SOAN 55B
THE ONLY GOOD INDIANÉÉÉ..
Fall Semester 2005
Friday 1:15-4:00,
Kohlberg 228
Instructor: Steve Piker
LoganÕs Lament
"I appeal to any white man to say, if ever he
entered LoganÕs cabin hungry, and
he gave him not meat; if ever he came cold and naked, and he clothed him
not. During the course of the last
long and bloody war(The French and Indian War, 1755-63), Logan remained idle in
his cabin, an advocate for
peace. Such was my love for the
whites, that my countrymen pointed as they passed, and said, ÔLogan is the
friend of the white men.Õ I had
even thought to have lived with
you, but for the injuries of one
man. Col. Cresap, this last
Spring, in cold blood, and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of
Logan, not sparing even my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in
the veins of any living creature.
This called on me for
revenge. I have sought it: I have killed many: I have fully glutted my vengeance. For my country, I rejoice at the beams of peace.
But do not harbor a thought
that mine is the joy of fear.
Logan never felt fear. He
will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Ð Not one."
(Logan was born about
1725, son of the renowned Cayuga,
Iroquois, Chief, Shikellamy, and grew up on the banks of
the Susquehanna River in central Pennsylvania in a village populated by
displaced Indian refugees from a number of Eastern tribes, to which village LoganÕs father served as emissary from the powerful
Iroquois Federation Ð The Six nations Ð of upstate New York, centered on
the Finger Lakes region. Logan knew well Moravian missionaries
who lived and worked in the village,
and probably obtained his fluency and literacy in English from
them. Upon his fatherÕs death in
1748, Logan replaced his father as emissary. The violence and disruption of the French and Indian War and
its immediate aftermath displaced Logan and many other Iroquois, some of whom
moved westward to the upper Ohio River valley, down stream from modern day Pittsburgh, where the displaced
Iroquois became known as Mingoes.)
Ethnographic Vignette
An Anglo saleswoman is
driving toward home late one day in Northern Alberta when she sees a Native
American woman thumbing a ride by the side of the road. She stops the car, and the Native American woman gets
in. After a bit of small talk, the
native American woman notices a brown paper bag on the front seat.
"WhatÕs in the
bag?" she asks.
"ItÕs a bottle of
wine," responds the saleswoman.
"I got it for my husband."
The Native American woman
is silent for a moment, then
says, "Good trade"
.Literary Fragment
"ItÕs probably fair
to say that welfare dependency,
alcoholism, glue
sniffing, infant mortality, the highest
suicide rate among any of our ethnic groups, recidivism,
xenophobia, and a
general aversion to capitalistic monetary concepts are but a few of the
problems that American Indians have.
The list goes on.
Unfortunately, their
problems are of a kind that most white people donÕt want to dwell on,
primarily, I suspect, because Indians were a happy people before
their encounter with the white
race.
The irony is, except for a few political
opportunists, Indians
seldom if ever make a claim on
victimhood.
Individually, theyÕre
reticent about their hardships, do
their time in county bags and mainline joints without complaint, and systematically go about dismantling their lives and inflicting pain on themselves in ways a
medieval flagellant couldnÕt dream up.
É(Many Indians) donÕt
belong in the twenty-first centuryÉ
(Many live)on the threadworn edges of an aboriginal culture, inside a pantheistic vision of (a) world that(is)Éas dead
as(their)Éancestor Crazy Horse."
SYLLABUS
This syllabus contains
the following sections:
I) A narrative
overview of the course
II) Assigned readings,
and how they will be available to you
III) Schedule of class meetings
IV) Course requirements
V) Final exam assignment
VI) Paper assignment
VII) Terms and concepts
I) NARRATIVE OVERVIEW OF
THE COURSE
The case materials of
this course are not organized chronologically. But an
introductory chronological
narrative, leading into a summary of the course, should provide a useful
overview, and also highlight issues that will concern us during the
semester. At the outset, we note
that ÔIndianÕ or ÔNative AmericanÕ or ÔFirst AmericanÕ denote a vast array of
diverse cultures and a wealth of languages.
It is widely supposed
that the first European contact with the New World was made by Norse Vikings in
the tenth century A.D., that they established small coastal colonies in what is
now CanadaÕs Maritime Provinces, that they traded with and had other
intercourse with their Indian neighbors, that they didnÕt go beyond these
coastal regions, and that they departed before long, leaving no cultural traces
and not to return. Whether in fact
the Vikings were the first Old World people to come to the New World is not
known for sure, nor is it known certainly how extensively they may have
traveled and perhaps settled in the New world.
The great significance of
ColumbusÕ landfall in the Caribbean in 1492 was not that he was another early
European ÔdiscovererÕ of the New World.
Rather, it was that his ÔdiscoveryÕ occurred early in a burst of
European imperial, economic, religious, cultural, military, demographic and
epidemiological expansion that continued for centuries and which, by the 19th
century, had encompassed the entire world. Because of when it happened, ColumbusÕ ÔdiscoveryÕ of the
New World Ð unlike the ÔdiscoveryÕ of the New World by the Vikings a few
centuries earlier Ð insured that the entire New World would be overtaken by the
centuries long expansion of Europe then beginning, an expansion unprecedented
in the history of humankind.
The geographical focus of
this course is the lower forty eight states and Canada. For these parts of the New World, the
advent and establishment of Europeans occurred in three distinct patterns: 1) That of the Spanish(Florida, gulf Coast, Texas, New Mexico,
Arizona, California). 2) That of the French(Canada west to the Rockies, the Great Lakes
region, much of the middle region of the U.S. in the Mississippi River
drainage. And, 3) That of the British(Atlantic coast from
New England to Georgia, and inland to the crest of the Appalachian Mountains).
