Histories of Anthropology Annual, Volume 1

Histories of Anthropology Annual Volume 1 e d i t e d b y r e g n a da r n e l l & frederic w. gleach

Histories of Anthropology Annual, Volume 1

Histories of Anthropology Annual, Volume 1 edited by

Regna Darnell & Frederic W. Gleach

university of nebraska press lincoln & london

∫ 2005 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America ! issn: 1557-637x isbn-13: 978-0-8032-6657-5 isbn-10: 0-8032-6657-x

Contents

Editors’ Introduction

vii

1. Consistencies and Contradictions: Anthropological Anti-Imperialism and Frederick Starr’s Letter to Baron Ishii

1

Robert Oppenheim 2. The Carnegie Mission and Vision of Science: Institutional Contexts of Maya Archaeology and Espionage

27

Quetzil E. Castañeda 3. American Anthropologists Discover Peasants

61

Stephen O. Murray 4. Anthropology, the Cold War, and Intellectual History

99

Herbert S. Lewis 5. Bernhard Stern and Leslie A. White on the Church and Religion

114

William J. Peace and David H. Price 6. The Evolution of Racism in Guatemala: Hegemony, Science, and Antihegemony

132

Richard N. Adams 7. Mark Hanna Watkins: African American Linguistic Anthropologist

181

Margaret Wade-Lewis 8. Jacob Ezra Thomas: Educator and Conservator of Iroquois Culture Michael K. Foster 9. The Influence of Herbert Spencer on the World of Letters

246

Robert L. Carneiro 10. Trends in Image and Design: Reflections on 25 Years of a Tribal Museum Era

271

Patricia Pierce Erikson List of Contributors

287

219

Editors’ Introduction

Regna Darnell and Frederic W. Gleach

Histories of Anthropology Annual (hoaa) is dedicated to the proposition that there is diversity in the history of anthropology as a disciplinary specialization, just as there is diversity in the anthropologies we practice. We believe that considerable work is being done that is not reaching its appropriate audiences. hoaa will assemble such diverse efforts and make them more visible and accessible. Publication outlets for anthropological historians directing their work to an audience of anthropologists have been limited to date. The History of Anthropology Newsletter (han), established by George W. Stocking Jr. in 1973 and currently edited by Henrika Kuklick, has kept scholars in contact but has failed to provide them with a larger disciplinary audience. The University of Wisconsin monograph series History of Anthropology, also founded by Stocking and now edited by Richard Handler, has provided thematic volumes with potential course-text value as well as systematic documentation of some pieces of our history, but the structure of the series has necessarily restricted content to certain themes. The Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology series, edited by Regna Darnell and Stephen O. Murray for the University of Nebraska Press, has facilitated the publication of books, including biographies, documenting the history of anthropology, largely in North America. Although research in our disciplinary history has been published in disparate journals such as Critique of Anthropology and Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, scholars would need to search widely to find all that has been published. Even worse, much research has languished unpublished, known only to a few specialists. hoaa is intended as a place for this invisible body of work. The editors do have a few axes to grind about what the history of anthropology is and should be. Key among these is a set of themes that can be shorthanded as diversity: diversity of practitioners; diversity of national, theoretical, and methodological traditions; diversity of subdisci-

plines and ways to merge and cross them. Anthropologies have developed from different starting points and with different trajectories in various parts of the world, and these various traditions have interacted through most of the discipline’s history. ‘‘Central place’’ models of the discipline (whether the ‘‘center’’ is the United States, New York/Philadelphia/ Washington, Columbia/Berkeley/Chicago, or whatever) may have some utility at certain times and for certain questions, but they fail to fully document the ways anthropologies have developed. They also shortchange what some might consequently construct as ‘‘lesser’’ traditions, those on the peripheries howsoever defined, and thus contribute to reproducing sociopolitical hierarchies of knowledge that we believe are better challenged than reinforced. Anthropologists have been rich and poor, urban and rural, of various national, ethnoracial, and religious backgrounds, and these individuals with their different personal histories and personalities have shaped and colored the discipline. Although American anthropologists today typically refer to anthropology as a ‘‘four field’’ discipline—comprising archaeology, linguistics, sociocultural anthropology, and biological anthropology—this subdisciplinary division is by no means universal even within the American traditions, let alone in the broader world. And individual practitioners have always crossed such ‘‘boundaries’’ with alacrity, demonstrating the arbitrariness of the construct. Theoretical and methodological camps are perhaps the most recognized diversity and certainly have produced some of the most hostile debates. Students seem to want to fall into one camp or another even without the active inculcation that they often receive as part of their training, and the all-too-typical pattern of teaching disciplinary history as a chronological progression of theories—a sort of simplistic evolutionary framework that few would countenance in any other aspect of their work—does little to defeat that impulse. The editors are adamant that these models are a poor way to understand our histories, that theoretical and methodological camps have always coexisted and cross-fertilized, and that individuals who may seem easily categorized as ‘‘functionalist’’ or ‘‘poststructuralist’’ or what have you are and were much more complex in their lives and work than such labeling allows. Instead of some sort of evolutionary framework of ideas, we see complex and shifting social and ideological webs. There are several important consequences of this position. It encourages awareness that our disciplinary history should be treated anthropologically, that ethnographic practice is not only relevant but essential—hearkening back to A. Irving Hallowell’s foundational essay, ‘‘The history of anthropology as an anviii

Editors’ Introduction

thropological problem’’ ( Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 1965). Oral histories and ethnography are as much a part of the history of anthropology research as is archival research, and professional competencies in all must be developed. Our position also recognizes, even depends on, disciplinary reflexivity: we learn antecedent ideas not as lifeless specimens impaled on needles of the past in some glass-cased museum of history, but as ideas to be engaged dialogically, offering potentially useful ways of thinking. The old dichotomy between historicism and presentism had, and has, analytical utility for some questions, but the reality that we actively engage the past in the present—while constituting the future—cannot be ignored. Recognizing these complex networks, we want to encourage work that comes from standpoints that contrast and enrich one another. Multiple, even contradictory perspectives may offer richer understandings of the system. We anticipate publishing in hoaa a wide range of research, and we encourage the greatest possible diversity of participants. Work can be organized around theoretical paradigms, institutional frameworks, social networks (including individual biography), or other themes as relevant to the particular subject. We fully intend to include both analytical and more descriptive works, and we are open to provocative and challenging pieces—even if we personally might not agree with the arguments. The editors could not have managed this project alone. We wish to acknowledge modest but needed support from the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Western Ontario. We also thank the reference staff of Cornell University Library and particularly Peter Fraissinet of the Bailey Hortorium Library for timely and friendly assistance in verifying citations. What began as mutterings in the corridors around the American Anthropological Association Centennial meeting in 2002 has become, through a vision shared by the editors and Gary Dunham of the University of Nebraska Press, a practical solution to diffuseness and lack of communicative outlets for the kind of work showcased there. The aaa Centennial demonstrated the existence of wide interest in the history of anthropology within the profession, especially among students and young colleagues, as well as the personal need of each anthropologist to acknowledge and come to terms with her or his unique intellectual and sociological genealogy. We have assembled a diverse international editorial board whose feedback has broadened the scope of the enterprise and whose advice has brought a wealth of intriguing manuscripts. We take pride in our inability to characterize the papers included in this inaugural issue of hoaa in any systematic way. The present volume of hoaa, diverse as it is in some ways, only begins to represent the complex Editors’ Introduction

ix

diversity of our disciplinary history. We particularly note as editors a relative absence of gender-oriented content, despite the fact that there is much such work ‘‘out there’’; we anticipate that future volumes will fill that gap, as well as others. We envision future volumes including more book reviews, museum exhibit and film reviews, and brief sketches and notes (including debate), and we remain open to creative suggestions. We encourage all interested parties to engage the papers and authors offered here, to actively include this historical knowledge in contemporary practice, and to contribute to future volumes. We look forward to the emergence of additional expansions of what one might mean by the histories of anthropology.

x

Editors’ Introduction

Histories of Anthropology Annual, Volume 1

1. Consistencies and Contradictions Anthropological Anti-Imperialism and Frederick Starr’s Letter to Baron Ishii Robert Oppenheim

University of Chicago founding anthropologist Frederick Starr (1858– 1933), among American anthropology’s ‘‘excluded ancestors’’ (Handler 2000), has often been noted for an anti-imperialism that is in turn usually described as inconsistent, even contradictory. His involvement in the early 1900s with Erving Winslow’s Anti-Imperialist League and related organizations (Stocking 1979b), which included tenure as a league vice president from 1907 until 1921 (Zwick 2004), as well as his sometimes flamboyant public advocacy of Philippine independence, U.S. noninterference in Mexican affairs, and other often unpopular causes, can be set against his equally full-throated defense of Belgian activities in the Congo (Starr 1969) and the extension of Japanese control over Korea and Manchuria. Moreover, Starr’s own practices of field research, while hardly unique in their employment of local police and other officials to corral subjects for anthropometric measurement and other study, were marked in the blithe enthusiasm they evinced for such uses of authority. They have themselves been taken as belying his more abstract commitments (McVicker 1989a: 219; 1989b: 119). With regard to Starr’s relation to colonial governments and imperialist projects, one of the more interesting documents to be found in the collection of Starr’s papers archived at the University of Chicago is the draft of a letter he sent in December 1911 to a Baron Ishii, Japanese Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, shortly after the completion of his first stint of fieldwork in Korea.∞ The twelve pages of the letter sought to offer advice on a wide range of issues connected with the governance of Japan’s new colony, which had been made a protectorate in 1905 and formally annexed in 1910. Both the very existence of this document and some of its more incendiary suggestions at first glance redouble the apparent contradictions of Starr’s life and anti-imperialism. Yet I would argue that the letter also represents a locus classicus, a meeting point of some unconsidered consistencies of Starr’s political and anthropological positions, particularly during the second half of his four-decade career.≤

Though I can only sketch this contention here, at issue, I would further suggest, is not only our understanding of Starr himself but our understanding of a brand of anti-imperial politics of which Starr was representative, which in turn might open a vista onto one of the (several) places that American anthropology was coming from at the beginning of the 20th century. With the Ishii letter as a basis, I will turn to these larger concerns in the latter part of this essay. Starr’s interest in working in Korea had been piqued in April 1909, during a research trip to Japan. A rumor of impending annexation passed on by a foreign resident, indeed of de facto takeover, corresponded with Starr’s previous observations. He whispers that Japan has annexed Korea—a matter of perhaps fifteen days back! This perhaps explains the 50000 men working day and night in the Osaka arsenal and the trains of soldiers being hurried to Yokohama, and even the armed soldiers on the street corners in Yokohama? Crafty old secret politics? What will happen when it is really known? [fsp b15 Japan 1909 nb8:12] Starr’s initial plan was to leave for Japan and Korea in January 1911 and spend most of the six-month duration of the journey in Korea. At the last minute, the financing for the trip fell through, and he instead undertook research in Mexico ‘‘to cover [his] disappointment.’’ In June, in his weekly letter to ‘‘my dear mother,’’ he announced his new intention to undertake a shorter, four-month trip, to commence in late August. Her response is not recorded but was apparently negative—Starr wrote back, the next week, ‘‘I am sorry the Korea plan does not amuse you’’ (fsp b6 f12 Starr to mdm June 20, 1911 and June 27, 1911). But of course, he went anyway, accompanied as usual by that point by his photographer and assistant, Manuel Gonzales.≥ The comparative study of Japanese colonial administration was among his specific goals for the research period (see clippings in fsp b34 f12). Arriving first in Japan, Starr spent three weeks in September and early October 1911 finalizing preparations for the impending work in Korea, while he and Gonzales kept busy around Tokyo taking photographs and collecting examples of Japanese tattooing. Starr’s Korean pass had mistakenly been issued with validity only until September 29, but he received a promise of personal attention to the matter from a representative of the colonial office. He called also at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where Vice-Minister Ishii, with whom he would later correspond, gave him a letter of introduction to Governor General of Chosen (Korea) Terauchi Masatake (fsp b15 Japan–Korea 1911 nb1:23, 38, nb2:9).∂ Subsequently 2

Oppenheim

invited by Ishii to a party at the same ministry, Starr attended in Japanese dress, to considerable comment but in line with his usual custom (fsp b6 f12 Starr to mdm Oct. 4, 1911).∑ The crossing to Korea was finally made on the night of October 5, aboard the steamer Sakura Maru (fsp b15 Japan–Korea 1911 nb2:13). In 1911 and indeed on subsequent journeys to Korea, Starr’s usual pattern was to travel up and down the length of the peninsula by train, casting an anthropological eye on a well-trodden itinerary of sites and locations marked out by the accounts of travelers and missionaries and by an incipient tourist industry, spending from a few days to a week in each location before moving on.∏ During his initial visit, he sought out the shrine to legendary founder Kija at P’yôngyang, inspected the American-owned Oriental Consolidated Mining Company at Unsan, inquired about ginseng cultivation at Sông-do (Kaesông) and sericulture near Ûiju, discussed religious schism at the headquarters of the Korean ‘‘new religion’’ Ch’ôndogyo in Seoul, and examined the Ûnjin ‘‘Miryok’’ (Mirûk; a carved stone Maitreya) and dolmen wherever he could find them. He left the railway path to visit the historic city of Kyôngju, itself of growing interest to Japanese archaeology. There he made observations of the cave temple Sôkkuram that were among the first by a Western author—some sources of the next few years would erroneously credit Starr with its ‘‘discovery’’—and retained in later years a fascination with its origin and implications that structured his only major publication on Korea, Korean Buddhism (1918), in ways both apparent and not. Starr’s notebooks from his 1911 Korean research recorded changes wrought by the Japanese administration and a variety of effects of the colonial takeover. New building and the burgeoning of the ‘‘Japan streets’’ of Seoul and other cities were obvious, but Starr also registered some of the more subtle consequences of Japanese rule; few of these notations ever found their way into print. Near the northern border with Manchuria, he described a ‘‘pretentious’’ and ‘‘generally interesting’’ Japanese military memorial erected to honor a victory of General Oshima in the SinoJapanese War, part of a more ubiquitous memorial politics. ‘‘We had seen the single golden star now on so many occasions that I believed it the emblem of the Korean government and inquired about it,’’ Starr wrote, having discovered that ‘‘it really signifies the Japanese Army’’ (fsp b15 Japan–Korea 1911 nb2:59). Starr also made note of material culture and folk belief in the context of war and colonialism: At one place I saw a little boat, made of a piece of calabash with a little stick for a mast and paper sails or a red paper streamer; it had apparently been stranded when the water was high; such little Consistencies and Contradictions

3

boats are set adrift with a little of the fresh harvest of rice to prevent harm to the fields; they are also loaded with gifts and drifted to carry away the smallpox spirit; after the war, small-pox prevailing, these were set adrift with the prayer that they might go to Japan and carry the disease. [fsp b15 Japan–Korea 1911 nb3:5] The Russo-Japanese War, fought in and around Korea, may have ended, but the Japanese takeover of Korea had itself hardly been bloodless. Based on Japanese police reports, one source cites a figure of 17,600 resisters killed between 1907 and 1910 (Eckert et al. 1990:244). In troubled 1911, the smallpox spirit, in other times simply propitiated and driven off, had gained a destination. Starr and Gonzales were met and assisted throughout their Korean travels by police and other local officials placed at their disposal. On October 11, soon after his first arrival in Seoul, the anthropologist had his formal audience with Governor General Terauchi, at which he presumably presented the letter of introduction written for him by Ishii. Terauchi responded by offering documents written in both Japanese and English about his administration and proposed also to arrange a dinner in Starr’s honor on his next return to the capital (fsp b15 Japan–Korea 1911 nb2:33). The dinner took place on the evening of October 27, following a speech given by Starr to the Japanese ymca on ‘‘All Sorts and Conditions of Men.’’ Among the approximately twenty guests present, Starr sat at Terauchi’s right, while Gonzales was second from his left. The affair seems to have been a sumptuous social occasion—in his notebook Starr described the several wines, coffee, Apollinaris water, and cognac served— and it ‘‘went off handsomely’’ (fsp b15 Japan–Korea 1911 nb3:26–27). The Anthropologist as Colonial Advisor Such was the immediate background to Starr’s letter to Baron Ishii. Having left Korea for Japan on November 30, in late December on board ship en route to Seattle, Starr wrote his mother that he had finished a report that he ‘‘thought courteous to prepare for the Japanese government’’ (fsp b6 f12 Starr to mdm Dec. 26, 1911). What he actually sent has not been preserved, but the handwritten Ishii letter, dated from Tokyo on December 11, the day of his sailing, evidently represented a draft. It began with cordial thanks and salutation: ‘‘As you personally have been kind enough to take an interest in my Korean trip, and as The Foreign Office has aided me so handsomely in all ways, I desire to make a report to you of our visit.’’π 4

Oppenheim

After briefly setting out the itinerary he and Gonzales had followed and explaining his twin goals in making the journey of ‘‘see[ing] as much of Koreans, their life, customs &c. as possible’’ and ‘‘see[ing] something of the Japanese administration and enterprises,’’ Starr set out his positive overall impressions: On the whole we were greatly pleased with conditions. There is no question that important and deep-seated reforms have taken place under Japanese control. Courts are more readily accessible and justice better administered probably than at any time in the past. Probably taxation is more wisely levied and more equitably collected than ever before. Education is being fostered, resources are being husbanded and developed, and public works of the most important kind are being pushed forward. We were greatly interested in the improvements at Fusan, the harbor development of Chemulpo, the great railroad bridge over the Yalu, the waterworks at Pyeng Yang, the model farm and dendrological school at Suigen, the constant construction [‘‘development’’ written above line] of good roads, and many other worthy enterprises which tend to the enrichment of the country and the comfort and advancement of the people. Such an array of modernizing achievements on the part of the colonial state could easily have been plucked wholesale from one of the many publications designed to disseminate news of the Japanese ‘‘civilizing mission’’ in Korea to the world at large, among which probably the most prominent was a stream of English-language Annual Reports on the Progress and Reforms in Korea issued beginning in 1907 (Schmid 2002:161– 162). We know, indeed, that Starr was a reader of these reports—he wrote a series of book reviews of them throughout the second decade of the century. A few examples were quite likely among the materials given to him personally by Governor General Terauchi at their first meeting. Yet I will show that Starr did not simply accept these civilizing claims as presented with their full panoply of usual concomitants. Neither of the boxes to which Starr is commonly assigned in histories of anthropology— neither the ‘‘anti-imperialist’’ box, within which his endorsement of Japanese colonial development would seem prima facie a betrayal of principle, nor the ‘‘civilizationalist’’ box, within which his enthusiasm for the material manifestations of the Japanese ‘‘civilizing project’’ would seem of a piece with his ostensible lifelong commitment to the Tylorian framework—fully grasps the complexities of his political and intellectual engagement with the world. Consistencies and Contradictions

5

To be sure, Starr accepted the fact of Japanese absorption of Korea. Scattered throughout his letter were elements of concrete advice, addressed not to the issue of whether Japan should rule Korea at all but to the question of how it might do so more easily and effectively.∫ For one thing, he wrote, what to resident Japanese appeared as a ‘‘language problem’’ might find its solution if demographic and economic forces were allowed to play out. As everywhere the language problem will be and is a serious one. I believe good politics will never try to supplant the language of a conquered people by that of the conqueror. The effort to replace Korean by Japanese can only bear ill results. Open direct efforts of the kind should be entirely avoided. Undoubtedly in time—as a considerable immigration of Japanese is going on, the Japanese language will more & more become useful and desired; its use will extend more & more. But this extension will be more rapid if left almost to itself, than if it is in any degree forced. In the long run, at least, the colonial administration would fail to heed even this instrumentally oriented suggestion. With wartime mobilization beginning in the late 1930s and the associated effort to effect a cultural and spiritual Gleichschaltung throughout the empire, coercively assimilationist language policy would reach its zenith, to the point of mandating even Korean adoption of Japanese names. The language issue intersected also with the question of colonial officials. Starr called for better Korean-language training for Japanese officials and for more Koreans to be employed in positions of authority. We have the impression that the interpreters in government service are Koreans generally; that the number of Koreans who know Japanese is much greater than the number of Japanese who speak Korean. Ought not one of the fundamental demands for government service to be [sic] a real knowledge of Korean? Of course some of the higher officers will presumably always be men who do not know Korean. But—those Japanese officers who deal directly with the people ought to be masters of the language. For them to be at the mercy of interpreters—& those Korean is surely unfortunate. We were impressed by the fact that the number of Korean officials is much less than it should be and that [crossed out: ‘‘every’’] Korean officials who occupy offices of importance are completely hemmed about by Japanese assistants or advisors. This is surely an abnormal condition, sure to breed misunderstandings and dif6

Oppenheim

ficulties. In the nature of things Koreans should have Korean officials up to the very limit of safety. The presence of so many Japanese officials in Korea works only disadvantage there. Starr’s observation that those Korean officials who did occupy positions of importance were ‘‘hemmed about’’ by Japanese handlers can probably be traced to a specific incident. When he and Gonzales arrived in the city of Kyôngju, they were welcomed by the Kyôngju magistrate, an Englishspeaking man named Yang, ‘‘really the only Korean in [a] bunch’’ that also included the (Japanese) chief of police, the mayor of the Japanese municipality, and various others (fsp b15 Japan–Korea 1911 nb4:27–31). Of course, in the Ishii letter, Starr’s original consideration in his notebook of the plight of Yang and other Koreans like him, in which some sympathy might be detected, had become a cause for practical recommendation as to how ‘‘disadvantage’’ might be avoided. A second type of advice dominated the last few pages of the letter. Starr offered a set of ‘‘suggestions . . . in the direction of [his] own studies . . . of a professional or semi-professional kind.’’ They concerned the collection and preservation of both ethnographic materials and antiquities. ‘‘Now is the moment,’’ Starr wrote, to make a great ethnographic collection—a double collection— representing Korean culture. This should include everything illustrating the life and customs of Korea. It should be complete and detailed. It should include dress, ornaments, implements, utensils, products, fabrics, artwork, books & other print, thought forms. Nothing is trivial or insignificant for this purpose. Such a collection once made and properly maintained would be a source of pride and pleasure to Japanese & Koreans alike in coming time. It must be made at once, for Korea changes and must change. It should be double as I have said—the one series going to Tokyo, the other remaining in Seoul. Expense should not be spared in this because delay is fatal and incompleteness must not be considered possible. Starr’s ‘‘commitment to museum collecting’’ has been described as a fundamental aspect of his anthropological persona (McVicker 1989a:218). In 1911 at least, collecting was a major aspect of his Korean research. The quality and kind of ethnographic collecting Starr undertook, however, has been subject to discussion. Enid Schildkrout (1998:173) has described the ‘‘minimal’’ documentation that accompanied the African collection he sold to the American Museum of Natural History, while Donald McVicker (1989a:221–222) has described Starr as just ‘‘as aware Consistencies and Contradictions

7

of the necessity for proper documentation as any other anthropologist of his time.’’ The logic of Starr’s selection and display practices, meanwhile, has often been taken to reflect the 19th-century evolutionism for which he is taken as a late and lonely holdover (cf. McVicker 1989b:123). It must be remarked that collecting and giving advice about collecting are different things, yet what is nonetheless notable about the Korean collection he envisioned is its variety, ‘‘completeness,’’ necessary (co-)location in Seoul, and contextual (self-)referentiality as a representation of ‘‘Korean culture.’’ Minimally, it is difficult to read this and pigeonhole Starr as simply a revenant from the Mason side of the Boas-Mason museological debate of the 1880s (Stocking 1968:155–156). Also apparent, of course, was the assumption of collection as among the proper activities of a colonial power, and the duality of a collection housed simultaneously in Seoul and Tokyo as a mediation of the tensions of colonial sovereignty.Ω When he turned from ethnographic materials to antiquities and art objects, however, Starr criticized and even coded as backward prevalent Japanese practices of museum-oriented displacement. There is already at Seoul a museum. This is quite distinct in character from the preceding [ethnographic museum]. It is largely a collection of fine old art objects & religious things or historic & historic-personal relics. It is far from what it should be either in content, ideal, or display. I mean no criticism of Japan when I state that even at home she is far behind the world in her conception of museums—apart from Commercial Museums. But the museum at Seoul deserves and needs support & backing and development. Its contents belong in Seoul. The finest collection of Korea should be there—not drafted off to Tokyo. A careful representative series should be, of course, in Tokyo, but it ought not to rob the old capital. 3) Unfortunately at times things have been removed to museums which ought never to have been taken from their original surroundings. Thus, the museum at Nara [in Japan] makes one’s heart bleed—where scores of figures are placed behind glass which ought to have remained in the temples where alone they were in place. There are plenty of disconnected and disassociated objects for the museums without robbing temples and monasteries of their treasures. Only where destruction is certain if the object remains in care of the temple is there any excuse for its removal. There are many interesting monuments in Korea which ought to be at once cared for—not to remove them to museums, but to restore them sufficiently for preservation. 8

Oppenheim

A number of works by Korean archaeologists and historians since 1945 have been content to take the disposition of cultural patrimony in the colonial period as straightforwardly homologous with the theft of nationhood itself (Yi 1996; see also Pai 2000). Yet it does seem that Japanese removal of Korean art objects and (parts of) monuments—by no means always to museums—was especially prevalent before and early in the actual colonial period, and these practices were the specific targets of Starr’s recommendations.∞≠ From the perspective of most understandings of Starr’s anthropological practice by historians of the discipline, however, what is again of interest here is the completion of a contextualist crescendo: any future ethnographic collection should be both in Korea and Japan, any future Korean art collection should be centered in its own domain, while Korean temple objects and monuments should be preserved in situ. In closing his anthropological suggestions, Starr turned to the situation of two particular locales. He called for the preservation of Suigen (Suwôn) and any other remaining walled cities, pointing to the potential ‘‘value of [Korea] as an excursion ground’’ located between ‘‘Kharbin & Peking and Japan.’’ ‘‘It is to be hoped,’’ he wrote, ‘‘that neither false economy, nor desire to modernize, nor even a claimed hygienic improvement will destroy her walled beauty.’’ At more length he discussed the situation of Kyôngju and especially its showpiece, the cave temple Sôkkuram: The fine remnant of the pagoda at Kyong Ju needs immediate attention. A small sum spent upon it now will save it for centuries to come. The magnificent tomb of general [sic] Kim [Yusin] at the same place demands immediate attention. So the beautiful pagodas at the monastery of Pul Kon sa [Pulguksa] (40 li from Kyong Ju) and the fine terrace wall, stairs or bridges at the same place ought to be rendered secure. To remove them would be a crime, which all who know and appreciate such things would reprobate and which could never be atoned. But immediate attention is essential for their preservation. We understand that a local society for the preservation of the monuments of old Silla has been organized.∞∞ The appropriation of a modest sum each year to aid this society would be an entirely proper expenditure of the Chosen government. But there is one cry which must be heard, if Japan is to deserve well of the art world. At the little monastery of Suk Kool Am [Sôkkuram] is a work of art & architecture notable—a stone Buddha looking out over the Eastern Sea. For more than a thousand years, its protecting roof of ingenious and cunning construcConsistencies and Contradictions

9

tion sheltered it from the seasons’ destruction. Only five years ago (I believe) a part of this roof fell. In the fall damage was done to the Buddha figure. The whole work ought to be restored and at once. The demand is so urgent that immediate steps should be taken. Viewed as an investment abundant expenditure is warranted. The time will come, & soon, if proper care is now taken, when Kyong Ju, Pul Kon Sa, Suk Kool Am may draw visitors from the whole world. Proper care of these now will redound to Japan’s credit. Neglect will be unpardonable. The work should be left neither to local societies or [sic] the Chosen government but should rest as a responsibility upon Japan herself. And weigh well my urgency of the claims of locality: not removal, but conservation is the true policy. There is at least the possibility that Starr’s comments on antiquities, on Kyôngju, and especially on Sôkkuram in the Ishii letter had some actual influence over the course of Japanese policy. When the anthropologist next returned to Korea in 1913, Governor General Terauchi ‘‘mentioned the appointment of Prof. Sekino [Tadashi] to supervise monumental conservation and hoped [Starr] would meet him; he also, in response to [Starr’s] observation regarding the Stone Buddha [at Sôkkuram], said steps had been taken to prevent further damage or deterioration there’’ (fsp b15 Japan–Korea 1913 nb2:55). Starr visited Kyôngju once more, in 1930, after the reconstruction of Sôkkuram overseen by Sekino was complete (Pai 1998:24 n. 13). In the course of his stay, ‘‘the local-head stated categorically’’ that it had been ‘‘his report that led to an interest in and restoration of the Cave Temple.’’ ‘‘I have always believed so,’’ Starr remarked in his notebook (fsp b17 Japan 1930 nb4:5), ‘‘but I never made the claim.’’ Orthodox accounts of the reasons for reconstruction of Sôkkuram (for better or worse) do not mention Starr, but while the question of direct effect is perhaps undecidable, what is evident amid all this sycophancy is the more fundamental point that Starr was among the class of international experts to whom the colonial state’s archaeological efforts were designed to appeal.∞≤ Among the concrete suggestions of Starr’s letter to Ishii were finally two issues of delicacy, ‘‘matters much discussed both among Koreans & foreigners in Korea.’’ The first concerned the administration’s relations with Christian missions and mission schools. Starr had received much material help from resident missionaries in the course of his Korean travels, but in offering advice to the colonial state he sought to establish his impartiality by drawing on an extant reputation as cool to the missionary goal of conversion.∞≥ 10

Oppenheim

I believe the Government is losing a valuable body of helpers. My attitude to missions is so well known at home that I am certain not to be misunderstood on this matter. It is a mistake not to seek their [above line: ‘‘the’’] aid of the Protestant missionaries. It has been pretty generally assumed that as a body they are antiJapanese. There are undoubtedly anti-Japanese among them. But I am certain that the sentiment of many of them is undergoing change and that today many of the most important are ready to admit the improvements and reforms which have taken place under Japanese administration. [crossed out: ‘‘The government has no need of pledging itself to follow their direction.’’] [crossed out: ‘‘But’’; illegible word above line] it can gain much by taking them more or less into her confidence. Among them are men of scholarship, of power, of clear view; as a body they know the language; they see things from the people’s point of view; they know the people & come intimately into contact with them, as no one else does. If asked for (a) information, (b) suggestion and (c) advice, they would heartily respond. The Government need not commit itself to follow their direction, but consultation with them could but be helpful. Starr recommended also a pragmatic attitude with respect to the particular issue of mission schools. Governor General Terauchi’s administration had begun a year earlier with a pledge of neutrality toward missions. But as the second decade of the century wore on, schools became an epicenter of conflict, first in a high-profile conspiracy case that connected a plot to assassinate Terauchi to a particular Christian academy and then in the promulgation of school accreditation standards that threatened many missionary-run institutions with closure; by 1919 ‘‘most of the missionaries in Korea had become convinced that their goals were at odds with those of the Japanese’’ (Clark 2003:41–45). Starr would have had this situation avoided, but he expressed sympathy with what he assumed to be the governmental goal of the elimination of these schools. Offering perhaps the perspective of the social scientist, he advised that, as with the ‘‘language problem,’’ demand forces might offer a solution without the need for authoritarian measures if alternative educational institutions were fostered. There is a wide-spread feeling, going far beyond mission circles & found even among those who usually are avowedly anti-missionary, that the Government is waging war against the Consistencies and Contradictions

11

mission-schools and will not cease until these are closed. The feeling exists in both native and foreign circles. [crossed out: ‘‘The way to’’] A martyr becomes dangerous; however dangerous mission schools may be in themselves—mission-schools closed through aggressive action become actually more dangerous. For myself I should not regret the cessation of all mission-schools. But the way to bring about such cessation is to raise the quality and efficiency of the public-school and there will be not attractiveness in the mission school. These can never compete actually with properly developed public schools. Raise the grade of these and the mission schools will die a natural death for lack of pupils. The second issue ‘‘much discussed’’ was judicial torture, and Starr’s advice on the matter represents one of the more troubling moments in the entirety of his writings. He began by decrying the practice and making it clear that Japan was not alone in having used it or having been accused of using it: ‘‘Is torture practiced upon suspects or witnesses? I understand that it is denied. The matter is a delicate one. Extortion of evidence through torture is largely abandoned in civilized communities. With shame I recall water cures in the Philippines and ‘third degree examinations’ before the police of our great American cities. But on the whole the tendency is away from such barbarism.’’ Yet Starr’s recommendation turned away from outright denunciation and toward an acceptance of torture as a ‘‘necessary evil’’ rooted in Korean custom. It is natural perhaps to claim that it has been abolished in Korea. But personally it seems to me a weakness to make the denial. I am not convinced that it is best to actually abolish it there at the present time. For centuries it has been employed in the most cruel & barbarous forms until it has been ingrained into the life & thought of the community. While it should be resorted to only in extremity—it may still be a necessary evil. If the government says frankly—that to its sight the thing is still necessary, it may perhaps be discredited for cruelty & barbarism. But at the present it is doubly discredited; it gains all the ill repute of torture (more than if practiced avowedly) and then is accused of false and double dealing. Ultimately, his critique rested not on the fact of torture but on the political effect of its hypocritical public denial. Just do it, Starr seemed to say, and do it forthrightly, if do it you must. To grasp this, I will argue, is to come closer to understanding Starr’s anti-imperialism at its core. 12

Oppenheim

Starr’s International Relations Starr did pronounce on Japanese imperialism itself in the course of the Ishii letter, in an argument with a structure similar to his specific remarks on torture. In basically Social Darwinist terms, he accepted the necessity of Japanese expansion in 1910 and in the Manchurian future. There are thoughts suggested by the railroad. One is constantly impressed by the fact that it is evidently a military enterprise. Its location to one side of the Korean towns, the construction of stations far beyond the commercial needs of towns like Shinguishu, the locating of barracks like that of Pyeng Yang far beyond the possible necessity of policing all point to the fact that Japan in Korea is preparing for stern future possibilities. This is well. I have always found ample justification for the absorption of Korea in three facts: 1) Japan is crowded and must have room for overflow; 2) Japan must be fed and needs producing grounds; 3) Japan is threatened and must have a foothold in the mainland. These three facts are fundamental; their importance cannot be overestimated. Yet Starr would not have this necessity prettified. Having already lauded what he took as the salutary effects of Japanese rule in Korea, the ostensible unidimensional Tylorian ‘‘civilizationalist’’ nonetheless rejected the political rhetoric of ‘‘civilization.’’ ‘‘It is folly to overemphasize Japan’s desire to help, to elevate the Koreans as such. No nation is primarily altruistic. If you desire the progress and advancement of Korea and Koreans it is because Japan’s prosperity depends upon Korea.’’ Hypocrisy, again, was to be avoided; colonial takeover should stand for itself. Within the colonial realm, however, amelioration of the prevailing antagonism was also a necessity, if only in Japan’s own interest. But to me it looks as if Korea may be either a great blessing or a great curse; as if she may be a bulwark of strength, or the point of fatal weakness. There are 13,000,000 Koreans. At the present time they are absolutely anti-Japanese; they are not in open rebellion, but they are and mean to be a dead weight. Neither courts, nor fair taxation, nor schools, nor good government, nor public enterprises, nor good roads will win them. All these they will take and profit by, but for them they will give neither thanks nor appreciation. Yet when the time of test comes their friendship, their vigorous and active assistance is necessary. Without it armies, navies, & railroads will not avail. Consistencies and Contradictions

13

The potentially conclusive role of ‘‘friendship’’ carried through to Starr’s Korean Buddhism of 1918, in which he declared that such a resurgent religion, ‘‘developed among those people and friendly to Japan,’’ might be a ‘‘decisive element’’ in some future ‘‘moment of test’’ (Starr 1918:65). The Ishii letter continued with the question: ‘‘How is such a feeling of harmony and common interest to be aroused?’’ The answer Starr offered, if oriented to the desideratum of imperial peace through colonial hegemony, picked up a theme of greater resonance in Starr’s political and anthropological writings. (a) There must be intentional effort to develope [sic] friendly relations between Japanese as individuals and Koreans as individuals. We saw few cases of actual brutality of Japanese toward Koreans. We saw quite as few cases of evident friendship. Japanese generally—even the meanest—feel themselves superior and at best treat the Koreans with good-natured contempt. So long as this lasts there will be no cooperation. b) the Japanese must respect differences; difference is not necessarily criminal or blameworthy; Japanese customs may be excellent, but the differing Korean custom may be quite as good. Not only ought individuals to recognize this right of difference: laws too ought to respect it and should interfere as little with long-settled custom as possible. I think all recognize the folly & futility of the laws against the topknot, the long pipe, the style of dress. Unless some actual harm, some crying danger lurks in local custom it should not be interfered with. c) While, naturally, the incoming Japanese must & will find some occupation and advantage in the land— vulgar and cruel exploitation should be avoided. These are three evident lines along which harmony and co-operation are to be cultivated. Others should be diligently sought—for their importance cannot be overestimated. Again, although Starr has been defined as simply an advocate of convergent evolution toward a civilizational ideal on the model of Tylor, ‘‘respect for difference,’’ with this difference construed in nonhierarchical terms (as in Korean customs ‘‘quite as good’’ as the Japanese), was also a recurring theme of Starr’s work perhaps especially in the latter portion of his career (cf. Miller 1975:52). ‘‘Respect of Difference’’ was the title of an anthropological talk Starr gave, the outline for which concluded ‘‘be then—not only tolerant, but respectful,’’ while another talk compared the issue to ‘‘pears & grapes’’ (fsp b28 f10 ‘‘Revato, the Layman,’’ f14 ‘‘Respect of Difference’’). Even as early as his sensationalistically titled 1901 14

Oppenheim

children’s book Strange Peoples, which indeed did trot out the standard evolutionary stages of savagery, barbarism, and civilization, Starr admonished that ‘‘we must never forget that we are as strange to them as they are to us’’ (Starr 1901:1–2, 4). A later talk version began simply ‘‘there are no strange peoples’’ and closed with ‘‘two important lessons . . . Recognition of similarity . . . [and] Respect for difference’’—adding ‘‘the latter more important’’ (fsp b28 f14 ‘‘Strange Peoples’’). In the Ishii letter, a Social Darwinist necessity, the expansion of a Japan besieged thus enclosed a more Herderian vision of a possible mediating internal politics of colonialism. Necessity could also be enclosed by this possibility, or Darwin by Herder, however: Starr was no mere global pessimist. Probably his most far-reaching statement on international relations was The Modern World Problem, a pamphlet published in 1919 based on a lecture given before the Workers University Society of the University of Chicago. The piece was an attack on the League of Nations as it was then being debated with a focus on one of Starr’s familiar targets, namely, the hypocrisies that the proposed international body would concretize. Without adequate (or any) representation from Asia, Africa, or Latin America, not to mention Germany or Russia, the league could only be ‘‘a selfish, narrow, bigoted, hostile little cluster of white peoples.’’ If it aimed to stand for ‘‘selfdetermination,’’ moreover, the league must exclude Great Britain for its colonial domination of India and Ireland; the United States for the Philippines, Cuba, and Nicaragua; France for its Asian and African colonies; Italy for its ‘‘Tripoli experiment’’; and, indeed, Japan for Korea (Starr 1919:26–27).∞∂ Starr ended by posing the question of whether such a league could ever be timely, expressing his doubts in the voice of the discipline: Frankly, as an anthropologist, I do not believe that the time will ever come. You may say: ‘‘What a dreary future prospect.’’ I tell you the thing for every self-respecting nation to do is to conduct herself with such honesty, integrity, and decency, that every other nation in the sisterhood will point to her with pride and say: ‘‘There is a nation great among the nations.’’ And if we had one or two such nations, the desire to pattern after them would be so great that no one would need to think of any League of Nations to produce perpetual peace. [Starr 1919:28] The Kantian-Wilsonian vision of ‘‘perpetual peace,’’ of a coconstitutive sublimating jump to world governance and civilizing enlightenment together (Kant 1970), would ever prove illusory, offering precisely only a Consistencies and Contradictions

