, but rather to counter prejudices.

For her part, Jameson was much interested in two half cast women she befriended (Jameson 205;405;423) but although she found much to her liking in their features and airs, her descriptions nevertheless reveal underlying prejudices as Mrs. MacMurray's Indian features are said to be refined by her white blood (Jameson 205). The Indian blood is there to add exotic charm, which can be heard in the women's voices, whose intonation is "slightly foreign" (205; 405). However, in 1836, Jameson's description of four French Canadians was already prophetic as to what Canada could be as a nation as she noted "they were all Canadian voyageurs of the true breed, that is half-breed, showing the Indian blood as strongly as the French" (526, my italics). Johnson would have found the notion of the Mixed race as the true breed much to her liking. Her "Shagganappi" clearly states her hopes for her country, her "ultimate aspirations for Canada" (Gerson & Strong Boag, 2000: 199). The Governor General insists that the boy's mixed-race identity makes him the symbol of the new nation: 'You are a Canadian in the greatest sense of that great word.' (263) repeating the message that is also foregrounded in "My Mother" (Johnson, 1913: 62). Choosing a story for children as a vehicle for this message reveals that Johnson's hopes lied in the next generation who would be able to challenge the racial divide between Native and European Canadians and come to see Canada as a Mixed-raced nation.

Conclusion

  Native women: the mystique of reciprocity in Traill's and Moodie's contact narratives Although they also told stories of white hostility towards Native friends, Catharine Parr Traill and Susanna Moodie offered a much more positive version of encounters in the contact zone. In their narratives the focus in on the friendly relations they themselves established with their Chippewa neighbors.

1.

  I am indebted to Professor Margarete Rubik who presented a paper entilted "The ethics of touch" at the ESSE conference in Istambul, September 2013, arguing that that female travel narratives foreground touch. I have, in a forthcoming essay, argued that this holds true for Moodie and Traill:" Did they go native? Representations of First Encounters and Personal Interrelations with First Nations Canadians in the writings of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill", Journal of Commonwealth Literature, publication pending.

  Although Traill's and Moodie's depictions of their First Nations neighbours were at first organized by a dynamics of othering, duly underscoring exotic traits and replicating the stereotype, their narratives soon evinced an interest in their neighbors as individuals, and not types, resulting in much more positive accounts of interpersonal and friendly relations. Several accounts were organized by the dynamics of reciprocity, testifying to the possibility of overcoming the racial divide. Their narratives also evinced an interest in Native knowledge, craft and technology, undermining the colonized/ colonizer positions they also foregrounded. Not all of Pauline Johnson's stories offered a positive version of interracial relations, but while she often exposed white prejudices against a Native or Métis woman, she nevertheless offered her readers strong-willed female Native heroines who can be read as figures of resistance in empowerment narratives. Interestingly, Moodie's and Traill's narratives can also be read as empowerment narratives as their female characters gain freedom, independence and agency, which native women possessed. Like the Strickland sisters, Pauline Johnson spoke from within the dominant culture, which allowed her to offer dialogic narratives where Native voices and white voices challenge one another, and Native characters speak for themselves and speak back. Although it is quite clear that Traill and Moodie stopped depicting Canada as a terra nullius, their visions of Native peoples remained problematic, and they believed they were witnessing the end of a people; In stories such as "My Mother" or "The Shagganappi', Johnson, by contrast, tried to express her belief in the new nation.