The British purpose was
to colonize, to make their part of the New World a cultural and economic and political and demographic
extension of Great Britain. Great
Britain sent, in the 17th and 18th centuries, vast numbers of people who, in
the British colonies, systematically dispossessed the Indians of their land
and, sooner or later, removed them from their land.
Spanish and French
imperialisms in the New World were alike in that their main initial purposes,
beyond annexation of territory, were extraction of wealth and harvesting of
souls. The Spaniards, however,
once they had looted all of the portable precious metals that they could find, subjugated
Indians in a feudal system which forced them to produce extractable wealth in
the fields and mines by awarding their labor to Spaniards(encomiendas), and
they converted Indians to Christianity, by force if necessary. Throughout Spanish America, those
Indians who survived the conquest and its subsequent ravages were in the main
allowed to inhabit at least some of the lands of their ancestors. But the price was the assumption by the
Indians of the status of serfs(with, however, the partial exception of
California, this system was much more extensively implemented in the Spanish
domains in Mexico, Central America, and S. America than in the Spanish domains
in the forty eight states).
In todayÕs Spanish America, only vestiges of the feudal system
remain. But, almost without
exceptions in these lands, the culturally marked descendants of pre-Hispanic
Indians are at the bottoms of the societies, economically and politically and
socially. The French, more benignly, came in small numbers and were content to
trade with the Indians for furs, the treasure that they mainly sought, and fish
the coastal waters without seeking either to displace the Indians or
fundamentally remake their traditional cultures; and they prosyletized
with modest results. Thus, both the Spaniards and the French
left the Indian populations substantially in place, and the French also left
traditional lifeways substantially intact. But French imperialism in North America all but ended in
1763, with their defeat at the hands of the British in the French and Indian
War. And French New World domains
passed into the hands of the British; and much of them, subsequently, into the
hands of the Americans.
In the long run, however,
if not always in the short, the advent of Europeans was almost always
disastrous for Indians, and especially so in the forty eight states. First, and for the most part
unknowingly, Europeans brought with them infectious diseases previously unseen
in the New World, to which Europeans had some immunity and Indians none. One devastating epidemic followed upon
another, continuing through the 19th century, literally decimating Indian
populations. Second, especially
the British Ð and, following the Revolutionary War, the Americans Ð brought
vast, endless streams of people, whose aggregate land hunger harnessed to the
economic, political, and military policies of, first, the British colonial
administration and, later, the American government insured that Indians would,
eventually, be dispossessed of all but undesirable fragments of the lands they
had occupied and made use of before 1492.
Sometimes dispossession of Indians involved wars, which the Indians
could not win, notwithstanding some notable military successes on their
parts(sometimes with the help of European allies, sometimes not). But the decisive factor was
Euro-American population/land pressure Ð always growing, never ending, always
government abetted Ð which in the long run insured that the traditional
lifeways and subsistence modes of Indians would be rendered no longer viable;
and that surviving Indians would be displaced from their lands and homes.The
inescapable sequel for most Indians was the enforced dependency and
demoralization of reservation life which, in its several flavors and textures,
embodied Ð and continues to do so Ð a cruel contradiction: the inescapability of tradition along
with the impossibility of tradition.
ÔInescapable' in the sense that traditional meanings and customs and
beliefs and identities remained compelling and salient and integral to
Indians. ÔImpossibleÕ in the sense
that the lifeways which once gave life to and enshrined these traditions could
no longer be enacted.
Especially in the 17th
and 18th centuries, in a number of regions Ð e.g., the American Southeast, the
Iroquois domains centered in western New York, the western Great Lakes region,
and the lower Mississippi River drainage Ð durable multi cultural
accommodations emerged which to a significant extent worked for all
parties. In addition to Indians,
these mutual accommodations variably included British, French, Spanish, and African Americans. This historical circumstance suggests,
to some, the intriguing possibility that the tragic denouement which, for the
Indians, materialized just about everywhere was perhaps not inevitable.
Not quite all North
American Indians have been so meanly treated by the last five hundred
years. Especially in Alaska and
the northern reaches of Canada, some have fared better. In these regions, until recently, there
were few EuroAmericans, because the latter found these regions to be
inhospitable and they(and their governments)didnÕt much want for themselves
what resources the regions were, earlier on, known to contain. EuroAmericans, of course, have in the
20th century come to covet the natural resources of these regions. But so also have the Indians of these
regions, especially Canada, latterly developed facility with national and
provincial legal institutions, which facility they often use effectively to
conserve tradition.
With this as background,
then, our course unfolds as followsÉÉÉ
Pre contact Indian
tradition, in anything like its entirety, is not directly accessible to
us. Much of this tradition,
however, survived contact and played a vital role in the often multi
generational, sometimes centuries long, mutual accommodations that developed
locally between Indian groups and EuroAmericans. Since these mutual accommodations were of considerable
practical importance to Euroamericans, they were written about Ð sometimes
copiously Ð in the myriad documentation of itself that. first, the colonies and
then the American nation produced.
And, especially for Western tribes which succumbed last, vestiges of
tradition, or at least living memory of same, persisted into the late 19th and
even early 20th centuries, and was studied extensively by communities of modern
scholars, e.g., anthropologists and historians. We look into just such a mutual accommodation situation in
the Ameican southeast in the 18th century, with the help of visiting Professor
of History from the University of Oklahoma, Joshua Piker, whose book, OKFUSKEE, explores with much attention to Creek local life the
enduring Creek/EuroAmerican interface of this period. Coming north, we will follow this up by looking at a
comparable, but longer lasting EuroAmerican/Indian mutual accommodation
involving the Iroquois and both the French and the British. And we will look as well at the
disintegration of this mutual accommodation, and what followed. A major part of what followed was
reservation life for the Iroquois, and the emergence of a new pattern of
reciprocal perceptions and expectations on the part of the Iroquois and their
new American neighbors. Many of
whom, as it happened, were Quakers, who wrote thoughtfully and at length about
their associations with the Iroquois.