15

beautiful cloak for the hypocrisy that Starr so abhorred. Flanders’s fields had not, after all, remade ‘‘human nature,’’ fulfilled the hope that ‘‘the lion and lamb are going to lie down together in perfect harmony’’ (Starr 1919:12–13)—‘‘no nation,’’ as he had written Ishii, ‘‘is primarily altruistic.’’ Yet civilization from the top down was not the only potential escape from a war and an imperialism that could not be outlawed. The efflorescence of individual nations into ‘‘honesty, integrity, and decency,’’ with respect as the mediating link between them, offered a bottom-up alternative. Starting with only one or two great nations, the road to perpetual peace might still be open. (Personalist) Contradictions or (Exceptionalist) Consistencies? Starr’s diagnosis of Terauchi’s Korea in the Ishii letter was capped off with remarks on Terauchi himself: May I say one word regarding the Governor-General. I know nothing of his financial or economic enterprises. But as an executive he has won success. As long as it seems best to conduct the new Province under military control, he must be considered a capable officer. He is universally considered severe—that is the essence of the military regime but all insist that he is impartial, that he treats Japanese and Korean quite alike. This is of fundamental importance. The years between 1910 and 1919 are known in Korean historiography as a period of colonial ‘‘military rule,’’ in contrast with the less obviously harsh (though more subtly cooptative) ‘‘cultural rule’’ that followed the unsuccessful March 1, 1919, Independence Movement and the accession of Saito¯ Makoto to the governor generalship in the same year. All the colonial rulers of Korea were military men, but Terauchi, who held the office until 1916, was associated with a particularly hard-line military faction (Cumings 1997:153) and was often held responsible for the character of the initial colonial period, as evident in Starr’s remarks on his severity. The appointment in 1919 of Saito, ¯ a naval rather than army officer understood as a moderate, was accordingly received with approval by foreign residents in Korea and by international liberal opinion (Clark 2003:63). Starr would join in welcoming Saito’s ¯ reforms; in calling for ‘‘friendship’’ and an end to repression of harmless Korean customs, he indeed anticipated some of the precepts of ‘‘cultural rule.’’ Yet Starr also repeated publicly his positive judgment of Terauchi as a man for his time even beyond his death in 1919. Even when paying his respects to Saito¯ in 1921, he ‘‘[took] the occasion to call attention to the fact that [he] had been 16

Oppenheim

in Chosen under all three [governors’] administrations . . . saying a word in defense of Terauchi, without at all diminishing the effect of what [he] said for the new incumbent’’ (fsp b16 Japan–Korea 1920–21 nb5:36). Starr’s practical recommendations then ended on a note of frankness: ‘‘I trust that my motives in the preceding observations will not be misunderstood. I have said here to you many things which I would not say publicly, outside. I have said them because for many years I have been interested in the achievements and advancement of the Japanese Empire. They are the expressions of a friend and well-wisher; not a criticism.’’ This admission of the privileged nature of his communication to Baron Ishii, the contrast he drew with what he would be willing to say publicly can be taken to represent anything from a guilty conscience to a more pragmatic recognition of the potentially embarrassing nature of his support and his suggestions. Certainly the Ishii letter can be read into the usual interpretation that Starr’s anti-imperialism was riddled with contradictions, his principles all too commonly, all too humanly set aside when profitable or convenient due to idiosyncrasy or personal commitments. His defense of Belgian rule in the Congo first in articles in the Chicago Tribune and then in his Truth about the Congo, even as his own field notebooks recorded atrocities, has bordered on the nauseating for historians of anthropology, especially when taken in conjunction with his subsequent receipt and vain display of medals from the Belgian government (Stocking 1979a:13; Schildkrout 1998:172).∞∑ Before traveling, Starr often collected letters of introduction from foreign diplomatic officials in the United States to their counterparts abroad; one acquired in 1916 from the Belgian embassy in Washington before another trip to Japan and Korea pronounced him ‘‘un ancien défenseur de l’ouvre congolaise’’ (fsp b4 f1 Belgian minister to Starr Nov. 28, 1916). With respect to Japan, notwithstanding the profession of support in his report to Baron Ishii, Starr did not describe himself as an unconditional defender of its place in the world or even as a Japanophile. Asked by his sister in 1926 whether he would ever choose to live in Japan owing to his ‘‘affection’’ for it, Starr replied: You are making a mistake which many of my friends make. I do not love either Japan or the Japanese; in fact I find it hard to get on with Japanese at all. But there is much of interest for me in Japanese life and customs—and I consider Japanese politics remarkably skilful. There are few countries, none that I know of that has sailed as well through dangerous waters as she, and none that more eminently faces natural destruction. Nor, do I feel that I am pro-Japanese. [fsp b7 f10 Starr to My Dear Sister Aug. 18, 1926] Consistencies and Contradictions

17

From Seoul in 1911, he declared his ‘‘sympathies’’ to be with Koreans, even while chronicling the ‘‘life, movement, and brilliancy’’ that Japan had brought (fsp b6 f12 Starr to mdm Oct. 30, 1911). As might be suggested by his need to dispel the false impressions of even his own family, however, many others took him as simply an unquestioning supporter of Japan. Ironically, his positions on Japanese affairs were sometimes sufficiently radical relative to the U.S. public political spectrum of the time that his own writings could be reappropriated and used to contrary purposes. After Japan had seized German Pacific possessions, the Ladrone (Mariana) and Marshall Islands, in the course of the First World War, Starr commented in the press and in a widely reprinted article that Japan had no intention of ever relinquishing them. The Hearst newspapers and other press heralds of the ‘‘yellow peril’’ cited this statement of a ‘‘recognized orientalist’’ as confirming the sinister expansionist designs of ‘‘the Jap and the Slav’’ and calling for an aggressive U.S. policy (fsp sb14 ‘‘Japan’s Ambitions and Their Menace to America’’). Yet it is evident from Starr’s other public statements at the time that he intended to offer neither a warning nor the pretext for a call to action; for him, Japanese expansion in Micronesia, as in Korea and Manchuria, was to be understood as an impinging necessity. It was to be expected and accepted. War with the United States, were it to come, would be the fault of confrontational U.S. ‘‘preparedness policy,’’ not Japan itself (fsp sb14 ‘‘U.S. Policy a Peril, Says Prof. Starr’’). Starr’s defense of Terauchi Masatake in 1911 and afterward seems likewise to emerge from the context of a ‘‘special relationship.’’ The anthropologist never met Terauchi’s immediate successor as governor general, Hasegawa Yoshimichi; he was cordial with Saito¯ Makoto. But with Terauchi himself, Starr seems to have had something that approached actual friendship and mutual trust. At another lunch in 1913, the two repaired to a reception room for coffee, where, through a bilingual official, they had what Starr described as ‘‘quite a heart-to-heart talk.’’ Starr expressed the judgment that also emerges from the Ishii letter that Terauchi was evenhanded if also severe; Terauchi replied with the hope that ‘‘the time was near when greater freedom could be given and that he would be found capable of lenience as well as severity’’ (fsp b15 Japan–Korea 1913 nb3:42). At their next meeting in February 1916, Terauchi asked Starr to ‘‘carry a personal message to Mr. [Theodore] Roosevelt,’’ having received a report of Roosevelt’s defense of his government against one of its critics. Starr wrote: Recently when Baron Shibusawa was in New York he met Mr. R[oosevelt] and Korea and Terauchi San were mentioned: the Baron spoke somewhat strongly against his administration, con18

Oppenheim

demning his severity &c. Mr. Roosevelt entered into a defense and showed a surprising knowledge of Korean affairs and conditions. The Governor-General desires me to express his appreciation of (a) the interest Mr. Roosevelt has shown in Korean matters & his knowledge of them and (b) his good opinion of him and the work he has tried to do here. [fsp b15 Japan–Korea 1915–16 nb6:8–9] After delaying with the hope that he might have the chance to deliver the message to Roosevelt personally, Starr finally drafted a letter from Chicago on August 22, 1916, addressed to the former president at his residence in Oyster Bay, New York. The letter did precisely what Terauchi had asked, with Starr adding that the governor general had spoken ‘‘with genuine feeling’’ (fsp b4 f1 Starr to Roosevelt Aug. 22, 1916). In 1917 Starr visited Terauchi after he had become prime minister of Japan; Terauchi wrote him a letter of introduction to his successor in Korea, Hasegawa (fsp b7 f4 Starr to mdm Apr. 10, 1917).∞∏ Privately, Starr expressed support for Terauchi’s plays for power. On January 25, 1917, he wrote in his notebook: ‘‘Today the diet was dissolved and Terauchi San will make his appeal to the people. These are stirring times and history is making. Personally I believe in Terauchi and consider constitutionalism and party politics mere words here; now is the chance for me to learn my mistake if it be such’’ (fsp b16 Japan–Korea 1917 nb1:16). His last audience with Terauchi was in August 1919, after the politician had been forced to resign and had less than three months to live (fsp b7 f6 Starr to mdm Aug. 12, 1919). Yet to take Starr’s evident (if occasionally denied) regard for Japan, Belgium, Terauchi, and the like as simply explanatory of apparent lapses in his anthropological anti-imperialism is to leave unquestioned the tenets of that anti-imperialism—surely one of many in the history of the discipline. In U.S. public discourse at the turn of the 20th century there was, for example, a strand of what might be called ‘‘racist anti-imperialism’’ tied to attacks on nonwhite immigration.∞π In the Starr papers there is a letter from James L. Slayden, member of the House of Representatives from Texas, trustee of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and fellow anti-imperialist, who in 1913 corresponded with Starr about a briefly discussed possibility of his appointment as one of the commissioners to the Philippines, in which position Starr would forward a proindependence agenda. Declaring Starr an ‘‘eminently fit man for the place,’’ Slayden added, ‘‘I have been hostile to the idea of acquiring tropical territory and when to the tropical condition is added an Asiatic locus my hostility to it becomes rabid’’ (fsp b3 f7 Slayden to Starr Apr. 22, Consistencies and Contradictions

19

1913). Such acquisitions could bring brown men and women to U.S. shores. Starr’s reply, if any, is not preserved; clearly the congressman assumed common cause. But if we might judge from the fact that Starr’s major political commitment of the 1920s was his opposition to the 1924 Japanese Exclusion Act (Starr 1924, 1925; cf. Hirobe 2001), then these were not the coordinates of Starr’s anti-imperialism either. What, then? The bottom line in my view is that Starr was an antiimperialist. His public stances for noninvolvement in the Philippines and in Mexico, for giving Liberia a chance, and for other similar causes were not isolated occasions but a steady aspect of his middle and late career, and these stances were taken minimally at the cost of public opprobrium and accusations of being unpatriotic. But more than that, Starr was an anti–Great Power imperialist. For all the discussion of his Congo ‘‘inconsistency,’’ little note has been taken of the clearly stated assumptions behind his position. Starr understood opposition to Belgian rule as playing into the hands of the expansionism of other European states. What will the natives gain by partition? They will still have their oppressors, only they will be divided around among three instead of being exploited by one. Suppose the redistribution did take place. Suppose France, Germany, and England divided the Congo between them; suppose—as would be certain—that oppression and atrocity continued in the divided territory. Would we still continue our noble effort in behalf of the suffering black millions? [Starr 1969:121] Starr’s ‘‘repression’’ of Belgian atrocities can be regarded as short-sighted, cynical in its calculus of means and ends, or just plain bad, but it was not unmotivated. Finally and most of all, however, Starr was an anti-American imperialist. ‘‘We’’ might interfere in the Congo ‘‘for reasons of humanity’’ when and only when ‘‘our hands [were] clean and when we [had] given the Filipinos their well-deserved independence’’ (Starr 1969:127). ‘‘The Bantu in the Congo we love,’’ he noted. ‘‘We suffer when he is whipped, shudder when he is put-upon a chain-gang, shriek when he is murdered. Yet, here he may be whipped, put on the chain-gang, murdered, and if any raise an outcry he is a sentimentalist. Our negro problem is a serious and difficult one’’ (Starr 1969:121). This formula also bespeaks the consistency of the curious Social Darwinist–Herderian amalgam in the arc between the Ishii letter and The Modern World Problem. Pressed internally by population and externally by predatory states, Japan (like Belgium) might have excuse for colonial expansion, and too bad for Korea, but the United States 20

Oppenheim

never could. ‘‘Respect for difference’’ was a salve on the wounds of an imperfect world, but respect between nations was also the only way forward; struggle was neither ordained nor progressive, but simply was. Japan might rule Korea for better or for worse, yet the hypocrisy of claiming to do so in the name of ‘‘civilization’’ must at any rate be avoided. There is, furthermore, a ‘‘rest of the story’’: this modality of antiimperialism had a Chicago address. From around the turn of the century, Starr was associated with a set of interlocking Chicago institutions centering on the Unitarian minister and activist Jenkin Lloyd Jones. These included Jones’s All Souls Church, the Abraham Lincoln Center, and the periodical Unity; Starr tried out many of his writings as talks before All Souls, and as a member of Unity’s editorial board he published more there after about 1910, in the form of book reviews, essays, and serializations of his pamphlets, than he ever did in American Anthropologist or other disciplinary journals. In his youth, Jones had fought with Grant at Shiloh and since then had been devoted to the ‘‘war against war.’’ Jones’s organizations filtered anti-imperialism through the lens of a radical pacifism constructed in such martial terms, opposing first war preparedness and then U.S. entry into World War I even after other peace groups had capitulated to its necessity along with Wilson, flying all the while the ‘‘banner of peace’’—no mere metaphor but a U.S. flag bordered in white that hung over the Abraham Lincoln Center. To read Unity is to confront an obvious universalism, apparent in its international range of topics and contributors and its motto, ‘‘The World is my country, to do good is my Religion.’’ But this was multiplied by a commitment to a ‘‘higher patriotism’’—Lincoln, Jones’s ‘‘christ and guide,’’ was for him a moment in a historical series that began with Buddha and Jesus (Thomas 1967:103, 133, 206). To paraphrase Clifford Geertz’s (1984) much-paraphrased title, the Jones nexus was thus at the very least ‘‘anti-anti-exceptionalist’’: against ‘‘manifest destiny’’ and triumphalist U.S. expansionism, certainly, but also against any position holding that the United States among all nations could be compelled to engage on the squalid terms of a realpolitik world. The United States should be among the ‘‘one or two such nations,’’ the paragons of Starr’s Modern World Problem; in this frame, anti-imperialism was as much for the sake of the soul of the United States as it was in sympathy with imperialism’s more obvious victims. Starr’s own position may not have been identical to Jones’s—Starr was, in fact, less inclined to regard peace as the necessary culmination of an evolutionary process, more apt to counterpose the ‘‘anthropological’’ truth of the prevailing sentiments of an already disordered world to Jones’s belief in this verdict of ‘‘science’’ (cf. Thomas 1967:163–164; Starr 1919:28)—but it was a supConsistencies and Contradictions

21

portive conversation within the fold. Starr’s own Kulturkampf (cf. Stocking 1992) opens broader questions of the indigenous rootedness of at least one politics of American anthropology in domestic liberal religion.∞∫ I should be clear that I am not out to praise Starr, though I do think that burying him in contrasts with canonical disciplinary forebears has lost its value and its point—the reputation of Boas can stand on its own two feet. The other ‘‘bottom line’’ of his support for Japanese colonialism and his failure to pronounce torture anathema will win him few friends; that ‘‘Japan had to do it’’ carries little weight in postcolonial Asia. As has meanwhile been made abundantly evident, Starr did not leave much in the way of institutional or intellectual inheritance that would be taken up by American anthropology (Miller 1975; Stocking 1979a:13–15). His actual collections are, perhaps, a different matter (Kotani 1999). Let me suggest, however, that among Starr’s legacies to the discipline is his rather thorough inhabitation of a dilemma. The ‘‘double move’’ past the then relatively novel specter of U.S. imperialism toward any sort of effective engagement with the issue of Japan in Korea or Belgium in the Congo escaped him. Anthropological anti-imperialism today is more likely to ground itself in some form of culturally or historically informed universalism, whether Marxist or humanist or both (Fanon), than in the American exceptionalism that I have argued was largely constitutive of Starr’s consistencies—one can indeed ‘‘rationalize life from fundamentally different basic points of view’’ (Weber 1930:78).∞Ω And yet, even as the American Anthropological Association can now glance backward at 2003 meetings devoted to the annual theme of ‘‘Peace’’—for relevance in troubled times—Starr’s dilemma is not a problem that has gone away. Notes 1. I would like to thank the Department of Special Collections, Joseph Regenstein Library, University of Chicago for its generosity in granting access to the Frederick Starr Papers, assistance in finding and copying materials, and permission to quote from the papers in scholarly publications. I hereafter cite this collection as ‘‘fsp,’’ where b=box, f=folder, nb=notebook, and sb=scrapbook. 2. Starr was employed at the University of Chicago from 1892 until his retirement in 1923; on his institutional and university career, see especially Miller 1975; Stocking 1979a:11–15; and Darnell 1998:110–114. However, after 1923 he continued traveling, conducting fieldwork (defined by his own standards, of course), and planning anthropological writings over the subsequent decade up to the eve of his death. Virtually all existing studies of Starr have emphasized the first part of this time period. 3. After Gonzales’s death in 1912, Starr was often accompanied in Japan and Korea by a young Japanese photographer, ‘‘Hanzo,’’ or Maebashi Hambei by his full name. The anthropologist also employed an assortment of Korean and Japanese interpreters and other facilitators. 22

Oppenheim

4. ‘‘Chosen’’ was the Japanese reading of Chosôn, the name of the final, five-hundred-year (1392–1910) Korean royal dynasty, whose dominion immediately preceded Japanese colonization of the peninsula, as well as another ancient state. The appellation is preserved today in the Korean name of the Democratic People’s Republic of (North) Korea, while the (Southern) Republic of Korea has drawn its designation from a different precolonial polity (actually, a set of them). Though of course subordinate to the government in Tokyo, throughout the colonial period (1910–45) the governor generalship in Korea was an extremely strong institution, with basically unquestioned official authority over Korean affairs. The occupants of the post were of very high stature: both Terauchi Masatake and Saito¯ Makoto, for example, also served as Japanese prime ministers. 5. On the sartorial politics of Starr’s presence in Japan and Korea, see Evans 1987 and Oppenheim in press. 6. Starr made six total trips to Korea, the last in 1930. While my account of Starr’s research practice here dovetails with the usual judgment that his late writings were essentially merely travelogue, the product of something other and lesser than intensive, single-site (Boasian) fieldwork, Starr also collected anthropometric data, material culture, riddles, and photographs in 1911. In later years, his perspective on Korea also increasingly developed in dialogue with indigenous cultural intellectuals (Oppenheim in press). 7. The unnumbered pages of Starr’s letter to Ishii, dated Dec[ember] 11, 1911, can be found in fsp b3 f5; I will quote from this source without additional citation. 8. I depart at this point from a treatment of the letter to Ishii in the order in which it was written. My purpose in doing so, of course, is to arrange a number of strands so as to tie them into the question of Starr’s anti-imperialism. 9. Numerous works, most obviously Anderson 1991:163–185, have placed the institution of the museum at the center of colonial and nationalist projects. On anthropological collecting in colonial Korea, see especially the work of Hyung Il Pai (1998, 2000). 10. The cave temple Sôkkuram, discussed explicitly by Starr in an excerpt quoted later in this essay, provides one example. A popular account of Korean antiquities describes the removal of an interior stone pagoda that formerly stood before the Avalokite´svara carving on the central back wall in 1909, within two years of Sôkkuram’s ‘‘discovery’’ by Japanese authorities (Yu 1999:200–201). 11. Silla was the kingdom of the first millennium ad, with a capital located at the site of the present city, to which most of Kyôngju’s relics trace. 12. The Japanese reconstruction of Sôkkuram involved changes to its design and initiated a problem with water condensation that has continued to the present. Many Korean authors and certainly the nationalist media have thus tended to portray the project as at best incompetent and at worst another incidence of willful Japanese colonial disregard or destruction of Korean cultural property. 13. Indeed, in reviews of books on Asian topics he would write in later years, he rarely failed to note and dismiss missionary authors’ obligatory statement of the superiority of Christianity to established East Asian religions. 14. R. Berkeley Miller (1975:53) covers some of the same ground, without, however, drawing out the fuller implications of Starr’s vision of ‘‘perpetual peace,’’ as I seek to do in this discussion. 15. Indeed, on board the ship returning from Korea to Japan, on the eve of writing the Ishii letter, Starr received with a packet of his mail an ‘‘upgrade’’ from the Belgian authorities. He informed his mother: ‘‘In my mail, examined on the steamer, I found the new decoration from King Albert. I had expected it to be the Officer of the Lion of Leopold I, and was a little disappointed that it was an advancement, not a new naming. I am now a Commander of the Consistencies and Contradictions

23

Order of Leopold II. I presume I shall have to return the old Cross. The new one is heavy, beautiful, and worn suspended by a double ribbon upon the mid-breast. It is far the most striking I have’’ (fsp b6 f12 Starr to mdm Dec. 6, 1911). 16. As suggested earlier, however, Hasegawa remained unavailable throughout Starr’s 1917 visit to Korea (fsp b16 Japan–Korea 1917 nb4–6). 17. I owe this term to a conversation with George W. Stocking; see also Stocking 1979b:10. For a suggestion that Starr (in 1904) participated in this logic, see Rydell 1984:173–176. On Slayden’s career, see Gray 1962. On racist anti-imperialism as a characteristic position of southern Democrats, see Lasch 1958; on the phenomenon more generally, see also Love 1997. 18. This is perhaps the place to thank Chicago’s Meadville-Lombard Theological Seminary for access to its full collection of Unity and conversations on Jones. 19. ‘‘So-called’’ or ‘‘self-proclaimed anti-imperialism today,’’ I should perhaps write, though I hasten to add not with the intention of undermining the ethical seriousness of any of these positions. The label begs the question of whether ‘‘imperialism’’ (however hyphenated) is an accurate description of what is happening in the present world, and thus whether ‘‘anti-imperialism’’ is an adequate framework for launching a response (Kelly and Kaplan 2001:17).

References Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. edition. London: Verso. Clark, Donald N. 2003. Living Dangerously in Korea: The Western Experience 1900–1950. Norwalk ct: EastBridge. Cumings, Bruce. 1997. Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History. New York: W. W. Norton. Darnell, Regna. 1998. And Along Came Boas: Continuity and Revolution in Americanist Anthropology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Eckert, Carter J., Ki-baik Lee, Young Ick Lew, Michael Robinson, and Edward W. Wagner. 1990. Korea Old and New: A History. Seoul: Ilchokak. Evans, Nancy L. 1987. Frederick Starr: Missionary for Anthropology. ma thesis, Department of Anthropology, Indiana University. Geertz, Clifford. 1984. Distinguished Lecture: Anti Anti-Relativism. American Anthropologist 86(2): 263–278. Gray, Sondra Wyatt. 1962. The Political Career of James Luther Slayden. ma thesis, University of Texas at Austin. Handler, Richard, ed. 2000. Excluded Ancestors, Inventible Traditions: Essays toward a More Inclusive History of Anthropology. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Hirobe, Izumi. 2001. Japanese Pride, American Prejudice: Modifying the Exclusion Clause of the 1924 Immigration Act. Stanford ca: Stanford University Press. Kant, Immanuel. 1970[1795]. Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch. In Kant: Political Writings. Hans Reiss, ed. Pp. 93–130. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kelly, John D., and Martha Kaplan. 2001. Represented Communities: Fiji and World Decolonization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kotani, Yoshinobu. 1999. Ainu Collections in North America: Documentation Projects and the Frederick Starr Collections. In Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People. Pp. 136–147. Washington dc: Arctic Studies Center, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. 24

Oppenheim

Lasch, Christopher. 1958. The Anti-Imperialists, the Philippines, and the Inequality of Man. The Journal of Southern History 24(3): 319–331. Love, Eric Tyrone Lowery. 1997. Race over Empire: Racism and United States Imperialism, 1865–1900. PhD dissertation, Department of History, Princeton University. McVicker, Donald. 1989a. Parallels and Rivalries: Encounters between Boas and Starr. Curator 32(3): 212–228. ———. 1989b. Prejudice and Context: The Anthropological Archaeologist as Historian. In Tracing Archaeology’s Past: The Historiography of Archaeology. Andrew L. Christenson, ed. Pp. 113–126. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Miller, R. Berkeley. 1975. Anthropology and Institutionalization: Frederick Starr at the University of Chicago, 1892–1923. Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers 51/52:49–60. Oppenheim, Robert. In press. ‘‘The West’’ and the Anthropology of Other People’s Colonialism: Frederick Starr in Korea, 1911–1930. Journal of Asian Studies. Pai, Hyung Il. 1998. The Colonial Origins of Korea’s Collected Past. In Nationalism and the Construction of Korean Identity. Korea Research Monograph 26. Hyung Il Pai and Timothy R. Tangherlini, eds. Pp. 13–33. Berkeley: Center for Korean Studies, University of California. ———. 2000. Constructing ‘‘Korean’’ Origins: A Critical Review of Archaeology, Historiography, and Racial Myth in Korean State-Formation Theories. Cambridge ma: Harvard University Asia Center. Rydell, Robert W. 1984. All the World’s a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Exhibitions, 1876–1916. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schildkrout, Enid. 1998. Personal Styles and Disciplinary Paradigms: Frederick Starr and Herbert Lang. In The Scramble for Art in Central Africa. Enid Schildkrout and Curtis A. Keim, eds. Pp. 169–192. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schmid, Andre. 2002. Korea between Empires, 1895–1919. New York: Columbia University Press. Starr, Frederick. 1901. Strange Peoples. Boston: D. C. Heath. ———. 1918. Korean Buddhism: History—Condition—Art. Boston: Marshall Jones. ———. 1919. The Modern World Problem. Chicago: Workers University Society. ———. 1924. ‘‘Grave Consequences’’: Six Articles on the American-Japanese Question. Seattle: Seattle Fellowship. ———. 1925. Social Aspects of the Japanese Problem. In Proceedings of the National Conference of Social Work. 52nd annual session. Pp. 66–76. Chicago: University of Chicago Press for National Conference of Social Work. ———. 1969[1907]. The Truth about the Congo: The Chicago Tribune Articles. New York: Negro Universities Press. Stocking, George W., Jr. 1968. Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology. New York: Free Press. ———. 1979a. Anthropology at Chicago: Tradition, Discipline, Department. Chicago: Joseph Regenstein Library, University of Chicago. ———. 1979b. Anti-Imperialism and Anthropology: The Case of Frederick Starr. History of Anthropology Newsletter 6(1): 9–10. ———. 1992. Anthropology as Kulturkampf: Science and Politics in the Career of Franz Boas. In The Ethnographer’s Magic and Other Essays in the History of Anthropology. Pp. 92–113. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Thomas, Richard Harlan. 1967. Jenkin Lloyd Jones: Lincoln’s Soldier of Civic Righteousness. PhD dissertation, Department of History, Rutgers University. Weber, Max. 1930. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Trans. Talcott Parsons. New York: Routledge. Consistencies and Contradictions

25

Yi Kuyôl. 1996. Han’guk Munhwajae Sunansa [History of the sufferings of Korean cultural materials]. Seoul: Tolbegae. Yu Hong-june. 1999. Smiles of the Baby Buddha: Appreciating the Cultural Heritage of Kyôngju. Trans. Charles M. Mueller. Seoul: Changbi. Zwick, Jim, ed. 2004. Anti-Imperialism in the United States, 1898–1935. Electronic book, http://www.boondocksnet.com/ai/, accessed June 23, 2004.

26

Oppenheim

2. The Carnegie Mission and Vision of Science Institutional Contexts of Maya Archaeology and Espionage Quetzil E. Castañeda

In the United States, the major alternative [to Rockefeller funding of anthropology] came from the Carnegie Institution, which was heavily oriented to physical anthropology and archaeology; such general ethnographic work as it sustained was an outgrowth of its interests in Mayan archaeology. George W. Stocking Jr., Philanthropoids and Vanishing Cultures The war work of the Carnegie Institution covered many fields of activity, from the manufacture of optical glass to military intelligence work, and to it all Dr. Woodward offered the most effective support. He himself was a member of the Naval Consulting Board. Fred E. Wright, Memorial of Robert Simpson Woodward When the history of the proceedings of the institution comes to be written there will be a fine chapter of patriotic service to the Government in reference to this matter. ciw President Robert S. Woodward, Minutes of the Meeting of the Board of Trustees

This essay, while not a ‘‘fine chapter of patriotic service,’’ does contribute toward an anthropological history of the Carnegie Institution of Washington (ciw; also known officially as Carnegie Institution or ci). The ciw (also referred to here as ‘‘the Carnegie’’) was founded, with a deed of $10 million in steel stock in 1902, as a research institute during the formative period of U.S. science.∞ The ciw participated in the general emergence of a public sphere that was driven by the great philanthropic foundations and initiatives of the first decades of the 20th century. It was part of the emergence of a new governmentality that was to transform citizen and society along the rational lines of scientific knowledge. As a part of its scientific mission, it supported research in many, but not all, areas of science, including archaeology and, eventually, social anthropology. The legacy of the Carnegie also includes, to a great extent, the shaping of both the U.S.

military–industrial complex and the shaping of the contemporary structure of scientific research in the United States. As is well known, ciw president Vannevar Bush orchestrated the collaboration of science, industry, and military during World War II and then forged the development of the National Research Foundation (Bush 1990; Zachary 1999). Less known, however, is that the second ciw president, Robert S. Woodward, had already established institutional precedent for how science and scientists would contribute to the U.S. government during war time. The wide ranging and profound importance of the ciw in many areas of science and society has motivated many studies that focus on specific aspects and problems in the history of the institution and of some specific sciences. While the results of the ciw support of archaeology is not quite as monumental as the million-dollar observatories and laboratories that the Carnegie built and operates, the Carnegie sponsorship of ‘‘pan-scientific’’ research in Mesoamerica and the Maya world is a fundamental watershed for Americanist anthropology. Despite this indisputable importance, a sustained study of this history of the field in the manner of a ‘‘sociology of knowledge’’ is curiously absent. In part this may have to do precisely with the role of the Carnegie in initiating espionage by scientists, specifically by archaeologists. However, if such a silence might stop some from ‘‘digging up the dirt’’ on archaeology, it also effectively ‘‘buries’’ the intellectual specificity and unique contribution of the Carnegie-sponsored Maya research. For example, Stocking is able, as in the epigraph at the beginning of this essay, to reduce and dismiss the complexity, diversity, and specificity of 44 years of Carnegie Mesoamerican archaeological research (see also Stocking 1992:156–57; Castañeda 2003, n.d.). The ciw sponsorship of wide-ranging ‘‘pan-scientific’’ research and interdisciplinary ‘‘cooperation’’ is something of a unique and significant, if also relatively short-lived and narrowly focused, experiment in anthropology. Not a school nor a tradition nor a paradigm, the Carnegie anthropological research program was a distinct way of doing anthropology that has since been absorbed into the university-based science and its associated historiography. To recuperate this ‘‘minor literature,’’ it is necessary to ‘‘excavate’’ it from the intellectual histories that marginalize and elide the diversity and specificity of this disciplinary modality of anthropology. This essay contributes toward this goal by discussing the institutional basis and modality of this nonuniversity, nonmuseum, non-Rockefeller ‘‘anthropology.’’ This essay does not engage or take any position whatsoever on the ethical issue of anthropologists as spies.≤ I am, however, interested in the institutional contexts in which this infamous moment of anthropological 28

Castañeda

history occurred: How and why was it possible for archaeologists working for the ciw to become spies? My goal is to provide ethnographic and historical information about the ciw in terms of its institutional structure, history, personnel, activities, ideas, connections, mission, and vision of science so as to address this and related questions that emerge from an anthropological examination of the Carnegie in the first half of the 20th century. Section 1 of this essay provides background on the founding history of the ciw and raises issues of how to approach the subject matter. Section 2 discusses the ciw mission and vision of science. Section 3 is a provisional mapping of the invisible grid of power and affiliation among the ciw trustees. Section 4 inspects the ciw war effort, including espionage, during World War I under President Woodward’s leadership. Section 5 concludes with questions for further research. Scientific Governmentality in the ‘‘Third Space’’ The Carnegie Institution of Washington was a unique experiment in the first half of the 20th century. Although other research institutions existed in the public sphere as a nonuniversity and nongovernmental agency, the ciw arguably became the most significant. The dominant understanding of the history of anthropology recognizes a shift from the governmentsponsored anthropology housed in museum or state agencies to an anthropology based in the university, which, at this time of the professionalization of sciences, was primarily focused in private institutions. The ciw was thus founded in a ‘‘third space’’ of the public sphere between the governmental agencies of science and the university. Although it is nongovernmental in the sense that it is not a state agency, it is certainly a governmentalist agency in the Foucaultian sense of an institutional form that works in the ‘‘public sphere’’ (see Eley 1994) with the goals of transforming the basis of citizenry, subjectivity, social agency, and national belonging along rational lines of science—specifically through the production, dissemination, and consumption of scientific knowledge. It is noteworthy in this regard that from its founding in 1902 to April 28, 1904, the president of the United States, the president of the Senate, the speaker of the House of Representatives, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and the president of the National Academy of Sciences were ex-officio members of ciw’s board of trustees. As one of the few researchfocused public ‘‘ngos’’ avant la lettre, the ciw was formally and institutionally separated from government, yet connections existed in myriad ways through the personal positions and networks of the trustees. Reiterated in the Carnegie’s centenary, in-house history is the fact that the ciw is ‘‘one of the most important and yet least studied institutions in Carnegie Mission and Vision of Science

29

the history of American Science’’ (Trefil and Hazan 2002:239). In the face of the impossible task of writing a comprehensive history, many studies deal with more delimited issues, such as the founding of the institution. One area that has been outlined is the context of and struggles among intellectual leaders—such as George Ellery Hale (astronomer and founder of the National Research Council), Daniel Coit Gilman (ex-president of Johns Hopkins University), Andrew D. White (ex-president of Cornell University), John Shaw Billings (medical doctor, founder of the National Library of Medicine and director of the New York Public Library), James McKeen Cattell (Columbia Professor of Psychology and friend of Boas), and Charles D. Walcott (Boas’s grand antagonist at the U.S. Geological Society)—to influence and shape how Andrew Carnegie’s pending philanthropic commitment of $10 million would be used: the proposal for a national university had strong advocates, but was decisively dismissed by Carnegie himself in favor of a research institute (see Reingold 1979; Lagemann 1989; Madsen 1967, 1969; Trefil and Hazen 2002:21–22). Significantly, once ciw was established as a research institute, its trustees have always pursued a course of institutional independence from the university, government, and business (Trefil and Hazen 2002:83–95). It is on the assumption and reality of this institutional independence that questions about the visible and not so visible interconnections of funding, ideas, research efforts, leadership, and so on become analytically significant and historically valuable as problems to pursue. Nathan Reingold’s analysis of the intellectual shaping of the ciw agenda is expressly stated in terms of the general absence of nongovernment, nonuniversity research institutes in the early 20th-century United States (1979:314). However, the work by Reingold and others (noted previously) has not been fully exploited as a foundation for the further investigation of a wide range of issues that are raised by contemporary concerns and anthropological approaches. The historical significance of the ciw has yet to be fully explored, for example, in terms of the emergence of a public sphere constituted by a new governmentality that is based in the ideologies, dissemination, and practice of scientific knowledge.≥ The critical histories of the eugenics movement, both in the United States and elsewhere, are important examples and springboards for work along these lines (e.g., Kelves 1985; Stepan 1991; Walsh 2001). Similarly many historical studies of philanthropies only flirt with the topic of the ciw, for example, Ellen C. Lagemann’s (1989) study of the Carnegie Corporation and George W. Stocking’s (1992) discussion of Rockefeller funding of anthropology. In these studies the role of the ciw, while often noted, does not come clearly under investigation as a primary focus. The present essay 30

Castañeda

contributes institutional background on the ciw for others to pursue further investigation; it also provides an understanding of the context in which both an important anthropological research program and the conduct of military intelligence by anthropologists emerged. Science ‘‘at the Mouth of the Cave’’ The novelty of this experiment of an independent research institute was never lost on the board of trustees, who continually struggled among themselves to define and actualize the ciw mission: The objects of the Corporation shall be to encourage in the broadest and most liberal manner, investigation, research and discovery, and the application of knowledge to the improvement of mankind; and in particular: (a) to conduct, endow, and assist investigation in any department of science, literature, or art, and to this end to cooperate with governments, universities, colleges, technical schools, learned societies, and individuals; (b) To appoint committees of experts to direct special lines of research; (c) To publish and distribute documents; (d) To conduct lectures, hold meetings, and acquire and maintain a library. [Section 2, ciw Articles of Incorporation, Apr. 28, 1904; emphasis added] This statement leads to a twofold discussion in this section. First, it is necessary to discuss further the vision of science that came to inhabit this mandate. Second, it is necessary to elaborate on the ideal of applying knowledge to the improvement of humankind. Carnegie Visions of Science (the First 50 Years) Reingold (1979) charts the trustees’ negotiation of Andrew Carnegie’s desire to find and support ‘‘the exceptional man.’’ In this struggle, initial Carnegie president Daniel C. Gilman (1902–4; ex-officio trustee 1905–8) was an early victim to a pair of more influential trustees (John Shaw Billings and Charles D. Walcott) who formed a ruling ‘‘elite’’ (Trefil and Hazan 2002:26).∂ As a practical expediency to get off the ground running, the ciw dedicated a significant portion of funds to the Minor Grants program for such ‘‘exceptional’’ researchers who may or may not have been trained as scientists. After initiating more financially sound management and critical appraisal of the results of the minor grant funding of some of the ‘‘exceptional men,’’ President Woodward (1905–20; trustee 1905–24) managed to redirect priorities to the establishment of permanent research departments, laboratories and observatories.∑ The prioritiCarnegie Mission and Vision of Science

31

zation of departments over the Minor Grants also entailed a rejection of support given to universities, museums, and related research organizations and curtailment of direct funding to people located in such institutions.∏ Under the third president, John Campbell Merriam (1921–38), this initiative was modified in two ways. A version of the minor grants persisted in the promotion of ‘‘cooperation in research’’ and multidisciplinary approaches to problems as the funding base for additional associate researchers in departments and nondepartmental, temporary ‘‘investigations’’ (Bunker 1938). As well, the minor grants continued as the vehicle to provide funding to projects and persons that originated from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.π Under President Vannevar Bush (1939–55), the prioritization of departments was extended even further. The question of the identity of the Carnegie Institution, as evident in trustee discussion of a proposal to change the name to Carnegie Research Institution (Board of Trustees 1913; hereafter bt), reflects more practical issues of the nature of ciw business.∫ Even more than a decade after the founding of the ciw, there was discussion among the trustees whether ‘‘investigation’’ and ‘‘research’’ were to be viewed as synonymous or whether one referred to humanist and the other scientific endeavors. Between the hard-science trustees and those who advocated work in literature and poetry, Robert S. Woodward charted a middle path that placed humanist ‘‘study’’ on a par with scientific ‘‘study’’ in practical-methodological (but not epistemological) terms: in his 1915 report in the Year Book (13–14), he expressly rejects the view that science only refers to the ‘‘hard’’ or mathematico-physical, natural sciences; it also includes the social and humanist sciences so long as the ‘‘criteria and methods’’ of science are not excluded from the investigation. In a rather circular manner, he argued that humanist investigation is ‘‘research’’ and research is ‘‘scientific,’’ not only because investigation is synonymous with research, but also because all research is ‘‘scientific’’ or it is not even ‘‘research’’ (bt 1916:666–678). Thus, humanist fields were able to survive the first four decades of the ciw’s history despite the dominant emphasis on ‘‘big science’’ (see Trefil and Hazen 2002:85). Although history (history of science and U.S. history), classical archaeology (the American School in Rome), a department of sociology and economics (run by ciw trustee C. Wright), and limited research in anthropological linguistics were supported in the first decades of the ciw, neither linguistics per se nor anthropology conducted by Boas or his students were ever supported (see Castañeda 2003, n.d.). In the 1940s, however, Vannevar Bush (president 1939–56) eliminated almost all humanist sciences, as well as unproductive/false sciences such as the Eugenics Record Office and sciences that were more productively and 32

