Summary of Annie Proulx's Barkskins is a novel about settler colonialism in North America and the eradication of the boreal forest and its native inhabitants. The novel spans 300 years tracing the family lineages of two Frenchmen, Charles Duquet and René Sel.
In the late seventeenth century, Duquet and Sel, two poor indentured servants, arrive in the wild, seemingly infinite coniferous forest of New France. Their master, Claude Trépagny, tasks them with cutting trees to clear the land for a new maize plot. He tells them that after three years of servitude they will receive their own land to work. Soon after, the enterprising Duquet runs away to join the fur trade. Sel, a skilled woodsman, remains. But then Trépagny forces Sel to marry Mari, an older Mi’kmaw woman with whom Trépagny had been living, so that Trépagny can marry a wealthy Frenchwoman. In exchange for Sel’s cooperation, Trépagny gives the young man…