With the help of Christopher Densmore, Curator of the Friends Historical
Library at Swarthmore, and primary
documents from the LibraryÕs collection, we will take a close look at this
emerging situation. So also
will we consult published work on two major Iroquois leaders of the late 18th
and early 19th centuries: Chris
Densmore's book on the career of the noted orator, Red
Jacket(RED JACKET: IROQUOIS ORATOR
AND DIPLOMAT); and Anthony Wallace's DEATH AND REBIRTH OF THE SENECA, which
treats the Iroquois prophet Handsome Lake and the revitalization movement he
founded. And this, along with the
Creek materials, will frame for us a central issue of the course, viz.,
evolving mutual perceptions and expectations among Indians and
EuroAmericans.
Acculturation refers to
the situation in which culture
contact renders the traditional
culture and lifeways of one of the
contacting cultures no longer viable.
Almost all American Indian groups underwent acculturation following the
advent of EuroAmericans. And the
Indians endured, and endeavored to
accommodate somehow to the inescapable tragedy that had befallen them. Often, especially early on, the
endeavors conspicuously included what Wallace calls revitalization movements,
self conscious attempts somehow to fashion a more satisfying cultural
situation. WallaceÕs DEATH
AND REBIRTH OF THE SENECA provides us with a classic study of the Handsome Lake
revitalization movement. Almost
always, these movement fail to produce a viable and satisfying cultural
rejoinder to the dilemmas at hand(although, interestingly, the Handsome Lake Movement had some
success with this; and we will
want to see if we can figure out, why and how so?) Yet life, grounded in distinctive tribal Indian identities,
goes on. And it comprises myriad
local explorations and innovations in the service at once of remaining faithful
to traditional identities and evolving lifeways that work in the post
acculturation milieu.
For us, the paradigm example of this process is the Comanche of the
Llano Estacado of West Texas, rendered for us by Morris FosterÕs volume BEING
COMANCHE, from their 17th century high plains horse bound buffalo hunting and
warrior culture to their circumstances at the end of the 20th century. We follow the Comanche with a look at
parallel processes among the
Cherokee of the American southeast, whose cultural transformation from the
colonial period to the present is is evoked by Sarah HillÕs treatment(WEAVING
NEW WORLDS: SOUTHEAST CHEROKEE
WOMEN AND THEIR BASKETRY)of the evolution of Cherokee womenÕs weaving
practices.
Reconstruction of Indian
lifeways, albeit fragmentarily, in the aftermath of acculturation is evoked by,
e.g., Wallace and Foster and Hill.
But destruction, of individuals and communities, has been just as much a
part of the ftermath of acculturation.
Especially from Wallace, we get a glimpse of the human ravages of
acculturation. From Anastasia
Shkilnyk(A POISON STRONGER THAN LOVE)we get a snoot full of it, a graphic, anguished depiction of how far
acculturated people can sink, of
the personal and social tragedies that can overtake them.
Finally, in the here and
now, what is to be done? WeÕll
come at this from two different directions. First, Hugh Brody(MAPS AND DREAMS)presents us with a case(the
Athabaskans of northwest Canada)that is probably as much of a success story as
one can find in the tragic annals of American Indians: ÔsuccessÕ in the sense that these
Athabaskans have evolved lifeways which at once are continuous with traditional
identities and which have soime viability in the modern situation; and
ÔsuccessÕ also in the sense that the Athabaskans and the EuroAmerican Canadians
have made some progress in attaining realistic understandings of each other.,
albeit their respective world views remain leagues apart. Second, Michael BrownÕs volume, WHO
OWNS NATIVE CULTURES?, superbly
phrases the key issues that must be faced, now, in the emerging accommodations
of native cultures to the modern world, and vice versa.
Alice KehoeÕs, NORTH
AMERICAN INDIANS. A COMPREHENSIVE
ACCOUNT, is just that. We will
consult it throughout the semester
for contextualization of the individual cultural cases that we look at in
depth.
II) ASSIGNED READINGS
Members of the class are
expected to read the following books and articles.
A.F.C. Wallace. THE DEATH AND REBIRTH OF THE SENECA
Alice Kehoe. NORTH
AMERICAN INDIANS. A COMPREHENSIVE
ACCOUNT
Hugh Brody. MAPS AND DREAMS
Morris Foster. BEING COMANCHE
Anastasia Shkilnyk. A POISON STRONGER THAN LOVE
Sarah Hill. WEAVING NEW WORLDS: SOUTHEAST CHEROKEE WOMEN
AND THEIR BASKETRY
Michael Brown. WHO OWNS NATIVE CULTURES
Christopher
Densmore. RED JACKET: IROQUOIS ORATOR AND DIPLOMAT
Joshua Piker. OKFUSKEE
A.F.C. Wallace. "Revitalization movements"
Clifford Geertz. "The impact of the concept of
culture on the concept of man"
________ "From the nativeÕs point of
view"
Edward Sapir. "Culture, genuine and
spurious"
Steven Piker. Review essay of,
CHRONICLING CULTURES: LONG-TERM
FIELD RESEARCH IN ANTHROPOLOGY,
and, SNEAKY KID AND ITS
AFTERMATH: ETHICS AND
INTIMACY IN FIELD WORK
Primary documents from the Friends Historical Library,
Swarthmore College
The first eight books are available for
purchase in the College book store, and copies of each will be on general
reserve at McCabe. The ninth will
be distributed to you by yours truly.