Castañeda

efficiently conducted by other institutions, as in the case of the Nutrition Laboratory.Ω The diverse projects under the Division of Historical Research were reduced to archaeology and ‘‘closed.’’ Although officially closed, a number of the researchers (in archaeology and genetics) continued to receive institutional support and salaries until their retirement; nonetheless, under entering president Haskins, archaeology was given a two-year period to finalize all work in 1956 (see Trefil and Hazen 2002:88; Year Books 1955–58). Governmentality and the Improvement of Mankind A persistent issue that especially concerned the trustees of the first decades is the institutional specificity of the ciw, vis-à-vis not only universities but also other Carnegie organizations. Not only has the public been ‘‘confused’’ about the differences between the ciw and the Carnegie Corporation, but some of the trustees have been as well (bt 1913, 1916). At the 1913 meeting of the board of trustees, it was necessary for the chairman of the board to explain to the trustees that there are other Carnegie organizations, each with a separate budget, mandate, and name (however similar). In response, one trustee expressed appreciation for this clarification, especially with regard to the financial and institutional separation of the Carnegie institutes, institutions, corporations, and foundations. Of course, for the small group of trustees who were also the directors or trustees on one or more of these Carnegie organizations, such explanations were not necessary. Nonetheless, there was an apparent need to inform both the public (who requested funds for inappropriate activities) and certain members of the board (who believed Andrew Carnegie or his proxy, the Carnegie Corporation, would endlessly refill the ciw endowment as necessary) about the real nature of an ‘‘altruistic’’ research institute that was independent not only of the government and the private-sector universities but also from the other Carnegie philanthropies and organizations. It is interesting to read Woodward’s complaints (in the Year Book reports and in the minutes of the board of trustees throughout the second decade of the 20th century), about the public misconception, or rather lack of knowledge about, ‘‘altruistic establishments.’’ The magnitude of the issue became abundantly clear when, as Woodward discusses, the District of Columbia, the City of Boston, and the State of Arizona sought in different ways to tax the tax-exempt organization of the ciw (bt 1918:743–747). According to Woodward, this was based on ignorance not only of the public but of politicians and lawmakers. These attempts put the novel experiment of a nongovernmental, nonuniversity research institute into historical perspective. Further, they open questions about the history of Carnegie Mission and Vision of Science

33

Table 2.1a. Carnegie organizations in the United States U.S.-based Carnegie organizations

Year

Established

Carnegie Institute

1895

Carnegie Technical Schools

1900

Carnegie Institution of Washington Carnegie Hero Fund Commission

1902

Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

1905

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

1910

Carnegie Corporation of New York

1911

as a cultural center; became the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh with a music hall, museums of art and natural history, a library, and the Carnegie Science Center as a vocational school (not university); became Carnegie Institute of Technology and later Carnegie Mellon University as a scientific research institute; now Carnegie Institution to recognize heroic acts performed in the United States and Canada as an education-policy institute from which developed a teacher retirement plan that became tiaa– cref as a research and education foundation on international affairs and U.S. foreign policy as the only Carnegie institution awarding grants in the area of advancement and diffusion of knowledge

1904

ngos and nonprofit organizations and their roles in the creation of a public sphere in the United States. Along these lines, and against apparent ongoing criticism of the ciw, both Woodward and Merriam, in their ‘‘President’s Report’’ in the Year Book, found it necessary to reiterate that the institutional mission is science. They also persistently define the scientific mission in two ways: First, science is defined as positive, methodological knowledge derived from ongoing study of problems—often phrased in terms of ‘‘attack’’—that are specific to diverse fields but which are nonetheless ‘‘unified’’ in the pursuit of the ‘‘very orderliness of the universe [as] the supreme discovery of science’’ (Bunker 1938:715). Second, the value of such scientific discoveries and knowledge is its social relevancy measured as the contribution to the universalized well-being of ‘‘Man’’ within an evolutionary/progressive schema, that is, to the ‘‘improvement of mankind.’’∞≠ 34

Castañeda

Table 2.1b. Founding trustees of Carnegie Corporation of New York, 1911 Founding trustees

Positions in other Carnegie philanthropies

ciw trustee

Andrew Carnegie Elihu Root

New York President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace President, Board of Trustees, Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh President, Carnegie Institution of Washington President, Carnegie Foundation Advancement of Teaching President, Carnegie Hero Fund Commission New York New York

No 1902–37

William N. Frew Robert S. Woodward Henry S. Pritchett Charles L. Taylor Robert A. Franks James Bertram

1902–15 1905–24 1906–36 No No No

According to Merriam, Woodward regarded the ‘‘method of science’’ as ‘‘having permeated all regions of thought and animated all of the commercial, industrial, political, social, and religious activities of men. Whether we welcome it, deplore it, or indifferently acquiesce in it, the fact seems undeniable that the method of science and the doctrine of evolution are the most effective sources of the intellectual enterprise of our day’’ (Merriam 1924:4). Merriam, in his 1934 ‘‘President’s Report,’’ extends this idea to conclude that the value of science is not merely the ‘‘betterment of living conditions through ready production both of necessities and luxuries’’ and the ‘‘abolishing of poverty in the material sense’’ but also the elimination of the ‘‘poverty of mind and soul’’ (Bunker 1938:737–738). Thus, for Merriam, the value, mission, and ultimate social relevancy of science is ‘‘the seeking of truth’’ on which to construct philosophy and religion: ‘‘Science gives reason why every man should have a philosophy and at least an appreciation of what religion may signify’’ (Bunker 1938:738). In 1937 Merriam further explains that although there are differences between the natural and the social sciences, the method of natural science would be used with ‘‘increased value’’ in the social sciences to attain understanding of ‘‘the larger history of evolution of life-forms’’ and the ‘‘orderly movement in social evolution’’ at the heart of which is creation, that is, ‘‘constructive or creative activity’’ (Bunker 1938:739, 740). Statements such as this, which waxed into philosophical lyricism, must have contributed to the view of some ciw trustees, as well as to Merriam’s Carnegie Mission and Vision of Science

35

replacement, Vannevar Bush, that Merriam was a ‘‘poser,’’ ‘‘old fake,’’ and ‘‘paranoid’’ (Zachary 1999:84). It also suggests why Boas and his followers viewed Merriam’s vision of anthropology as quite antithetical to theirs. The predominant conception of the mission of science and its ‘‘social relevance’’ that the ci maintained, therefore, was not a notion of immediate applicability and utility. The Carnegie maintained an open-ended and long-term vision of, first, the uneven process by which scientific knowledge production ‘‘advances’’; second, the difficulties of a priori knowledge of the ‘‘social’’ relevance of the results of investigation; and third, the appropriate means of application once the production of specific knowledge has been paired with an appropriate social context of application (Woodward 1915:14–17; Merriam 1922:4–5; 1937:6–11). This seems in part to be a faithfulness to Andrew Carnegie’s ideas, that science and research have their own rhythms of accomplishment and to be successful must have sufficient time for the development both of research (collection, analysis, and synthesis of data) and of application. It is also an operational definition of ‘‘basic research.’’ The mission of the ciw was limited to the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge, not its application; indeed, application was not even an applicable criterion of basic research—except during the war efforts of World War I and World War II as will be discussed later. Thus, the ciw goal of improvement of ‘‘mankind’’ stands in contrast to the objectives of social-science initiatives by Rockefeller funding in the interwar period (see Stocking 1992:178–211). In the former, the ‘‘application of knowledge’’ produced in basic research is an uncertain goal with an undefined future and amorphous shape; in the latter, the aim of basic research was to create knowledge that had both immediate relevance and contemporary applicability. By way of contrast to these two modes or visions of basic research, it might be useful to define ‘‘applied social science’’ or ‘‘applied anthropology’’ as using a contrastive criterion of contemporary relevance and immediate applicability. But where is science to be applied to have relevance for the improvement of humanity? In other words, the problem of the application of scientific knowledge raises the question about the conceptualization of the ‘‘social place’’ or real-world domain where knowledge is to be applied. To extract from the Carnegie vision such an embedded and implicit notion, it is useful to briefly characterize Manuel Gamio’s vision of anthropology. In his 1916 manifesto, Forjando Patria, anthropology is painted with positivism, not only in terms of epistemology but in the sense that anthropology is positioned as ‘‘sociology’’ in the Comtean scheme, where this scientific discipline is the pinnacle and the synthetic umbrella of a scientific rationality and practice commissioned to restructure, even engineer, so36

Castañeda

ciety toward improvement. Gamio’s anthropology, beside literally being a governmental science established as an agency of the revolutionary Mexican state, is a governmentality that assumes the nation as the space of its operation, the modern nation as the goal of its agenda, national society as the target of its application, and national culture(s) (and citizenry) as the problem to resolve. This makes almost a point by point contrast to Boasian anthropology, which did not prioritize, foreground, or problematize the nation until World War II. Rather the nation was assumed as a pregiven and thus nearly invisible ‘‘solidity’’ of the public sphere in the third space between private citizen/family and the state. The field of operations of Boasian anthropology is the space not of the nation but of society; this point offers another way to go about explaining why anthropology had to first create a subfield of political anthropology as a subset of itself and then by the end of the 20th century become itself almost intrinsically and selfconsciously political in its approach and assumption of objects. Thus, anthropology for Gamio is envisioned as a governmentalist practice of direct intervention by para-state agencies, while anthropology in its university modality that Stocking defines as Boasian is an indirect application of knowledge either as advocacy or as policy formation; it is this indirect governmentality of U.S. university-based anthropology that necessarily leads to the emergence of an ‘‘applied anthropology’’ premised on the direct intervention in a field of operation defined not as the nation but as minoritarian sociocultural communities. Similarly, Gamio’s vision of the relevance of basic research also contrasts with the ciw vision of science. As in university science, the nation is already given—it exists and is stable, and thus it can recede into the background as an enabling assumption. The ‘‘social’’ is also already given as the public and civic spheres of modernity that are ideologically fashioned as ‘‘universal’’ even as these spheres retain the contours of the nation. Society is the space of intervention and the goal of the abstract ideal of ‘‘improving Mankind’’; however, it is not the problem to which scientific knowledge is to be applied. Thus, ‘‘relevance’’ is an assured eventuality based in dissemination to the public, not a problematization of the public as a population in which to apply science in the form of policing, statistics, surveillance, and so on. The exception to this liberal-pastoral logic of improvement, of course, was the Carnegie Eugenics Record Office (Charles Davenport, founding director), which sought to have both immediate relevance and applicability precisely in this policing mode of governmentality.∞∞ Further, the scientific ideal of improvement takes the form of a value and desire (presented as ‘‘objective’’ and ‘‘neutral’’ because of its detachment) to organize the world by scientifically rational principles; in Carnegie Mission and Vision of Science

37

this valorization the priority and privilege of one nation, the United States, is presupposed as the field, means, mode, and beneficiary of application. This double articulation of value-free science (‘‘objective neutrality’’) that aspires to universal value, on the one hand, and the enabling conditions within a nationalist agenda, on the other hand, becomes glaringly obvious during World Wars I and II, when the ciw mobilized itself for the war effort as the primary orchestrating center of military-industrial research and production. In his annual ‘‘President’s Report’’ in 1941 (Year Book no. 40), the second of his term as president, Vannevar Bush eloquently expresses this doubling of universal good and good of/for nation in the following manner: The urge to do something for humanity, by improving its knowledge of its environment, is so allied to the urge to do something definite to protect one’s country from aggression that all scientific effort responds to the stimulus. This is one of the reasons why fundamental scientific advance, and in fact basic intellectual accomplishment of many kinds, is often accelerated rather than retarded by national stress. . . . For the scientist whose talents apply directly to the means by which a nation defends itself, the way is glaringly clear. He may well regret deeply that his efforts, so long devoted to an altruistic ideal embracing the whole of mankind, become limited for a time to a narrower national aim. But he shares in that primal joy that comes from intense group effort in defense of his home, sublimated it is true, but just as real as though he stood at the mouth of a cave with a few strong men of the clan armed with stone axes against a hostile world. [Bush 1940:4–5] It is interesting to compare this expression with the similar message in his 1939 (Year Book no. 39) incoming ‘‘Report to the Trustees.’’ The 1940 statement is more a rhetorical rallying of the converted, made after the United States entered World War II. The 1939 statement is clearly a pleading appeal to the undecided, made before official U.S. participation in the war. In both cases, there is an appeal to what is positioned as the ethic of science as well as the ethics of the scientist. Both cases are based on a kind of ‘‘duplexity.’’ It is this ‘‘duplexity’’ of the scientific ethic and ethics of science that Boas confronted beginning with his 1919 letter to the Nation— and then in the National Research Council, where then nrc chairman and future ciw president Merriam forced Boas’s resignation. ‘‘Duplexity’’ was coined by Peter Pels (1999) in his analysis of the recent rise of moralism in 38

Castañeda

the history of anthropology to refer to the way in which anthropologists have ethical-moral commitments to two divergent categories of persons, client-sponsors that fund research and the studied subjects of research.∞≤ Duplexity is not duplicity. The double commitments, here to the universal good and to the nation, may or may not overlap, contradict, support, or intersect each other. As expressed by Bush, duplexity is clearly the condition of possibility not only for the Carnegie war effort but also for scientific achievement in general. It is fundamentally the basis for the sanctioning by the Carnegie presidents and trustees of espionage by archaeologists during both world wars. The Invisible Grid: Persons, Positions, Power The Carnegie Institution of Washington is so constituted that it is bound to be deeply involved in that aspect of the present intense national effort which is concerned with the application of the natural sciences to national defense, and it is necessary and fitting that the Institution should respond fully to the call of government in this regard. Inevitably, therefore, many of its long-range programs of research in the field of pure science have now been changed or held in abeyance. Vannevar Bush, ‘‘President’s Report’’

In the course of my archival research at the ciw in the 1990s, I asked staff whether they knew of espionage by Carnegie archaeologists. The response was typically ‘‘no, how interesting’’ followed by ‘‘but it is not a surprise given who the trustees were!’’∞≥ The goal of this section is to present information on the trustees such that the idea of Carnegie archaeologists working as spies is as ordinary, predictable, and obvious for anthropologists as it is for Carnegie insiders. The first decade of the ciw, as already noted, entailed an ongoing negotiation over the priorities and nature of the research that was to be sponsored (Madsen 1969; Reingold 1972, 1979). In this struggle, John S. Billings (chairman of the board of trustees, 1903–13) and Charles D. Walcott (trustee, 1902–27; vice-chairman of the board of trustees, 1914– 25; and chairman of the executive committee of the trustees, 1917–21; president of the National Academy of Sciences, 1917–23 [Malone 1936, vol. 19:328]) had greater influence over the first ci president Gilman. The ciw’s own centennial history defines Billings and Walcott as the de facto elite who ran the show. Woodward was able to wrestle greater administrative control back to the office of president, it seems, with his determination to keep the institute financially stable, on the one hand, and focused on nonuniversity, pure research, an interest shared with Billings and Walcott, on the other hand; this triadic dynamic was broken, however, with the Carnegie Mission and Vision of Science

39

death of Billings in 1913. Furthermore, a new generation of trustees had already begun to emerge in the period from 1907 to 1915. As a senior trustee, Walcott assumed a new position of power (chairman of the Executive Committee), but, according to Reingold (1979:326–329, 334, 336– 339), he had already been neutralized by Woodward.∞∂ The first generation of trustees can be divided into four categorical types: ‘‘military men,’’ ‘‘men of science,’’ ‘‘businessmen,’’ and ‘‘government men.’’∞∑ Among the first type were officer veterans of the Civil War and/or Spanish-American War, such as John C. Spooner (trustee, 1902– 7), Col. Henry L. Higginson (1902–19), and Carroll D. Wright (1902–8), but also included in this type were a number of physicians, such as Billings and S. Weir Mitchell (1902–14), who were more publicly recognized as men of science. Among the ‘‘science men’’ were ex-presidents of universities, for example, Andrew D. White (trustee, 1902–16) from Cornell, Gilman (1902–8) from Johns Hopkins, Seth Low (1902–16) from Columbia, and Henry S. Pritchett (1906–36) from mit. Pritchett (an astronomer of Welsh descent) was also president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (1906–30), founding trustee of the Carnegie Corporation, and involved in the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. Also in this category were medical doctors whose accomplishments clearly extended into areas of science, teaching, and administration: S. Weir Mitchell (of Scottish descendent and a friend of Carnegie) was a recognized pioneer in neurology; Henry P. Walcott (trustee, 1910–24) was chair of the Massachusetts State Board of Health (Malone 1936, vol. 19:329); Billings, who directed a hospital in the Civil War, was also founder of the Johns Hopkins Medical School, the National Medical Library, and the New York City Public Library; William W. Welch (trustee, 1906–34), however, was perhaps the most prominent as a founder (under Billings) of the Johns Hopkins Medical School, originator of the medical pedagogy, president of the Maryland State Board of Health (1898–1922), president of the American Medical Association (1910–11), chairman of the Board of Scientific Directors of the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research (1901–33), and chairman of the Executive Committee of the ciw Trustees (1906–16) [Malone 1936, vol. 19:621–624). Other men of science of this generation of trustees were primarily employed in government and not in universities, for example, Carroll D. Wright, ci trustee, U.S. commissioner of labor, and also chair of the ciw Department of Sociology and Economy; and C. D. Walcott, director of the U.S. Geological Society; in contrast, Alexander Agassiz of Harvard was only briefly a trustee (1902–5).∞∏ The businessmen who were invited on board as trustees were often philanthropists in the first decades of the Carnegie. Thus, in the first gener40

Castañeda

ation of trustees there was the banker and University of Chicago trustee Charles L. Hutchinson (ci trustee, 1902–19) and coal-mining industrialist Cleveland H. Dodge (1903–23); the latter founded his own New York City–based foundation on the principle that he would not profit from the money his coal-mining business made during World War I. In the second generation noteworthy philanthropists are Martin Ryerson (1908–28), also a trustee of the University of Chicago, incorporator of the Field Museum, and trustee of the Art Institute (Malone 1936, vol. 16:272), and Robert S. Brookings (trustee, 1910–29), a founder of what is now the Brookings Institute. Government men, that is, professional politicians, included for a short period then secretary of war John Hay (trustee, 1902–5) and, for longer periods, Seth Low (trustee, 1902–16), who was mayor of New York but also ex-president of Columbia University. A number of politician/lawyers include former assistant secretary of state John L. Cadwalader (trustee, 1903–14) and a (then) future U.S. president William H. Taft (trustee, 1906–15); this pair later formed, along with George W. Wickersham (trustee, 1909–36), the prestigious Cadwalader, Wickersham and Taft Law Firm in 1914. However, the most significant ‘‘government man’’ was the illustrious and controversial Elihu Root (trustee, 1902–37). As an upstate New York lawyer, Root entered the public eye when he defended the famous Tammany Hall case in the mid-19th century.∞π He later became secretary of war (1899–1904), secretary of state (1905–09), U.S. senator from New York (1909–15), and a powerbroker in dc politics. He was the first U.S. secretary of state to initiate a trip to Latin America in the 20th century, and he played a key role in U.S. relations with Latin America as well as the Philippines; he was a strong protagonist in the creation of the Pan-American Union, which later became the Organization of American States. As a close friend and advisor of Andrew Carnegie, he became chairman of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace (1910– 25) and a trustee of the Carnegie Corporation. As a lawyer-statesmen and advisor of presidents and contenders, he was a key player in the League of Nations and The Hague Peace Palace. As a ciw trustee, Root served as vice-chairman of the board of trustees (1903–13), chairman of the board (1914–37), and chairman of the Executive Committee (1922–30). While always a powerful voice in Carnegie affairs, Root became the central axis as he assumed the top administrative roles among the trustees beginning in 1914, after the death of Billings. The emergence of what I refer to as the second generation of trustees can be dated with the inclusion of William Barclay Parsons (trustee 1907–32), a civil engineer famous for his work on the Panama Canal, a railroad in Carnegie Mission and Vision of Science

41

Table 2.2a. Officers and committees of the CIW Board of Trustees, 1915 Chairman, Board of Trustees Vice-Chairman, Board of Trustees Secretary, Board of Trustees Chair, Executive Committee, Board of Trustees Members, Executive Committee

Ex-Officio members of Executive

Finance Committee

Auditing Committee

Elihu Root Charles D. Walcott Cleveland Dodge William H. Welch Wm. Barclay Parsons Henry S. Pritchett Charles D. Walcott Henry White Cleveland Dodge Elihu Root Robert Woodward (president) Cleveland Dodge (chair) Henry S. Pritchett G. W. Wickersham R. S. Brookings (chair) C. L. Hutchinson G. W. Wickersham

China, the Cape Cod Canal, and the New York City subway, among other public works (Malone 1934, vol. 14:276–278).∞∫ In this generation Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (1914–24), Stewart Paton (1916–42), Simon Flexnor (1910–14), Henry White (1913–27), Henry Walcott (1910–24), Theobald Smith (1914–34), James Parmalee (1917–31), and John J. Carty (1916–32) came on board (also Taft, Brookings, and Ryerson as noted). This board membership took shape under the second half of Woodward’s presidency when the ciw initiated its first encounter with the government as an institutional manager of the scientific-militaryindustrial war effort. The ciw trustees set up three committees, two of which dealt with financial-managerial aspects of the institution. The administrative power of the institution was divided into the office of the president, the ‘‘directors’’ of the board of trustees, and the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees. By directors I refer to the chairman, the vice-chairman, and the secretary of the board; along with the president, this group of persons ran the annual meeting. However, it was in the executive committee, at meetings held throughout the year, that decisions shaping policy and funding were made. Once shaped at this level, policy choices were brought up for vote and further discussion by all trustees in the annual meetings of the board. 42

Castañeda

Table 2.2b. Officers and committees of the CIW Board of Trustees, 1927 Chairman, Board of Trustees Vice-Chairman, Board of Trustees Secretary, Board of Trustees Chair, Executive Committee, Board of Trustees Members, Executive Committee (in 1922 exofficio members were eliminated and became direct members)

Finance Committee

Auditing Committee

Elihu Root Henry S. Pritchett Cameron Forbes Elihu Root John J. Carty W. Cameron Forbes J. C. Merriam Wm. Barclay Parsons Stewart Paton Henry S. Pritchett G. W. Wickersham Wm. Barclay Parsons Henry S. Pritchett (chair) G. W. Wickersham Robert S. Brookings (chair) James Parmalee Martin A. Ryerson

This organizational structure remained intact with only slight modifications in 1922, under the second year of Merriam’s tenure as president, and then additions under later presidents Bush and Haskins. (See Table 2.3 for the succession of ci presidents and summaries of accomplishments.) Further the placement of persons in governing committees remained fairly constant from 1915 through the mid-1920s. The rearrangement of persons in positions essentially follows the death of Charles D. Walcott in 1927. In his place Elihu Root (1902–37) and Henry S. Pritchett (1906– 36) became positioned as the key leaders in the subsequent ten-year period. New trustees who became members of the board and assumed committee positions were W. Cameron Forbes (1920–55) and John J. Carty (1925–34). This reconfiguration, in conjunction with the retirement of Jameson as the director of the Department of History, allowed Merriam to initiate his plans for the expansion of the Maya archaeology program under the umbrella of history with the rise of A. V. Kidder as the director of a newly created Division of History, which included Southwest archaeology, history of science, American history, and multidisciplinary Mesoamerican research. The significant changes in the 1930s began with loss of both Root and Pritchett. In 1932 Root first stepped down from the chair of the executive committee. Pritchett was his initial replacement for two years only when Carnegie Mission and Vision of Science

43

Table 2.2c. Officers and committees of the CIW Board of Trustees, 1936 Chairman, Board of Trustees Vice-Chairman, Board of Trustees Secretary, Board of Trustees Chair, Executive Committee Board of Trustees Members, Executive Committee

Finance Committee

Auditing Committee

W. Cameron Forbes Walter S. Gifford Frederic A. Delano W. Cameron Forbes Robert Woods Bliss Frederic Delano Walter S. Gifford J. C. Merriam (president) Stewart Paton Frederic C. Walcott Lewis H. Weed Walter S. Gifford Alfred Loomis Henry S. Morgan Elihu Root Jr. Frederic C. Walcott (chair) Frederic Delano (chair) Homer L. Ferguson Wm. Benson Storey

afterward Forbes became chair of the executive committee; Forbes also replaced Root as chairman of the board in 1934. Frederic Delano (1927– 49) assumed the position of secretary of the board and was made a member of the executive committee in the 1930s. In this rearrangement, Walter S. Gifford (trustee, 1931–66) also moved up as vice-chairman of the board as well as became a member of both the executive committee and the finance committee. Other new trustees included Herbert Hoover (1920–49), Gen. John Pershing (1930–43), Frederic C. Walcott (1931– 48), James Wadsworth (1932–52), Frank B. Jewett (1933–49), Roswell Miller (1933–55), Charles Lindbergh (1934–39), Richard P. Strong (1934–48), Alfred L. Loomis (1934–73), Lewis H. Weed (1935–52), James F. Bell (1935–61), Robert Woods Bliss (1936–62), Henry R. Shepley (1937–62), and Elihu Root Jr. (1937–67). Noteworthy is that Jewett was president of the National Academy of Sciences and head of AT&T’s Bell Laboratories, Weed was head of the Medical Division of the National Research Council, Forbes was a businessman and diplomat (former governor general of the Philippines, ambassador to Japan), Delano was FDR’s uncle, F. Walcott had been a Republican senator from Connecticut, and Herbert Hoover was the Republican president prior to FDR. It 44

Castañeda

Table 2.3. CIW presidents, 1902–2004 President

Years

Daniel Coit Gilman (1831–1908)

1902–4

Robert Simpson Woodward (1849–1926)

1904–20

John Campbell Merriam

1921–38

Vannevar Bush (1890–1974)

1939–55

Carnegie Mission and Vision of Science

Biographical notes Educator, librarian, professor of geography 1872–75 president of uc Berkeley 1876–1901 founding first president of Johns Hopkins University Astronomer, geographer, mathemetician 1884–90 U.S. Geological Survey (under J. W. Powell) 1890–93 U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey 1893–95 Columbia, professor of mechanics and mathematical physics 1895–1904 Columbia, dean of College of Pure Science Member, U.S. Naval Consulting Board, 1915–19 Paleontologist, geologist, archaeologist uc Berkeley professor, PhD from University of Munich 1890s conducted stratigraphic excavations in San Francisco Bay middens; later supervised Max Uhle’s work in same San Francisco Bay shell mounds 1919 chair of nrc (forced Franz Boas’s resignation); chair again 1921–22 His brother Charles was University of Chicago professor, founder, and chair of ssrc in the 1920s Inventor and intellectual architect of National Science Foundation 1932–38 dean and vice president, mit 1940–41 chair, National Defense Research Commission 1941–47 director, Office of Scientific Research and Development (osrd) 1942–46 chair, Joint Committee on New Weapons and Equipment, Joint Chiefs of Staff 1947–48 chair, Research and Development Board, National Military Establishment 45

Table 2.3. (continued ) President

Years

Caryl P. Haskins (1908–2001)

1956–71

Philip H. Abelson (1913–2004)

1971–78

James D. Ebert (1921–2001)

1978–87

Edward E. David Jr. (1925–)

1987–88

46

Biographical notes Areas of research: biophysics, genetics, entomology (Web searches find more of his poetry than achievements in science; let us say simply therefore that he was a poet who did good science) Physicist, worked on the Manhattan Project 1941–1945 associate, senior and principal physicist, Naval Research Laboratory 1946–1953 chairman, Biophysics Section, ciw Department of Terrestrial Magnetism 1953–71 director, ciw Geophysics Laboratory 1960–63 General Advisory Committee, Atomic Energy Commission 1962–84 editor, Science magazine 1968–81 council member, National Academy of Sciences 1971–78 president and ciw trustee 1978–80 chairman, Board of Trustees, Bio-Energy Council 1984 Distinguished Public Service Award, nsf Embryology, developmental biologist 1981 elected vice president of the National Academy of Sciences 1981 led reorganization of National Research Council; chair of Government-University-Industry Round Table 1956–76 chair, ciw Department of Embryology At one point president of 8 professional societies and trustee of 13 national and international organizations Interim president 1970–73 science advisor to Richard Nixon 1979 chair of Executive Committee, Board of Directors, American Association for the Advancement of Science Castañeda

Table 2.3. (continued ) President

Years

Biographical notes

Maxine Singer (1931–)

1988–2002

Richard A. Meserve (1944–)

2003–

Biochemistry and molecular biology 1980–87 chief of laboratory biochemistry, National Cancer Institute 1975–90 trustee, Yale (University) Corporation 1985–94 director, Whitehead Institute 2004 Philip Hauge Abelson Prize, aaas Member, Human Genome Organization Lawyer, applied physics 1999–2002 chairman, Nuclear Regulatory Commission 1992–ciw Trustee Member, Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

was this board, with its strong political, business, and science connections, that brought Vannevar Bush to the ciw as president, thereby setting the conditions for the wholesale transformation of the relations between government, science, and business (see Bush 1990; Zachary 1999). In this decade Merriam lost his ally in Maya archaeology when William Barclay Parsons (1907–32) died in 1932. A generation of trustees retired or passed away in the early 1930s: John J. Carty (1916–32), Whitefoord R. Cole (1925–34), Cass Gilbert (1924–34), Frederick H. Gillet (1924–35), Andrew J. Mellon (1924–37), Andrew J. Montague (1907– 35), James Parmalee (1917–31), philanthropist Julius Rosenwald (1929– 31), Theobald Smith (1914–34), William H. Welch (1906–34), and George W. Wickersham (1909–36). By 1932 Steward Paton (1916–42) was among the few trustees, and the only one on the executive committee, whose tenure dated from the initial years of Merriam’s presidency in the 1920s. A new generation of trustees had emerged; as detailed by Zachary (1999), the key players (Forbes, Delano, F. Walcott, Jewett) were supporters of the dynamic Vannevar Bush, who by the mid-1930s was loudly proclaiming the need for the military, science, and industry to prepare for war (Zachary 1999:76–86). Because of space constraints as well as persistent gaps in my own knowledge, more extensive biographic and sociological information on Carnegie Mission and Vision of Science

47

the trustees is not provided.∞Ω The historical tracking of the trustees becomes too complicated at this point and is not immediately necessary for the present work. This essay offers an initial diagram of persons and hints of their networks for future research on the Carnegie; it is suggestive of and useful for a variety of different lines of study. Nonetheless, the goal here is to make visible some of the points of the grid that enabled the ciw to play a central role in the emergence of the U.S. military-scientificindustrial complex during both World War I and World War II. The Carnegie War Effort: Espionage in Context The war work of the Carnegie Institution covered many fields of activity, from the manufacture of optical glass to military intelligence work, and to it all Dr. Woodward offered the most effective support. He himself was a member of the Naval Consulting Board. Fred E. Wright, Memorial of Robert Simpson Woodward Amongst other men who have been called from the Institution into the Government we have one man who is serving as a spy. He is an archaeologist, and archaeology puts up a very fine camouflage for that business. Robert Woodward, 1917

In the symposium to honor the centennial of Vannevar Bush’s birth (1891– 1974), ciw President Maxine Singer (1991:5) noted that Bush was an ‘‘unsung hero’’ who had not received the recognition due him for his part in the reshaping of U.S. science. By the end of the 20th century, many had begun to sing him praise, including for his role as the intellectual author of the personal computer and the Web. His role, along with the Carnegie’s, in World War II has become clear. What is missing, however, in this new historical impulse is close inspection of the precedent for an alliance between science, government, and industry that had already been set by the ciw during World War I. There is no attempt here to provide the ‘‘fine chapter’’ that Woodward so proudly anticipated. Instead, as a stimulus for further research, I offer a synthesis of Woodward’s own summary of the ‘‘detailed reports concerning the activities . . . of the Institution in Government work’’ (Woodward, bt 1919:797) that he presented to the trustees in 1917, 1918, and 1919.≤≠ The part of his 1919 report on the war effort can be broken down into four sections that deal with the basis of the war effort, the Naval Consulting Board, costs and benefits, and staff and department participation, respectively. 48

Castañeda

Basis of the War Effort In the April 1917 meeting of the executive committee, the members made two resolutions that enabled the ciw war effort. These resolutions shifted priorities from pure to applied research; thus, as postulated by James Trefil and Margaret Hindle Hazan (2002), the war effort was capacitated by a temporary shift of mission, which was envisioned by the famous clause Andrew Carnegie inserted into the Articles of Incorporation that allows a vote of the trustees to change the mission/agenda of the institution. Woodward repeated the resolutions of the executive committee to the entire board of trustees. These are, first, that the ciw president could respond to U.S. government requests to place ciw personnel and facilities at the service of the government, and, second, that such staff would be placed on leave of absence and that the ciw would cover the difference between the wages/salaries paid by the government and what the person would otherwise receive from the ciw (See bt 1917:687–688; Executive 1917:26). Woodward added that sometimes the government had to be prodded to make the necessary request. The Naval Consulting Board This advisory committee emerged in 1915 at the request of the Navy for two representatives of ‘‘technical societies’’ to advise on ‘‘the business of research’’ for military purposes. At the first meeting, the board, which included Thomas Edison as honorary chairman, changed the name from Advisory Board on Inventions for the Navy to Naval Consulting Board. Also in 1915, George Hale, the ciw director of astronomy, pioneered the creation of the National Research Council, in which Woodward was also active; the nrc was the branch of the National Academy of Sciences that would advise the government on science and technology in the preparation for war ‘‘with functions similar to the National Defense Council’’ (Woodward, bt 1918:758). As charted by Lagemann (1989:29–44), there was some negotiation of power and prestige by Hale and others over the best way to create a more effective, if not also permanent, research and technology arm of the government for war purposes during peacetime. From Woodward’s own sarcastic and critical accounting, the ncb was mostly ineffective as it subscribed to the theory that discoveries and advances are about as likely to come from untrained as from trained minds and that, since the number of amateurs is very large, the best way to secure advances is to set experts at work examining the suggestions and inventions of Carnegie Mission and Vision of Science

49

inexperts. . . . The Naval Consulting Board was also encouraged to believe that discoveries and advances are developed chiefly by abnormal minds and that it is therefore worth while [sic] to set men of proved efficiency and capacity at work scanning the horizon for the scintillations which might otherwise emanate unperceived from exceptional men, who are supposed to be in hiding, or at best more or less concealed behind books and bottles in dingy laboratories. . . . The so-called ‘‘wizards’’ of the Naval Consulting Board produced no epoch making inventions to win the war. They examined about 110,000 miscellaneous suggestions and inventions and found less than 10 of these worthy of application and development. [Woodward, bt 1918:759, 761] In contrast, Woodward approved of the nrc, which ‘‘proceeded on the supposition that discoveries and advances may be most reasonably expected to arise with those that have already shown capacity to make them’’ (bt 1918:759). Woodward suggested, however, that these two advisory boards in tandem were important contributors to the war effort and that they provided the impetus for ciw collaboration. Perhaps the most significant contribution, or the one of which Woodward was the proudest, is the production of optical glass for weapons. Since such glass had previously been imported from Germany, and the manufacturing technology had been previously unknown in the United States, ciw researchers had begun to develop it as early as 1915. Two points are worth noting here: First, Woodward and Hale were already involving and mobilizing the ciw in a war effort by 1915. The full extent and nature of this mobilization requires further archival research because it poses several questions. For example, were other persons, such as ci trustees (e.g., former secretary of war Root, Senator Cabot Lodge, Parsons), involved in the mobilization? Was espionage an ‘‘extracurricular’’ factor that was considered by any of the protagonists involved? Was it a factor in the creation of a Maya archaeology program and the hiring of Sylvanus G. Morley (see Harris and Sadler 2003)? The second point regarding this war effort is that this alliance between government, science, and industry failed to lead to a permanent network. Woodward himself laments that it would not congeal because of inefficiency on the part, not of military men, but of the government itself. We might add that neither Hale nor Woodward was the visionary leader that Bush would later prove to be. Interestingly, it is precisely a related frustration with the government’s inefficiency in adopting his technological inventions during World War I that prompted Bush to develop a vision of how to organize science in relationship to industry and the state. 50

Castañeda

Costs and Benefits It is worth noting, as did Woodward, that despite financial aid from the government, the ciw war effort entailed a financial burden that would soon bring crisis. (See Table 2.4 for a summary of costs.) The solution was a series of ten annual contributions of $250,000 from the Carnegie Corporation. Despite this pending crisis (discussed in bt 1919:808–824), Woodward found some symbolic and long-term benefit: He was especially happy that the public had now come to identify and begun to understand who and what the ciw was: ‘‘The war has helped to put the Institution on the map’’ (Woodward, bt 1919:806). However, he further noted, ‘‘while confidence in and respect for the Institution have been measurably increased during the war, irrational expectations . . . have not diminished’’ (bt 1919:807). Another ‘‘cost’’ that was less a problem for the institution per se than a burden on Woodward’s own time commitments was the necessity, he claimed, of surveillance. Woodward complained: ‘‘The time has apparently arrived when it is permissible to state that no inconsiderable portion of the time and attention of the President of the Institution during the past four years has been devoted to the business of watching Germans connected with the . . . [ciw] staff’’ (bt 1919:763). In other words, since 1915 President Woodward, whom the secondary literature on the history of anthropology claims was a friend of Boas from their Columbia days, was also conducting espionage, albeit in-house, on those ‘‘persons suspected of pro-German tendencies’’ (details provided in bt 1918:763–766). Staff and Department Participation Woodward also took note of the efforts of the staff in the war by detailing aspects of their participation. Nearly two hundred representatives, or two-thirds of the ciw staff, including three trustees (John J. Carty, W. Barclay Parsons, W. H. Welch), were engaged directly or indirectly in the ‘‘Government service.’’ Among the ‘‘39 persons [that were] connected directly with the Army and Navy services of the U.S. . . . were three colonels [the trustees], one lieutenant colonel, four majors, three captains, five lieutenants, and sixteen non-commissioned officers and privates in the Army. In the Navy there were one lieutenant and two ensigns. There were also in the British Army one captain, two lieutenants, and one engineer of the Chemical War Service from the Staffs of the Institution’’ (bt 1918:797–798). Woodward noted that among the three staff members in the Navy, Morley rose from ensign to navy lieutenant (Woodward, bt 1919:799): Carnegie Mission and Vision of Science

51

Table 2.4. Costs of the CIW war effort, World War I Total costs

ciw expenses

Government expenses

Salaries and wages

$339,499.60

$292,860.80

Direct expenses

$194,783.19

$85,524.39

Total real costs Estimated indirect costs and losses Estimated + actual

$534,282.79

$378,385.19 $150,000.00

$46,638.80 (payment) $109,258.80 (reimbursement) $155,897.60

$684,282.79

$528,385.19

Costs

Source: Woodward bt 1919:801–805.