The remainder of the readings
will be made available to all members of the class in Xerox copies. Members of the class are not required
to purchase any books, and it should be possible to do all of the assigned
reading on time without doing so.
III) SCHEDULE OF CLASS
MEETINGS
The class will meet
Friday afternoons, 1:15 to 4:00, in Kohlberg 228. Since our class meeting is at the end of the week, it is
expected that the assigned reading for each week will be completed by you before coming to the class meeting for
that week.
2 September. INTRODUCTION
Buzz group exercise. The class will be divided into
discussion groups of four students each,
The groups will be asked to discuss the following issue: The advent of Europeans was, for
virtually all American Indian groups, a disaster, sooner or later. Often, in the aftermath of the disaster
and as a rejoinder to it, revitalization movements arose among American Indian
groups. The buzz groups are asked
to: 1) identify the elements of the cultural catastrophe; 2)
identify the rejoinders framed by the movements; and, 3) discuss the prospects
for success on the part of the movements in fashioning viable cultural resyntheses. The relevant
reading is WallaceÕs paper, "Revitalization movements."
Issues: Introduction to the subject matter of
the course; connection of the subject matter of the course to the field of
anthropology; review of course procedures.
Readings: Articles by
Wallace, Geertz, Sapir, and S. Piker; Kehoe(chs. 1.2)
9 September. THE CREEK AND THE ENGLISH LEARN TO LIVE
WITH EACH OTHER IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHEAST, 18TH CENTURY
Professor Joshua Piker,
Department of History of the University of Oklahoma, will lead the class this
week.
Issues: In the immediate post-contact period,
often Indians and EuroAmericans worked out more or less durable mutual
accommodations to which both sides assigned importance, in which there was
considerable communication and exchange across the cultural boundaries, and
during which traditional Indian lifeways remained substantially intact. Attendance to the details
of local life in the Indian
communities reveals much that was
vital to the working of these accomodations.
Reading: Joshua Piker. OKFUSKIE; Kehoe(ch. 4)
16 September. RECIPROCAL PERCEPTIONS AND
EXPECTATIONS: QUAKERS,
MISSIONARIES, AND THE ALLEGHANY SENECA IN 1805
This week and next the
class will be led by Chris Densmore,
Curator, Friends Historical
Library(McCabe)
Issues: Throughout the 17th and most of the 18th centuries the Six Nations of
the iroquois Confederacy controlled vast territories and c onducted and
independent foreign policy in the conflicts between British and French
interests for the contgrol of the trade and territories of much of what is now
the American Midwest and Canada.
Following the American Revolution, and the partial defeat of the
Iroquois by American forces, the Iroquois confronted loss of both territory and political power. This session concerns internal and
external conflict of the Seneca, paticularly those living on the Alleghany
River in what is now Western New York,
immediately after the period described by Wallace in DEATH AND REBIRTH
OF THE SENECA as missionaries and others sought to influence the development of
the Seneca. We will focus on
contemporary documents of Quakers and missionaries who visited or lived among
the Seneca and how those documents reflect the "voice" of Native
Americans and Euro-Americans, how "hearing" is filtered through
cultural assumptions, the silences of documents, and the role of documents in
scholarly interpretations of reality.
Readings:
Primary documents from
the Friends Historical Library
Christopher
Densmore. RED JACKET: IROQUOIS ORATOR AND DIPLOMAT. pg. 135-40("Red Jacket's reply to Reverend Cram, 1805")
23 September. FACTIONALISM, ACCOMODATION AND
ACCULTURATION: RED JACKET'S BATTLE
TO MAINTAIN SENECA INDEPENDENCE.
Issues: this session follows the story of the
Iroquois, specifically the career of the Seneca Orator Red jacket, as the
Iroquois relationship with the Euro-Americans changes from a relationship with
powerful but distant enemies and/or allies to the era of reservations in which Euro-Americans are near and contant neighbors and exercise potentially dominan t political and military power. Through Red jacket's career, we will examine Seneca and Euro-American attitudes toward
accommodation and acculturization as well as differing strategies to achieve or
resist accommodation and
acculturization. The session will
also include a brief examination
of the political and legal relationship between the Seneca nation and
the United States.
Readings:
RED JACKET......, pgs.
60-124, 131-134, 141-145
30 September. MUTUAL INDIAN/EUROAMERICAN
ACCOMODATION, ITS DISINTEGRATION, ACCULTURATION, REVITALIZATION.
Group report. The Handsome Lake Movement.
Issues: The oft-occurring mutual accommodations
of Indians and EuroAmericans eventually fail, to the disastrous disadvantage of
the Indians. Acculturation ensues,
and in its wake often come revitalization movements, religiously inspired
attempts to fashion a viable cultural resynthesis.
Reading: A.F.C. Wallace. THE DEATH AND REBIRTH OF THE SENECA;
Kehoe(ch. 5)
And, in class this week
some time will be devoted to discussion of the final exam and poster
session/paper assignments. By this
afternoon, class members should have signed up for a poster session book.
7 October.
No class meeting this
week. In lieu of class meeting,
members of the class will have individual scheduled appointments with SP to get
squared away of their respective poster session/paper assignments.
14 October. FALL BREAK
21 October. THE RECONFIGURATION OF INDIAN
IDENTITY: THE COMANCHE
Group report: Changing but distinctive Comanche
identity, from tradition through
the vicissitudes of reservation life
Issues: The traditional culture of the
Comanches of the 17th and 18th centuries became impossible for them in the last
half of the 19th century. Yet,
following this cultural catastrophe and through the 20th century, the Comanche
by their own lights have remained distinctively Comanche. Of what does this process, and this
distinctiveness, consist?
Reading: Morris Foster. BEING COMANCHE; Kehoe(ch. 6)
28 October. THE RECONFIGURATION OF INDIAN
IDENTITY: THE CHEROKEE
Group report. Changing but distinctive Cherokee
identity, from the colonial period
into the 20th century
Issues: Same as week of 21 October, substitute ÔCherokeeÕ for ÔComancheÕ
and adjust historical dates.
Reading: Sarah Hill. WEAVING NEW WORLDS:
SOUTHEAST CHEROKEE WOMEN AND THEIR BASKETRY; Kehoe(ch, 4)
4 November. THE FULLEST HUMAN COSTS OF
ACCULTURATION: OJIBWA
Group report: The Grassy Narrows Ojibwa: What finally pushed them over the edge?
Issues: Acculturation is usually profoundly
demoralizing for those who undergo it.
The personal and social pathologies Ð such as the cruel ravages of alcohol among the Grassy
Narrows Ojibwa Ð that so often accompany acculturation express
demoralization. These are the
facts. To understand the facts, we
need to see Ð contextually, and in narrative fashion Ð how and why acculturation
breeds demoralization.
Reading: Anastasia Shkilnyk. A POISON STRONGER THAN LOVE: Kehoe, chs. 5,6)
11 November. GROPING TOWARD A VIABLE MUTUAL
ACCOMODATION FOR MODERN TIMES: THE
NORTHERN ATHABASKAN AND THEIR ANGLO CANADIAN NEIGHBORS
Group report. For Brody, the meaning of ÔmapsÕ and
ÔdreamsÕ, and the importance of the distinction for his case study
Issues: How if at all can a modern Indian
identity at once connect historically with and partake of tradition, and be
viable and compelling in modern times?
Reading: Hugh Brody. MAPS AND DREAMS; Kehoe(ch. 9)
18 November. KEY ISSUES
IN THE EMERGING ACCOMODATIONS OF NATIVE CULTURES TO THE MODERN WORLD, AND VICE
VERSA..
Buzz group exercise: the class will be divided into buzz
groups, and each group will be presented with one of the issues that Brown phrases, and invited to discuss and
evaluate the line of reasoning that Brown develops re the issue. As with week 1 buzz group
exercise, each group will
summarize for the class as a whole the gist of its discussion, and the class as a whole will discuss
these issues with the help of the buzz group inputs. Unlike the week 1 buzz group exercise, following our class
meeting each buzz group will be asked to reconvene briefly at a time and place
of its choosing, further review its issue, and prepare a brief written report
on the issue to be mailed out to the entire class before our final class
meeting of the semester .
Reading: Michael Brown. WHO OWNS NATIVE CULTURES? and, Kehoe(ch. 9)
25 November. THANKSGIVING BREAK. No class meeting.
2 December. Poster sessions.
5 December. make up class meeting for Thanksgiving
break Friday. Wrap up, discussion
of final exam.
IV) COURSE REQUIREMENTS
Attendance at each class
meeting is required of every member of the class. Grade penalties for unexcused absences. Extra curricular activities
will not provide bases for excused absences. The reason for this is: The course is designed with the
expectation that class members will help each other with the comprehension of
course materials and the production of required work. A main way in which we help each other is through the
informal exchange of ideas, observations, questions, interpretationsÉÉ.you name
it. Our scheduled class meetings
are the main venue for such exchanges among ourselves.
Group
report(ungraded). Ech member of
the class will be required to participate in the preparation and oral
presentation in class of one group report. The scheduling and topics of the group reports are set forth
in SCHEDULE OF CLASS MEETINGS(III, above). The upcoming report will be assigned in class the previous
week, so that the entire class Ð and not just the reporting group Ð will know
whatÕs coming. Two students per
report, each report will be based
on the assigned reading for that week,
no extra reading for the reports.
For each group, about an
hour of out of class time should be required for preparation of the report, the
oral presentation of which should take 20-30 minutes.
Buzz groups, 2 September, 18 November
Final Exam. Assigned in (V), below.
Poster Session/Paper. Assigned in (VI), below.
Final exam and poster
session/paper assignments will be discussed in class on 2 and 30 September.
AndÉÉÉ..i) For your course grade, exam and paper will weigh equally. ii) Class participation will be taken into account in determining
course grade, but only to your advantage:
if as I hope you participate extensively in class discussions, it can
only help your grade, not hurt it. iii) For the poster session/paper and the final exam, I am glad to review your preparation with
you, but only if and when you bring me some work(e.g., draft,
detailed outline)that you have already produced. If you come to me with, ÔI donÕt understand what youÕre
looking for hereÉÕ or any whole or part paraphrase of this, itÕs going to be a real brief
conversation. All of the
assignments Ð buzz groups and group reports as well as poster/paper and final Ð
call upon you to construct the issue(s) in the assignment, and identify course
materials germane to the issue(s)as per your construction, and to organize
these materials into a line of reasoning that intelligently addresses the
issue(s). The FIRST and MAIN thing
that I want YOU to do with the assignment is to put a construction on it, and
produce some work from your construction. And please N.B., the buzz group and group report
assignments will involve you just in the initial, tentative, exploratory stages
of the production of academic
work. For the poster session/paper
and the final, you will of course start at these stages, but you will carry
your work forward to the presentation of a polished final product. iv) What letter grades mean: ÔBÕ means good work,
important points well handled, well organized and good writing
mechanics; ÔCÕ means satisfactory work,
some important points well handled, but some important material is not well handled or omitted;
ÔDÕ means poor but barely passing,
almost nothing thatÕs important
is done well and/or a lot
of important stuff is mishandled; ÔEÕ means that essentially nothing of real
academic worth is there; ÔAÕ includes everything for ÔBÕ and, in addition, you have made an
original and intelligent and important contribution.
And.........from time to
time, I will send e-mails around to everybody, containing, e.g., commentary on what transpired in class
meetings or course procedure matters or assignments. You are responsible for being familiar with the content of
the e-mails that I send around.