The ‘‘[ciw] Research Associate in Central American Archaeology, Mr. Morley . . . became an ensign of the United States Navy in April 1917 and has . . . served the intelligence Office of the Navy very effectively. His experiences have been full of adventures’’ (Woodward, bt 1918:755– 756).≤∞ It is a curious turn of phrase: even in the face of the then-recent human slaughter in the ‘‘Great War,’’ espionage by archaeologists was envisioned as an adventure. It is as if, when he listened to Morley’s stories at the Cosmos Club, Woodward were dreaming of some future moment of watching a movie about an archaeologist from/called Indiana fighting Germans.≤≤ Historiography, Ethics, and the Improvement of Man [In his] book, Science the Endless Frontier, Dr. Bush laid the foundation from which, in later years, the modern National Science Foundation was to be developed. Indeed, the whole current philosophy of federal aid to nongovernmental, scientific research in the nation virtually took its origin in the debates and deliberations of those years, guided and usually dominated by his thinking. Caryl P. Haskins, The Search for Understanding

The trustees agreed with Woodward that his reports of 1917–19 on the ciw war effort and the Naval Consulting Board would not be published in the Year Book and perhaps should not be for some five years. Woodward himself communicated his desire to write the history of the ciw, including the ‘‘fine chapter’’ that for the moment would have to be buried from public scrutiny. Perhaps he viewed his plan to retire as president, which he announced in the 1918 meeting (he remained a trustee until 1924), as an 52

Castañeda

opportunity to pursue this goal, but death in 1926 overcame that project. Here then is a fortuitous event that has contributed to the general silence and near amnesia of ciw about this precedent. No doubt the trustees of the 1930s knew of the previous efforts, perhaps even in detail, given some of the political-military associations of the 1930s leadership with Root. Regardless, what Woodward and the ciw attained in World War I was certainly not comparable to what Bush and the ciw attained during World War II, namely, the wholesale transformation of the social context of science and the military-science interface of the United States. In contrast to the silence of the trustees following 1919, there was no dissimulation of the scientific work for military purposes—except, that is, for the archaeological espionage in Latin America (see Price 2000). Whether or not this was a conscious tactic to aggrandize Bush’s own accomplishments, it should be recalled that upon entering office as president, Bush, at least symbolically, did indeed ‘‘burn the history books’’ and history itself—that is, with well-known disdain for history and its methods, he eliminated the ciw historians of science and of the United States. It is a thesis to pursue that the only reason archaeology was also not cut was the functional espionage it contributed to the ciw war effort. Archaeologists, anthropologists, and many historians of anthropological sciences, with marked exceptions, continue to promote historical amnesia about the ‘‘espionage episode’’ not only when it first emerged in the institutional context of the ciw, but later when this practice was further developed and routinized in the Bush–ciw–World War II milieu. In this essay no moral or ethical judgment is assumed or made. Rather, the goal has been to create greater knowledge and understanding of these events in and of themselves in order to debate the ethics and morals of the actions, choices, practices, and situations involved. While this might seem like a sleight of hand akin to a scientific protestation of value-free neutrality while holding a postcolonial/postmodern knife of criticism behind the back, it is not. My view is that cultural analyses that offer or entail a political critique too often pose or are received as ethical analyses; but an analysis of ethics, despite its assumption or promotion of a political position, is a very different activity than, even as it relies on, both a cultural description of politics and a political description of culture. The recommendation here is that the basic facts of the situation, as well as thorough knowledge of it, have still to be disclosed and developed. For this to occur, the historiography of the field must open up.≤≥ In turn, this would allow the specific contribution of Carnegie archaeology and anthropology—visà-vis other ‘‘traditions’’ and modes of anthropology—to be celebrated and analyzed. Carnegie Mission and Vision of Science

53

Direct military service 4, Colonels Carty, Parsons, and Welch, and Major Paton 6, including U.S. Navy Lt. Morley 2 1

1 9

ciw Department, research facility, or other

Board of Trustees

Division of Associates and Research Associates

Publication and Administration Botanical Research

Ecological Research Department of Experimental Evolution and the Eugenics Record Officea

Table 2.5. CIW staff participation in World War I war effort

4, Trustees not identified nor work mentioned. Likely to include Woodward and Root, perhaps Senator Lodge, Massachusetts Board of Health H. P. Walcott, coal industrialist C. H. Dodge 10, translations of texts, including German colonial policy; U.S. Naval Intelligence by Morley (754–755) 3, not specified/not mentioned 3, advisor to Departments of Agriculture and Interior related to ecology of sheep and cattle production in Arizona (753) 2, not specified (754) 5, auxiliary work, not specified (753). ‘‘Davenport is Major in Surgeon General’s Corps and has charge of anthropometrical work‘‘ (753)

Indirect military work (research and production for military)

0 0

1 1

1 10

Historical Research

Marine Biology

Meridian Astronomy Mount Wilson Observatory

Nutrition Laboratory Department of Terrestrial Magnetism Service

4, not specified (754) 31, production of optical glass and research on the concentration of nitrates 8, analysis and translation of German newspapers and journals (752) 1, creation of instruction manual for navigation and rental for $1 of director’s yacht, the Anton Dohrn, for patrol service (751) 0, not specified (754) 29, construction of precision micrometers for the U.S. Bureau of Standards and in the manufacture of optical glass adjuncts for artillery 25, investigations on effects of undernutrition 31, naval instruments, especially for navigation and detection of submarines (751) 156

a

There is a discrepancy between the numbers in the table and as narrated by Woodward. Nine persons are cited as involved in direct military service from the combined Eugenics Record Office and Experimental Evolution, whereas in the accompanying table, three persons and no persons, respectively, are listed for these two units. Source for numerical information: Woodward bt 1919:799–801. Source for descriptions of indirect wartime activities: Woodward bt 1918:747–757, with specific page number provided in parentheses.

39

0 3

Embryology Geophysical Laboratory

Notes The present essay was made possible by a Fulbright Garcias Robles Grant and I thank Leticia Beceril, Maggie Hugg, Karla Sanchez of the comexus staff for their support and friendship. I also thank Carmen Morales Valderama, Mechthild Rutsch, and all the members of the Seminario de la Historia de la Antropología for engaging this material and my work. Thanks are also due to David Price, Anne Pybrun, Rick Wilk, Lynnette Leidy, Kathy O’Connor, Tim Wallace, Geoff White, Mark Leone, Cynthia Robin, Juan Castillo Cocom, Patricia Fortuny Loret de Mola, Maria Rogal, Mario Ruz, Ana Luisa Izquierdo, Betty Faust, and Paul Sullivan for their support on this and related work. I especially thank Susanne Garvey and John Strom for their tireless help over the last 20 years during my repeated visits to the ciw. My own work is so indebted to and embedded in ‘‘the Carnegie’’ that this essay should be read as both institutional genealogy and as a ‘‘love poem’’ to the ciw. This essay is dedicated to Robert Carmack, who long ago suggested the need for a better sociology of knowledge of anthropology. 1. Carnegie later gave additional funds to the endowment in block amounts ($2 million in 1907, $10 million in 1911) as well as set amounts in annual increments under $1 million. By the 1920s the endowment value was $25 million. See Carnegie 1967 for his statement upon presenting the trust deed; and Woodward bt 1919:819. 2. I treat this issue in a discussion of ethics in archaeology in Castañeda 2002. 3. The literature on and around Foucault’s concept of governmentality is significantly increasing. My own understanding derives from essays, especially by Foucault and Gordon, in Burchell, Gordon, and Miller 1991, as well as Rose 1999; Dean 1999; Hindess 1996; and the essays in Barry, Osborne, and Rose 1996. See also Eley 1994 on the public sphere. 4. There are often one-year differences in the dates given for a president’s term, and rarely for a trustee, between different secondary sources and even in different ciw year books. This, I believe, has to do with variations in counting the term of office based on either the date of the trustee vote (usually December) and the initiation of office (usually sometime the subsequent year). Also the year books themselves are a numbered series that corresponds to Julyto-July; thus the number of the series corresponds to the earlier year, but the publication date corresponds to the later year. This confusing system was later changed to simply the correlation, which thereby added another complication. 5. Woodward himself was an astronomer but became primarily an administrator. The influential founder of the National Research Council, George Elery Hale, an astronomer, was the founding director of the ciw observatories (1904–23). See Reingold 1979; Lagemann 1989; and Madsen 1969. 6. Exceptions included Thomas Hunt Morgan, the experimental biologist who pioneered work on genes; as a Carnegie scientist he and his work were funded (1914–42) even though his labs were first at Columbia and then California Institute of Technology (Trefil and Hazan 2002:159–164). 7. This fact seems to complicate the published financial statements in terms of drawing up the annual amounts of ciw spending on departmental versus nondepartmental research. The annual amounts for research under the Division of Historical Research similarly cannot be used without corrections since the division was an umbrella for nonanthropological research (e.g., history of science, U.S. history) as well as archaeology, social anthropology, linguistics, anthropometry, medicine, ceramics, climatology, and ancillary fields (see Castañeda n.d.). 8. In fall 2000 Suzanne Garvey, ciw director for external affairs, asked me for the citation of this discussion, which she wished to provide the trustees, who were at that time again discussing the ciw name. 56

Castañeda

9. Originally the Station for Experimental Evolution and the Eugenics Record Office were separate departments, but they were combined by Merriam in 1921 under the overall directorship of Davenport. This new entity, the Genetics Department at Cold Spring Harbor, had two assistant directors who corresponded to this division. Merriam also initiated two reviews of the eugenics research in the 1920s and 1930s; Kidder was a member of both evaluation teams. In 1934 Davenport retired because of ill health, and H. H. Laughlin assumed directorship until Bush ousted him in 1940. Bush placed M. Demerec as director of the streamlined Genetics Department, which proceeded along its path of groundbreaking dna research. 10. Bunker 1938 is an excellent source on the ciw under Merriam and includes reports by department heads. Bunker was in charge of publications and quotes extensive passages from Merriam’s president’s reports for the years 1931, 1934, and 1937 as well as an extensive, unreferenced comment by Root. Merriam’s 1923 report includes a summary statement of Woodward’s vision and agenda of science. 11. With reference to Walsh 2001, Paul Sullivan (discussant, aaa panel on Gamio 2001) pointed out that both Gamio and the ciw eugenics program were quite close to the European fascism of the day. This similarity was not lost on Vannevar Bush, who immediately sought to eliminate eugenics by retiring Laughlin, Davenport’s replacement as director of genetics. An mit friend of Bush called one of Laughlin’s reports ‘‘a pretty poisonous piece of fascist racialistic tripe’’ (Zachary 1999:93 n. 12). 12. See Castañeda in press for further discussion of Pels and on the question of ethics in ethnography; see Castañeda 2002 for further discussion of this duplexity of the ethics of science. 13. Paraphrasing of personal communications with Susanne Garvey, director for external affairs, and John Strom, currently publications Web manager. 14. See Castañeda n.d. for a discussion of the Woodward-Walcott dynamic in relation to Boas. 15. The information in this section derives from various biographic dictionaries such as Preston 1940; Garraty and Sternstein 1974; and Malone 1929–36. In addition a diversity of online sources and search engines were used, including American Biography, the Library of Congress, and the websites of businesses, universities, and foundations established by trustees and/or presidents. 16. Because Wright was a trustee, his research efforts were not supervised. Once Wright retired, Woodward and the trustees realized their mistake in the lack of oversight of the department. 17. See Jesup 1964 for a full biography and Merriam 1937 for a memorial statement on Root. 18. Parsons is the trustee who immediately began to advocate a ciw archaeology program, specifically led by Sylvanus G. Morley (see Brunhouse 1971; Givens 1992; Woodbury 1973; see also bt for 1910, 1911, 1913). 19. A future, more elaborate study of this type is planned. 20. Woodward’s final unpublished report, in the 1919 minutes, states: ‘‘[The] detailed reports [written by the ciw heads of research units] have been filed in the archives . . . and will be available if at any future time . . . [there is need] to make use of them in the preparation of a connected report. . . . Therefore [I] give only a summary of the personnel engaged in this work and a summary of expenses entailed’’ (Woodward bt 1919:797). 21. Contra this view is Brunhouse (1971: 95–147), who insists that Morley’s espionage was mundane, nearly boring. Since Brunhouse based his opinion completely on Morley’s diary, the sense of a lack of adventure might be in comparison to Morley’s ‘‘usual’’ escapades Carnegie Mission and Vision of Science

57

and/or a more sober narrative style for the espionage activities. Harris and Sadler (2003), relying on Office of Naval Intelligence (oni) archives to write their ‘‘fine chapter’’ on Morley’s espionage, do not fail to note the ‘‘adventure.’’ 22. The Cosmos Club was the most elite social club of Washington dc, where Carnegie trustees and S. G. Morley were members. According to Harris and Sadler (2003:46–48, 398 n.n. 22, 23, 28, 30, 32), Morley made his contact with the oni recruiter, Sheldon, at this club (also see Brunhouse 1971:63–94). Curiously, Trefil and Hazan claim (2002:215), against all odds, that the inspiration for Indiana Jones was not Morley but Earl Morris. Further, they assert that the depiction of Earl Morris in the adventure narrative of archaeology at Chichén written by his wife and excavation partner, Anne Axtell Morris, is the source of Indiana Jones (see Morris 1931). 23. An example of historiography that attends to the sociological contexts of anthropology is offered by Patterson (1995, 2001).

References Barry, Andrew, Thomas Osborne, and Nikolas Rose, eds. 1996. Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism, and Political Rationalities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Board of Trustees. 1913–19. Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Board of Trustees. Unpublished manuscript, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington dc. Brunhouse, Robert L. 1971. Sylvanus G. Morley and the World of the Ancient Mayas. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Bunker, Frank F. 1938. Cooperative Research, Its Conduct and Interpretation. In Cooperation in Research. Pp. 713–752. Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington. Burchell, G., Collin Gordon, and P. Miller, eds. 1991. The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bush, Vannevar. 1990[1945]. Science: The Endless Frontier. Washington dc: National Research Foundation. Carnegie, Andrew. 1967[1902]. Remarks by Andrew Carnegie on Presenting His Trust Deed. In The Search for Understanding. C. P. Haskins, ed. Pp. ix–xi. Washington dc: Carnegie Institution. Castañeda, Quetzil E. 2002. Fantastic Archeologies and Archeological Correctness. Paper presented at the conference ‘‘Toward a More Ethical Mayanist Archeology,’’ sponsored by Canadian sshrc, Wenner Gren, and the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, November 14–17. ———. 2003. Stocking’s Historiography of Influence. Critique of Anthropology 23(3): 235– 262. ———. N.d. ‘‘Cooperation’’ in ‘‘Pan-Scientific Research’’: On the Varieties of Anthropology in Carnegie Sponsored Maya and Mesoamerican Research. Unpublished manuscript, Open School of Ethnography and Anthropology, Mérida, México. ———. In press. Ethics for the Other: Research Positioning, Transculturation, and Ethnography without the Other. Cultural Anthropology (Spring 2006). Dean, Mitchell. 1999. Governmentality: Power and Rules in Modern Society. Thousand Oaks ca: Sage Publications. Executive, ciw Trustees. 1917. Minutes of the Meeting of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees. Archives of the ciw, Washington dc, April 10. Eley, Geof. 1994. Nations, Publics, and Political Culture: Placing Habermas in the Nineteenth Century. In Culture/Power/History. N. B. Dirks, G. Eley, and S. B. Ortner, eds. Pp. 297–335. Princeton nj: Princeton University Press. 58

Castañeda

Gamio, Manuel. 1992[1916]. Forjanda Patria. 4th edition. México DF: Editorial Porrúa. Garraty, John A., and Jerome L. Sternstein, eds. 1974. Encyclopedia of American Biography. New York: Harper and Row. Givens, Douglas R. 1992. Alfred Vincent Kidder and the Development of Americanist Archeology. Albuquerque: University of New México Press. Harris, Charles H., III, and Louis R. Sadler. 2003. The Archaeologist Was a Spy. Albuquerque: University of New México Press. Haskins, Caryl P. 1967. Introduction. In The Search for Understanding. C. P. Haskins, ed. Pp. xii–xxiii. Washington dc: Carnegie Institution. Hindess, Barry. 1996. Discourses of Power. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell. Jesup, Philip C. 1964[1938]. Elihu Root. 2 vols. New York: Archon Books. Kelves, Daniel J. 1985. In the Name of Eugenics. New York: Knopf. Lagemann, Ellen C. 1989. Politics of Knowledge. Middletown ct: Wesleyan University Press. Madsen, David. 1967. The National University. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. ———. 1969. Daniel Coit Gilman at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. History of Education Quarterly 9:154–186. Malone, Dumas. 1929–36. Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Merriam, John C. 1922. President’s Report. In Yearbook no. 21 (1921–22). Washington dc: Carnegie Institution of Washington. ———. 1924. President’s Report. In Yearbook no. 23 (1923–24). Washington dc: Carnegie Institution of Washington. ———. 1937. President’s Report. In Yearbook no. 36 (1936–37). Washington dc: Carnegie Institution of Washington. Morris, Anne Axtell. 1931. Digging in Yucatán. New York: Doubleday. Patterson, Thomas C. 1995. Toward a Social History of Archaeology in the United States. New York: Harcourt Brace College. ———. 2001. A Social History of Anthropology in the United States. Oxford: Berg. Pels, Peter. 1999. Professions of Duplexity: A Prehistory of Ethical Codes in Anthropology. Current Anthropology 40(3): 101–136. Preston, Wheeler. 1940. American Biographies. New York: Harper and Brothers. Price, David H. 2000. Anthropologists as Spies. The Nation 271(16) (Nov. 20): 24–27. Reingold, Nathan. 1972. American Indifference to Basic Research: A Reappraisal. In Nineteenth-Century American Science. George H. Daniels, ed. Pp. 38–62. Evanston il: Northwestern University Press. ———. 1979. National Science Policy in a Private Foundation: The Carnegie Institution of Washington. In The Organization of Knowledge in Modern America, 1860–1920. Alexandra Oleson and John Voss, eds. Pp. 313–341. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Rose, Nikolas. 1999. Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self. 2nd edition. London: Free Association Books. Singer, Maxine. 1991. Preface. In Cannevar Bush Centenary: Extending the Vision. Pp. 5–6. Washington dc: Carnegie Institution of Washington. Stepan, Nancy. 1991. The Hour of Eugenics. Ithaca ny: Cornell University Press. Stocking, George W., Jr. 1992. The Ethnographer’s Magic. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Trefil, James, and Margaret Hindle Hazan. 2002. Good Seeing: A Century of Science at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Washington dc: Joseph Henry Press. Carnegie Mission and Vision of Science

59

Walsh, Casey. 2001. Eugenic Acculturation: Manuel Gamio, the ssrc Committee on Human Migration, and the Anthropology of Development in Mexico, 1920–1940. Paper in panel ‘‘The Legacy of Manuel Gamio,’’ J. Vicente-Palerm, organizer. Meetings of American Anthropological Association. Washington, December 1. Woodbury, R. B. 1973. Alfred V. Kidder. New York: Columbia University Press. Woodward, Robert S. 1915. President’s Report. In Yearbook no. 14 (1914–15). Washington dc: Carnegie Institution of Washington. Wright, Fred E. 1926. Memorial of Robert Simpson Woodward. Bulletin of the Geological Society of America 37 (Mar.): 115–134. Zachary, G. Pascal. 1999. Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century. Cambridge: mit Press.

60

Castañeda

3. American Anthropologists Discover Peasants

Stephen O. Murray

The peasant is an immemorial figure on the world social landscape, but anthropology noticed him only recently. Clifford Geertz, ‘‘Studies of Peasant Life’’

After the First World War, American anthropologists’ focus on the distribution of aboriginal cultural traits faded, and they gradually withdrew from salvaging memories of prereservation life from aging Native Americans (see Darnell 1977, 2001; Cole 2003). Anthropologists, particularly in the Midwest, began to pay attention to functioning contemporary cultures, albeit often continuing to look at atomistic traits (‘‘survivals’’ of aboriginal culture) within a framework of ‘‘acculturation’’ (Redfield, Linton, and Herskovits 1936) and along geographic distributions that were taken as indicators of historical changes (while mostly continuing Franz Boas’s a priori rejection of anything that had been written about a culture by anyone other than a professionally trained anthropologist).∞ The research by some University of Chicago anthropology graduate students who were fledged before an anthropology department split off from the preeminent sociology department was rooted in the ‘‘Chicago school of sociology’’ focus on urban ‘‘disorganization’’ (anomie, vice, crime) of immigrants to Chicago from rural backgrounds and the uneven assimilation of émigrés from peasant societies outside the United States. The exemplar of research on immigrant peasants in their society of origin and struggling in the United States was The Polish Peasant in America and Europe (Thomas and Znaniecki 1927). Thomas was forced out of the University of Chicago, and his own more general book Old World Traits Transplanted appeared bylined Robert E. Park and Herbert A. Miller in 1921.≤ Park, whose 1904 PhD was from the University of Heidelberg, played an important role in introducing German sociological ideas to America, including the Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft (community/society) ideal types of Ferdinand Tönnies, which were the prototype for the ro-

mantic notions of homogeneous, harmonious peasant communities articulated by Park’s son-in-law, Robert Redfield, communities contrasting to the conflict-plagued, vice-ridden cities filled with ‘‘marginal’’ immigrants (see Park 1924, 1928; Wirth 1938; Bulmer 1984).≥ Such a Jeffersonian view of noble (genuine) yeoman (and suspect ‘‘city slickers’’ with a spurious culture) was not part of the peasant studies by those who had been trained at the University of California, Berkeley (where there was no sociology department) by Alfred Kroeber and Robert Lowie. Redfield’s representation of Tepoztlán was vigorously challenged in a restudy of the community by a Columbia-trained anthropologist, Oscar Lewis (1944, 1947, 1951, 1953). The controversy was explained away at the time by some (including Redfield 1955a:136) as reflecting differences in temperament between the observers (Redfield looking for harmony and looking at what people enjoyed in contrast to Lewis looking for and at their troubles).∂ By the time Redfield’s glorification of ‘‘little communities’’ came under critical fire from other anthropologists, a peasant-based revolution in China had interfered with Redfield’s own research agenda, and anthropologists had forgotten the roots of Chicago anthropology study of peasant communities in the immigrant assimilation ‘‘Chicago school’’ work, even though the German sociology–Robert Park–Robert Redfield lineage was remembered as the root of Redfield’s folk/urban and little community/ urban civilization typologies. Although Kroeber and Lowie were, in some senses, heirs of German romanticism of the Volk (not least as former students of Franz Boas), neither German sociology nor the Jeffersonian mythos of the yeomanry seemed to affect the work of Berkeley anthropology alumni. The German romantic traditions also had less discernible influence on Redfield’s students than on Redfield. Indeed, ‘‘Redfield’s students’’ presented themselves more as students of A. R. Radcliffe-Brown and participated in the cross-disciplinary paradigm of functionalism that was mixed with European social theory in the Harvard and Columbia sociology paradigm that eclipsed the ‘‘Chicago school’’ within sociology after World War II. The Berkeley alumni had not worked directly with Radcliffe-Brown and, insofar as their work was functionalist, seemed more interested in the cultural dynamics of Bronislaw Malinowski than in the equilibriumassuming Radcliffe-Brown functionalism. At least one of the Berkeley alumni, Walter Goldschmidt—like Oscar Lewis, John W. Bennett, and Herbert Passin—did research on agriculturists in the United States and showed some awareness of what rural sociologists were doing (mostly in isolation from theorists and researchers in sociology departments).∑ 62

Murray

The First Generation of University of Chicago Anthropologists The Early Research of Robert Redfield Like Margaret Mead in the mid-1920s, Robert Redfield did not want to piece together fragments of memories of what aboriginal Native American life had been like 40 or more years before. For Redfield, as for Margaret Mead, reservation life and culture did not seem worth observing. ‘‘Day-today interaction between the encysted enclaves of Indians and members of the surrounding white communities was either ignored or treated as an external event like the weather,’’ as Mead (1965:xiv) recalled (with characteristic overstatement). ‘‘Living, isolated, small cultures’’ were more pressing research sites in her view than ‘‘an odd collection of traditions, once integrated, now merely coexistent’’(xvii–xviii). Even before the arrival in Chicago of A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Redfield worried about records of cultures ‘‘no longer represented by the activities of living persons’’ (1930:149; referring, specifically to Ralph Beals’s salvage of memory culture in northwestern Mexico). Redfield had no interest in the distribution of discrete traits, and especially not in the distribution of remembered ones. It is well known that Redfield was a student of the Boasians Fay-Cooper Cole and Edward Sapir, as well as of his father-in-law, Robert Park, and of Ernest Burgess at the University of Chicago Department of Sociology and Anthropology (which split into two departments after Redfield had completed both his course work and the fieldwork for his dissertation; see Murray 1986). Less well known is that his impetus to study anthropology in general and México in particular came from another earlier student of Franz Boas, Manuel Gamio. Gamio went to Columbia in 1909, although his doctorate was not awarded until the publication of La poblacion del valle de Teotihuacán in 1922. On a trip to México in 1923, the dissatisfied lawyer Robert Redfield met and admired Gamio and decided to emulate him. After his return to Chicago, Redfield began graduate studies in the sociology/anthropology department of the University of Chicago in the fall of 1924. Redfield began a practicum in sociology under the supervision of Ernest W. Burgess; he received a $500 stipend from the Local Community Research Committee (which was, in turn, funded by the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial) to work half-time observing Mexicans in Chicago. He made over forty visits to the Mexican neighborhoods of Chicago as part of his practicum from October 5, 1924, until April 24, 1925 (Godoy 1978:51–52). The rationale to the Committee on the Scientific Aspects of Human Migration of the Social Science Research Council ssrc for fieldwork in México was very much in the W. I. Thomas–Robert Park tradition of American Anthropologists Discover Peasants

63

Chicago sociology exemplified by The Polish Peasant in America (Thomas and Znaniecki 1927) and Old World Traits Transplanted (Park and Miller 1951) in which immigrants constituted a social problem. Thomas pioneered research on the traditional organization of peasants at home and their personal and collective disorganization in U.S. cities. Having completed the massive report on Polish immigrants in 1918, during the 1920s Thomas sought support for comparative work on Jewish, Sicilian, and Swedish immigrants (see Murray 1988). Similarly, Redfield claimed in a 1926 fellowship application that ‘‘a description of the life of such Mexicans [from ‘‘semi-primitive village communities’’] in their home communities would facilitate an intensive study of the problems arising out of the growing Mexican immigration into the United States’’ (Godoy 1978:55). In 1926–27 the same committee supported Gamio’s study of Mexican movement back and forth to the United States (Gamio 1930, 1931; Redfield 1929, 1931; also see Massey et al. 1987)—what Redfield characterized as ‘‘the immigration problem’’ (1929:434) in summarizing Gamio’s ‘‘study of Mexican immigration with the emphasis on the immigrant and on Mexico rather than on the effect of the Mexican immigrant upon the economic and social organization of the United States.’’ Redfield wrote, ‘‘Dr. Gamio looks at the matter from the south side of the Rio Grande, although his experience with North America makes it also possible for him to consider some problems raised by the Mexican in our environment’’ (1929:434, emphasis added). In a summary of his PhD thesis (in the Burgess Collection 189:1), Redfield stressed that he was interested ‘‘not in the rescue of the disappearing vestiges of pre-Columbia culture, but in the culture as it exists today’’ and in ‘‘contemporary change in the present-day community under the slowly growing influence of the city and modern industrial civilization.’’ He ignored the historical close connection of Tepoztlán to the Aztec capital of Tenochitlán.∏ He also made no attempt to establish the representativeness of the field site, insouciantly stating, ‘‘This community is assumed to be more or less typical of the folk culture which characterizes the vast middle ground of Mexican civilization,’’ and asserting that the social changes from the ‘‘slowly growing influence of the city’’ presented ‘‘a case of diffusion, occurring in an easily observed situation, so slowly as not to accomplish the disorganization of the community.’’ It bears stressing that these are not ‘‘findings’’ of Redfield’s fieldwork in Tepoztlán but were the rationale in a plan for studying it. Paralleling the justification for Gamio’s study, in his dissertation—A Plan for a Study of Tepoztlán, Morelos—Redfield wrote: ‘‘Impetus to the project was given by the current practical interest in Mexican immigrants 64

Murray

in the United States. A description of culture traits characterizing such immigrants would constitute, it was supposed, a description of the mental content and form which they would bring with them, and so indicate the amount of adjustment they would have to undergo in accommodating themselves in the new milieu’’ (1928a:8). In an account of his stay in Mexico for a nonprofessional audience, Redfield similarly wrote of ‘‘collaborat[ing] with the sociologists in scientific study of foreign populations who do now and who promise even more to present practical problems to the people of the United States’’—this last a category that was narrowly conceived despite the annexation of considerable portions of what had been Mexico to the United States, for ‘‘the Mexicans, perhaps above all other peoples, present to us plenty of problems’’ (1928b:243). In what is hard not to see as blaming the victims, Redfield explained that permanent immigrants ‘‘cause problems of status and race prejudice’’ (1929:437). (He also reassured readers that ‘‘Dr. Gamio would not encourage permanent residence of Mexicans in the United States, but would encourage their temporary residence’’ [1929: 433].) Although Redfield proposed nomethetic study of culture-borrowing in his ssrc proposal and alluded to ‘‘traits’’ in his Plan, he did not aim to inventory traits in the Boas-Kroeber manner, but rather to explore ‘‘attitudes’’ in the Thomas-Park manner and ecological variation in culture/ mentality in the Park-Burgess manner (Redfield 1928a:73, 231).π Following the spatial logic of Chicago sociology research in the ‘‘laboratory’’ of Chicago and foreshadowing the synchronic treatment of ‘‘modernization’’ across the Yucatán (Redfield 1941), Redfield charted change across space (from the zócalo into different barrios) rather than changes through time.∫ Nonetheless, he argued (specifically, against Clark Wissler) that ‘‘culture change takes place by way of communication; not by way of geographic distribution’’ (Redfield 1930:148) and called for (more than exemplified) ‘‘noting the actual contacts and communications which are bringing about change’’ (151). Oscar Lewis would later emphasize that he (and his team of researchers gathering systematic data on 15 times as many Tepoztlán residents as Redfield had) examined behavior, while Redfield wrote about ‘‘culture’’ primarily as ‘‘conventional understandings’’ (Lewis 1951:421; Cline 1952:224; cf. Redfield 1941:132). With a $2,500 grant, accompanied by his wife, Margaret, mother-inlaw (Clara Cahill Park), and two children under the age of three, on December 4, 1926, Redfield set up housekeeping in Tepoztlán, Morelos, the village suggested by Gamio.Ω Following a Cristero (insurgent counterrevolutionary Catholic) raid on February 18, 1927, which Redfield would later breezily dismiss as a ‘‘minor disturbance’’ (1928b:247), he evacuated American Anthropologists Discover Peasants

65

his family to Tacubaya, a suburb of Mexico City. ‘‘From February 28 until the end of June when his fieldwork ended, Redfield commuted from Tacubaya to Tepoztlán. From his correspondence there is no way of ascertaining with any degree of certainty how much time he spent in Tepoztlán and how much in Tacubaya’’ (Godoy 1978:69). Although four to five months was a relatively long period of fieldwork for American anthropologists of the mid-1920s, Redfield’s was funded much better than most and, quite specifically, for a full year in the field. Cole wanted him to stay at least through the summer, but Redfield insisted he had worked hard enough, particularly during the four-hour commutes to and from Tepoztlán. Cole was satisfied with the resulting dissertation, and Sapir was sufficiently enthusiastic about both the community study and the folklore materials (corridos mostly collected by Margaret Park Redfield) to advocate immediate publication in two volumes (Sapir to Redfield, July 8, 1928). In an undated reply to Sapir, Redfield claimed that he wanted to return to Tepoztlán before committing his preliminary study to print. In an apologetic preface to the book Tepoztlán two years later, Redfield explained, ‘‘The materials are now published only because it seems impossible that he will soon be able to return to Tepoztlán to continue the study here only introduced. . . . They are no more than a small sample of materials which might be obtained. They are far from constituting an ethnographic monograph on the people of Tepoztlán. Eight months is too short a time within which to secure the data for such a monograph. . . . Eight months is not even time enough to correct one’s initial blunders’’ (1930:v). Eight months is also probably twice as long as Redfield was actually in Tepoztlán. In the opening pages of the book, Redfield laid out his conception of ‘‘folk society’’ in contrast to urban literate society, romanticizing the ‘‘folk’’ and justifying not looking at written records (of, for instance, church parishes): The ways of the folk, largely unwritten and unremarked, constitute the real Mexico. . . . To learn and to set down the ways of the folk, one must encounter them directly and intimately; they are not otherwise to be found. What characteristics distinguish [‘‘folk’’ peoples]? Such peoples enjoy a common stock of tradition; they are the carriers of a culture. This culture preserves its continuity from generation to generation without depending upon the printed page. Moreover, such a culture is local; the folk has a habitat. . . . Within the folk group there is relatively small diversity of intellectual inter66

Murray

est; attitudes and interests are much the same from individual to individual. . . . And, finally, folk peoples are country peoples. [1930:1–2] Tepoztlán appeared to Redfield to ‘‘represent a type intermediate between the primitive tribe and the modern city . . . analogous to the peasant communities of the more backward parts of Europe, of the Near East, and of the Orient’’ (1930:216). In the final chapter of his book, Redfield presented Tepoztlán not as an approximation to the abstract type but as ‘‘a folk community [that was] slowly becoming more like the city. This change [was] a case of diffusion, occurring in an easily observed situation, so slowly as not to accomplish the disorganization of the community’’ (218)—‘‘slow’’ still lacking any measurement. Despite the admitted sketchiness of Redfield’s ethnography and documentation of slow change (even through the recent revolution and the counterrevolution that led to his moving his family away), the book was well received by one of American anthropology’s most critical evaluators (Kroeber 1931:133 lauded it as a ‘‘landmark’’ and a ‘‘model to be emulated’’), by the great Mayanist Alfred Tozzer, and by Robert S. Lynd (1931), the coauthor of the most influential and thoroughgoing community study, Middletown (Lynd and Lynd 1929). Lynd (1931) regretted the lack of categories for direct comparison of recent community studies. An unlikely advocate of participant observation, Ruth Benedict (1930) demurred from her own (then both past and future) practice of relying on informants (‘‘white-room ethnography’’ supplemented by library research), invidiously lauding the sociologist Lynds’ participant observation of ‘‘Middletown’’ (Muncie, Indiana) to Redfield’s fieldwork. Although far from being a bestseller—selling 786 copies in the first year after publication, 1,751 between 1930 and 1943 (undated report in the Redfield papers)—Tepoztlán established Redfield as the premier American anthropological authority on peasants and their acculturation. He moved on to consolidate this status by directing Carnegie work on Yucatán peasants along a folk-urban continuum. An Atypical, New Yucatán Village Chan Kom, the community Redfield himself studied the longest as a part of that research, was at the time of his first visit (1930–31) not at all a traditional village.∞≠ The government of the Yucatán recognized Chan Kom as a pueblo (by granting it ejido land) only in 1926. Before the revolution of 1910–17, there was no village.∞∞ Agricultural techniques there were traditional and individualistic, but Chan Kom agriculture was American Anthropologists Discover Peasants

67

not for subsistence only: in the early 1930s, Chan Komians marketed half the maize they produced (Redfield and Villa Rojas 1934:51). Redfield and Villa Rojas noted ‘‘marked variation’’ between families’ standards of living and ‘‘considerable’’ differences in status, partly based on relative wealth (1934:57, 100–101). Yet, they insisted that ‘‘there are no social classes. . . . Differences in status are not conferred by birth. . . . Superiority is not conferred by one surname rather than another’’ (101). Redfield (1950: 43,76–78,164) repeated the assertion that there were no class differences in Chan Kom, adding that occupational or status groups also were not recognized—despite the greater independence from maizegrowing of ‘‘leading families, who are all engaged in commerce’’ (55). The factions involved in the religious schism of the 1930s described by Redfield (1950:88–112) were family based. Political dominance and economic interests were clearly involved. As Redfield and Villa Rojas had earlier noted, ‘‘About one-third of the present families of Chan Kom have come from Ebtun, but these are the largest and the most influential families; leadership in Chan Kom has always resided with the Ebtun colonists’’ (1934:27; see also 212). This is one of many Chicago social-scientist denials of the importance (or even existence) of class differences (e.g., the work of Lloyd Warner, Edward Shils, and Erving Goffman substituting status/prestige for class). Reporting on a later study of Chan Kom, Victor Goldkind argued that ‘‘differences among relatively wealthy peasants, those who cultivate barely enough for subsistence, and the completely landless can be quite comparable, and just as important to the people involved as those occurring among the distinct classes or occupational groupings of the urban center’’ (1966:343). Goldkind (1965, 1966) questioned the interdependence and homogeneity of Chan Kom in earlier decades (those of Redfield’s two studies), not just of the time of Goldkind’s fieldwork. (See also the still-later study by de la Cruz [1996].) The presence of American archeological expeditions to excavate Chichén Itzá had an influence on Chan Kom’s individual and collective aspirations. Rather than a greater integration with mestizo Mexican culture, Chan Kom indigenes were influenced to an unusual extent by North American culture carriers. As Redfield wrote, ‘‘ ‘The road to light’ starts out toward Chicago rather than toward Mexico City. The changes in Chan Kom are in the direction of North American or cosmopolitan urbanized life rather than in the direction of Latin culture. . . . The two zestful sports, business and baseball, are surely not Latin. . . . Apparently the spirit of this people is not favorable to the adoption of Latin manners or mores’’ (1950:153).∞≤ Moreover, construction of a road from Chan Kom to Chichén Itzá threw off the geographical calculation of distance from Mérida as the folk-urban 68

Murray

metric for cultural isolation. Both the relationships with Americans and the newness of the settlement made Chan Kom quite an untypical remote village (Beals 1961:10–11). Similarly, Eustaquio Ceme was quite untypical a villager to provide the one life history published from Chan Kom (Redfield and Villa Rojas 1934:212–30). In addition to being unusually analytical (a native intellectualizer) and a leader, Eustaquio Ceme was raised in Ebtun, not in Chan Kom, and not by his parents. Unusually even among Chan Kom residents, he had been schooled in Spanish and was an aggressive advocate of modernization, opposing village shamans with a New Testament at the time of Redfield’s initial fieldwork. At least in the view of Redfield (1950:99), his prime informant led the village—two allied leading families descended from Ebtun in particular—into and then out of an evangelical Protestant sect. Having championed ‘‘progress’’ (the spirit of capitalism and a Protestant ethic) in his youth, Don Eus later supported a gerontocratic revival of traditional religious ways after the unseemly asceticism and youth-led Protestant adventure. Indeed, his general disappointment with the ‘‘modernization’’ he had promoted undercuts the optimistic title of Redfield’s second book on Chan Kom: The Village That Chose Progress.∞≥ Don Eus was disillusioned with demoralization and the intrusion of hedonistic and individualistic values to the detriment of the frugality and hard work characteristic of the primitive capital accumulation and concomitant pueblo infrastructure-building of his youth. By 1948 Don Eus appeared to have forgotten his own youthful independence from elders and the extent of his role in advocating new ways (see Redfield 1950:118). To an extent that would alarm anyone looking for a representative sample, when Redfield wrote ‘‘Chan Kom,’’ he often meant Eustaquio Ceme, a Yucatán Maya Ogontêmmeli (see Redfield 1960) articulating an elaborate worldview, not the stoic, nonintellectualizing ‘‘common peasant.’’ The revolutionary political institutions (a federated Liga Local and agrarian committee), according to Redfield and Villa Rojas (1934:104– 106), were not, in Redfield’s view, especially salient and were not mentioned at all in Redfield’s 1950 book, but the amount of communal labor ( fagina) in Chan Kom was exceptionally high. Also, the population was unusually young, comprised of those seeking to better their lot by building a new community and willing to pay the price of devoting between a sixth and a quarter of each man’s time to civic projects and/or to the overhead of local (independent pueblo) governance (181). The age distribution in the pioneer settlement of 1931 and the established pueblo of 1948 remained the same, though the population tripled (contrasting Redfield and American Anthropologists Discover Peasants

69

Villa Rojas 1934:14 with Redfield 1950:68). Only 1 in 14 Chan Kom residents was aged 45 or more at either point. The village, in particular its leader, had already ‘‘chosen progress’’ in the early 1930s. Redfield and Villa Rojas emphasize that Chan Komians were peasants producing for markets with a well-developed ‘‘tendency toward the pecuniary valuation of all goods, even land’’ (1934:67). Indeed, the evidence for the atypicality of Chan Kom as an exemplar of a longestablished local tradition is explicitly presented in the course of the first Chan Kom monograph, although later Redfield denied that ‘‘the relative progressiveness of Chan Kom’’ was a reason for its selection. Rather, ‘‘the associations established with the Americans at Chichén and the presence of a teacher [Alfonso Villa Rojas] who was soon to become an ethnological collaborator determined the choice’’ (1950:16). Redfield spent 10 weeks in intermittent periods in Chan Kom during the early 1930s. According to Villa Rojas, Redfield ‘‘had a facility for making friends with people; on the other hand, he did not really establish close ties with his informants. . . . He had a way of asking complex questions that informants found difficult to answer. . . . His interviews with the few informants who knew Spanish were well planned, although they were carried out in a deceptively casual manner. . . . He was enormously inquisitive, anxious to pursue to the smallest detail those topics that interested him’’ (1979:47–48). ‘‘Despite his linguistic handicap,’’ he also ‘‘liked nothing better than to be present, simply as an observer, at all kinds of gatherings and social occasions,’’ according to Villa Rojas, who also recalled that Redfield ‘‘was able to go without sleep all night, so as to observe some special ceremony being carried out by a shaman; later he would interview individually all of the [few Spanish-speaking?] principal participants in the ceremony. In this way, he obtained a comprehensive and integrated understanding of everything he had seen’’ (48). Although Villa Rojas emphasized the meticulous recording of detail Redfield exemplified in the field and sought from Villa Rojas, Redfield’s publications are more integrated than specifically detailed—overly integrated in the view of some later anthropologists. For instance, Murray J. Leaf wrote: ‘‘Redfield’s work never did present, in an orderly way, most of the ‘ethnographic’ detail that one finds even in contemporary works of the same general tradition—like Evans-Pritchard’s. The descriptions always retain a thin, abstract, and distant quality. . . . Without the support of closely analyzed data, Redfield’s framework remained only programmatic, although it was the program most widely followed by anthropologists who were less interested in the reconstruction of ‘tribal isolates’ than in modern complex societies, in both the old and new worlds’’ (1979:267). At the 70