And....... each of you is encouraged to use e-mail to communicate with
the class about, e.g., questions, thoughts, references to books or articles or
movies or events that you think will be of interest to us all.....you name
it. To do this, if you so request,
I will provide you with an e-mail
address directory for the class; or, if you prefer, just send y our
e-mail to yours truly, and I'll beam it out to the class.
V) FINAL EXAM ASSIGNMENT
At the beginning of the
three hour period, scheduled for our final exam in December,
three questions from the list of questions, below, will be specified for
you to answer. Your completed exam
essays will be due at the end of the three hour period. About three double spaced pages per
essay, open book, open notes.
Further: a) If you submit more than three essays,
and the quality of the extra essays is at least as good as the quality of the
three required essays, this will help your grade. b) You are
encouraged to work in small groups in preparing your exam essays. If a group(four students max)works
together on all of the essays, the group may with my permission submit one
collective exam. c) I will be glad to review your
preparation with you prior to the scheduled exam time.
Please N.B., for each
essay, the main things that are expected of you are, first, clear statement of
the issue(s) that the essay addresses; second, identification of course
materials(e.g., from readings, in-class proceedings)that are relevant to the
issue(s); and, third, the organization of these materials into an essay built
around a line of reasoning which intelligently addresses the issue(s). Following each question, below,
important relevant readings are identified for you.
1) This course includes
material on a number of Indian cultures that have undergone acculturation, and
its aftermath. Pre-acculturation,
these cultures differed from one another.
With reference to any two of the cultures that we have learned about
this semester, you re asked to consider:
Do specific pre-acculturation features of cultures influence how, for
each, the acculturation process and its aftermath unfold(Hill, Wallace, Densmore, Foster, Shkilnyk)
2) For extended periods
of time, both the Iroquois and the Creek co-existed with EuroAmericans in ways
that made possible substantial continuation of the traditional cultures of the
two Indian groups. What enabled
this co-existence, while it lasted?
Why did it end? Can you
imagine any plausible scenario(s), in the respective times and places, by which
the co-existence might have continued, perhaps indefinitely?(J. Piker,
Wallace, Densmore, Kehoe)
3) Return to traditional,
pre-contact lifeways is impossible for American Indians. For at least some enduring Indian
groups, however, a distinctively Indian identity which is historically
continuous with traditional cultures may be possible. For
this situation to emerge, Indian groups must innovate practices that are at
once meaningful to them on their own cultural terms and workable in the broader
white manÕs world that Indians inescapably inhabit. You are asked to find a couple of examples of this process from
our case materials, and show how it works(Hill, Foster, Brody)
4) Among the myriad
difficulties and misunderstandings that arose among Indians and EuroAmericans
in their dealings with each other, a major and frequent misunderstanding on the
part of Euroamericans was the supposition that specific Indian groups(e.g.,
Comanche, Creek)could be dealt with as entities, sort of as mini nations, if
you will. Almost without
exception, this was not so. For
any one of the Indian cultures that we have studied, you are asked to show why
this was not so. AndÉÉ.a striking
exception to this generalization was the Iroquois. What was it about the Iroquois that made this supposition
valid for them, at least for a long time?(J. Piker, Foster, Wallace, Densmore, Kehoe)
5) The advent of
EuroAmericans insured that they and Indians would newly live in close proximity
to each other, and that each would newly be of practical importance to the
other in myriad ways. Such
situations breed, among the newly comingled cultural groups, reciprocal
perceptions and misperceptions, which themselves influence the evolving
relationships between the cultural groups. You are asked to compare and contrast the patterns of
reciprocal perceptions among the Creek and the English(pre-acculturation), and
the Seneca and the Quakers(post-acculturation); and to indicate how the
reciprocal perceptions influenced emerging relationships between the respective
cultural pairs.(J. Piker, Chris DensmoreÕs documentary materials, Wallace,
Kehoe)
6) What does it mean to
consider the traditional cultural heritage of a people to be a protected
resource, such as private property?
Is it feasible to do so? Is
it desirable to do so?
7) We have looked at
examples of American Indian groups which, arguably, have had some success in
fashioning lifeways which at once are continuous with distinctive traditional
identities and which are workable in the inescapable broader EuroAmerican
world(e.g., Athabaskan, Comanche, Cherokee). Each of these cultures is an example of what Brown calls
Ônative cultures.Õ Brown also
summarizes a viewpoint, Ôtotal heritage protection,Õ which is espoused by,
e.g., some advocacy groups which purport to act on behalf of native cultures. You are asked to use the
experiences of some or all of these American Indian groups to evaluate the
worth and practicality of the Ôtotal heritage protectionÕ program for native
cultures.(Brown, Hill, Brody, Foster)
8) You are asked to make
up a question which frames an
issue which is important to what this course is all about, and then to answer
it.
VI) POSTER SESSION/PAPER ASSIGNMENT
Here's how this works. Each of you will be required to submit a ten page paper at the
end of exam period. The paper
should be produced in the following manner:
1) The paper will be based on a book, to
be selected from the list of books, below. These books include ethnographic studies, historical
accounts, biography, and novels. The books treat
the issues of conflict and adjustment issues entailed for Indians by the advent
of EuroAmericans.
2) You should be matched up with a book by
the class meeting of week 5(30
September). More than one student
can use the same book. You are
invited to select a book on your own, but you don't have much to go on for this
and if, because of this, you prefer not to pick a book, I will do the matchmaking for you. If you think that it may be of use to you, I'll be glad to
meet with you out of class and chat with you briefly about books in which you
think you may be interested...........And, you may propose for yourself a book
that is off list. If so, it
should deal with issues of
conflict and adjustment entailed for Indians by the advent of
EuroAmericans. If you are going to
go off list for your book, please be sure to clear it with me.