Murray

time of initial publication of The Folk Culture of the Yucatán, even so sociologistic a critic as Durkheim-translator and explicator Harry Alpert was, after noting the ‘‘assumption that the communities represent four successive stages of an ongoing historical process’’ (1941:896) and questioning the assumption of ‘‘one-to-one correspondence between isolation and homogeneity’’ (897), complained: ‘‘The analysis is much too abstract, too unpsychological. The author fails to make the established relationships meaningful in terms of the concrete behavior of specific individuals undergoing to process in question. We do not meet anyone in the throes of becoming secularized or individualized. We get no insight into the changing mentality of individuals. Our acquaintance is with cultural processes and social situations, not with people’’ (897; also see the Jan. 19, 1962, letter from Oscar Lewis to Eric Wolf [Rigdon 1988:231]). Sicilian Peasants Studied by a Less-Famous Classmate of Redfield’s Redfield’s classmate Charlotte Gower also began studying peasants by working with immigrants to Chicago. Her doctoral dissertation (also 1928) was based on fieldwork in Chicago’s ‘‘Little Sicily.’’∞∂ Like work contemporary to it on Native American cultures, it was based on memory of nonmaterial culture from another time and place: ‘‘The material [on supernatural patrons] was gathered in connection with a preliminary study of the cultural background of Sicilian immigrants to America. It represents a reconstruction of a portion of Sicilian culture from the accounts of people already in this country, and literary resources’’ (Gower 1928:2). Her immediately postdoctoral fieldwork in ‘‘Milocca’’ (Milena), Sicily, during 1928–29 was supported by a Social Science Research Council fellowship, ‘‘because it was hoped that a knowledge of the background of the Sicilian immigrants to the United States might prove useful in understanding their problems in reactions to their new environment’’ (Chapman 1971:vii).∞∑ Although her description is very normative with minimal discussion of intracultural variation, the book written in 1930 (finally published as Chapman 1971) stressed factionalism, stratification, lack of cooperation beyond the ranks of family and godparent ties, and the lack of a sense of solidarity even within age groups: There is no sentiment of solidarity which binds a woman to her sex as a whole, or a youth to the aggregate of his coevals. . . . The sense of unity goes little beyond consciousness of kind. . . . Within these sex and age groups there is no cooperation. . . . This lack of a sense of solidarity in no way signifies that the sex and age groupAmerican Anthropologists Discover Peasants

71

ings are without importance in the organization of Sicilian society. Everyone has the clearest idea of his place in respect to these groupings, and the majority of his actions and relationships are determined by his position in the structure. One is never merely a person, but a man or a woman, and, although here the precise limits are less strictly defined, a member of an age class. Of this he is perfectly aware. . . . In any particular set of circumstances he knows how it is expected that he will behave, and also knows in general what to expect from the members of the other groupings. [Chapman 1971:49, 48] Even with the Mafiosi in jail, Gower’s picture of a western Sicilian village under Fascist rule is markedly less harmonious/pastoral than Redfield’s rose-tinted portraits of Tepoztlán and Chan Kom. Among other topics, she collected material on witchcraft beliefs. Although she collected proverbs, stories, and love songs, ‘‘insofar as possible, information was acquired by direct observation of the life of the community and by as full participation in that life as the circumstances and convenience would allow’’ (Chapman 1971:viii). Unlike other ethnographers (and not just of that era!), she was very aware that she ‘‘could not escape affiliation with one of the two factions that divided the town, an affiliation that considerably limited [her] range of contacts among the leaders of the community’’ (1971:viii). In being explicit about this, as in all regards, she was very conscientious about not overgeneralizing. Gower was in the province of Caltanissetta more than four times as long as Redfield was in the state of Morelos. Still, like Redfield, she found that those she was studying were oriented more to America than to the national capitals (Rome in her case, Mexico City in Redfield’s). Redfield wrote to Livia Appel of the University of Wisconsin Press on July 27, 1937, that Gower’s study ‘‘constitutes a contribution to scholarship of unusual merit and that both the simplicity and quality of exposition and the subject matter makes me feel that the book would have general appeal.’’ Radcliffe-Brown wrote to Cole on January 28, 1941, that ‘‘in normal times, Oxford University Press would have published it.’’ Despite the advocacy of Redfield, Cole, and Radcliffe-Brown for publication, both the University of Chicago Press and the University of Wisconsin Press failed to publish Milocca during the 1930s (Gower to Redfield, July 25, 1935, July 23, 1937), although 1938 correspondence from Donald Bean of the University of Chicago Press to Redfield evidences a plan to publish it simultaneously with Pascua, Saint Denis and Suye Mura (studies dis72

Murray

cussed later in this essay). William Foote Whyte (in a Nov. 9, 1941, letter to Redfield) opined that Milocca was diffuse and lacking in a clear problematic, but as good as Saint Denis, if not as tightly organized and wellwritten as Pascua; and earlier that year, Redfield (Apr. 1, 1941, letter to Cole) had asked, ‘‘Can we do it this year? The series is going well.’’ No answer has been preserved, and the Gower folder in the Redfield papers ends with his reply to Whyte, so it is unclear why the University of Chicago Press did not publish Milocca. Gower had left the University of Wisconsin for Lingam University in China in 1938 (recommended by Redfield, Apr. 7). If she did a community study during her four years there or her later years in the employ of the U.S. Marine Corps and the Central Intelligence Agency (King and Patterson 1991:106), none has been published. When it was finally published, Milocca was reviewed positively. Cronin celebrated ‘‘that the analysis is not encumbered by Redfieldian peasant theory, which denies, for example, the existence of such things as social class, or by an emphasis on value system without accompanying behavioral data’’ (1973:515; see also Cappanari 1973; Scarpaci 1973). Redfield’s Students The nature of a man’s method is often clarified by seeing how it found expression in his students. Sometimes the nature of a method appears most clearly in some of its least cautious exemplifications. Robert Redfield, 1954

Having been raised to the rank of full professor and dean of the social sciences division by 1934, Redfield was able to sponsor some of his students’ work on other peasantries. The Spicers’ Study of Yaqui Villagers Edward Spicer, who had been University of Arizona Dean Byron Cummings’s student and assistant in archaeological projects, shifted to social anthropology as a doctoral student at the University of Chicago of Redfield and Radcliffe-Brown. Rosamond Brown, a fellow graduate student, took notes for him while he was hospitalized for tuberculosis. They were married in June 1936 and began a year’s fieldwork at the Yaqui (Yoeme) village of Pascua on the outskirts of Tucson, Arizona. His PhD dissertation, a functionalist community study focusing on cultural persistence (of uprooted Yaquis at the edges of an American city) and ‘‘fictive kinship,’’ and her ma thesis on the Pascua Easter ceremony emerged from this fieldwork. American Anthropologists Discover Peasants

73

Both of them were somewhat discouraged by Redfield’s demands for generalization after reading what he considered overly detailed observations of particular events. In a June 8, 1938, letter to Redfield, Rosamond Spicer balked at providing an account of a ‘‘typical festival,’’ maintaining that she must describe ‘‘a specific event which took place March 1937 in Pascua. [She could] not pretend to be studying other than a specific event.’’ (Redfield replied soothingly, ‘‘You are right that you will have to report the specific ceremony that you witnessed. However, I think that your description can be so presented that the reader will understand what elements are more important than others, so that a sort of anatomy can become apparent’’ [ June 14, 1938].) Redfield wrote to Edmund Spicer (June 27, 1938) that his manuscript met the highest expectations and, for purposes of social anthropology, was one of the most useful written on a North American people. To Edward Sapir, in support of an ssrc application to extend Yaqui ethnography to the Mexican homeland, Redfield wrote that Spicer was ‘‘one of the very best students through Chicago. He has a clear sense of problem and of responsibility to the facts.’’ The study of Pascua was published by the University of Chicago Press as part of a quasi series of community studies, with Redfield’s own books, John Embree’s Japanese village study, and the Quebec studies of Horace Miner and Everett Hughes (Hughes was Redfield’s classmate in the thenjoint sociology and anthropology department at Chicago; the others were students of Redfield and Radcliffe-Brown). Spicer was eager to have Redfield write an introduction to Pascua and wrote to him, ‘‘I still feel that an introduction, however short, by you would add a great deal to the book. I know of no one who could in a few words set it better in its proper theoretical context’’ (Jan. 22, 1940). Pascua was like Chan Kom (and unlike Tepoztlán) in being a new settlement with considerable influences by American culture and in being composed of indigenes (i.e., not mestizo Mexicans). As a study of semiintegration of immigrants within the borders of the United States, Spicer’s initial fieldwork was within the same Thomas-Park immigrant disorganization paradigm as Redfield’s and Gower’s fieldwork in Chicago. Although ignoring relations of Pascua and Pascolas with the Tucson, Arizona, and United States government, Spicer explicitly addressed factionalism. ‘‘We Yaquis [in Pascua] are not all from one pueblo; how, then, can we form one pueblo here?’’ Spicer (1940:149) quoted as a common saying. Diverse points of origin (and the ‘‘wild’’ versus ‘‘tame’’ histories of those places of origin in relation to the Mexican government) are what Spicer stressed. He argued that there was ‘‘little correlation between prop74

Murray

erty possessed and village participation’’ and an ‘‘absence of class groupings based on income or property possessed.’’ Pascolas did not consider ‘‘economic values’’ important (as did the ‘‘surrounding community’’ of Anglo—and Mexican-Americans) (55). ‘‘Prestige in the village depends much more on ceremonial activity than it does on income or possessions of property,’’ Spicer (1940:55) wrote of Pascua, matching Redfield’s representation of Chan Kom. Whereas Pascua was an ethnic enclave of ex-peasants on the margins of a then-small American city, the Spicers went on to do fieldwork in the Mexican Yaqui village of Potam, Sonora, (ca. 1941–42) also characterized by a lack of differentiation: The economic system which obtains in Potam is one characterized by very little specialization in production activities. All Yaquis produce approximately the same crops in about the same ways. All the men know and use similar agricultural techniques and all of them know, or are learning, similar techniques in housebuilding and in implement- and furniture-making. . . . To a considerable extent the variations in income through crops and money are equalized. Families whose crops are poor in a given year may have relatives[,] godparents, or compadres who have better crops and through these social relations obtain aid in the form of food and cash. They in turn in another year may have to use what surplus they have to help their relatives or compadres. [1954:53, 52] Spicer’s primary focus was on ‘‘exotic’’ religious beliefs and practices, with an explicit functionalist (in the Radcliffe-Brown style) argument for ‘‘the consistency and interdependence of the behaviors and beliefs which characterize Yaquis’’ (1954:2), the ‘‘close linkages of most aspects of Yaqui culture’’ (196).∞∏ Considering both Spicer’s interest in ‘‘acculturation’’ and the considerable disruption of Yaqui life by the Mexican Civil War and continued martial law, Potam is a remarkably pastoral account of a tightly integrated ‘‘traditional’’ village with practically no attention to state power. Spicer noted, ‘‘Most Yaquis of Potam have fairly frequent relations of some sort with Mexican residents in Potam territory,’’ going beyond selling produce and buying manufactured goods from Mexican storekeepers. For maintenance of order, the ‘‘governors [the leaders of the indigenous social structure] and other Poteños take the position that their own organization is perfectly adequate to serve all Yaqui interests, and that therefore the only function which the [Mexican state’s appointed] municipality officials can serve is to preserve order and adjust the affairs of Mexicans or other non-Yaquis in the territories. . . . The municipality American Anthropologists Discover Peasants

75

officials do not interfere in the trials or other proceedings of the Potam governors’’ (110). Although never focusing on class (or incipient class) differences between 20th-century Yaquis, Spicer’s magisterial ‘‘cultural history’’ of the Yaquis included three pages discussing (albeit minimizing) differentiation among 19th-century Yaquis and pointing out that the Yaquis (in Mexico) were not peasants then (Spicer 1980:219–221). Embree’s Studies of Acculturation of Japanese Peasants Unlike the quite new and quite small villages of Chan Kom and Pascua, John Embree and his Japanese-speaking wife, Ella, undertook fieldwork in a long-established (more than seven centuries) village in the southern prefecture of Kumamoto on Kyushu in the fall of 1935. Suye Mura was also considerably larger than Chan Kom and Pascua. As John Embree wrote to Redfield on January 15, 1936, ‘‘We do not intend to produce any such complete report [as Chan Kom]. First alibi—Suye Mura 1600, Chan Kom 250; 2nd alibi—no time; and 3rd alibi—utter inability.’’ Although Redfield was interested in ‘‘survivals of traditional village ways,’’ he urged Embree to study the role of literacy and generational differences (Feb. 20, 1936, letter). To a much greater extent than in Redfield’s and Spicer’s ethnographies, Embree considered incursions of state—a state explicitly trying to foment local organizations for identification and solidarity with national polity and policies. Whereas the neighborhood group (buraku, hamlet) had been the most important unit in the social structure of rural Japan, Embree showed that ‘‘the hamlet [was] part of a much larger and highly complex structure which [was] and ha[d] for some time been undergoing rapid change. . . . In abstract structural terms the hamlet [was] steadily losing its relative independence, and it as a group and its members as individuals [were] becoming more and more involved in and dependent upon relations with the wider social environment’’ (1937:xii), in part through increased communication that was supplanting the local dialect with standard Japanese. Embree also explicitly recognized that ‘‘many unintended changes have come into Suye Mura, in addition to, and sometimes as the indirect result of, the carefully introduced changes directed by the government’’ (1937:301). At the time of his observations, a cash economy was supplanting some traditional cooperation, and (along with improved roads) facilitating dependence on manufactured goods, and internal stratification (elaborated on pp. 158–161). Changes in traditional cultivation practices were being introduced by opinion leaders—a returned college graduate and a retired schoolteacher—rather than through unmediated influences of mass media (304–305, 311). 76

Murray

Embree was especially interested in forms of cooperation, including credit clubs and labor exchange. He included a chapter on the typical villager’s life history and looked closely at the mixture of Buddhism and Shinto in the beliefs and actions of villagers. Like Gower, unlike Redfield and Spicer, Embree discussed differences in class, both ‘‘new class groupings based on wealth’’ and old-time landed gentry (whose children were sent to high schools outside the village and were the only ones who went to college). He also found marriage to be endogamous by class: ‘‘upper groups taking brides from upper families, middle groups from middle families, etc.’’ with females occasionally ‘‘marrying up,’’ but males not (1937:161). Suye Mura, the monograph resulting from the Embrees’ fieldwork, was a ‘‘durable classic’’ (Smith and Wisswell 1982:ix), of special interest as the only community study of the World War II enemy, ‘‘traditional Japan.’’ Although remembered by Herbert Passin (1982), Tamotsu Shibutani (1990 interview with author, Santa Barbara ca), and other wartime students of Japan as the major resource, Pearl Harbor did not lead to a burst of sales for the book. Through 1941, 437 copies of the book had sold, with only 45 more copies selling in the first 18 months of U.S.-Japan warfare. Restudy of the village (Yoshino 1954) did not result in the kind of challenges later studies of Tepoztlán and Chan Kom produced. Indeed, I cannot find any criticism of any of Embree’s assertions in it. Moreover, ‘‘at the outset the mayor was of the opinion that no further study was needed and that one could find out anything he might want to know from Embree’s work. This attitude proved to be a handicap at various times during the course of the field study. However, the deputy, the assembly chairman and other 26 leaders of the village were very helpful and cooperative’’ (Yoshino 1954:26–27).∞π Unlike Thomas, Redfield, Gower, and Spicer, who did research on ethnic minority enclaves in the United States before doing fieldwork in the ‘‘source culture’’ (i.e., the homeland of the immigrants to the United States), Embree began with study of the source culture and then did fieldwork among émigrés from it. After taking a position at the University of Hawaii, Embree undertook what he saw as a study of the acculturation of Japanese farmers in Hawaii (what became Embree 1941). In a letter to Redfield dated October 31, 1939, Embree reported that (University of Chicago) sociologist Herbert Blumer had read and liked his study, which was too controversial for the University of Hawaii Press to risk publishing. Redfield (Jan. 11, 1940) wrote, ‘‘I wish I saw it as fitting into the Anthropology Series of our Press here, but the truth is I do not.’’ It was not focused on the southwestern United States or Mesoamerica, but neither were Suye Mura or Saint Denis. American Anthropologists Discover Peasants

77

The primary reason for exclusion appears to be that Redfield regarded Japanese Hawaiian farmers as not constituting a ‘‘traditional’’ peasant society. The Japanese farmers in Kona raised coffee for export and also tended to be small shopkeepers. In describing them, Embree discussed selective retention and adaptation of traditional rural Japanese institutions. Increased use of money and machinery did not have as much disintegrating effect on Hawaii as he had seen in Japan, although the Kona farmers engaged in less cooperative labor than did Suye Mura peasants. Embree also looked at residence and opportunity, ecology, and institutions, rather than values or any national character based on primary socialization practices, the dominant focus of American anthropology throughout the 1940s; later, Embree (1950a) specifically criticized the culture and personality work that attempted to explain the conduct of World War II on the basis of child-rearing practices. Something else that troubled Redfield about Embree’s Kona manuscript was that it had too much ‘‘case material and incident which [he couldn’t] easily assimilate to any well-defined problem.’’ Redfield also noted, ‘‘I miss the guidance of general ideas.’’ Like Rosamond Spicer in her reluctance to operate on Redfield’s level of abstraction, Embree (June 4, 1940, letter) replied that ‘‘as a benighted empiricist, I am against having a theme song drown out the words.’’ After applying anthropology during World War II and in Southeast Asia after it, and before being killed in an automobile accident at the age of 42 in 1950, Embree (1950b) wrote an article on the ‘‘loose’’ structure of Thai culture (in contrast to the tight interconnections of Japanese culture) that showed him quite able to produce thematic general ideas of the sort Redfield and others pursued through the 1950s in seminars on Asian civilizations (‘‘great traditions’’) and local variations (‘‘small traditions’’) (see Redfield 1955b, 1956a) and that provided a framework for social anthropology of Southeast Asian peasantries (see Evers 1969). Miner’s Study of Rapidly Changing Rural French Canada Like Embree and Spicer, Horace Miner was a protégé of Robert Redfield and much influenced by Radcliffe-Brown-style functionalism as a University of Chicago anthropology student.∞∫ Like Spicer, Miner focused on religion, the ‘‘deeply ingrained’’ Catholicism—‘‘Lack of contact with persons of other convictions and the relative lack of functional problems in the mode of living mean that the particular native belief is rarely questioned. Life in St. Denis is a flow of traditional behavior. . . . Religious behavior and thought dominate all life’’ (1939:91,100). Like Redfield, Miner aimed to provide an ethnographic description of a ‘‘folk culture in 78

Murray

its least-altered existent form’’ (the most rural point of the folk-urban continuum) and to consider factors responsible for cultural change in the direction of urbanization and anglicization’’ (ix). Although Miner was interested in social and cultural change and urban influences on the countryside, Saint Denis de Karmouraska at first seemed to Miner ‘‘so old French [that he] worried there would be no outside influence.’’ He wrote, ‘‘I lose no sleep over that now’’ (Miner to Redfield, Aug. 3, 1936). Redfield’s introduction to Saint Denis framed it as a study of peasants: ‘‘The habitants live in terms of common understandings which are rooted in tradition and which have come to form an organization. The fundamental views of life are shared by almost everyone; and these views find consistent expression in the beliefs, the institutions, the rituals, and the manner of the people. . . . The sanctions which support conduct are strongly sacred. . . . There is little disorganization and little crime’’ (1963:xiii–xiv). Redfield characterized ‘‘the French Canadians herein described . . . [as] almost the only North American peasants’’ (Miner 1963:xv). Miner does not seem to have used the term peasant in the text, but when Redfield urged Miner to be frank about anything in the draft introduction that made him uncomfortable and specifically wondered, ‘‘Perhaps there will be objection to calling rural French Canadians peasants; they seem peasants to me’’ (Redfield to Miner Sept. 9, 1938), Miner replied, ‘‘ ‘Peasant’ does not disturb me at all; it is a common term of reference in Canada’’ (Sept. 14, 1938). Miner’s title had been Quebec Folk (with Saint Denis in the subtitle) (Sept. 14, 1938), but in a 1963 foreword to a reprinting of Saint Denis, he denied having ‘‘undertaken to illustrate or to ‘test’ any social typology’’ (vii), noting that the ‘‘context of peasant culture’’ was supplied in Redfield’s introduction. Miner stressed that his ‘‘analysis of St. Denis was made along ethnological and structural-functional lines, strongly influenced by the teaching of A. R. Radcliffe-Brown.’’ (It certainly has a Radcliffe-Brownian focus on kinship—and folk Catholicism was as exotic to Miner as to Redfield and to Radcliffe-Brown.) Miner approached culture change as resulting from social ‘‘structural forces and from diffusion, not as a shift away from a folk type of culture’’ (1953:vi). Redfield himself noted the increased money income and the export of labor to factories rather than the agricultural pursuits that had been de facto exclusive in the traditional/folk society. While doing fieldwork, Miner disclaimed any ‘‘intention to be solely a reporter of the ‘society’ of St. Denis, but rather [sought to be] a commentator on how the present culture reflect[ed] the change . . . going on [at the time], the directions of this change, the means of its introduction, and the American Anthropologists Discover Peasants

79

forces responsible for it’’ and to provide a basis for comparison of social changes elsewhere (Miner to Redfield, Nov. 30, 1936). George Peter Murdock lauded Saint Denis in an American Anthropologist review as the most genuinely cultural study of recent community studies and praised it for making ‘‘explicit the traditionally patterned norms according to which people behave and organize their interpersonal relations’’ and for providing an outstanding analysis of social and political organization. ‘‘Religion and its intimate interpenetration with all other aspects of the culture are admirably portrayed, albeit with a certain Durkheimian rigidity,’’ Murdock (1940:324) wrote. Although later attacked for minimizing the urbanity of the colony of France, sociologist Hubert Guindon, who did fieldwork in Saint Denis, vigorously defended Miner’s portrait of rural parish Quebec as ‘‘traditional’’ Quebec after the British conquest during the 18th century (see Guindon 1988:3–18). Miner later undertook an anthropological study of a ‘‘corn-belt county’’ in the United States (1949) and of preindustrial cities in Africa, including a community study of Timbuktu that was rejected by the University of Chicago Press despite 1948–49 recommendations to do so from Redfield, Sol Tax, Joseph Greenberg, and William Bascom, and Miner’s willingness to subvent publication. Eventually, it was published as a memoir of the American Philosophical Society in 1953 and criticized by Ralph Beals (1954) and Aasel Hansen (1954) for applying rather than testing the folkurban model, confounding multiethnicity and urbanism, and failing to distinguish normative from descriptive assertions. Miner went on to psychological anthropology research on purportedly rural (‘‘oasis’’) and ‘‘urban’’ samples of Algerians born in a small town at the edge of the Sahara Desert (Rorschach tests administered in 1950, analyzed in Miner and De Vos 1960). Miner seems to have done little research after the midpoint of the 20th century, although he wrote some general pieces about African urbanism/urbanization and defending the value of the folk-urban continuum (Miner 1952, 1968). Later Work The folk-urban difference is not a classification. It is a mental construction of imagined societies that are only approximated in particular ‘‘real’’ societies. Robert Redfield, memorandum about Oscar Lewis criticisms, June 22, 1948

The Guatemalan fieldwork of Redfield (in the Ladino town of Agua Escondida and briefly in San Antonio Palopo) and Sol Tax (in Chichicastenango and Panajachel) challenged the notions about the ubiquity of strong familial organization and lack of individualism in folk societies— 80

Murray

even across the span of Mayan peasant communities. From Agua Escondida, Redfield wrote to Alexander Leighton: ‘‘It is often said that the Highlands of Guatemala contain a great variety of cultures in a relatively small area. This is true in that each community has its own traditions, costumes, and forms of institutions . . . [but] now that I have been here several times the cultures of the Western Highlands seem to me very much alike in what one might call their fundamental character or in what [William Graham] Sumner would have called their ethos’’ (Dec. 12, 1938; see Tax 1941; Rubinstein 1991). To Melville Herskovits, Redfield wrote of a surprisingly ‘‘thin culture’’: ‘‘We are living here for a few weeks with a very agreeable, peaceful, orderly and happy people, who have less culture and less social organization than I had supposed compatible with stability and order’’ (April 1937; cf. the comparison Embree 1950b would later make between tight and loose structuring). Comparing Chichicastenango to the Chan Kom described by Redfield and Villa Rojas, Tax wrote Redfield on March 1, 1935: ‘‘Chan Kom might as well be in Siberia for the feeling of differences that one gets. I’m afraid that if we ever write about Maya Culture, all we shall be able to talk about will be tortillas.’’ Four days later, Tax dispelled any visions of harmony (and simplicity): ‘‘There seem to be as many conflicts as in Chicago; the culture is not that simple one we like to think a Folk has—in fact, I should be willing to gamble right now that it has all the complexities of a rural community of ten thousand in Illinois. . . . The only thing that holds the culture together—makes it as homogeneous as it is—is the political organization and the limitations imposed by little outside contact as well as strong conservatism’’ (Tax to Redfield, Mar. 19, 1935). Publication of Tax’s systematic and detailed examination of small-scale capitalism, the manuscript of which he had drafted in early 1939 (see Rubinstein 1991:267–271), was delayed by wartime paper shortages and priorities until 1952. Redfield did not publish any Guatemalan community study—nor much else about Guatemala (1939 and 1956 articles are the exceptions), although he did refer to differences between the Yucatán and the Guatemalan Maya in his 1941 exposition of a folk-urban continuum—with Mérida being the urban center then. The emergent international resort of Cancun has since become the antipode of Chan Kom for traditionalists with ‘‘the homogenous community world envisaged by the ideological propaganda of los antiguos elite,’’ who abhor the worship of money among those influenced by or who have migrated to Cancun (de la Cruz 1996:156). Along with arguing that an ‘‘ideal type’’ model cannot be falsified, Redfield insisted that ‘‘the comparison [he] attempted in the Yucatan was American Anthropologists Discover Peasants

81

directed not toward a full understanding of Yucatecan society, but toward understanding a method of comparison’’ (Redfield to Helen Hughes, Mar. 16, 1953, in regard to the manuscript of what became Mintz 1953). Redfield also insisted that ‘‘the Yucatecan hacienda, like Mexican plantations in general, was for generations not an industrial enterprise for profit but a way of life for people’’ whom he did not think should be considered rural proletarians. Sidney Mintz (1953:142) characterized as ‘‘impersonal’’ the relations between managers and workers in the henequen plantations of the Yucatan. Mintz proposed the plantation as another type of Latin American socioeconomic organization and very politely suggested that this ‘‘distinctive type is not amenable to the folk-urban construction,’’ though he noted that adding the plantation to typology of communities in Latin America or the Yucatán in particular ‘‘might have upset, or at least modified the sequence from the ‘folk society’ of Tusik to the ‘metropolis’ of Mérida and back again.’’ Mintz observed, ‘‘To a very large degree, it would seem that Merida’s very existence hinges on the continued success of the henequen plantations. The forces of change seem to originate not in the metropolis but in the world outside, and Mérida is important in its intermediary relationship with the key economic area where henequen is produced’’ (142), not as an independent urban center from which culture change emanated (or a great tradition was maintained and elaborated). In 1953 Mintz sought to elaborate Redfield’s typology. A decade earlier, George Peter Murdock, who had been schooled in the Yale social evolutionary doctrines of the Sumner-Keller tradition, expressed concern about hyper-abstract models of form and process; of Redfield, he noted, ‘‘[He] is fond of playing with paired polar concepts such as cultural organization and disorganization, the sacred and the secular, collectivism and individualization. Like the evolutionists, he tends to conceive of cultural change, not in terms of a dynamics of process, but as an apparently inevitable transition from one conceptual pole to its opposite. The reader is irresistibly reminded of Herbert Spencer’s all-embracing theory of evolution from undifferentiated homogeneity to differentiated heterogeneity. In theories of this order the present reviewer sees little nourishment’’ (1943:136). Some other Redfield students, such as John Bennett and Herbert Passin, did anthropological fieldwork in the rural United States (as recalled by Bennett 1988; on the folk-urban shift applied to rural southern Illinois, see especially Bennett 1943, 1948; see Passin and Bennett 1943 on diversification of beliefs following increasing social heterogeneity). Although interrupted by the purported applications of anthropology during World War II and having even surveying of rural communities in China in 1948–49 thwarted by the civil war there, Redfield returned 82

Murray

to ‘‘armchair ethnology’’/comparative analysis of ‘‘the folk society’’ (in the singular) after the war with a special emphasis on Asia (see Redfield 1954a, 1955a,b, 1956a; Mariott 1955). The focus of the work on examining the relationships of great tradition (civilization) to little (folk) traditions that Redfield directed during the early 1950s largely ignored the ‘‘economic and social development processes which had become a major concern of public policy [not least the Ford Foundation, which financed the Chicago comparative program] and international social life at the time. However, Redfield, [Milton] Singer, and others participating in the approach were concerned with scholarly matters like the meaning of religion in peasant societies, the symbols and values of Oriental religions, and the like.’’ They did not focus on the relations between centralized states and localities, or with technological transformations, or with ‘‘traditional’’ means of production (John W. Bennett 1998:76–77), despite purporting to provide holistic analysis ‘‘guided by a direct acquaintance with the culture and its expressive utterances and representations, and by collections of factual information about it’’ (Singer 1991:179). The Berkeley Lineage Although Kroeber (1948:284) would definitively lay out the anthropological conception of ‘‘peasants’’ as forming a ‘‘part society’’ (‘‘definitely rural—yet liv[ing] in relation to market towns. . . . They lack the isolation, the political autonomy, and the self-sufficiency of tribal populations’’), and some of his interwar graduate students at Berkeley would do pioneering work on peasants, Kroeber and Lowie taught about ‘‘primitive’’ peoples and civilizations without ever mentioning peasants (George M. Foster, Apr. 13, 2000, interview with author). Ralph Beals The first Berkeley-trained anthropologist focused on Mexico was Ralph Beals. He did summer fieldwork with the Nisenan (southern Maidu) and wrote an ethnological dissertation based on material on northern Mexico in the Bancroft Library collection. After completing his PhD in 1930, Beals received a two-year National Research Council fellowship (in biological sciences) to study the Cahita peoples (Yaqui, Mayor, Opata) of Sonora, a Mexican state that was under martial law with still-active Yaqui rebels inland. Elsie Clews Parsons visited Beals in the field and arranged for him to work with her among the Mixe in southern Mexico in 1932– 33. ‘‘Essentially Boasian in outlook, Beals studied ‘tribes’ rather than communities’’ during the 1930s (Goldschmidt 1986:949). American Anthropologists Discover Peasants

83

Simultaneous with founding an anthropology department at ucla, Beals returned to Mexican fieldwork for 15 months in 1940–41 with four students from the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia y Historia. His community study of Cherán, a Tarascan town on a recently paved highway, was published in 1946. It marks a turn to applied interests and to the phenomenon of urbanization (see Beals 1951) and increased sensitivity to issues of sampling and ad hoc proclamation of ‘‘community’’ (see Beals 1954, 1961). Although a community study of a town that was being rapidly incorporated into mestizo Mexican culture, it was still organized as an inventory of culture traits on the model of the elicitation of traits of Native California peoples supervised by Kroeber and extended south into Mexico by Beals’s survey of Cahita peoples. In 1964–67 Beals returned to Oaxaca in a training program that, along with fieldwork on his own in 1972–73, resulted in his 1975 book on the peasant marketing system there. George Foster George M. Foster also did a trait inventory of an indigenous California group (Yuki) based on elicitation of memories from elders. Foster’s Berkeley dissertation fieldwork of 1940 and 1941 was done among the Sierra Popoluca people in the Mexican state of Vera Cruz, inspired primarily by Herskovits’s interest in economic anthropology (see Herskovits 1940; Foster had been an undergraduate student of Herskovits’s at Northwestern University). Although traditionally milpa digging-stick subsistence farmers, following the Mexican Civil War, the Popolucas raised coffee as a cash crop and used money in trade for manufactured goods. In his dissertation Foster labeled the Popolucas ‘‘primitive,’’ but they were indigenous peasants linked to the emerging Mexican national economy.∞Ω In 1943 Berkeley alumnus Julian Steward, under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution’s Institute of Social Anthropology, hired Foster to teach (in Spanish) one semester a year at the National School of Anthropology in Mexico City and to take students to Michoacán (the home state of Mexico’s reformist president, Lázaro Cardenás) for collaborative fieldwork on Ihuatzio, a Lake Pátzcuaro Tarascan village, to compare to Beals’s study of (inland) Cherán. The large party was not accepted (the local priest was particularly opposed, suspecting the anthropologists were Protestant missionaries in disguise: see Riess 1999:133). Foster instead undertook fieldwork in the mestizoized village of Tzintzuntzan in 1944. His very comprehensive 1948 monograph (with Gabriel Ospina), Empire’s Children, described myriad aspects of the culture and economy of 84

Murray

what in the mid-1940s still approximated being a closed corporate community. ‘‘There’s no theory in Empire’s Children, but there are data on many things,’’ Foster said in an April 13, 2000, interview. In his overview of Tzintzuntzan research, he recalled, ‘‘As a student of Kroeber and Lowie, I was taught that all forms of behavior, all data, have meaning and that they are relevant to interpretation and explanation, even if this relevance is not apparent at the time they are noted or recorded’’ (1979:171; repeated in 2002:262), and added, ‘‘In hindsight, I feel fortunate that I emphasized data rather than theory in the initial study’’ (1979:176). In marked contrast to the seeming preference for taking geographical distances as a substitute for examining historical records (most notably in Robert Redfield’s folk-urban continuum, but also recurrently in the rejection by many Boasians of what had been recorded by nonprofessionals and substitution of inferences about the distribution of traits), Foster carefully worked through extant records from earlier times about Tzintzuntzan. After returning to Berkeley as a professor in 1953 and fieldwork in Spain, Foster was able to return to Tzintzuntzan 1958. His intended restudy metamorphosed into longitudinal research as he made annual revisits into the 1990s and involved younger anthropologists in detailed longitudinal observation of Tzintzuntzan (see Foster 1979, 2002; Riess 1999). Long-running observation of behavior and attitudes of Tzintzuntzeños was the basis for Foster’s theorizing about peasant worldviews and social organization. His 1967 book Tzintzuntzan focuses on the image of a limited good and dyadic contracts as organizing principles that explained much about the Tzintzuntzan peasants of the 1940s (the ethnographic present of the book, although supplemented by data from later times), particularly the lack of communal cooperation. In regard to his model of ‘‘the limited good,’’ Foster wrote, ‘‘[It] is accurate, I believe, for traditional Tzintzuntzans, perhaps to about 1965, although with a decreasingly good fit during the years immediately preceding that date’’ (which was also the date of its publication as a model of peasant worldview) (2002:267). In addition to research on how Tzintzuntzeños lived and understood their lives, Foster organized comparisons of peasants around the world in a reader, Peasant Society (Potter, Diaz, and Foster 1967), which he coedited and for which he wrote an analytical introduction. The view of noncooperation of Tzintzuntzeños deeply suspicious of one another and of any gains being possible except at the expense of others (the zero-sum of the ‘‘limited good’’) contrasted with Redfield’s optimism about Chan Kom as a village that ‘‘chose progress’’ (Redfield 1950) and was characterized by extensive communal labor (Redfield and Villa Rojas American Anthropologists Discover Peasants

85

1934) and with Redfield’s (1954b) representation of the peasant view of the good life. Foster’s writings about a less harmonious ‘‘folk society’’ was linked to Oscar Lewis’s (1951) very critical presentation of a restudy of Tepoztlán.≤≠ Lewis—whose restudy of Tepoztlán involved a team of half a dozen Mexican fieldworkers (plus his wife and local residents trained as assistants), included at least twice as long a residence in Tepoztlán as Redfield’s, and ten times as many interviewees—followed villagers to the metropolis (Mexico City) and also challenged Redfield’s characterization of the ‘‘disorganized’’ urban end of the folk-urban continuum (Lewis 1952, 1970).≤∞ Foster’s student Robert Kemper similarly extended the research on Tzintzuntzeños to the capital (Kemper 1977, 1979, 2002; see Foster 1979, 2002).≤≤ Walter Goldschmidt, Julian Steward, and Eric Wolf Another future American Anthropological Association president who worked extensively on rural society, Walter Goldschmidt also began graduate work at Berkeley in 1935. In the interwar turn in American anthropology from ‘‘primitive’’/‘‘tribal’’ peoples to community studies, Goldschmidt’s 1997 recollection singled out Redfield’s Tepoztlán (as ‘‘a penetrating, if idealized view of peasant life’’), the Lynds’ Middletown (1929) as the pioneer U.S. community study, and Warner and Lunt’s (1941) first ‘‘Yankee City’’ book. ‘‘These studies,’’ he noted, ‘‘tended to treat the community as if it were a tribe, that is, as being largely self-contained rather than dependent on the nation-state of which it was a part. They also treated them as if they were representative of the nation, or, at least, the region’’ (Goldschmidt 1997:viii). He suggested that the undertheorized body of material in such community studies aimed to provide ‘‘detailed empirical documentation of the rural side of the rural-urban dichotomy, a counterpart to the empirical work on cities inspired by Chicago [sociologists]’’ (ix)—ignoring the considerable body of research by rural sociologists, although his own early work on (nonpeasant) agriculture in California’s Central Valley (1942, 1946, 1947) showed great awareness of what rural sociologists had been doing (i.e., was less professionally ethnocentric than the writings of Ralph Beals during the 1940s) and in As You Sow (1947) did not cite any of the community studies Goldschmidt (1997) singled out as pioneers.≤≥ Goldschmidt had found that ‘‘from industrialized agriculture one reaps urban life’’ even in the countryside, with impersonal pecuniary-driven social relationships, rampant materialism, and class conflict between a rural proletariat and capitalist owner/growers: ‘‘Industrial agriculture blurs the border between town and country and 86

Murray

renders the urban-rural dichotomy meaningless’’ (Goldschmidt (1997:xii; see 1947:222–238). When Kroeber’s earlier student Julian Steward (PhD 1929) turned from ‘‘primitive’’ North and South American societies to coordinating a study of Puerto Rico during the late 1940s (work reported in Steward 1956), he also compared villages, although these were chosen for differing economic pursuits rather than along a rural/urban continuum as in Redfield’s Yucatán work. Although Steward cited the earlier Chicago studies of peasant societies, his only reference to Puerto Rican ‘‘peasants’’ was to some small landowners in the coffee-growing San José region (studied by Eric Wolf). Although materialist and focused on economic ‘‘base’’ rather than ideological ‘‘superstructure,’’ Steward’s approach was as typological as Redfield’s comparisons of civilizations (‘‘great traditions’’) during the 1950s, and ‘‘the fact that the separate communities were really parts of a larger whole—the functionally interdependent political economy of the islandnation—somehow escaped the Steward research program and vitiated many of its conclusions. There was no theory of larger systems’’ (John W. Bennett 1998:87). Near the end of Steward’s life, he coordinated a set of case studies of modernization of peasant societies across four continents (and three volumes: Steward 1967) that still treated the localities in isolation even while pursuing a conception of evolution that looks rather unilinear (see Murphy 1981:199–200). During the 1950s, one of Steward’s students-turned-colleagues, Eric Wolf, continued typologizing peasantries (with the goal of formulating ‘‘cultural laws’’) and distinguishing semiautonomous closed corporate communities from peasant communities with less control over their lands (1955, 1957). Thereafter, Wolf increasingly focused on the relationships of peasantries and states, stressing that cities are ‘‘a likely, but not an inevitable product of the increasing complexity of society. . . . The city is but one—though common—form in the orchestration of power and influence, but not its exclusive or decisive form’’ (1966:11; endorsed in Foster’s introduction to the Peasant Society reader, Potter, Diaz, and Foster 1967:6).≤∂ The smoothly functioning microcosm of Redfield, RadcliffeBrown, and Chicago students of the two disappeared in Wolf’s synthesis of historical materials about peasant revolutions (Wolf 1969). By the end of the 1960s, closed corporate community peasant societies (insofar as they had ever existed) disappeared, and functionalist studies of rural communities maintaining equilibrium ceased to seem plausible as American anthropologists increasingly examined state influences on even remote localities and documented histories, conflicts, and dysfunctional sociocultural arrangements. American Anthropologists Discover Peasants

87

Conclusion As the supply of ‘‘primitives’’ ran out (along with the rapidly dwindling supply of Native Americans who remembered prereservation life), and as the fate of peasants first in the Soviet Union and then in China became of increasing concern to U.S. policymakers, some anthropologists discovered peasants as peoples to study. The ‘‘discovery’’ and initial fieldwork was not as ‘‘recent’’ as Clifford Geertz supposed in 1962, however. Following the sentence used in the epigram at the beginning of this essay, Geertz wrote: ‘‘Only since World War II with the entrance of the major peasant-based nations of Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America onto the stage of international politics has any notable shift of interest toward the study of peasant life occurred’’ (1962:1). This is quite a startling statement to have issued from the University of Chicago anthropology department, where many of Redfield’s associates were still active. Geertz’s survey of the literature mentioned Redfield’s great/little tradition conception from the 1950s, and George Foster’s research in Spain, but not Redfield 1930 or Redfield 1941 or Redfield and Villa Rojas 1934 or Embree 1937 or Fei 1939 or Spicer 1940 or Lewis 1951 or any of the publications of Ralph Beals or Sol Tax or Nathan Whitten. (I also wonder why the Middle East in particular had not been on the stage of international politics before 1945.) Geertz did not comment on the romanticizing of rural life and the negative view of urban life in the German tradition of celebrating the Volk or the other European national traditions of valorizing national folk life. Although Oscar Lewis, the primary later critic of romanticizing peasants/ peasantries, termed the idealization of ‘‘simple’’ peoples and societies ‘‘Rousseauian’’ ‘‘cultural primitivism,’’ it seems to me that Robert Redfield (in particular) was more in the Jeffersonian tradition of regarding the yeoman as a bulwark of a healthy, egalitarian society (see Benet 1963) than in that of the proto-romantic valuation of ‘‘noble savages’’ of Rousseau. Redfield and his students extended many functionalist assumptions about stability and tradition from ‘‘primitives’’ to rural agriculturists. This work also fit with the more general tendency of American anthropologists to focus on religion and cognitive phenomena rather than on class differences, conflict, political relations of locality to national governments in synchronic ‘‘community studies’’ that mostly ignored documented history, and even outbreaks of violence while the field researcher was present, as in the case of the Cristero raid on Tepoztlán that led to Robert Redfield evacuating his family and leaving Mexico altogether far ahead of schedule.≤∑ The ethnographic work by Berkeley alumni (along with Columbia alumni Oscar Lewis, Sydney Mintz, and Eric Wolf; and the Harvard alum88

Murray

nus Conrad Arensberg) provided a less rosy picture of peasant life than Robert Redfield’s generalizations about ‘‘folk’’ society. Their work paid more attention to those who owned no land and to differences in income within communities represented as less homogeneous and less harmonious than in Redfield’s typology in which ‘‘folk’’ was an ‘‘ideal type’’ in more than one sense (i.e., a normative ideal as well as abstract type). Many of the critiques by anthropologists of the folk-urban continuum were published in sociology journals (e.g., Mintz 1953, Lewis 1953; along with the considerable concessions to critics of the continuum in Miner 1950, 1952; also see Tumin 1952 on stratification within a peasant community: San Luis Jilotepeque, Guatemala), while sociologists criticized urbanism as a dubious entity within a dubiously unilinear evolution and challenged both the valuations and the simplifications of the rural-urban dichotomy (e.g., Caplow 1949, Duncan and Reiss 1956) and the genuine/spurious contrast underlying it in Redfield’s deployment (Tumin 1945). Movement along the folk-urban continuum was also challenged as an adequate model of social change both for peasants in the countryside and for emigrants from the countryside to cities. Although the Mexican revolution, which was a ‘‘peasant revolution’’ especially in the part of the country (Morelos) in which Robert Redfield undertook fieldwork, and although his later work was in a part (the Yucatan) of long-running insurrection during the 19th century, the initial American anthropological theorizing of peasants and their ‘‘folk society’’ glossed over local conflicts and conflicts with state authority. As functionalism became the dominant discourse in anthropology after the retirement of Franz Boas, history and (‘‘dysfunctional’’) conflict were not considered interesting topics, and Radcliffe-Brown influenced Redfield and University of Chicago students of both of them to focus on (local) equilibration. Whether influenced by the specter of Maoist peasant revolution in China (a society from which some functionalist ethnographies by ‘‘natives’’ had been encouraged by Redfield, Malinowski, and RadcliffeBrown) or simultaneous with it, an assault on the image of rural harmony and comity in Mexico was launched by Oscar Lewis and augmented by George Foster, both students of prominent Boasians, and by the time of U.S. engagement in an Asian land war, different aspects of peasant life were theorized by Eric Wolf and others. Notes This article draws heavily on collections (Redfield, Tax, Burgess, Park, University of Chicago Press) in the Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago, on the Kroeber and anthropology department archives in the Bancroft Library of the University of California, and on the American Anthropologists Discover Peasants

89

Spicer collection of the Arizona State Museum in Tucson. My thoughts about the people and ideas discussed herein have been shaped in ways that are not always obvious by taperecorded interviews of George Foster, Theodora Kroeber, Tamotsu Shibutani, and Rosamond Spicer, and by untaped conversations with Raymond Fogelson, Everett Hughes, Edward Spicer, Sol Tax, Yves Winkin, and Roger Yoshino. I am also grateful for comments on an earlier draft provided by Clifford Wilcox and an anonymous referee, and to Sol Tax for allowing me access to his papers before they were officially opened to researchers. 1. Herskovits was preoccupied with ‘‘survivals,’’ especially in The Myth of the Negro Past (1941). 2. Thomas admired work on ‘‘primitive’’ societies by Boas and Boas’s students (see Murray 1988), though his research on migration and sociocultural disorganization owed nothing to Boasian anthropology. 3. Everett Hughes, who was fledged with a PhD from the same department in the same year as Redfield, and who told me that he and Redfield took all the same classes, recalled that although Redfield ‘‘was an exceedingly urban[e] man, yet he could not stand life in Chicago except around the University. He did not like cities’’ (1974:141). There is some merit in Charles Leslie’s (1976:158) claim that ‘‘the symmetry of [Redfield’s] analyses, which are the work of a restrained, ironic sensibility’’ are akin to classicism rather than to romanticism (and that Oscar Lewis’s view was akin to operatic verismo, (Lewis’s own label for his approach was ‘‘ethnographic realism’’; see Rigdon 1988:5.) However, verismo was related to postromanticist naturalism rather than to Herderian romanticism, and the ‘‘balanced reporting’’ Leslie asserted is difficult to sustain for Redfield’s Tepoztlán, which is so focused on fiestas and ballads (corridos). 4. Lewis (1960:179) ‘‘wondered why [Redfield] did not give more attention to the contrast between his own idealized version of peasantry and the sordid descriptions of the novelists,’’ mentioning Balzac, Reymont, Sholokhov, Turgenev, and Zola (but not Gogol!). Villa Rojas (1979:49) attested to Redfield’s familiarity with and keen interest in writers of the day, including, specifically, Sinclair Lewis. Along with Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, Sinclair Lewis was especially famous for portraying the intolerance for noncomformity in rural America (e.g., in Main Street and the early part of Arrowsmith) and the fervor of small-town American Christian zealots and those who stirred them up (especially in Elmer Gantry and It Can’t Happen Here). In the years surrounding the Scopes ‘‘monkey trial’’ and Mencken’s recurrent assaults on the ‘‘boobocracy,’’ the idealization of rural virtue and harmoniousness stands out as particularly unusual, despite its respectable (Jeffersonian) lineage. 5. The exception is Pitirim Sorokin at the University of Minnesota (before going to Harvard). Sorokin and his Minnesota associates introduced A. V. Chayanov’s conceptions of peasant family economies to Anglophone readers in their Source Book in Rural Sociology (Sorokin, Zimmerman, and Galpin 1931), but this eventually influential conception did not diffuse to American anthropologists working on peasantries until much later. 6. Beals (1961:10) noted that in Aztec times Tepoztlán had been the paper manufacturing center with intimate ties to urban intellectuals rather than small-scale farmers. Redfield continued to insist, ‘‘In many respects Tepoztlán does conform with that imagined construct [the folk community]: it is or was isolated and homogeneous, with a traditional way of life. . . . I suppose Tepoztlán to represent the middle range, of peasant or peasant-like societies’’ (letter to Oscar Lewis, June 22, 1948). 7. Not events but reactions to and interpretations of them were the focus for sociological inquiry, according to Park (1924). His denigration of mere events and the quest for ‘‘typical’’ experiences seems to me a prototype of Redfield’s impatience with Rosamond Spicer’s insistence on recording a particular ritual rather than abstracting a generalization of what Pascua rituals were like. 90

Murray

8. See the peculiar explaining away of use of historical records in Singer 1991:177. To ignore the revolutionary violence that led him to evacuate his family and commute from the capital rather than continue to live in Tepoztlán does not seem to me to differ from the general ignoring of events and the colonial, neocolonial, or other authoritarian settings of the peoples studied by anthropologists (then or later). 9. As Redfield summarized Gamio’s findings on U.S.-to-México money orders, ‘‘the heaviest immigration comes from the States at the west end of the south central plateau, Jalisco, Guanajato, and Michoacán’’ (1929:435), not from south of the capital. That is, Redfield did not choose to study a village generating emigrants such as Tzintzuntzan, Michoacán, studied later and over the course of decades by George M. Foster. Proximity to the capital and acquaintances there must have been part of the reason Redfield chose to work in Tepoztlán. 10. Chan Kom was not the most remote (from Mérida) point of the locations Redfield chose to illustrate (or to test?) the rural-urban continuum. That was Tuzik, a place in which Redfield was particularly uncomfortable, and one of the series in which ‘‘he failed to grasp that they [the inhabitants] were, and had long been a part of the modern world. They were not the small, homogeneous, meaning-filled, untroubled, family-oriented, self-sufficient social isolates of a more pleasant human past that Redfield imagined,’’ as Sullivan (1989:158) put it. ‘‘Drawing upon [Alfonso] Villa’s work [published separately in Villa Rojas 1945] as he did, most of Redfield’s facts about the Maya of central Quintana Roo were accurate. But his selection, assemblage, and interpretations of them to constitute a portrait of folk society required prodigious feats of imagination and denial, particularly concerning the Maya’s relations with foreigners like himself’’ (1989:158) (i.e., Americans, but also the British of what was then British Honduras, now Belize, whom the Yucatán Mayas tried to play off against Ladino/Mexican domination). Beals (1961:10) earlier noted that the supposedly rural peasants were refugees from hacienda peonage and had had long-standing contacts with British Honduras. 11. Redfield and Villa Rojas noted that ‘‘few, if any of the villages of the southeastern part of the state of Yucatán have histories of undisturbed occupation’’ (1934:23). The vicinity was not cultivated during the War of the Castes, ‘‘which began in 1847 and cannot be said to have come to a definite and conclusive end, although real military operations ceased in the seventies.’’ The predecessors of Chan Kom colonists ‘‘remained near or with the Whites during the war’’ and were pushed back by the Quintana Roo Indians (1934:23). 12. Although many Americans would and did read this as unremarkable recognition of the superiority of U.S. culture and prosperity, Redfield’s recurrent romanticizing of folk solidarity makes it seem likely that he was at least ambivalent and possibly being ironic in this designation, and in labeling what Chan Kom people chose as ‘‘progress.’’ 13. Sometimes referred to as ‘‘The Little Village That Could’’ (a play on the title of the children’s book The Little Engine That Could), Redfield’s use of ‘‘progress’’ may have been intended more ironically than it was read as in the ascendancy of modernization theory. Clifford Wilcox reminded me (via e-mail) that the boosterist sense of ‘‘progress’’ is inconsistent with the romanticism of the folk and their expressive culture that I attribute to Redfield. 14. Apparently, the Illinois Institute for Juvenile Research funded Gower’s Chicago fieldwork, rather than the Local Community Research Committee. Burgess was the key gatekeeper of research funds for both (Bulmer 1984:123–125; see also James Bennett 1981 on the iijr). 15. Note the focus on the immigrants’ problems rather than the immigrants being a problem, as in Redfield’s formulations. Gower’s book is, as King and Patterson (1991:106) noted, oddly silent on emigration, the original research problematic, as well as the justification for its funding. American Anthropologists Discover Peasants

91

16. Not least, given the trait inventorying and sorting into indigenous and Spanish of her own work, the criticism of Elsie Clews Parsons that Pascua is a good piece of work but in a void and inevitably misleading: her comment ‘‘You just can’t describe a fingernail without saying something about finger, hand, body—as you all seem to think you can’’ (Sept. 17, 1940, letter to Robert Redfield) is as startling as Ruth Benedict complaining of a lack of participant observation data for Tepoztlán. 17. There were changes brought about by the U.S. occupation and land reform; marked changes included the participation and interest of villagers in their local government and in public affairs had increased; governing officials were more responsive to popular sentiment legal restrictions relative to women were gradually disappearing; for example, women could now vote, hold public office, and own property; the current educational aim was to teach children to become socially responsible citizens rather than unquestioning followers; the land reform program had improved the standard of living of the former tenant farmer. Least changed were the pattern of conformity to traditional rules of behavior the rigid hierarchical stratification system within the family and in most social relationships; veneration of family ancestors and of the emperor; the system of exchange of labor and cooperative living (adapted from Yoshino 1954:155). 18. For examples of Redfield’s patronage, see Redfield to Donald Bean, Jan. 8, 1938; Redfield to Lunt Upson, 1937; Redfield evaluation for the Julius Rosenwald Fund, Mar. 28, 1939; Redfield to Miner Aug. 6, 1947. 19. Foster noted that ‘‘similarities between certain so-called primitive economies and our own Western economy are frequently greater than between two primitive societies’’ (1942:2), hence the qualifier ‘‘Mexican’’ on ‘‘primitive.’’ 20. Although in my 2000 interview, Foster said that he had not intended to criticize Redfield, Foster and Lewis cited each other in support of their representation of chronic suspiciousness and noncooperation in Mexican peasant communities—although Lewis (1970:253) questioned whether Tzintzuntzan was a peasant community, since less than a third of its residents engaged in farming. Each also enlisted Sol Tax’s study of Panajachel, Guatemala, Penny Capitalism (1952), as an illustration of individual(istic) calculation. 21. Over time, the émigrés from Tepoztlán fade away in Lewis’s publications of research on Mexico City slums. Rather ironically, Lewis increasingly focused on a culturalist (cultural determinist) essence as abstract as any of Redfield’s, albeit one linking to the pessimistic view of Tepoztlán. Paddock (1961) recognized this early on. Although continuing to coordinate research by teams of researchers, over time Lewis wrote more and more about fewer and fewer individuals. 22. Another instance of a peasant-community study followed by research on emigrants from the community to a metropolis is provided by Bernard and Rita Gallin (1974a, b). 23. Goldschmidt (1997:x) recalled that his work in the early 1970s on ‘‘the general character of peasant society’’ was stimulated by Martin Yang’s A Chinese Village: Taitou, Shantung Province (1945) and Arensberg’s The Irish Countryman (1937), the latter of which 92

Murray

had been published before Goldschmidt’s work on California Central Valley agriculture, as had the landmark Peasant Life in China (Fei 1939). 24. Embree had already placed the state rather than the city as the decisive entity: ‘‘Each little peasant group is part of a larger nation which controls its economic life, enforces a code of law from above, and, more recently requires education in national schools. . . . The farmer’s crop is adjusted to the needs of the state’’ (1939:xvi). Lewis asserted that ‘‘peasant communities came into existence only after the rise of cities’’ (1970:253). 25. This tendency was not confined to studies of rural communities: Aasel Hansen, who was responsible for the urban pole of the folk-urban continuum (i.e., Mérida), recalled that ‘‘Redfield criticized [him] for spending too much time on Mérida history’’ (1976:179).

References Alpert, Harry. 1941. Review of The Folk Culture of the Yucatan, by Robert Redfield. American Sociological Review 6:896–898. Arensberg, Conrad M. 1937. The Irish Countryman: An Anthropological Study. New York: Macmillan. ———. 1961. The Community as Object and Sample. American Anthropologist 24:41–64. Beals, Ralph. 1930. The Comparative Ethnology of Northern Mexico before 1750. PhD dissertation, University of California. ———. 1946. Cherán: A Sierra Tarascan Village. Smithsonian Institution Institute of Social Anthropology Contribution 2. Reprint, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998. ———. 1951. Urbanism, Urbanization, and Acculturation. American Anthropologist 53:1– 10. ———. 1954. Review of the Primitive City of Timbuctoo, by Horace M. Miner. American Anthropologist 56:307–308. ———. 1961. Community Typologies in Latin America. Anthropological Linguistics 3:8–16. ———. 1975. The Peasant Marketing System of Oaxaca, Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press. Benedict, Ruth. 1930. Review of Tepoztlán, A Mexican Village: A Study of Folk Life, by Robert Redfield. New York Herald Tribune, Nov. 2: 24. Benet, Francisco. 1963. Sociology Uncertain: The Ideology of the Rural-Urban Continuum. Comparative Studies in Society and History 6:1–23. Bennett, James. 1981. Oral History and Delinquency. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bennett, John W. 1943. Some Problems of Status and Solidarity in a Rural Society. Rural Sociology 8:396–408. ———. 1948. The Study of Cultures: A Survey of Technique and Methodology in Field Work. American Sociological Review 13:672–689. ———. 1988. Anthropology and the Development Process: The Ambiguous Engagement. In Production and Autonomy: Anthropological Studies and Critiques of Development. John W. Bennett and John Bowed, eds. Pp. 1–29. Lanham md: University Press of America. ———. 1998. Classic Anthropology. New Brunswick nj: Transaction. Bulmer, Martin. 1984. The Chicago School of Sociology: Institutionalization, Diversity and the Rise of Sociological Research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Caplow, Theodore. 1949. The Social Ecology of Guatemala City. Social Forces 28:113–133. Cappanari, Stephen. 1973. Review of Milocca: A Sicilian Village, by Charlotte Gower Chapman. American Anthropologist 75:327–328. Chapman, Charlotte Gower. 1971[1930]. Milocca: A Sicilian Village. Cambridge ma: Schenkman. American Anthropologists Discover Peasants

93

Cline, Howard. 1952. Mexican Community Studies. Hispanic American Historical Review 32:212–242. Cole, Sally. 2003. Ruth Landes. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Cronin, Constance. 1973. Review of Milocca: A Sicilian Village, by Charlotte Gower Chapman. Current Anthropology 14:515. Darnell Regna. 1977. Hallowell and ‘‘Bear Ceremonialism.’’ Ethos 5:13–30. ———. 2001. Invisible Genealogies: A History of Americanist Anthropology. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. de la Cruz, Alicia. 1996. The Two Milpas of Chan Kom. Albany: State University of New York Press. Duncan, Otis Dudley, and Albert J. Reiss Jr. 1956. Social Characteristics of Urban and Rural Communities, 1950. New York: John Wiley. Embree, John F. 1937. Suye Mura. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1939. New Local and Kin groups among the Japanese Farmers of Kona, Hawaii. American Anthropologist 41:400–407. ———. 1941. Acculturation among the Japanese of Kona, Hawaii. Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association 59. Menasha wi: American Anthropological Association. ———. 1950a. A Note on Ethnocentrism in Anthropology. American Anthropologist 52:430– 432. ———. 1950b. Thailand: A Loosely-Structured Social System. American Anthropologist 52:181–193. Evers, Hans-Dieter. 1969. Loosely Structured Social Systems: Thailand in Comparative Perspective. New Haven ct: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies Center. Fei Hsiao-T’ung [Xiaotong]. 1939. Peasant Life in China: A Field Study of Country Life in the Yangtze Valley. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Foster, George M. 1942. A Primitive Mexican Economy. PhD dissertation, University of California Berkeley. (Seattle: American Ethnological Society, 1966.) ———. 1967. Tzintzuntzan: Mexican Peasants in a Changing World. Boston: Little, Brown. ———. 1979. Fieldwork in Tzintzuntzan: The First Thirty Years. In Long-Term Field Research in Social Anthropology. George Foster et al., eds. Pp. 189–207. New York: Academic Press. ———. 2002. A Half Century of Field Research in Tzintzuntzan, Mexico: A Personal View. In Chronicling Cultures: Long-Term Field Research in Anthropology. Robert Kemper and Anya Royce, eds. Pp. 252–283. Walnut Creek ca: AltaMira Press. Foster, George M., and Gabriel Ospina. 1948. Empire’s Children: The People of Tzintzuntzan. Smithsonian Institution Institute of Social Anthropology Publication 6. Mexico: Nuevo Mundo. Gallin, Bernard, and Rita S. Gallin. 1974a. The Rural-to-Urban Migration of Anthropologists in Taiwan. In Anthropologists in Cities. George Foster and Robert Kemper, eds. Pp. 223–248. Boston: Little Brown. ———. 1974b. The Integration of Village Migrants in Taipei. In The Chinese City between Two Worlds. Mark Elvin and G. W. Skinner, eds. Pp. 331–358. Stanford ca: Stanford University Press Gamio, Manuel. 1922. La Población del Valle de Teotihuacán: El Medio que se ha Desarrollado, su Evolución Ethnica y Social. México, D. F.: Dirrecíon de Talleres Gráficos. ———. 1930. Mexican Immigration to the United States: A Study of Human Migration and Adjustment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1931. The Mexican Immigrant: Autobiographic Documents. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 94

Murray

Geertz, Clifford. 1962. Studies of Peasant Life: Community and Society. Biennial Review of Anthropology 1961:1–41. Godoy, Ricardo. 1978. The Background and Context of Redfield’s Tepoztlán. Journal of the Steward Anthropological Society 10:47–79. Goldkind, Victor. 1965. Social Stratification in the Peasant Community: Redfield’s Chan Kom Reinterpreted. American Anthropologist 67:863–884. ———. 1966. Class Conflict and Caciques in Chan Kom. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 22:325–345. Goldschmidt, Walter R. 1942. Social Structure of a California Rural Community. PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley. ———. 1946. Small Business and the Community: A Study in Central Valley of California on Effects of Scale of Farm Operations. Washington: U.S. gpo. ———. 1947. As You Sow: Three Studies in the Social Consequences of Agribusiness. New York: Harcourt, Brace. ———. 1986. Ralph Leon Beals. American Anthropologist 88:947–953. ———. 1997. Foreword: The End of Peasantry. In Farewell to Peasant China G. Guldin, ed. Pp. vii–xv. Armonk ny: M. E. Sharpe. Gower, Charlotte Day. 1928. The Supernatural Patron in Sicilian Life. PhD dissertation, University of Chicago. Guindon, Hubert. 1988[1960]. Quebec Society: Tradition, Modernity and Nationhood. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Hansen, Aasel T. 1954. Review of The Primitive City of Timbuctoo, by Horace M. Miner. American Journal of Sociology 59:501–502. ———. 1976. Robert Redfield, the Yucatán Project, and I. In American Anthropology: The Early Years. John V. Murra, ed. Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society 1974. Pp. 167–186. St. Paul: West. Herskovits, Melville J. 1940. The Economic Life of Primitive Peoples. New York: Knopf. ———. 1941. The Myth of the Negro Past. New York: Harper and Brothers. Hughes, Everett C. 1976. American Ethnology: The Role of Redfield. In American Anthropology: The Early Years. John V. Murra, ed. Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society 1974. Pp. 139–144. St. Paul: West. Kemper, Robert V. 1977[1971]. Migration and Adaptation: Tzintzuntzan Peasants in Mexico City. Beverly Hills ca: Sage. ———. 1979. Fieldwork among Tzintzuntzan Migrants in Mexico City. In Long-Term Field Research in Social Anthropology. George Foster et al., eds. Pp. 189–207. New York: Academic Press. ———. 2002. From Student to Steward: Tzintzuntzan as Extended Community. In Chronicling Cultures: Long-Term Field Research in Anthropology. Robert Kemper and Anya Royce, eds. Pp. 284–312. Walnut Creek ca: AltaMira Press. King, Russell, and Guy Patterson. 1991. Charlotte Gower Chapman. In International Dictionary of Anthropologists, Christopher Winter, ed. Pp. 105–106. New York: Garland. Kroeber, Alfred L. 1931. Review of Tepoztlán, A Mexican Village: A Study of Folk Life, by Robert Redfield. American Anthropologist 33:236–238. ———. 1948. Anthropology. New York: Harcourt, Brace. Leaf, Murray J. 1979. Man, Mind and Science: A History of Anthropology. New York: Columbia University Press. Leslie, Charles. 1976. The Hedgehog and the Fox in Robert Redfield’s Work. In American Anthropology: The Early Years. John V. Murra, ed. Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society 1974. Pp. 146–166. St. Paul: West. American Anthropologists Discover Peasants

95

Lewis, Oscar. 1944. Social and Economic Changes in a Mexican Village: Tepoztlán 1926– 44. América Indígena 4:281–314. ———. 1951. Life in a Mexican Village: Tepoztlán Re-studied. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ———. 1952. Urbanization without Breakdown: A Case Study. Scientific Monthly 75:31–41. Reprinted in Lewis 1970:413–426. ———. 1953. Tepoztlán Restudied: A Critique of the Folk-Urban Conceptualization of Social Change. Rural Sociology 18:121–136. Reprinted in Lewis 1970:35–52. ———. 1960. Some of My Best Friends Are Peasants. Human Organization 19:179–180. ———. 1970. Anthropological Essays. New York: Random House. Lynd, Robert S. 1931. Review of Tepoztlán, A Mexican Village: A Study of Folk Life, by Robert Redfield. American Journal of Sociology 36:823–824. Lynd, Robert S., and Helen M. Lynd. 1929. Middletown: A Study in Contemporary American Culture. New York: Harcourt, Brace. Mariott. McKim. 1955. Village India: Studies of the Little Community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Massey, Douglas, Rafael Alarcón, Jorge Durand, and Humberto González. 1987. Return to Aztlan: The Social Process of International Migration from Western Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mead, Margaret. 1965[1932]. The Changing Culture of an Indian Tribe. New York: Capricorn. Miner, Horace M. 1939. Saint Denis: A French-Canadian Parish. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1949. Culture and Agriculture: An Anthropological Study of a Corn Belt County. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ———. 1950. A New Epoch in Rural Quebec. American Journal of Sociology 56:1–10. (Incorporated as a postscript to the 1963 reprinting of Saint Denis.) ———. 1952. The Folk-Urban Continuum. American Sociological Review 17:529–536. ———. 1953. The Primitive City of Timbuctoo. Princeton nj: Princeton University Press. ———. 1968. Community-Society Continua. International Encyclopedia of Social Science 1:174–180. Miner, Horace M., and George De Vos. 1960. Oasis and Casbah: Algerian Culture and Personality in Change. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology. Mintz, Sydney. 1953. The Folk-Urban Continuum and the Rural Proletarian Community. American Journal of Sociology 59:136–143. Murdock, George P. 1940. Review of Saint Denis: A French-Canadian Parish, by Horace M. Miner. American Anthropologist 42:323–324. ———. 1943. Review of The Folk Culture of the Yucatan, by Robert Redfield. American Anthropologist 45:133–136. Murphy, Robert F. 1981. Julian Steward. In Totems and Teachers: Perspective on the History of Anthropology. Sydel Silverman, ed. Pp. 170–206. New York: Columbia University Press. Murray, Stephen O. 1986. The Postmaturity of Sociolinguistics. History of Sociology 6(2): 75–108. ———. 1988. W. I. Thomas, Behaviorist Ethnologist. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 24:381–391. Paddock, John. 1961. Oscar Lewis’s Mexico. Anthropological Quarterly 34:129–149. Park, Robert E. 1924. Experience and Race Relations. Journal of Applied Sociology 9:18–24. 96

Murray

———. 1928. Migration and the Marginal Man. American Journal of Sociology 33:881– 893. Park, Robert E., and Herbert A. Miller. 1921. Old World Traits Transplanted. New York: Harper. Passin, Herbert. 1982. Encounter with Japan. Tokyo: Kodansha International. Passin, Herbert, and John W. Bennett. 1943. Changing Agricultural Magic in Southern Illinois: A Systematic Analysis of Folk-Urban Transition. Social Forces 22:98–106. Potter, Jack M., May N. Diaz, and George M. Foster. 1967. Peasant Society: A Reader. Boston: Little Brown. Redfield, Robert. 1928a. A Plan for a Study of Tepoztlán, Morelos. PhD dissertation, University of Chicago. ———. 1928b. Among the Middle Americans: A Chicago Family’s Adventures as Adopted Citizens of a Mexican Village. University of Chicago Magazine 20:242–247. ———. 1929. The Antecedents of Mexican Immigration to the United States. American Journal of Sociology 35:433–438. ———. 1930. Tepoztlán, A Mexican Village: A Study of Folk Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1931. Introduction. In Gamio 1931, xi–xv. ———. 1939. Primitive Merchants of Guatemala. Quarterly Journal of Inter-American Relations 1. (Reprinted in Redfield 1962:200–210.) ———. 1941. The Folk Culture of the Yucatan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1950. A Village That Chose Progress: Chan Kom Revisited. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1950. The Primitive World and Its Transformation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1954a. Community Studies in Japan and China. Far Eastern Quarterly 14:3–10. ———. 1954b. The Peasant’s View of the Good Life. Lecture. (Included in Redfield 1962: 310–326.) ———. 1955a. The Little Community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1955b. The Social Organization of Tradition. Far Eastern Quarterly 15. (Reprinted in Redfield 1962:302–310.) ———. 1956a. Peasant Society and Culture: An Anthropological Approach to Civilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1956b. The Relations between Indians and Ladinos in Agua Escondida, Guatemala. América Indígena 16. (Reprinted in Redfield 1962:210–230.) ———. 1960. Thinker and Intellectual in Primitive Society. In Culture in History: Essays in Honor of Paul Radin. Stanley Diamond, ed. New York: Published for Brandeis University by Columbia University Press. (Reprinted in Redfield 1962:350–363.) ———. 1962. Human Nature and the Study of Society. Edited by Margaret Park Redfield. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Redfield, Robert, Ralph Linton, and Melville J. Herskovits. 1936. Memorandum for the Study of Acculturation. American Anthropologist 38:149–152. Redfield, Robert, and Alfonso Villa Rojas. 1934. Chan Kom: A Maya Village. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Riess, Suzanne. 1999. An Anthropologist’s Life in the Twentieth Century: Theory and Practice at the University of California Berkeley, the Smithsonian, in Mexico, and with the World Health Organization of George M. Foster. Berkeley ca: Regional Oral History Office. (http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:13030/kt7s2005ng) Rigdon, Susan M. 1988. The Culture Façade: Art, Science, and Politics in the Work of Oscar Lewis. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. American Anthropologists Discover Peasants

97

Rubinstein, Robert A. 1991. Doing Fieldwork: The Correspondence of Robert Redfield and Sol Tax. Boulder co: Westview. Scarpaci, J. 1973. Review of Milocca: A Sicilian Village, by Charlotte Gower Chapman. International Migration Review 7:212–213. Singer, Milton. 1991. Semiotics of Cities, Selves, and Cultures. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Smith, Robert J., and Ella Lury Wiswell. 1982. The Women of Suye Mura. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sorokin, Pitirim, Carle Zimmerman, and Charles Galpin. 1931. Source Book in Rural Sociology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Spicer, Edward H. 1940. Pascua. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1954. Potam. American Anthropological Association Memoir 77. Menasha wi: American Anthropological Association. ———. 1980. The Yaquis: A Cultural History. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 1988[1941–42]. People of Pascua. Ed. Kathleen Sands and Rosamond Spicer. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Steward, Julian H. 1956. The People of Puerto Rico: A Study in Social Anthropology. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ———. 1967. Contemporary Change in Traditional Societies. 3 vols. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Sullivan, Paul. 1989. Unfinished Conversations: Mayas and Foreigners between Two Wars. New York: Knopf. Tax, Sol. 1941. World View and Social Relations in Indian Guatemala. American Anthropologist 43:27–42. ———. 1952. Penny Capitalism: A Guatemalan-Indian Economy. Smithsonian Institution Publication in Social Anthropology 16. Washington dc: U.S. gpo. Thomas, W. I., and Florian Znaniecki. 1927[1918–20]. The Polish Peasant in America and Europe. New York: Knopf. Tumin, Melvin M. 1945. Culture, Genuine and Spurious: A Re-evaluation. American Sociological Review 10:199–207. ———. 1952. Caste in a Peasant Society. Princeton nj: Princeton University Press. Villa Rojas, Alfonso. 1945. The Maya of East Central Quintana Roo. Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication 559. Washington dc: Carnegie Institution of Washington. ———. 1979. Fieldwork in the Mayan Region of Mexico. In Long-Term Field Research in Social Anthropology. G. Foster et al., eds. Pp. 45–64. New York: Academic Press. Warner, W. Lloyd, and Paul S. Lunt. 1941. The Social Life of a Modern Community. New Haven ct: Yale University Press. Wirth, Louis. 1938. Urbanism as a Way of Life. American Journal of Sociology 44:1–24. Wolf, Eric R. 1955. Types of Latin American Peasantry. American Anthropologist 57:452– 471. ———. 1957. Closed Corporate Peasant Communities in Mesoamerica and Central Java. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 13:1–18. ———. 1966. Peasants. Toronto: Prentice-Hall. ———. 1969. Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century. New York: Harper and Row. Yang, Martin C. 1945. A Chinese Village, Taitou, Shantung Province. New York: Columbia University Press. Yoshino, I[kuro] Roger. 1954. Selected Social Changes in a Japanese Village, 1935–1953. PhD dissertation, University of Southern California. 98

Murray

4. Anthropology, the Cold War, and Intellectual History

Herbert S. Lewis

The growth of interest in the history of anthropology, of which this new annual is one manifestation, has at least two discernible motivations and ‘‘traditions.’’ One of these, called ‘‘disciplinary history’’ (by some of its opponents, in fact), arose from within the intellectual concerns of the field itself and owes a great deal to the writing and students of A. I. Hallowell.∞ George W. Stocking’s article ‘‘On the Limits of ‘Presentism’ and ‘Historicism’ in the Historiography of the Behavioral Sciences’’ (1965) stands as a manifesto for that approach, the attempt to study the past ‘‘in its own terms’’ in order to understand the origins of ideas, the contexts in which they grew, and the significant intellectual and personal histories of the subjects of their research. The second stream of writing about the history of the discipline had more of an exogenous origin, connected to the serious political, moral, and intellectual concerns that arose in America and much of the rest of the world in the 1960s, particularly as a result of the devastating events surrounding America’s war in Vietnam, the civil rights movement(s) in the United States, assassinations, and the struggles for independence of peoples in colonial areas. This approach to the study of the history of anthropology has been labeled ‘‘critical’’ for a number of reasons. For one, the earliest form of it came from a Marxian perspective, and the terms ‘‘critical’’ and ‘‘critique’’ are central to that tradition. (See the explicitly Marxist journals Critical Anthropology and Critique of Anthropology.) Kathleen Gough (1968) fired the opening salvo of this intellectual war and was followed by more than two dozen pieces in the often-cited collections edited by Dell Hymes (1969) and Talal Asad (1973). (See Desai 2001 for an original discussion of some of the key pieces in the debate.) The stream of ‘‘critique’’ of anthropology was widened by the revival of interest in the writers of the ‘‘Frankfurt school’’ and their ‘‘critical theory,’’ as well by the general influence of Michel Foucault and Orientalism (1978) by his acolyte, Edward Said. The growth of ‘‘the literary turn,’’

‘‘literary theory,’’ postmodernist, and postcolonial discourses produced a mighty river of critique of anthropology. The ‘‘critical’’ literature is heavily freighted with moral, ethical, and political commitments. According to Michael Payne, ‘‘critical theory’’ is dedicated to ‘‘the attempt to bring truth and political engagement into alignment’’ (Geuss 1981:1–2). ‘‘Critical theories have special standing as guides for human action in that: (a) they are aimed at producing enlightenment in the agents who hold them. (b) they are inherently emancipatory, i.e they free agents from a kind of coercion which is at least partly selfimposed’’ (Payne 1996:118). Anthropologists, with their unique direct involvement with the peoples of the world, especially the poorer and less powerful peoples, have been the object of suspicion of choice for many writers both within and outside the field.≤ Until recently the gaze of those in the ‘‘critique’’ tradition has been firmly fixed on anthropology’s putative connection to colonialism—resulting in what is one of the larger bibliographies in the canon and discourse of the past three decades—but there are signs that the critiques may soon turn to more recent events. The Cold War, itself the context in which these critiques first arose, is the most obvious of these. The Cold War serves as the basis for a chapter in Thomas C. Patterson’s recent book A Social History of Anthropology in the United States and for an invited session at the 2003 annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association. This essay had its origin in both the book and the aaa session, at which there were eight papers and two discussants. It is inevitable that works written from the ‘‘critical’’ and ‘‘critique’’ perspective will find that anthropology and anthropologists were complicit in the Cold War on the side of the United States and ‘‘the West.’’ My essay is intended as a contribution to the historiography of anthropology from the ‘‘disciplinary’’ perspective; it can also be seen as a preemptive strike, delivered in the knowledge that ‘‘critical histories’’ are being prepared.≥ Before I attempt to give my own subjective and partial view of that era, as a participant and observer, I shall discuss critically some of Thomas C. Patterson’s contentions regarding the extent to which the nature of anthropology itself—the topics dealt with and the guiding ideas (paradigms, theories, and discourses)—were influenced by the Cold War. Patterson’s approach is very much in the spirit of the genre, and some of the specific claims he makes are drawn from the literature of the critique of the social sciences of that era so we can get an idea of the nature of the discourse. (See, e.g., Berman 1983; Leacock 1982; Nader 1997; Simpson 1998.) 100

Lewis

Patterson on American Anthropologists and the Cold War Thomas C. Patterson’s book is explicitly Marxist in orientation, but it is unusual for a work in the critical tradition because the author respects those trends in the field and those individuals and works that he judges to be on the side of the (secular) angels. His anger is directed at the history, economy, and polity of the United States rather than at its anthropology. In the chapter on the Cold War, however, Patterson makes a number of claims that typify the genre—claims that implicate anthropology as a whole as well as certain individual anthropologists. David H. Price writes that Patterson ‘‘moves beyond whiggish just-so-stories, and hyper-reflexive particularistic histories, and provides a well-argued macro-historical analysis focusing on American anthropology’s implantation in historical forces beyond control of anthropological actors’’ (2002:805). What are some of these forces of political economy, and what was their impact on anthropology, according to Patterson? In chapter 4, ‘‘Anthropology in the Postwar Era, 1945—1973,’’ Patterson builds on the theme of America’s expanded role in the world and of the Cold War, which we are told was ‘‘precipitated by the United States and England and adopted by the other capitalist countries to halt the advance of socialism’’ (2001:103).∂ He writes, ‘‘Ideologies of anticommunism at home and national liberation movements abroad fueled the development of modernization theory and the construction of a Cold War anthropology underwritten by the Ford and Rockefeller foundations and the Fulbright program’’ (4). Patterson draws upon the works of several writers who claim that these foundations worked consistently to further the interests of the ruling capitalist class. He claims that in the 1930s the foundations funded work that was directed toward the maintenance of the economic and social order within the United States, but after the war they concentrated on the furtherance of the economic interests of American capital and the capitalist system around the world. Patterson insinuates that this had serious implications for anthropology in the postwar era—but he doesn’t demonstrate it. Granted, the relative wealth of financial support and encouragement that the foundations provided to students of anthropology (and all relevant fields) had the effect of liberating American anthropology from what had been, until World War II, its overwhelming dependence on the study of American Indians and Euro-American communities. But what other consequences did this support have for the field? Here are several of his claims. Anthropology, Cold War, and Intellectual History