3) During the week of Monday 7 October(no
class meeting this week)each member of the class will have a scheduled paper
conference with yours truly, to
get you squared away on how you will be executing this assignment. This week is our reading week, and my
hope is that each member of the class will read his or her poster session/paper
book during this week, so the contents of your book will be known to you as we
move through our course materials.
This will help you mightily in producing your poster and paper, and will enrich this experience for
you. Depending, however, on how
early in the week your paper conference with yours truly falls, there is no
expectation that you will have read the book before we meet. Please N.B., it is your responsibility
to see to the availability of your book.
If, for any reason, the book you select is not available, switch to
another book. Unavailability of a
book will not comprise a valid excuse for late work.
5) Posters will be presented at the class
meeting of 2 December.
Expectations for poster preparation will be discussed in class. Final draft of the paper is due on the
last day of exam period. Between
poster day and submission of final draft, you are expected to take advantage
of the feedback you received
during the poster session, as well as otherwise from yours truly if you have
sought it, to finalize your paper.
6) Format: Final draft of the paper should include a title page,
abstract, main body, conclusion,
footnotes of reference, bibliography.
At your discretion, you may also include, e.g., maps, charts, tables,
picture........you name it.
CONFLICT AND ADJUSTMENT
1) Hugh Brody. THE OTHER SIDE OF EDEN
2) James Mooney. THE GHOST DANCE RELIGION AND WOUNDED
KNEE
3) Fred Voget. THE SHOSHONE-CROW SUN DANCE
4) Frederick E. Hoxie. THE FINAL PROMISE: THE CAMPAIGN TO ASSIMILATE THE INDIANS,
1880-1920.
5) Clarissa Plummer. NARRATIVE OF THE CAPTIVITY OF CLARISSA
PLUMMER
6) John Demos. THE
UNREDEEMED CAPTIVE
7) Deborah Larsen. THE WHITE(novel)
8) Edward Spicer. CYCLES OF CONQUEST:
THE IMPACT OF SPAIN, MEXICO, AND THE UNITED STATES ON THE INDIANS OF THE
SOUTHWEST, 1533-1960
9) Ramon Gutierrez. WHEN JESUS CAME, THE CORN MOTHERS WENT
AWAY
10) James Welch. FOOLS CROW, and DEATH OF JIM LONELY(novels)
11) Dee Brown. CREEK MARY'S BLOOD(novel)
12) John Snyden. TECUMSEH. A
LIFE
13) Joanne Nagel. AMERICAN INDIAN ETHNIC REVIVAL. RED POWER AND THE RESURGENCE OF IDENTITY
14) Richard White. THE MIDDLE GROUND. INDIANS, EMPIRES, AND REPUBLICS IN THE
GREAT LAKES REGION, 1650-1815
15) Daniel Usner. INDIANS, SETTLERS, AND SLAVES IN A FRONTIER EXCHANGE
ECONOMY. THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI
VALLEY BEFORE 1783
16) Gregory Evans Dowd. A SPIRITED RESISTANCE. THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN STRUGGLE FOR
UNITY, 1745-1815
17) Esther Goldfrank. CHANGING CONFIGURATION IN THE SOCIAL
ORGANIZATION OF A BLACKFOOT TRIBE DURING THE RESERVATION PERIOD
18) Howard Prins. THE MI'CMAQ:
RESISTANCE, ACCOMODATION, AND CULTURAL SURVIVAL
19) Alice Kehoe. THE GHOST DANCE.
ETHNOHISTORY AND REVITALIZATION
20) Selected Tony Hillerman novels.
21) David Aberle. THE PEYOTE RELIGION AMONG THE NAVAJO
22) Peter Iverson. THE NAVAJO NATION
VII) TERMS AND CONCEPTS
The following terms and concepts will
be important to us during the semester.
1) Indian, first American, native American . These terms refer to the people who
were in the new world before 1492, and their descendants. None of these terms is pejorative, we
may use them interchangeably. '...and their descendants' entails the kind of ambiguity that the cultural identity issue often poses these days in the
United States, and elsewhere. Is
cultural identity determined by heredity?
Or by chosen affiliation and life style? Or.............?
Is it inescapable? Or is it
voluntary? This ambiguity arises
from the mixing of populations and the diffusion of culture traits. Thus, it was clear to everyone in 1492 who was and was not an Indian. It is by no means so clear today, for
generally the same kinds of reasons that it is not always clear, in the U.S., who is, e.g., African American or Jewish or Italian or
Christian or Chinese.
2) Culture. Anthropologists use the word 'culture' in( at least) the
following two ways:
A) General and evolutionarily. Culture is the mode of adaptation of
the human species., and it importantly comprises, e.g., speech, technology, learned social
relationships, and religion, all of which presuppose capacity for
symbolization. All human
groups, now and in the past, are fully cultural. In cross species perspective, it is evident that culture, in this sense, is not an all or none thing. Many species - extant and extinct -
other than the human species are, or were, cultural in different ways and to
significant extents.
B) Specific and contemporary. A specific culture - e.g., Iroquois,
Creek, Comanche, Thai - is the lifeway of a particular human group. Human cultures are highly diverse. Please N.B., this does not
imply that any specific culture is
a neatly bounded, self contained entity; and in fact it is often unclear,
geographically and demographically, where one culture leaves off and another
begins. i. Distinct cultures often share
traits. ii. Cultural boundaries are permeable: both people and traits cross them. iii) Many 'named' cultures - e.g., Creek Indian, American - are
actually historically recent amalgams of people and culture traits from
several different cultures. iv) All cultures, by virtue of diffusion of culture traits,
adopt and incorporate exogenous traits.
v) An individual's identity
may be multi cultural.