101

1. Patterson quotes Edward Berman’s statement (1983) that ‘‘the foundations supported lines of inquiry—such as behavioralism and functionalism—that countered more radical social theories which had gained prominence during the Depression’’ (Patterson 2001:104). To what extent does this apply to anthropology? In fact, behavioralism was never of any consequence in anthropology, but neither is it likely that there was ‘‘radical social theory’’ in anthropology in the 1930s that needed to be throttled by these forces. It is true that the positions on race and racism taken by Franz Boas and publicly propagated by his many students during the 1930s seemed radical to the proponents of racial determinism, but I don’t think this is what Patterson has in mind. During the 1930s, the years of the Great Depression, many of the last students of Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict at Columbia had socialist and communist inclinations and were politically active. They fought against racism and fascism, and many were caught up in the Spanish Civil War. But leftist anthropologists such as Melville Jacobs, Alexander Lesser, Gene Weltfish, Jack Sargent Harris, Bernard Mishkin, Irving Goldman, Oscar Lewis, Morris Swadesh (at Yale), and others were still doing anthropology within the Boasian paradigm, carrying out studies of culture history, acculturation, kinship, language, art, and folklore. According to May Ebihara’s informant, ‘‘ ‘A distinction was made between one’s position as an anthropologist and as a private citizen’ ’’ (1985:112). Jack Harris wrote to his mentor and friend, Melville Herskovits, ‘‘I still think anthropology from the viewpoint of dialectical materialism would be a fruitful thing’’—but this was a pious wish rather than a workable plan (Madden 1999:6). Even the most socialist and Marxist among them were not applying dialectical materialism in their research, nor could Harris actually make use of it when he was confronted with the realities of the field, in either Nevada or Nigeria. Leslie White had converted to socialism by the 1930s, but he didn’t have a following for his revival of cultural evolution (which he derived from Morgan, Spencer, Marx, and Engels) until the late 1940s. When he did gain devoted followers, they all thrived mightily throughout the Cold War years.∑ As for functionalism, it was hardly the leading paradigm in American anthropology during the Cold War, though it did feature prominently in American sociology at that time. In any case, ‘‘functionalism’’ and ‘‘structural functionalism’’ certainly had a legitimate place in anthropological discussions. Theoretical perspectives associated with Emile Durkheim, Bronislaw Malinowski, A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, 102

Lewis

Raymond Firth, and a small host of smart British-trained anthropologists working in Africa and the Pacific could hardly be ignored. Nor can our interest in them be explained as the result of a plot by Ford or Rockefeller. Actually, functionalism was at the height of its (limited) popularity in the United States at the University of Chicago precisely during the Depression years, a decade before the Cold War. Its importance there had nothing to do with the great social and economic forces in play at the time; it was the result of the accidental presence of Radcliffe-Brown at that school for six years. David Price, like Leslie White before him, deplores the emphasis on ‘‘Big Men’’ and ‘‘Big Women’’ in histories of anthropology, insisting instead on the ‘‘political-economic interactions that formed the base of American anthropology’’ (2002:805), but real life does not always conform to our expectations.∏ 2. Patterson claims that ‘‘the rising tensions of the Cold War led the Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller foundations to consider carefully the relation between their overseas programs and the foreign-policy objectives of the United States government.’’ Implying a direct causal (and sinister) relationship, he writes, ‘‘The Ford Foundation provided $138 million dollars to fifteen American universities, all of which had doctoral programs in anthropology, to develop non-western language and area studies programs’’ (2001:115, emphasis added). He continues: ‘‘Many scholars in the newly established area and international studies had close ties with government agencies. For example, Max Millikan (1913–69), the first director of mit’s Center for International Studies . . . co-authored a report with Walt Rostow (b. 1916) for the Director of the cia regarding the economic policies the government should promote in Southeast Asia and the Far East’’ (2001:115). Perhaps we would be horrified by what Millikan and Rostow reported, but what does this tell us about those anthropologists who were doing research and teaching during that era? Patterson insinuates that the anthropologists who were funded by the Ford Foundation were working toward the same ends as Millikan and Rostow, but he offers no substantial supporting evidence. Patterson’s only discussion of anthropological involvement in the study of economic development in this era consists of two paragraphs devoted to Clifford Geertz’s research on ‘‘the historical development of the Javanese economy’’ (2001:116). Max Millikan was, in fact, the overall director of the Center for International Studies at mit, which funded the ‘‘Modjokuto Project’’ of which Geertz’s research was a part. But there is no indication that Geertz tailored his findings to suit the needs of Western capitalism, or that his sociocultural and historical account of the Javanese economy furthered, or could have furthered, American interests. Anthropology, Cold War, and Intellectual History

103

Geertz writes that when the five anthropologists participating in the project left for Java for fieldwork, Millikan’s center was not yet a going concern, ‘‘so its connection with the work [Geertz and his colleagues] did there—essentially historical and ethnographic, a refitted community study—was nominal at best.’’ He remarks, ‘‘The work of our team seemed, both to the Center staff and ourselves, to be rather to the side of the Center’s mission, inconsistent with its ‘applied’ emphasis and too concerned with what the program-minded types took to be parochial matters. We drifted away into writing our separate theses on religion, kinship, village life, market selling, and other irrelevancies’’ (2002:7). Geertz did devote more time to the problems of economy and politics of ‘‘new nations’’ during the following decade, but it hardly seems reasonable or sensible to consider that anyone who carried out research in ‘‘a country that was considered vulnerable to takeover by Communism’’ should be forever under a cloud of suspicion, of guilt by association. (Laura Nader, however, does so [1997:114].) Patterson tells us that Geertz ‘‘rejected materialist conceptions of history,’’ which the author clearly considers a negative quality, but there were quite a few social scientists who went to foreign countries under the auspices of the Ford Foundation who did embrace materialist conceptions of history. Since different Ford Fellows were free to choose from either side of this eternal debate, we can hardly accept the one case that Patterson reports as proving that anthropologists who accepted funding from the Ford Foundation were directed by forces they couldn’t control.π I was fortunate to receive funding for my doctoral research in Ethiopia in 1958–60, just halfway between the era of Joseph McCarthy and that of Eugene McCarthy. My project was a study of power and domination in a monarchical society, inspired by a line that ran from Karl Marx to Karl Wittfogel to Morton Fried. Carl Rosberg and Lloyd Fallers were on my selection committee, and I was never called on afterward to report my findings to any agency or to tailor my results in any way. In fact, it seemed as though nobody cared what I did. All I owed the foundation was a report of a few pages in length saying generally that I had been there and done that and an acknowledgement of their financial support in anything I might write based on that research. 3. There is an odd—but major—contradiction in this chapter. On the one hand, Patterson leads us to believe that anthropology was in thrall to the Cold War aims of the government and the foundations. ‘‘The discourses of established areas of learning were shaped and transformed in tandem with the changing needs of the state.’’ According to this view, anthropologists were funded and bidden to go forth and study the peoples 104

Lewis

of the world, ‘‘ ‘situated along the periphery of the Soviet-Communist orbit’ ’’ (2001:104)—using behavioralism and ‘‘modernization theory,’’ presumably. But on the other hand, he argues: The Cold War also shaped the milieu in which the profession of anthropology was reorganized, and its center of gravity was shifted from the public political culture of the country to the academy. In this milieu, anthropology was increasingly seen as a practice divorced from the pressing issues of the day; it was a profession concerned with the ancient and the exotic. Studies of fossil hominids, the archeology of ancient peoples, strange languages spoken by only a few dozen individuals, or the exotic customs of some remote tribe did little to dispel these perceptions as long as they remained only topics for cocktail parties and their significance was not clearly linked to broader issues that were of concern to the wider public. [2001:133] Patterson contends that there was an effort in the late 1940s to ‘‘eradicate . . . the progressive or overtly radical thrust [anthropology] had in the 1930s’’ by dividing it into four fields. In the event it was only muted, ‘‘partially suppressed but not completely eradicated’’ (106). My first reaction is that such a project of conscious division of the field for political purposes would require a degree of shrewdness, farsightedness, and organizational skill of a sort never seen in any anthropological or other social science circles throughout history. (Perhaps only God herself ever accomplished such a feat—at the Tower of Babel.) But more seriously, there has always been diversification and specialization within anthropology, from its inception, and the growing formal divisions were no more than the result of the inevitable specialization of disciplines as the consequence of growing knowledge and new methods—as predicted by Boas many years before. In the absence of any documentary evidence that such a cabal took place, I think this a pretty unlikely proposition. Second, I am surprised to see that an anthropologist—at base an archaeologist, I believe—thinks that ‘‘studies of fossil hominids, the archeology of ancient peoples, strange languages spoken by only a few dozen individuals, or the exotic customs of some remote tribe’’ are irrelevant or worthy of contempt. Why did, and how could, the historical forces beyond our control have made anthropologists both active tools of the Cold War struggle against socialism and irrelevant chasers after the ancient and exotic? This serious contradiction makes it seem as though Patterson is just looking for any stick with which to beat an old dog. Anthropology, Cold War, and Intellectual History

105

4. According to Patterson, ‘‘Certain subjects, such as Marxist contributions to anthropology or social thought, could not be discussed openly in the academy for fear of political reprisal.’’ But, paradoxically, later in the chapter he presents a series of major research projects that were inspired by Marx, or more accurately, by Marx and Engels following Lewis Henry Morgan. All these projects flourished during the height of the Cold War period. He cites the various forms of neoevolutionism inspired by Leslie White and the materialist cultural ecology of Julian Steward and his students. (These students included the quite openly Marxist Bob Manners [my first teacher], as well as Eric Wolf, Sidney Mintz, Elman Service, Morton Fried, John Murra, Eleanor Leacock, Marvin Harris, Stanley Diamond, and many others.) Patterson cites a number of major, highly regarded, archaeological projects by Gordon Willey, Robert Adams, Robert Braidwood, and Betty Meggers that also had materialist and evolutionary bases. He cites a piece by Eleanor Leacock, ‘‘Marxism and Anthropology,’’ that demonstrates just how much well-known and respected Marx-derived work there actually was during those years. But he singles out Leacock’s remark that ‘‘the influence of Marxist theory upon neoevolutionary formulations was complicated by the fact that until the 1960s it was virtually impossible for an academic to discuss Marxism as such’’ (Leacock 1982:249). Perhaps; but this is not exactly the handicap it might seem. Those who paid attention had no doubt of the spirit guiding her work on Montagnais-Naskapi hunting territories or Mort Fried’s Evolution of Political Society (1967) or Bob Manners’s critiques of functionalism (1952) and of Laura Thompson’s idealistic approach to Hopi culture (Manners 1956). There was an obvious genealogy leading from Julian Steward and his students’ People of Puerto Rico Project to Andre Gunder Frank’s ‘‘dependency theory.’’ It was clear to us from the beginning that the seminar we attended at Columbia in 1955–56 on ‘‘peasants and plantations in the Caribbean,’’ funded by the small, private Samuel Rubin Foundation, had its roots in the same theoretical and ideological imperatives (foundations).∫ Leslie White didn’t mind publishing his attacks on anthropologists who rejected Marxism. For example, he was wedded to the notion of ‘‘primitive communism,’’ and he interpreted the rejection of this idea by others as an attempt to defeat Marxism. White’s belief in the idea of ‘‘primitive communism’’ was based on ideology, and he could not understand that Lowie and the other Boasians (as well as Malinowski and his followers and even the German ‘‘culture historical school’’) objected to it after a critical consideration of ethnographic evidence. He wrote, ‘‘But so men106

Lewis

acing did the theory of primitive communism become, apparently, that members of three anthropological ‘schools’ have felt called upon to scotch it. [There’s a footnote here: ‘‘Because, no doubt, Karl Marx ‘adopted’ Morgan’s Ancient Society, and it became a socialist classic’’]. . . It would appear that an effort was being made to ‘make the world safe for private property’ ’’ (1959a:256).Ω White was even more explicit and outspoken in ‘‘The Concept of Evolution in Cultural Anthropology.’’ He wrote, ‘‘The use of evolutionist theory in general and Morgan’s theories in particular by Karl Marx and the radical socialist labor movement evoked powerful opposition from the capitalist system. Thus anti-evolutionism became a creed for certain sectors of society. Just as ‘social Darwinism’ became a philosophical justification of ruthless exploitation in the industrial field, so did anti-evolutionism become a philosophy in support of the church, private property, the family, and the capitalist state’’ (1959b:109). And Patterson reminds us that Elman Service boldly seized on an idea from Leon Trotsky, via Mao Zedong, in a work published in 1960. These Marx-inspired voices were coming to us from such remote places as Columbia University, the University of Michigan, the University of Illinois, City University of New York, and Brandeis University—to name just a few institutions that not only tolerated, but honored, them. Several anthropologists lost their jobs during the McCarthy era, but at least some of them, like Gene Weltfish and Morris Swadesh, were punished for their political activities, not their academic work or ideas. Neither Gene Weltfish nor Morris Swadesh, for example, used Marxist theory in their writings. As Leacock wrote of Weltfish, she was one of those Marxist scholars who ‘‘preferred to build their work on Boas’s humanistic devotion to ethnographic detail and concern for political relevance rather than on [Marxist] evolutionary theory as such’’ (1982:249). It would have been difficult for Swadesh to work Marxism into his theoretical and methodological work on glottochronology or his paper on ‘‘Morphophonemics and Variable Vowel-length in Tubatulabal.’’ In retrospect, perhaps we were fortunate to have been able to gain from all the intellectual work inspired by Marx while being spared the terrible turgid terminological and ideological debates and the horrible sectarian wars that seem to be the ubiquitous conditions of Marxist debate. To conclude this discussion based on Patterson’s book, under the circumstances and in light of the considerable bibliographical resources he draws upon, it is remarkable just how little of substance Patterson presents that implicates anthropology and anthropologists in collusion with the Cold Warriors of the West. Although the author repeatedly claims that Anthropology, Cold War, and Intellectual History

107

these political and economic forces were in control, most (not quite all) of the anthropology of the period that he discusses seems at least blameless, if not actually praiseworthy—by Patterson himself! Confessions of a Cold War–Era Anthropologist In the rest of this short essay I shall presume to speak for my cohort. During the Cold War most of us did not tailor our theories to suit Walt Rostow or to serve the interests of the cia, nor did we busy and bury ourselves in irrelevant projects in order to avoid controversy. (Obviously I can’t swear that no individuals did any of these things.) We didn’t studiously avoid saying aloud the name ‘‘Karl Marx.’’ Some of us were excited by Marxian approaches; the majority of us weren’t that impressed by Marx any more than we were by Durkheim. Until recently American anthropology borrowed very little from any of the major sociological theorists. There is a common self-congratulatory myth of recent origin that the ‘‘fathers of us all’’ were Marx, Durkheim, and Weber—but it wasn’t that way (cf. Murphy 1976:11).∞≠ We did take advantage of the new opportunities to do research in places undreamed of by earlier generations. We were motivated by the desire to learn about the cultures of the world, and we believed that it was absolutely essential to include all the world’s peoples in any serious attempt to understand human cultural and social behavior. We thought we were being scientific, searching for truth (and the truth would set us free), but we also believed, with Eric Wolf, that our quest was a deeply humane one, ‘‘that what is worth studying is human experience . . . understood as the experience of life’’ (1964:96; cf. Murphy 1976:19). David K. Madden writes that Melville Herskovits, ‘‘a Boasian who studied Africans and African-Americans, lured (Jack) Harris into anthropology by appealing to the seaman’s taste for the exotic and the socialist’s desire for racial equality’’ (1999:1). Making due allowance for the terrible stigma attached to the term exotic, this isn’t a bad way to describe how many of us felt. We thought it would be really great to see how people lived in Ethiopia, Cambodia, Trinidad, Bengal, Japan, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, on the pampas—and all over the world. The prevailing attitude in ‘‘our crowd’’ was pro-people, antiracist, anticolonial (certainly among the Africanists), generally left-liberal, and skeptical about government and political cant. To return briefly to the crucial matter of our theoretical perspectives, as George Stocking wrote, speaking of developments in theory from the 1930s through the 1960s, ‘‘There has been no sharp break. Most of the diversification of the 1950s and 60s had its roots in developments already 108

Lewis

in evidence prior to 1945’’ (1976:44).∞∞ Picking up where Stocking left off (introducing the succeeding volume of collected papers from the aa), Robert F. Murphy came to similar conclusions in his survey of the work and theories of anthropologists from 1946 to 1970, a period that is almost exactly the same as the one covered in Patterson’s chapter 4. The Cold War gave us the opportunity to go out into the world beyond the United States, but it had little impact on our approaches and our theories. If anything, it made many of us more aware of issues of power and created a climate in which materialist and neoevolutionary views could flourish—alongside the ‘‘structural-functional,’’ the psychological, the symbolic, the structuralist, and, near the end of the period, ‘‘actororiented’’ approaches. But there was no change that occurred in anthropology from 1945 to 1968 that can begin to compare to what happened to the field after ‘‘ParisBerkeley-Madison 1968.’’ Except for the coming of Franz Boas to America in 1886, nothing ever affected the direction, the theoretical perspectives, the paradigms, and the nature and personality of American anthropology the way that the politics and emotions of that era did. And while the Boasian revolution really was the result of one ‘‘great man’’ appearing on the scene at a critical moment, the major changes of the late 1960s and 1970s came from the emotions, the anger, and the suspicions of ‘‘the people’’—from below. In neither case were these great changes the product of ‘‘the great forces of political economy.’’ Almost forty years after the summer of 1968, it is time to step back and take a more critical and historicist view of that academic revolution that created the current hegemonic discourses that claim the right to represent anthropology’s past. Notes This paper was read at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, 2003, in Chicago, Illinois, at a session titled ‘‘Anthropology at the Dawn of the Cold War.’’ 1. See Hallowell’s ‘‘History of Anthropology as an Anthropological Problem’’ (1965) and the writings of such scholars as George Stocking, Regna Darnell, Jacob Gruber, and others who studied with Hallowell at the University of Pennsylvania. 2. There is a third stream: presentist history written for the sake of the writer’s current theoretical position. Its locus classicus is Marvin Harris’s magisterial tract The Rise of Anthropological Theory: The Struggle for a Science of Culture (1968). 3. For example, aside from Patterson’s book, to be discussed here, Antonio LauriaPerricelli has written about Julian Steward and the People of Puerto Rico Project (originally published as Steward 1956), and Thomas Patterson and Lauria-Perricelli have published a paper about Steward’s ideas regarding ‘‘area studies’’ (1999). Eric Ross (2003) is writing about applied anthropology, peasants, and Cornell University’s Vicos project. Project Camelot and the controversy over the activities of anthropologists in Thailand received a Anthropology, Cold War, and Intellectual History

109

great deal of attention in the late 1960s and will undoubtedly be rediscovered before long. (David H. Price has devoted himself primarily to research about the difficulties of outspoken left-wing anthropologists during the 1950s. See Price 2004.) 4. Patterson offers no support for this rather brief and stark statement of what was surely a more complex historical reality than can be encompassed in these two lines. 5. Most of these young followers were also Columbia alumni who had grown up in the Depression and carried over the socialist and more radical views from their homes and social milieu into their anthropology after the war. 6. I would urge that we take a more critical view of the uninterrogated ahistorical myths about functionalism and its role in colonialism that have been perpetrated on the public beginning with Talal Asad’s collection (1973). These consist of wishful thinking rather than analyses of the history and uses of the concept. See Lewis 2004. We should also beware of the idea that ‘‘modernization theory’’ necessarily has evil connotations. I began teaching against the notion as early as 1963, but to be fair, as an idea on which to base research, it was neither unreasonable nor evidence of a capitalist plot. It is ultimately derived from the same tradition as Marxian evolutionism, with which it shares a great deal. Said Karl Marx, ‘‘The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future’’ (from Capital ). Cf. Bendix 1967. 7. Here is a very short list of a few anthropologists (and a couple of sociologists and a political scientist), mostly Africanists, whose early research was supported by the Ford Foundation. I intend no invidious implications with this selection; I hope that these people will be considered above reproach, innocent of collusion with the forces of reaction. The Marxist proclivities of a number of these scholars were clear at the time they applied for their grants. (Further identifications supplied on request.) Donald Barnett Ronald Cohen James Fernandez Marvin Harris John Howard Conrad Kottak I. L. Markovitz (political science) Gloria Marshall aka Nyara Sudakarsa Robert F. Murphy Bridget O’Laughlin William A. Shack Jack Stauder Immanuel Wallerstein (sociology) Henry Rosenfeld Gerald Berreman Richard G. Fox Diane K. Lewis Michael T. Taussig (sociology!) Maurice Zeitlin (sociology) 8. Sam and Vera Rubin had begun importing small amounts of fine soap from France in the 1930s, then wrapping it at home, and selling it door to door. Their enterprise eventuated in Faberge Perfume and related capitalist enterprises. They lived in the radical gilded ghetto of Croton-on-Hudson, New York, with similarly inclined people, and they generously funded many educational and political causes. Vera received her PhD in anthropology with the same cohort as Steward’s other Columbia students. 110

Lewis

9. Unfortunately, because the notion of ‘‘primitive communism’’ was fundamental to both romantic thought and Marxian doctrine, there were numerous attempts to force peasants to return to a state of primitive communism. This usually wrought serious economic havoc and immiseration (as in Julius Nyerere’s Tanzania) or else caused unknown millions of deaths (as in Stalin’s Soviet Union and Pol Pot’s Cambodia). For a milder example, see Grant Evans (1990) on the imposition of collectivization on the peasants of Laos in the 1970s by the Marxist elite of that country. 10. Although anthropology was very often housed in joint departments with sociology, as it still is in smaller schools, this was not the case at the turn of the century at the great ‘‘founding’’ schools: Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of California at Berkeley. The relationship between sociologists and anthropologists was closest somewhat later at the University of Chicago and then at Harvard, where the Department of Social Relations was founded in 1948. (See Gleach 2002 for an account of the joint department at the University of Wisconsin in the 1920s and 1930s.) I believe I was one of the earliest American anthropologists to apply Max Weber’s ideas about ‘‘traditional authority’’ to the analysis of a political system, in the late 1950s, a couple of years later than the British-trained Aidan Southall and Fredrik Barth and the American Africanist Lloyd A. Fallers. 11. Nor does Robert F. Murphy’s introduction to the volume of selected papers from the next period, 1946–70, reveal any theoretical developments that might be a result of the Cold War (Murphy 1976).

References Asad, Talal. 1973. Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter. London: Ithaca Press. Bendix, Reinhard. 1967. Tradition and Modernity Reconsidered. Comparative Studies in Society and History 9(3): 292–346. Berman, Edward H. 1983. The Influence of the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations on American Foreign Policy: The Ideology of Philanthropy. Albany: suny Press. Desai, Gaurav. 2001. Subject to Colonialism: African Self-Fashioning and the Colonial Library. Durham nc: Duke University Press. Ebihara, May. 1985. American Ethnology in the 1930s: Contexts and Currents. In Social Contexts of American Ethnology, 1840–1948. June Helm, ed. Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society. Pp. 102–121. Washington dc: American Ethnological Society. Evans, Grant. 1990. Lao Peasants under Socialism. New Haven ct: Yale University Press. Fried, Morton H. 1967. The Evolution of Political Society: An Essay in Political Anthropology. New York: Random House. Geertz, Clifford. 2002. An Inconstant Profession: The Anthropological Life in Interesting Times. Annual Review of Anthropology 31:1–19. Geuss, Raymond. 1981. The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gleach, Frederic W. 2002. Anthropologists-in-Training at the University of Wisconsin, 1925–30. Paper delivered at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association, November 2002. Gough, Kathleen. 1968. Anthropology and Imperialism. Monthly Review 19(11): 12–27. (Featured on the cover as ‘‘Anthropology: Child of Imperialism.’’ Reprinted in 1968 as ‘‘New Proposals for Anthropologists,’’ Current Anthropology, 9:403–407.) Hallowell, A. I. 1965. The History of Anthropology as an Anthropological Problem. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 1:24–38. Anthropology, Cold War, and Intellectual History

111

Harris, Marvin. 1968. The Rise of Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of Culture. New York: Crowell. Hymes, Dell. 1969. Reinventing Anthropology. New York: Random House. Leacock, Eleanor. 1954. The Montagnais ‘‘Hunting Territory’’ and the Fur Trade. American Anthropological Association Memoir 78. Menasha wi: American Anthropological Association. ———. 1982. Marxism and Anthropology. In The Left Academy: Marxist Scholarship on American Campuses. Bertell Ollman and Edward Vernoff, eds. Pp. 242–276. New York: McGraw-Hill. Lewis, Herbert S. 2004. Imagining Anthropology’s History. Reviews in Anthropology 33:243–261. Madden, David K. 1999. A Radical Anthropologist at Work in the Columbia Anthropology Department, 1936–37. History of Anthropology Newsletter 26(2): 1–10. Manners, Robert A. 1952. Anthropology and ‘‘Culture in Crisis.’’ American Anthropologist 54:127–134. ———. 1956. Functionalism, Realpolitik, and Anthropology in Underdeveloped Areas. America Indigena 16:113–126. Murphy, Robert F. 1976. Introduction: A Quarter Century of American Anthropology. In Selected Papers from the American Anthropologist, 1946–1970. Robert F. Murphy, ed. Pp. 1–22. Washington dc: American Anthropological Association. Nader, Laura. 1997. The Phantom Factor: Impact of the Cold War on Anthropology. In The Cold War and the University. Noam Chomsky, ed. Pp. 107–146. New York: New Press. Patterson, Thomas C. 2001. A Social History of Anthropology in the United States. Oxford: Berg. Patterson, Thomas C., and Antonio Lauria-Perricelli. 1999. Julian Steward and the Construction of Area-Studies Research in the United States. In Julian Steward and the Great Basin: The Making of an Anthropologist. R. O. Clemmer, L. D. Myers, and M. E. Rudden, eds. Pp. 219–240. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Payne, Michael. 1996. Critical Theory. In A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory. Michael Payne, ed. Pp. 118–119. Oxford: Blackwell. Price, David H. 2002. Review of A Social History of Anthropology in the United States, by Thomas C. Patterson. Man 8(4): 805–806. ———. 2004. Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and the fbi’s Surveillance of Activist Anthropologists. Durham nc: Duke University. Ross, Eric. 2003. Peasants on Our Minds: Creating the Myth of Peasant Conservatism during the Cold War. Paper delivered at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association, November 2003. Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Service, Elman. 1960. The Law of Evolutionary Potential. In Evolution and Culture. Marshall D. Sahlins and Elman R. Service, eds. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Simpson, Christopher, ed. 1998. Universities and Empire: Money and Politics in the Social Sciences during the Cold War. New York: New Press. Steward, Julian H., ed. 1956. The People of Puerto Rico: A Study in Social Anthropology. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Stocking, George W., Jr. 1965. On the Limits of ‘‘Presentism’’ and ‘‘Historicism’’ in the Historiography of the Behavioral Sciences. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 1:53–66. ———. 1976. Ideas and Institutions in American Anthropology: Toward a History of the Interwar Period. In Selected Papers from the American Anthropologist, 1921– 112

Lewis

1945. George W. Stocking, ed. Pp. 1–44. Washington dc: American Anthropological Association. White, Leslie A. 1959a. The Evolution of Culture. New York: McGraw-Hill. ———. 1959b. The Concept of Evolution in Anthropology. In Evolution and Anthropology: A Centennial Appraisal. Betty J. Meggers, ed. Pp. 106–125. Washington dc: Anthropological Society of Washington. Wolf, Eric. 1964. Anthropology: Humanistic Scholarship in America. Englewood Cliffs nj: Prentice-Hall.

Anthropology, Cold War, and Intellectual History

113

5. Bernhard Stern and Leslie A. White on the Church and Religion

William J. Peace and David H. Price

It is necessary to link the fight against the church and religion with the fight against capitalism and imperialism. As long as capitalism exists religion and the churches will be used for the ends of the capitalist class. Bernhard Stern, The Church and the Workers

Spurred by the appalling social and economic conditions of the Great Depression, radical politics experienced a florescence in America in the 1930s. The belief that a revolution could take place in the United States did not seem far fetched, and many Americans believed capitalism was doomed to collapse. Evidence that capitalism in general and American society in particular were breaking apart was impossible to miss as poverty abounded, strikes occurred frequently and were violently suppressed, and unprecedented unemployment spread unrest. By the end of the 1930s, the American Federation of Labor claimed to have 4,250,000 members and an estimated 2 million other workers were in independent unions. While the American economy eventually recovered, thanks in large part to the New Deal and World War II, the decade produced lasting institutions and ongoing problems, foremost among them a welfare state, a Red scare, a multitude of state and federal regulations, and unprecedented expenditures for a vast military industrial complex. The collapse of the capitalist economy gave American radical politics central importance and gave voice to Marxist and socialist alternatives for the future. It was painfully clear change was in order—people were starving, and many were convinced that capitalism and the large corporate institutions they spawned could not be trusted. A premium was placed on analyses that sought to explain why a few wealthy industrialists were rich beyond comprehension, while the people they employed were starving and living in squalid tenements. Why was it, William Z. Foster questioned, that in the land of plenty, workers went hungry and could not afford to heat their homes despite the fact clothes were readily available

and an abundance of food was produced? Anthropologists and sociologists naturally sought to explain not only why conditions were so bad in the United States but also actively tried to change the way people thought and acted. They were drawn to Marxist and socialist organizations because ‘‘they were the only ones in America speaking out against abuses of Nazism; as such they enlisted considerable support especially from Jewish intellectuals in the New York area. Anthropologists at Columbia, at City College of New York, and the New School for Social Research—even including the great Boas—lent their support to Marxist causes’’ (Adams 1998:344). Of those scholars politically and academically active during the 1930s, two are of particular interest: Leslie A. White and Bernhard Stern.∞ Whereas other scholars refrained from incorporating Marxist theory into their anthropological writings, Stern and White did so openly. Both men were closely associated with radical politics and activism—Stern was a member of the Communist Party (cp), while White was a member of the Socialist Labor Party (slp). Each wrote under a pseudonym, Stern as Bennett Stevens and White as John Steel. They were also persecuted by the universities that employed them and were investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Given their respective interest in radical politics and even similarities in their argumentative writing styles, one would expect Stern and White to be academic and political allies. This was not the case. Quite the contrary, they disliked each other and scoffed at each other’s work. This is ironic in that they shared similar political views and their research interests were strikingly similar. Each man was drawn to evolutionary theory and interested in the career and work of Lewis Henry Morgan. They were also extremely critical of organized religion and severely critiqued the Catholic Church. Stern’s and White’s most radical writings about religion and the Catholic Church were produced during the 1930s under their respective pseudonyms and are largely unknown. Their work will form the corpus of our essay and will be divided into the following sections: a discussion of how Stern and White came to be associated with the slp and the cp; their respective views of the church; the role of class and the church; the social significance of the church as an institution with regard to private property and social change; and, finally, the implications of their views and actions with regard to their public opinions about the church. ‘‘John Steel’’ and ‘‘Bennett Steven’’ It is unknown exactly how Leslie White came to join the slp. However, during his junior year at Columbia, he began to identify himself as a Stern and White on the Church and Religion

115

radical. White considered himself a man of action, and during a snowy walk in Riverside Park, he decided to dedicate himself to radical politics. This decision led him to read the ‘‘Marxist literature’’ in the most general sense. He also attended meetings of various Marxist and socialist organizations—none of which impressed him. After he graduated, he continued to seek out radical political organizations in the hope they would engage him politically and academically. He found such an organization in the mid to late 1920s. While working at the University of Buffalo, he was introduced to the slp by his close friend Marvin Farber, a philosopher and party member. The first direct and very public evidence that White had an intense interest in the slp and the work of Daniel DeLeon dates from 1931. In December 1930, White delivered a paper titled ‘‘An Anthropological Appraisal of the Russian Revolution’’ at the combined meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Folklore Society, and the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. White’s address made the front page of the New York Times largely because he forcefully argued that the capitalist system was doomed. This pronouncement was soon blazoned across the headlines of many newspapers. The publicity his paper garnered almost got him fired at the University of Michigan and made his identity known to the leaders of the slp, who were tremendously impressed by his analysis. Archival evidence suggests that White was seriously considering a career as a radical politician at the time he gave his aforementioned talk.≤ White’s fledgling career as an anthropologist was barely off the ground, and he had just changed jobs (he went from the University of Buffalo to the University of Michigan). His position was not secure; John Effinger, dean of the College of Literature, Arts, and Sciences at Michigan, did not predict a long tenure for White (White went on to teach at Michigan for 40 years). Like White’s entry into radical politics, the date Stern joined the cp and his reasons for doing so are hard to identify. It is most likely that Stern joined the cp with a cohort of other intellectual friends to discuss social, economic, and political issues. Stern wanted to become part of a larger group that would not make token changes in the status quo but revolutionize and improve the plight of the average American during the depths of the Depression. Prior to his joining the party, Charlotte Stern, Bernhard’s wife, described him as being an independent radical between 1925 and 1934. Stern was pro labor, an outspoken critic of organized religion, and supported causes such as the defense of Sacco and Vanzetti. Stern joined the party in the mid 1930s, probably in 1934 or 1935. He was an active member until 1941 or 1942. Stern’s activities and interest in 116

Peace and Price

the party waned in the 1940s, though he attended party functions as late as 1947. Both Stern and White were gifted and controversial teachers—a skill that did not endear them to some of their peers and university administrators. White had a full professorship for much of his career—though his promotion to full professor was denied for a decade. I hasten to add here that when Michigan administrators contacted White’s colleagues outside the university for recommendations, they were appalled he had not been granted such a promotion many years earlier. In contrast to White, Stern struggled his entire career for full-time work. Despite being a gifted teacher and compiling a distinguished record of publications, Stern held only one full-time position—and he was fired from that job. Stern’s scholarly contribution to sociology remains controversial, and according to Bloom, the political problems of the last decade of his life cloud our understanding of how productive his entire career was (Bloom 1990:24). White’s legacy within anthropology is also controversial and hotly contested at times. Indeed, he is remembered as much for the rhetoric of his arguments as for their content. Unlike White, who came to the attention of the fbi late in the Cold War, Stern was hounded by the fbi for many years and subjected to intense fbi and congressional investigation for his radical politics. The first indication Stern had that he would be of significant interest to the fbi came in 1948—despite the fact the fbi had been investigating him for almost a decade. The most serious attack on Stern came in 1952, when he was called before the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security under the direction of Senator Pat McCarran. The following year he was called before another congressional committee, this one investigating the ‘‘Subversive Influence in the Educational Process.’’ Stern stated to both committees that he was not a member of the cp after 1947. He refused to comment about his affiliations prior to 1947.≥ After Stern’s appearance before government committees, Columbia University initiated its own investigation. The Columbia Committee on Conference had six members, all full professors, and was created to protect faculty members from groups outside the university. This group sent a report to the president of the university and fully supported Stern, and unlike other Columbia professors such as Gene Weltfish, who was fired, Stern retained his position. While Stern was not fired nor did he have hard feelings toward Columbia, in retrospect it appears he was marginalized and shunted to the general studies evening program for the rest of his career. Like White at Michigan, the university tolerated Stern’s presence but offered little support. Indeed, some universities used people such as White, Stern, and other radicals as tokens so they could declare they were committed to academic freedom. Stern and White on the Church and Religion

117

White’s and Stern’s (Dis)Respective Views of the Church White’s and Stern’s critical views of the church and its role in the capitalist system could not have been well received by the fbi. During the 1930s, fbi director J. Edgar Hoover instituted a policy of recruiting agents who professed devout religious beliefs. It is logical to assume that any vigorous antireligious writings were extremely troublesome to many fbi agents. While the Constitution’s guaranteed separation of Church and State was a matter of law, agents with deep religious convictions must have been offended by White’s and Stern’s writing and quick to determine they were a serious threat to national security. Another variable was the tone of their work. Under the pseudonym John Steel, White forcefully argued that anthropology was unique in that it was possible to discern trends in the development of civilization. Anthropology provided a self-conscious, rational, and humane way of understanding the transition from one type of society to another. This is why White felt that the slp was important. Through the slp in particular and Marxist science and philosophy in general, humankind could find its way out of the current economic crisis. In White’s mind, it was a ‘‘race between education and catastrophe’’ (White [Steel] 1933b). He echoed these sentiments two years earlier in a letter to Elsie Clews Parsons, a radical in many ways herself, writing, ‘‘It seems to me that no one is so well equipped as the anthropologist to understand the present and to foresee the future. And I think he should render this service to society as best he can’’ (June 13, 1931). Given anthropology’s sweeping view of history and culture, White concluded that the capitalist system was not the best political system and was doomed to extinction via ‘‘martial suicide.’’ He also maintained that the gross inequalities in the capitalist system were not beneficial to the vast majority of people and decried the fact that people were exploited at the behest of a few wealthy industrialists. White pointed out that all capitalist institutions—the church included—misled people and served as the handmaiden of the state. Stern’s writings under the pseudonym Bennett Steven were similar to White in that he too stressed the inherent injustices of the capitalist system and the church’s historic links to the ruling class. Stern used provocative language and a confrontational analysis to highlight how the church stressed the importance of obeying employers, not making trouble, and remaining obedient to one’s superiors because the earthly economic and social order was also a creation of God. Stern and White utilized a jovially aggressive and sarcastic tone in their pseudonymous writings. We are left to speculate what fbi agents thought when they read passages such as 118

Peace and Price

The doctrines and rituals of the churches are powerful means of developing attitudes of subservience among the workers. . . . The worker is taught to reconcile himself to his poverty. . . . A supernatural power is pictured that will punish workers if they disobey the rules of order and self respect which their rulers have established to keep them docile and expedient. Capitalism and its laws and practices are taught to be God-given creations; it becomes irreligious and wicked to challenge them. Workers thwarted and depressed by the misery under capitalism are drawn to the churches by the social and recreational activities which the churches offer as a means of extending their influence. The church takes advantage of the desire of the workers to escape from the drabness of their lives. It offers warmth, music, and comfortable surroundings as an attractive contrast to the barren, cold, and dreary workers’ quarters. Religious ritual with its mystic emotionalism is given as solace and consolation to offset the monotony of the hard working day. Workers are given glowing promises of bliss in the future ‘‘kingdom of heaven’’ which divert their attention from efforts to change conditions here. Rewards after death are promised to those workers who are ‘‘loyal servants of the Lord’’ and of their employers, and those who are rebellious are warned of future punishment. By these means the churches attempt to dull any active organized expressions of protest by the workers against their poverty. [Stern (Stevens) 1932:3–4] The Role of Class and the Church Stern and White believed that the average American was misled and brainwashed by priests, politicians, and capitalists such as Henry Ford and other wealthy industrialists. They believed they had a moral obligation to report the truth so that workers would understand how capitalists and the church worked hand in hand with each other. For instance, White believed that the working class needed to know who their friends and enemies were in preparation for the next social revolution. Foremost among the enemies of the working class was the church, and it was important that the masses recognize that the church was an ‘‘enemy’’ rather than the savior it pretended to be. Obviously influenced by Lewis Henry Morgan, White was contemptuous of organized religion, especially the Roman Catholic Church. In many sections of Extracts from the European Travel Journal of Lewis Henry Stern and White on the Church and Religion

119

Morgan, edited by White, he provided examples of Morgan’s severe strictures of the church’s pomp, medieval practices, and the superstitions it fostered. Echoing Morgan, White viewed the Roman Catholic Church as a mere ‘‘nest of aristocracy, the advocate and apologist of unequal rights among men, of the rights of kings to govern, of feudalism to seize, and of priests to ravage and burden society, invariably casting in with kings and privileged classes and against any and all movements to ameliorate the political condition of the masses’’ (White 1937).∂ White analyzed the role the Catholic Church played in class politics in two notable essays published in the Weekly People—‘‘Two Portraits of Jesus’’ and ‘‘The Church and the Working Class’’ (White [Steel] 1934a,b)—as well as in a number of unpublished essays. In ‘‘Two Portraits of Jesus,’’ written during the Christmas season, White analyzed two irreconcilable portraits of Jesus drawn from the New Testament Gospels. In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5), Jesus is pictured as a loyal servant and defender of the current social order. He tells people to be humble, patient, and obedient, and in return for their suffering and servitude, they will receive a heavenly reward. In sharp contrast, Jesus attacked the priests and scribes and denounced them as ‘‘serpents’’ and ‘‘offspring of vipers’’ (Matthew 23:33). White went on to quote several passages from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke in which Jesus championed the cause of the poor and called for the abolishment of private property. To White these disparate portraits of Jesus were important because ‘‘they are the products of different periods in the historical development of Christianity. At its inception, Christianity was revolutionary, militant, and communistic. It is this period that gives us the portrait of the revolutionist’’ (White [Steel] 1933a). As Christianity evolved, however, it became necessary for bishops to administer its business affairs, and as they became more powerful, the New Testament was used to ‘‘standardize belief and the theory of apostolic succession was proclaimed.’’ Over time, the bishops gained a ‘‘monopoly’’ on salvation, and small congregations became institutionalized into ‘‘a Church where the prophets and teachers have given way to bishops and priests, and the revolutionary Jesus has become metamorphosed into his opposite. The Sermon on the Mount is the expression of alliance of the bishops with the Emperors. Jesus is drafted into the service of despots. . . . It is the Sermon on the Mount, painted by the hands of Church sycophants that the regime of class rule might endure. And that is the chief function of the churchmen today’’ (White 1930–31). While White utilized the Bible to support his views of class exploitation, Stern used the writings of several popes to illustrate similar views. In The Church and the Workers, Stern quotes Pope Leo XIII and Pope Pius XI to 120