And..........Culture(B)
is roughly the same as
'ethnolinguistic group,' a group of people who share a language and a
culture. Please N.B., shared culture by itself implies
nothing about the political and social organization of the group doing the
sharing. Thus, 'Thai' is a
culture, and there is the nation
'Thailand.' But millions of
culturally Thai people live in, e.g., Burma, Laos, Vietnam, and China. And, the !Kung, of whom there are tens
of thousands, of the Kalihari desert in southern Africa share a
culture. But the most inclusive
socially organ ized group among
the !Kung is the band, which numbers 25-75 people, counting both adults and
children. Institutions of the Thai
nation can make binding decisions for and speak on behalf of its citizens. Traditionally, no institutions, and no
persons, can make decisions for or speak on behalf of individual !Kung.
3) Diffusion of culture traits. A timeless and ubiquitous feature of human history. Traits characteristic of all domains of
culture - e.g., kinship., social organization, language, religion, technology
and material culture, art, education, recreation, politics - migrate from culture
to culture. Sometimes this occurs
in association with population movements, sometimes not. Occsionally this occurs as the result
of conquest, but more often not.
Over the past five centuries, there has been much diffusion across
Indian/EuroAmerican cultural boundaries, and there has always been diffusion
among Indian cultures. Sometimes a
trait(or trait complex)newly acquired by a culture radically transforms the
lifeways of the recipient culture,
e.g., the Plains Indians acquisition of the domesticated horse from the
Spaniards, which acquisition led to a burst of cultural creativity and
development; or Indians
acquisition of alcohol from
EuroAmericans, which was profoundly destructive of lifeways. Sometimes acquired traits are
integrated into established lifeways, perhaps enhancing them, without basically
changing them, e.g., acquisition
by many American Indian groups of EuroAmerican cloth, metal ware, and fire
arms. A conquering culture often
acquires much from the vanquished.
4) Imperialism. When one group invades and assumes control over another
group and its resources, including land, e.g., what Europeans did to Indians in
the new world, what Germany did to many countries in Europe and Japan to many
countries in Asia during World War II, what the Zulus did in SE Africa during
the 18th and 19th centuries, what Russia did in most of Siberia during the 17th
to the 19th centuries, what Germany and Austria-Hungary and Russia did to
Poland in the 19th century.
5) Colonialism. When the imperial group populates the territory of the
invaded group, e.g., what in the 17th and 18th centuries the British did on a
large scale in their part of North America, and what during the same period the
French did very little of in their part of North America. Please see, in the Terms and
Concepts section of the syllabus, entry 11, "settler society."
6) Raiding. Sometimes members of one culture mount armed expeditions into neighboring
cultures to appropriate resources and/or people, but without either imperialist
or colonialist designs, e.g., what for centuries the Vikings did all up and
down the sea coasts of Europe, and what over here was customarily done by,
e.g., Iroquois, Sioux, Comanche, and Apache. Such raiding can inflict large scale death and destruction upon the raided populations, as it
often did in each of the five just named cases. Almost all of the victims of, e.g., Iroquois, Sioux,
Comanche, and Apache raiding were other Indians.
7) Acculturation. One outcome of culture contact. There are many kinds of culture
contact, and many possible outcomes.
Acculturation refers to the outcome in which the traditional lifeways of
one of the cultures in contact are rendered no longer viable; in other words,
the group has undergone acculturation.
Almost all Indian groups in the new world underwent acculturation, sooner or later,
as a result of the advent of EuroAmericans.
8) Revitalization movement. A self conscious attempt by members of a culture to fashion a
more satisfying culture. A revitalization
movement involves a sustained attempt at
thoroughgoing cultural change.
Most intentional cultural change is nowhere near thoroughgoing enough,
nowhere near systemic enough, to
qualify as a revitalization movement.
Revitalization movements, typically religious in inspiration and led by
a prophets, often occur in the wake of acculturation and as rejoinders to
acculturation. They almost always
fail to establish viable cultural
resyntheses.
9) Tribe. Anthropologists use the term 'tribe' in(at least)the
following two ways:
A) To refer to a particular American
Indian culture, e.g., an Indian 'tribe,' e.g., the Ojibwa
tribe, the Creek tribe, the
Aztec tribe.
B) To refer to a type, or level, of sociopolitical complexity, as in the typology:
band/tribe/chiefdom/state.
'Tribes' in the sense of
(A) can and do fall into any of the categories set forth in (B)
10) Field work(or ethnography, or participant
observation). From
the first week's readings, please see the book review article by
Steven Piker, first two pages of same,
for a few definitional paragraphs on field work.
11) Settler society. "...a mass European migration
where people settled on land appropriated by conquest, treaty, or simple dispossession from indigenous groups....(and)massive
changes in land use and introduction of new diseases by settlers that...pushed
indigenous populations to the margins of viability, and frequently beyond"(Tim Murray. THE ARCHEOLOGY OF CONTACT IN SETTLER
SOCIETIES). In varying degrees,
this phenomenon often accompanied the world wide European expansion of the 15th
through the 19th centuries.
Nowhere, however, did the settler society phenomenon more fully and
clearly manifest itself than in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Interestingly, in all four of these
cases, the settler society impetus
came from the same source: 17th
and 18th century Great Britain.
Inevitably, settler societies engender durable issues of mutual
accommodation between the settlers(and the states and societies they newly
found)and whatever remains of the
indigenous populations. The
settler society phenomenon, and the issues of mutual accomodation engendered
thereby, is substantially what this course is all about. The course could, sensibly, be
renamed: "Settler
societies: a case study."
12) Native. We are all natives. We differ from one another according to what culture(s) we
are natives of.