Peace and Price

illustrate the church’s view that workers should be complacent, accept their life as laborers, and toil for a wealthy few without question. According to Stern, encyclical statements by Pope Leo XIII and Pope Pius XI were nothing more than a means of social control. Both Stern and White objected to statements such as that of Pius XI in his Quadragesimo Anno: ‘‘The differences in social conditions in the human family which were wisely decreed by the Creator, must not and cannot ever be abolished. . . . All opposition between the classes must cease and harmonious collaboration must be established between the various groups. . . . All must work together, therefore, for the common good in complete harmony and discipline, each at his own post in his own sphere, seeking only the interests of food and the kingdom of Jesus Christ’’ (Stern [Stevens] 1932:17). Stern’s writing under the pseudonym Bennett Stevens provides a forceful argument that the Catholic and Protestant churches’ support of capitalism had a long history. Moreover, both White and Stern objected to the role the church played in suppressing labor movements and the rights of the masses. Stern wrote: The churches have always used their influence and resources to maintain reactionary rulers in power. The Peasants’ Revolts at the close of the middle ages against the feudal princes were crushed by great slaughter with the active aid of both the Catholic and Protestant leaders. During the revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe when the rising bourgeoisie was arrayed against the landed aristocracy and monarchy, the churches again joined the reactionary forces. The French Revolution of 1789 and the revolutions of 1848 throughout Europe were all surging with anti-church spirit because the churches, as buttresses of the established order, passionately resisted the rise of the middle-class. But when the bourgeoisie became the ruling class, it in turn allied itself with the churches against the rising working class. In all capitalist countries the workers, fighting against those who profit from their toil, against those who are responsible for their poverty, for unemployment, for low wages, and miserable working and living conditions, find the churches directly and indirectly aiding the capitalist rules. [Stern (Stevens) 1932:3] Stern and White believed the church prevented the masses from focusing on the inherent injustices of class and the capitalist system. The reasons for this were simple: under capitalism, owners of production reaped huge dividends by fusing religious dogma with factory-floor mandates. To Stern and White on the Church and Religion

121

highlight this point, Stern cited John E. Edgerton, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, who stated: ‘‘I am proud to say that morning prayer exercises in my factory have had the finest economic effects. Workers are producing far more goods than before the prayer system started some years ago. We have made it almost impossible for any one but a Christian to get a job. We have been able by that process to keep our plant free of trouble’’ (Stern [Stevens] 1932:6). Stern characterized such talk as ‘‘lubricating oil to speed up the workers’’ and render them ‘‘pliant to increase exploitation’’ (6). Not content with simply enhancing the productivity of workers, the church also actively opposed strikes. Stern cited several specific examples. For instance, on the day the Seattle general strike was called in 1919, one hundred church delegates in convention in Seattle, in their attempt to stir up sentiment against the strikers, issued a statement resolving that the church ‘‘deplores the spirit of strike and confusion; that it commends to all men the solution of all social problems by the simple application of the principles enunciated by, and of the spirit of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.’’ Before and during the strike the churches did everything in their power to break the militant spirit of the workers by urging their members not to participate. They violently denounced the leaders of the strike as being in the pay of Moscow. [Stern (Stevens) 1932:11] In analyzing the Catholic view of private property and capitalism, Stern and White each illustrated the Catholic Church’s view regarding the state’s role in protecting the unequal distribution of private property: [The primary purpose of the state is] the safeguarding by legal enactment and policy of private property. Most of all it is essential in these times of covetous greed, to keep the multitude within the line of duty. . . . Neither justice nor the common good allows any one under the pretest of futile and ridiculous equality to lay hands on other people’s fortunes. . . . There are not a few who are imbued with bad principles and are anxious for revolutionary change. . . . The authority of the state should intervene to put restraint upon these disturbers. [Stern (Stevens) 1932:16] The Church as a Social Institution Marx inspired White to analyze the role the church played in American society for two reasons: first, people were under the assumption that the 122

Peace and Price

church and the state were separate entities. White characterized this belief as a ‘‘fairy tale,’’ pointing out that there are ‘‘church lobbies in Washington—Catholic and Protestant and political campaigns are often likened to ‘crusades’ ’’ (White 1926:4). Second, White was convinced ‘‘the time may not be far distant when a revolutionary crisis may be precipitated in the United States’’ (White [Steel] 1934a). In a long two-part article titled ‘‘The Church and the Working Class’’, White confined his discussion to the church as a social institution. He demonstrated that the church was tremendously wealthy, and he considered the church’s wealth a monstrosity amassed at the expense of those steeped in poverty. Obviously influenced by Morgan, White argued that the church was an ‘‘upstart aristocracy’’ and that a priest had no business being a man of rank or a pope a sovereign ruler. White was appalled that church officials lived in palatial structures, noting that their true profession called for them to live a life of humility, frugality, and Christian simplicity. He pointed out that that while priests, rabbis, and ministers dined on fine food and wine, millions of their followers lived in squalor, ignorance, disease, and unrequited labor. White was convinced religion was useless and that the church was a detriment if not a curse to society. White wrote that wealth is one of the greatest motives in its existence and private property is the chief force that holds the denominations together. Let no one suppose that all Baptists, Catholics, Methodists and Jews are united in their respective creeds. Far from it. . . . The tie that binds, blest so often in hymns, appears to be nothing neither more nor less than private property. . . . It is easy to see that the church has virtually nothing to do with religious belief, but that property has almost everything to do with the church. When the great tap-root, private property, is cut the church will wither away as rapidly as the state. [White (Steel) 1934b] White claimed the church’s net worth was close to $7 billion in 1934. (He cites the 1926 Census of Religious Bodies.) The church was thus, in his opinion, the largest ‘‘industry’’ in the United States, with more assets and income than Ford Motor, General Electric, Standard Oil, Anaconda Copper, Bethlehem Steel, Reynolds Tobacco, American Can, and Proctor and Gamble combined! White’s point that religion was big business was highlighted by Stern, who provided quantitative data about the size and wealth of American Catholic and Protestant churches and Jewish synagogues (ca. 1926) and briefly discussed J. P. Morgan’s and J. D. Rockefeller’s monetary investment in Protestant causes. Stern provided a table that he claimed represented the value and expenses of ‘‘some of the largest sects in the United States in 1926’’ (Stern [Stevens] 1932:7). Stern and White on the Church and Religion

123

Table 5.1 Value and expenses of ‘‘some of the largest sects in the United States in 1926’’

Churches

Value of church property

Roman Catholic Methodist Baptist Presbyterian Episcopal Lutheran Congregational Jewish

$837,271,050 $654,736,975 $469,827,795 $443,572,158 $314,596,738 $273,409,748 $162,222,552 $97,401,688

Expenses $204,526,487 $152,151,978 $98,045,096 $87,535,390 $44,790,130 $59,500,845 $25,820,342 $19,076,451

Source: Stern (Stevens) 1932:7

Both White and Stern argued that much of the church’s income was received from the rich ‘‘in return for its efforts to keep the working class in subjection.’’ Stern, however, went further than White in his premise that the church blamed the ‘‘starving and penniless workers’’ for the Depression. Stern cited the joint pronouncement by American Catholic cardinals, archbishops, and bishops proclaiming that the Depression’s widespread unemployment was the result of ‘‘lack of good will’’ and ‘‘neglect of Christ’’ and that the solution to these economic problems would be a needed ‘‘change of heart’’ by the workers (Stern [Stevens] 1932:8). Stern was troubled by the Salvation Army’s blame-the-victim stance, commenting that the Salvation Army’s breadlines forced the downtrodden to read slogans brainwashing them with messages such as ‘‘Business Depressions Are Caused by Dissipation, Dishonesty, Disobedience to God’s Will; a General Collapse of Moral Character’’ (8). Stern observed that Protestants had blamed the Depression on faith rather than the inherent failures of the capitalist economic system. One Protestant clergyman is quoted by Stern as declaring, ‘‘Unemployment will cease when people are converted to a belief in the Incarnate Christ’’ (8–9). Stern even interpreted the churches’ involvement in charity work for the unemployed as part of the larger capitalist plot. He declared that in these instances, the churches help with charity ‘‘because they realize that charity is a safety-valve against discontent and that it checks revolutionary struggle’’ (9). White too noted the failure of the church to improve the social conditions of its members. He also maintained that some capitalists realized religion was not necessary, that is, they were willing to give up the ‘‘hobgoblins and superstitions of religion’’ but nonetheless insisted that the 124

Peace and Price

masses needed religion. White rejected this reasoning because it made the worker appear stupid while the capitalist was smart. At an elementary level, White believed religion was a form of collective psychosis and that religion and psychosis had an identical development; the form and content of religion and psychosis were the same as were the mechanisms involved. Both psychosis and religion provide a way of dealing with an unbearable situation. According to White, ‘‘A psychosis gives you what you want— love, power, beauty, security. That is what a psychosis does for you and that is what religion does for the group. It gives man status among animals and in the solar system’’ (White 1930:2). Citing Thomas Jefferson, White maintained that priests have always been on the side of the despot and that the church was antibiological and antisocial. The church never contributed anything to society; it simply consumed the effort of the working class. As such, White considered the churches to be a ‘‘parasite[s]’’ or a ‘‘social tumor[s]’’ that have ‘‘allied themselves with armed forces. The priests are the most blood thirsty people in time of war. . . . The church in America does practically nothing for the masses except to prevent them from practicing birth-control so that they have more children to feed. It does that for them. There are the John D. Rockefellers and [their] churches. They tell people God’s in heaven and all’s right with the world. Then what’s the use of labor demonstration’’ (White ca. 1926). The Significance of Religion and Societal Change White was compelled to analyze the church at length because he believed its teachings were diametrically opposed to the tenets of socialism. In White’s view, socialism represented the future, a better society, and a way of ameliorating the deprivations of the Depression. This new form of society would be based ‘‘upon industrial organization and the exploitation of the resources of nature for the indiscriminate welfare of the human race, instead of the exploitation of labor for the private property of a few—in short, from capitalism to socialism’’ (White [Steel] 1940). The reason for this inevitable transition from capitalism to socialism was identical to that of the first great social revolution—‘‘an enlargement of the arts of subsistence or mode of production.’’ According to White, the Industrial Revolution had been only the ‘‘first phase of a revolution that was destined to embrace and transform civilization in its entirety: the Industrial Revolution is but the preface to the Social Revolution’’ (White [Steel] 1940). A revolution was defined by White as the ‘‘destruction of social forms which have become obsolete and which stand in the way of social evolution’’ (White [Steel] 1933b). Like the first agricultural revolution, a second revolution was ‘‘destined Stern and White on the Church and Religion

125

to transform our present way of life to its very foundations’’—a change to which the Church was diametrically opposed (White [Steel] 1940). According to Marxian science, the ‘‘Second Great Revolution’’ would strike a severe blow to the church because theology was a mask that concealed the political, economic, and social might of the church. White was not opposed to the practice of religion itself; in fact, he noted that religious or spiritual beliefs were a constant in the evolution of culture. What White could not accept was the influence of the church in education, economics, politics, marriage and divorce, or in any phase of social life except that of prayer. For White, the Russian Revolution proved not only that culture was continually evolving but that ‘‘the experience of the Soviet Union show[ed] all too clearly that the masses can get along quite well, thank you, without their priest, without their mumblings, their incense, and their icons’’ (White 1930–31:50). White envisioned the Soviet Union, now freed of the ‘‘age-old yoke’’ of religion, becoming one of the greatest nations on earth. The emancipation of people from religious indoctrination was a great threat—one that led religious leaders in the United States and Europe to spread horror stories about religious persecution in the Soviet Union. White did not believe Soviet citizens were being persecuted because ‘‘the church [knew] full and well that if its activities [were] to be confined exclusively to worshipping Almighty God, Allah, or some other deity, that they might as well shut up shop. The chief function of the church is to dominate and control as much of the social life of people as it can, and to assist the State in keeping the people in subjection, wage slavery, ignorance, and poverty’’ (White 1930–31:49). White pointed out that religious persecution existed and that priests had been shot and arrested not only in the Soviet Union but in the United States. These incidents, however, had nothing to do with worshipping God but rather with interfering with the affairs of the state and violating the laws of the land. White noted that a Baptist minister or a Jewish rabbi in America would be arrested if he manufactured and circulated $20 bills and that such an arrest had nothing to do with God. Likewise, if a bishop in the Soviet Union advocated a return of the tsar, he would be arrested, not for his religious convictions but for his political views. White argued that religious persecution had nothing to do with worshipping God but rather was a mechanism to protect the power of the church. He wrote that it was only when ‘‘the institution itself was threatened, that is to say, when the church was compelled to confine what it has pretended to be concerned with these many centuries, the worship and adoration of Almighty God, and to keep its hands out of business, politics, education, inter126

Peace and Price

national affairs, economics, medicine, art, food and drink customs, marriage and divorce, childbirth, and its prevention, etc., [that] the puppeteers throughout the world become alarmed. They see the beginning of the end. If they must confine themselves to worshipping, they might as well give up entirely’’ (White 1931/1932:49). While White focused on the significance of the Russian Revolution and how it related to the slp ideology, Stern noted the uses of church doctrine in the service of imperialist expansions; the conquest of the Philippines, missionary work in China, and the conquest of the American Indians were presented by Stern as evidence of a recurrent pattern of missionaries assisting in the efforts of global economic and cultural domination and subjugation (Stern [Stevens] 1932:22–24). Stern wrote that missionaries were the ‘‘angels of imperialism [who] open markets for the capitalists in all parts of the world and . . . prepare the way for the exploitation of the workers’’ (23). Stern interpreted Chiang Kai-shek’s conversion by missionaries of the Methodist Episcopal Church South (‘‘a church which shares in the responsibilities for the lynching of Negroes in the United States’’) as conjoining the forces of Christianity with antiCommunism (24). Stern observed that during World War I (which he described as ‘‘the last imperialist war’’), the Catholic Church distributed New Testaments to American soldiers containing a special foreword by Cardinal Gibbons reminding soldiers of their duty to serve what Stern described as ‘‘the capitalist state.’’ This passage also reminded conscripts that they were obliged to fight for their masters even if they did not understand why. Stern quoted Cardinal Gibbons’s admonition to soldiers: ‘‘Your first and important duty is prompt and cheerful obedience to the commands of your superiors. The sanction for it is found in these words in the New Testament: ‘Let every soul be subject to the higher powers for there is no power but from God, and those that are ordained of God’ ’’ (1932:22). Stern saw the most significant symbiotic manifestation of the churchstate relationship in the United States in the complex of legislative-taxabatement interactions. Stern wrote: States help support the churches by exempting church property from taxation. In many states, children must listen to the reading of the bible daily in the public schools and in some states to daily prayers. In several states where the churches control the legislatures, the teaching of evolution is forbidden in the public schools. Churches are permitted to maintain parochial schools whose primary purpose is to inculcate religion in the workers’ children. Protestants, Catholics, and Jews have recently united to have legStern and White on the Church and Religion

127

islation passed setting aside a part of the school day to the various church bodies for religious teaching. In fact, the primary purpose of the much heralded ‘‘cooperation of faiths,’’ has been to intensify the reactionary campaign against atheists and non-believers and to strengthen the hold of the churches over the minds of the masses. [Stern (Stevens) 1932:26] Stern noted that churches fulfilled an important social role in contemporary societies: they were vital centers for citizens to socialize and engage in recreation and conversations with a wide range of community members. To undermine the role of churches as social and community centers, Stern recommended that trade unions organize social events to fill these needs. Stern insisted that a militant workers’ antireligious movement must be organized under the leadership of workers who have already freed themselves from church influences, a movement that would have for its purpose the emancipation of the masses from religious domination (Stern [Stevens] 1932:31). Implications of Being a Political Radical During the 1940s and 1950s, fbi agents interviewed a number of students in Stern’s classes at Columbia to determine if Stern was engaging in Communist indoctrination in the classroom. One student/fbi informant stated that ‘‘Stern never mentioned revolution or any method of bringing about a change in ideologies in this country, but according to ——, used innuendo and ridicule as his weapons, making a particular point of ridiculing religion and Christianity. He reported that Stern cited the high war profits as an evil of the capitalistic system, and pointed out how the racial and religious minorities were more fairly treated in Russia’’ (wfo 100-30686417:19 May 21, 1951). White too was harassed during the Cold War. As with Stern, fbi informants approached White’s current and former students, fellow academics, and administrators at the University of Michigan. In spite of the obvious turmoil White’s teaching created, he refused to change the manner in which he lectured or modify his views to make them more palatable to those conservatively inclined. As a result, in 1946 religious leaders ordered nuns, replete with their traditional habits, to sit in on White’s classes. The purpose of their attendance was to take stenographic notes of what White said so they could obtain a more complete record of his ‘‘blasphemous statements.’’ According to Paul Martin, White was not only on the blacklist of local churches but his lectures ‘‘steamed up church bound coeds for days’’ (Martin to Harry Elmer Barnes, Jan. 1951). 128

Peace and Price

Despite the fbi’s failure to produce concrete evidence that Stern or White were indoctrinating students with false information, communist dogma, or anything more than a materialist view of the world, the fbi nonetheless continued to investigate them. Stern’s and White’s refusal to modify their views and how they were presented did not endear them to administrators at Columbia and Michigan. However, there is no doubt that Stern was more adversely affected than White during the McCarthy era. The fbi claimed that Stern had abused his position as a professor—a central theme in his appearances before congressional hearings in the early 1950s. Stern was vigorously questioned by Senator Joseph McCarthy and McCarthy’s Committee on Government Operations in March 1953. McCarthy’s chief aid, Roy Cohn, asked a number of questions about the pope, Catholicism, and organized religion—the nature of these questions confirm that the fbi had informed the committee that Stern had published his critique of religion under the pseudonym of Bennett Stevens.∑ Stern had nothing to say on this matter. While White was not brought before any congressional committee, the situation at the University of Michigan was tense—especially when the university fired three men for their political views (Hollinger 1996; Schrecker 1986). For more than a decade, the University of Michigan attempted to silence White’s political views without any effective results. White was denied chairmanship of the department and salary increases, refused leave, and harassed at an administrative level. By the end of 1947, the attacks on White reached the point where he was effectively declared persona non grata at the University of Michigan. White was told by an unidentified individual that if he did not secure a temporary post elsewhere for a short period of time, he would surely be fired. White quickly obtained a visiting position for 18 months, and the objections to his teachings quietly died down. That White and Stern felt the necessity to hide behind pseudonyms before undertaking their sociological and anthropological analysis of religion exposes the shallow depths of American mid-20th-century academic freedom. While White and Stern both maintained their academic positions at prestigious universities, others with radical critiques were not so lucky (see Price 1998, 2004), but beyond simple measures of employment, it is difficult to gage the stifling effects of McCarthyism on the development of anthropological theory. If anthropologists were not even free to apply the same analytical methods they used when studying nonliterate or pre-state societies to their own societies, then serious questions are raised about the extent to which self-censorship permeated and limited all their analysis. Granted, White and Stern’s body of academic work was hardhitting and clearly influenced by Marxist and materialist philosophy, but Stern and White on the Church and Religion

129

we are left to wonder what directions this work might have advanced had they lived in a country affording them the freedom of inquiry needed to forcefully examine sociocultural issues without fear of reprisals. Notes 1. For biographical information about the life and career of Leslie A. White, see Carneiro 1980, Peace 2004, and Service n.d. For biographical information about Bernhard Stern, see Bloom 1990, Merton 1957, and Price 2004. 2. There can be no doubt that White’s commitment to the slp was sincere. Between 1931 and 1946, White published 31 letters, articles, and miscellaneous notes in the Weekly People under the pseudonym John Steel (Peace 1993). He regularly attended slp meetings, recruited people into the party, and gave stump speeches in Detroit, Flint, and other cities within driving distance of his home in Ann Arbor. 3. Part of Stern’s testimony is reproduced in Price 2004:144–145. Stern refused to discuss his involvement with the cp in part because he did not want to ruin other people’s careers by naming them before a congressional committee. Stern’s case generated a significant amount of discussion at Columbia. Many were aware of his writings under the pseudonym Bennett Stevens, thanks in large part to Martin Dies, who discussed Stern’s pseudonymous writings in his book The Trojan Horse in America (1940:239–240). A story about the fbi’s interest in Stern and how it related to his pseudonym also appeared on the front page of Columbia’s student newspaper, the Columbia Spectator, on Friday, Dec. 6, 1940. 4. The parallels between White’s views of the church and religion and certain passages in Morgan are striking. In particular, see Morgan on the Roman Catholic Church and the Roman Catholic clergy (Morgan 1937:293–307). 5. Several unidentified fbi informants secretly reported to the fbi that Stern periodically used the cp pseudonym of Bennett Stevens for party activities. It is unknown how many publications Stern produced using this pen name, but in January 1940 the fbi procured from an anonymous informant a booklet titled ‘‘The Church and the Workers’’ by Bennett Stevens (Stern 1932). The fbi carefully analyzed this pamphlet, and his fbi file contains numerous quotes from it on religion.

References Adams, William Y. 1998. The Philosophical Roots of Anthropology. csli Lecture Notes no. 86. Stanford ca: Center for the Study of Language and Information. Bloom, Samuel. 1990. The Intellectual in a Time of Crisis: The Case of Bernhard J. Stern, 1894–1956. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 26:17–37. Carneiro, Robert. 1980. Leslie A. White. In Totems and Teachers. Sydel Silverman, ed. Pp. 208–252. New York: Columbia University Press. Hollinger, David. 1996. Academic Culture at the University of Michigan, 1938–1988. In Science, Jews and Secular Culture. Pp. 121–154. Princeton nj: Princeton University Press. Dies, Martin. 1940. The Trojan Horse in America. New York: Dodd Mead. Merton, Robert. 1957. In Memory of Bernhard J. Stern. Science and Society 21(1): 7–9. Morgan, Lewis Henry. 1937. Extracts of Lewis Henry Morgan’s European Travel Journal. Leslie A. White, ed. Rochester ny: Rochester Historical Society. Peace, William J. 1993. Leslie White and Evolutionary Theory. Dialectical Anthropology 18:123–151. 130

Peace and Price

———. 2004. Leslie A. White: Evolution and Revolution in Anthropology. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Price, David H. 1998. Cold War Anthropology: Collaborators and Victims of the National Security State. Identities 4(3–4): 389–430. ———. 2004. Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and the fbi’s Surveillance of Activist Anthropologists. Durham nc: Duke University Press. Schrecker, Ellen. 1986. No Ivory Tower. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Service, Elman. N.d. Segments of Oral History and Cultural Anthropology with Special Emphasis on the Formation of Schools of Thought. Unpublished manuscript in author’s possession. Stern, Bernhard [Stevens, Bennett]. 1932. The Church and the Workers. New York: International Pamphlets. White, Leslie A. Ca. 1926. An Approach to the Study of Religion. Unpublished manuscript, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. ———. 1930. Religion. Paper presented to the University of Buffalo Philosophy Club. ———. 1930–31. The Russian Revolution. Unpublished manuscript, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. ———. 1937. Foreword. In Extracts from the European Travel Journal of Lewis H. Morgan. Rochester Historical Society Publications no. 16. Pp. 221–230. Rochester ny: Rochester Historical Society. White, Leslie A. [Steel, John]. 1933a. Two Portraits of Jesus. Weekly People, Dec. 23. ———. 1933b. Thomas Jefferson: American Revolutionist. Weekly People, July 1. ———. 1934a. The Church and the Working Class. Part 1. Weekly People, Jan. 17. ———. 1934b. The Church and the Working Class. Part 2. Weekly People, Feb. 3.

Stern and White on the Church and Religion

131

6. The Evolution of Racism in Guatemala Hegemony, Science, and Antihegemony Richard N. Adams

Over the past 100 years the meaning of ‘‘race’’ and ‘‘racism’’ has undergone a series of transformations as different sectors of the world’s peoples constructed models for their particular needs. At the turn of the 20th century, race referred to populations that shared common cultural and biological origins and that were usually allocated within a hierarchical ordering of the larger society. It was widely but not universally held that behavior was in some manner hinged to biological inheritance. The term racism referred to ideas about the behavior-biology linkage that facilitated the political hegemony of one society or social segment over another. Colonial and European industrial society saw ethnically distinctive peoples as separate and inferior ‘‘races,’’ and they, in turn, reciprocated with antihegemonic ideas about their oppressors, recognizing them too as separate races, although often accepting the characterizations of their own inferiority. The racism that emerged most clearly in this era was that of the dominant classes—be they socioeconomic classes of the industrializing societies or the colonialist classes of the imperial world. The clearest expression of prejudice and discrimination marked the behavior of these hegemonic classes and manifested what I will here refer to as ‘‘hegemonic’’ racism.∞ A new construction emerged in the first half of the 20th century from the work of Euro-American scientists and social scientists who rejected the notion that biological inheritance could account for social behavioral difference. For them social behavior, culture, was socially transmitted. I will refer to this as ‘‘scientific’’ racism because of its origin among scientists, not as a claim to its value as truth.≤ This development was particularly important in the United States, where race could then be argued to be less of an obstacle to the assimilation of European immigrants into U.S. society. The scientific view held that the term race was to be restricted to the purely biological. These arguments at first gained ground slowly in Western intellectual communities, but with the emergence of Nazi hegemonic racist politics, the differentiation of cultural behavior from the

biological race became politically significant for many Westerners. World War II brought these concerns further into focus, and with the founding of the United Nations, unesco formulated the first of a number of statements on race that basically conformed to the positions taken by the social and genetic scientists. They allocated ‘‘race’’ to being something that had to do with biology, whereas social and cultural behaviors were totally independent. These statements paid little attention to the hegemonic role of racism. With the end of World War II, the breakup of colonial empires challenged the hegemonic position on race and led to overt accusations of racism by colonized peoples against the imperial powers and their societies. This evolved into a distinctive position marked by characteristics that differentiated it from the previous hegemonic and scientific positions. I will call this ‘‘antihegemonic’’ racism.≥ The principal elements that marked it were (1) the rejection of the hegemonic usage that linked culture and biology, and the acceptance of the scientific position; (2) the definition of racist groups by social opposition and political dominance rather than by common origins or inheritance of either biological or cultural antecedents; (3) the claim that racism is practiced only by the hegemonic; (4) the exhibition of discrimination and prejudice against the hegemonic racists; and (5) the use of any traits—cultural and/or biological—as identifying markers of race for purposes of identity and discrimination. This construction in many instances followed the prevailing elimination of the biological component but retained the earlier vocabulary and called it ‘‘racism.’’ This racism was defined by colonialist oppression and was a racism without biological race. This perspective was central in the founding of many new states and became important to the New World subordinated indigenous peoples and peoples of the African Diaspora, who began to seek their revindication in the New World and other regions where ‘‘internal colonialism’’ prevailed. While this new racism gained wider acceptance in some parts of the world, the older forms of racist thought— hegemonic and scientific—did not disappear. In Guatemala the hegemonic model had been used for the subjugation of Indians as forced labor by the late-19th-century liberal society that sought to construct Guatemala as a European nation-state. The indigenous peoples—more than half the population—were effectively barred from political franchise and the economic benefits of national development. For those who recognized the evils of the situation, indigenismo was invented as a way of more readily ignoring race in order to ‘‘civilize’’ the Indians and thus permit them to be more easily assimilated into the Ladino nation. It did not necessarily imply that the proponents abandoned the hegemonic perspective. Evolution of Racism in Guatemala

133

During the first half of the 20th century, Guatemala came under the observation of a succession of U.S. anthropologists whose perspectives were conditioned by the scientific model. The major part of the non-Indian society of Guatemala generally shared the common 19th-century hegemonic perspective on race. Although the foreign anthropologists agreed that biology was a central factor in the cultural constructions of race, the fact of ethnic passing from one sector to another led most of them to argue against the notion that biological characteristics were responsible for behavioral differences. They concluded that because race as such was not the central issue in Guatemala, the nature of the relations were not racist. The antihegemonic model was introduced in the 1960s by Guatemalan and European sociologists who found the U.S. anthropological perspectives—then dominant in the literature—to be unacceptable. Certainly from an ethnic standpoint, the most important target of racism was the Maya Indians, who had long been the object of discrimination and prejudice. Also of interest for future dynamics have been the efforts of nonIndians and Ladinos to redefine themselves in a social reality where racism is increasingly a two-way affair This essay will explore these events in more detail. Hegemonic Racism and the Emergence of Scientific Views Hegemonic Racism ‘‘From 1684 to 1815 . . . major writers dealt explicitly with race as an organizing idea and came to understand it as an ethnic grouping rather than as a race and order or course of things or events’’ (Hannaford 1996:187). Until that time, the application of the term race to human beings was reserved for the aristocracy; they were the ones who needed to distance themselves from others of their own society in order to confirm their power and authority. The expansion of the term to popular usage for classifying all human beings and populations as components of a major segment of humankind occurred in the course of the 19th century. Kenan Malik observes that a central impact of this emergent construction was that the ‘‘discourse of race helped recast social differences as natural ones, externalizing what were historically contingent features’’ (1996:222). With the expansion of world mercantilism and early capitalism and particularly the transformations accompanying the Industrial Revolution, the ‘‘natural’’ markers of race were extended to the increasingly powerful bourgeoisie. Because they did not benefit from the inherited authority enjoyed by monarchs and aristocracies, extending the term race clarified their superiority and helped mark the differences that separated them from the ‘‘dangerous classes.’’ The 134

Adams

displaced rural masses, frequently drawn into the industrial proletariat, needed to be subordinated in the new natural order. Assigning natural and therefore immutable differences to the emerging sectors helped to impose order in the nation-states that were emerging over much of the Western world. While it is currently popular (for reasons explored later) to ascribe the emergence of race to colonial practices, Malik argues that its origins can be found within the metropolitan countries from the outset. ‘‘The idea of race emerged not so much with reference to populations which were external to Western society, populations which were exotic or distant or physically distinct, but rather in relation to social gradations within European Society. The modern discourse of race developed through the racialization of social and class differences . . . the attribution of inferiority to the lower orders of society—the ‘dangerous classes’ . . . as a way of making sense of social differences’’ (Malik 1996:225). Robert Miles agrees: ‘‘Racism was not an exclusive product of colonialism: it did its work, had its effects, as much within the nation states at the center of the evolving capitalist world economic system as in those social formations of the periphery.’’ (1993:21). Early colonial relations in Latin America imposed conquerors on the conquered, but they did not automatically take the shape of racial superiority. Inca and Aztec aristocracies were initially allowed to rule, and the conquerors initially took wives from those groups. As it became clear that the utility of the conquered peoples lay in their labor and not their social standing, it became useful to make their inferiority immutable. The emergence of mestizos and the importation of black slaves injected confusing elements that were neither indigenous nor European. Whether superiority arose from upper-class standing in Seville or imperial-colonial standing in Mexico, the inferiors were drawn into the racist framework by the end of the colonial era. Thus in colonial Guatemala, as in most of Spanish America, not only were Indians, mestizos, and mulattos differentiated from Spaniards, but peninsular-born Spaniards were also differentiated from New World–born criollos. By the end of the 19th century, many diverse and often contradictory ideas had appeared about race, but three themes seemed generally accepted. First, the term separated and fixed segments of humankind, both within and between societies, on the basis of separate antecedents (e.g., descent, inheritance), which were marked by physical, psychological, and behavioral traits. Second, in that pre-Mendelian world, no clear line was drawn between biologically and culturally inherited traits (behaviors learned as a member of society); thus skin color and language might equally be regarded as ‘‘racial.’’ Opinions differed about the relative imEvolution of Racism in Guatemala

135

mutability and interdependence of biology and culture. Third, the distinctive racial segments were considered to be unequally endowed and to constitute politically and economically inferior and superior segments or classes within a society or between societies. Biological inheritance, cultural traits, and social inequality emerged as major axes around which the meanings of the term race have been reconstructed over the past two centuries. One further element, ‘‘identity,’’ the question of the individual’s own psychological identification with a particular group or inheritance, often seemed implicit in discourse and events but did not take on theoretical saliency until later in the 20th century. The 19th-century view of race dominated throughout Euro America after World War I and was probably enhanced by the fact that all major powers were severely subdued by the Great Depression. The writings of radical racists such as Madison Grant and William Charles Chamberlain had impact on both Europe and the United States. Racial prejudice served as a useful vehicle for social and political policies, eugenics programs, and other forms of social disenfranchisement. The economic problems of the Depression found in race a convenient rationale for identifying ethnic scapegoats for economic suffering. Thus Germany turned to the Nazis and their anti-Semitic version of economic dynamics. In the United States, anti-Semitic and anti-Asian prejudice and, more generally, isolationist movements fanned racist antagonisms. The post–Civil War Reconstruction era was long past, and the civil treatment of African Americans had not materially improved. Race Models in the United States In the 1920s Robert Park and others associated with the Chicago School of Sociology were instrumental in introducing the study of race relations to U.S. academia. Their argument held that racial prejudice and discrimination could be influenced by economic change; thus biology was irrelevant to the process. Park specifically argued that racially segmented societies could pass through a caste phase and then change into class societies. This assimilationist position was not lost on their Chicago anthropological colleagues, Robert Redfield and Sol Tax.∂ As I will argue, the scientific model was by no means widely accepted in U.S. society. The residue of slavery and the Civil War, on the one hand, and the vast waves of 19th-century European immigration, on the other, led to the emergence of two contrasting conceptions of racial differences: ‘‘the melting pot’’ and ‘‘Jim Crow.’’ The ‘‘melting pot’’ model rationalized that by giving up their native cultures and languages, European immigrants could be assimilated into U.S. society.∑ It was assumed that the differences were purely cultural and therefore they could be unlearned and replaced. 136

Adams

In contrast, the ‘‘Jim Crow’’ model reflected a hard racist position that differences between ‘‘Negroes’’ and whites were biologically based and unchangeable. The ‘‘one drop of blood’’ criterion was used to classify people as being either Negro or non-Negro. The related arguments were essentially hegemonic racism. Inferior peoples had to be dealt with as such, and education was of limited use because inferior people could not be changed. Miscegenation produced ‘‘half-breeds,’’ ‘‘mulattos,’’ who were in earlier epochs considered inferior to either parent race, and physical segregation was the best solution to relations between races. The most acceptable social system for the hard-core racist was therefore castelike. ‘‘The great lesson of the science of race,’’ wrote Madison Grant in 1923, ‘‘is the immutability of somatological or bodily characters, with which is closely associated the immutability of psychical predispositions and impulses’’ (Hannaford 1996:358).∏ These two models influenced U.S. anthropologists who worked in Guatemala in the first half of the 20th century. As suggested earlier, the Chicago scholars were surely aware of the arguments of their sociological colleagues; at the same time, those scholars of Jewish extraction were surely aware that the Jim Crown quality invented to deal with blacks was not absent in their own ethnic relationships. What seems to have been the case, however, is that all were familiar with the scientific arguments about the nature of race. Scientific Concept of Race Against this background of widely shared racism, the link between biological and behavioral inheritance was shaken with the rediscovery of Mendel’s early genetic experiments. Here was a scientific basis for arguing that the only immutable inheritance was biological and that culture inheritance was quite another thing. Lamarckian ideas became less credible over the first half of the 20th century as scientists began to explore the idea that biology and culture should be treated separately. ‘‘In the United States, during the whole of this period of Depression and the New Deal, with few exceptions, the social sciences held the race issue at arms’ length. Academics sought to explain and understand race in the scientific language of a detached, value-free economic and social theory drawn mainly from the deep wells of a racialized history of cultural, social and physical anthropology rather than from the fast-running waters of political reality’’ (Hannaford 1996:372). Biology and culture as components of race began to be separated in the scientific and Western political communities during the first half of the century. This was particularly evident in the social sciences in the United Evolution of Racism in Guatemala

137

States. Following the rediscovery of Mendel’s experiments, Franz Boas, who earlier had accepted the biology-behavior link, rejected it after 1900 (Stocking 1968, chapter 9). Boas had an early impact on the U.S. cultural anthropological community by demonstrating that descendants of immigrants in the United States changed what many had assumed to be fixed racial features (Boas 1912). The first edition of his Mind of Primitive Man in 1911 launched an attack on race. The acceptance of Boas’s ideas was aided through the work of his students—for example, Alfred Kroeber, Robert Lowie, Clark Wissler, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, Elsie Clews Parsons—as well as by colleagues, such the psychologist Otto Kleinberg. Boas’s impact was unquestionable, but as Donald G. MacRae has pointed out, a parallel movement in sociology was also defining the work of that discipline for the next century: ‘‘Racial explanation disappears from serious sociology with the great generation of the early twentieth century: Pareto, Durkheim, Hobhouse and Max Weber made the issue of race irrelevant by the introduction of new canons of analysis and by their attempt to explain the social by the social—the most useful of methodological principles. Race, by explaining too much too easily, by being susceptible to neither proof nor disproof, explained nothing’’ (1960:84). Although the social sciences were permanently diverted by Boas’s cultural anthropology and the new direction in sociology, the physical anthropological community was far from happy. H. J. Fleure and T. C. James reacted in a way that was widely shared: if Boas were right, ‘‘it would destroy the foundations of anthropological research for race problems’’ (1916:31; see also Stepan 1968). Because a great deal of what was then known as ‘‘anthropology’’ had a huge investment in ‘‘race,’’ there was good reason that applause for Boas was not universal. While public racism was rampant in the years before World War II in both Europe and the United States, both public and scientific opposition was also increasingly evident. Particularly important was Julian Huxley and A. C. Haddon’s 1936 rejection of both race as a scientific concept and the idea that ‘‘customs’’—that is, language, art, institutions, gestures, habits, traditions, dress, or even nations—could ‘‘serve as any criterion of racial affinity between peoples’’ (1936:271; cf. Hannaford 1996:373). As Ivan Hannaford notes, ‘‘In these brief sentences the historical, philological, and scientific explanations that had kept Europe in turmoil for a century were cast to one side, and an entirely new debate about the genetic basis of race opened up’’ (1996:373). Huxley and Haddon, however, did not throw out the notion that biologically distinct subdivisions of humanity might exist but rather suggested that what has been called ‘‘races’’ and ‘‘subspecies’’ could better be called ‘‘ethnic groups.’’ 138

Adams

In England the term culture tended to distance itself from the classic German usages and the sense of high cosmopolitanism. E. B. Tylor’s classic definition of culture came to label the way of life of a particular society, specifically the traditions and heritage of social practices and values. Thus as society had a biological heritage, so it also had a cultural and social heritage, separately passed on through learning. Among U.S. anthropologists, ‘‘culture’’ accented the distinction between biological heritage, on the one hand, and behavior, on the other. In Great Britain, Tylor’s work made it possible to omit race as a dynamic from the study of society. The development of genetics was slower in Great Britain than in the United States and was therefore less a factor in the weakening of 19th-century racial concepts (Rich 1986:112). A more popular cultural relativism appeared late in the 19th century in the work of an amateur ethnologist, Mary Kingsley, who rejected the notions of a hierarchy of racial fitness but still accepted polygenesis (i.e., different origins for different races) as the basis of racial differences (Rich 1986, chapter 2). Important voices in Britain and on the Continent argued against racism and the influence of race on behavior (e.g., Finot 1906), but British social anthropology’s development of functionalism tended to substitute for the concern with culture that preoccupied the Boasians.π The increasingly disturbing policies and activities of Nazi Germany had major influence on the success of the antirace arguments. As World War II approached, the Huxley and Haddon volume and the work of Boas and his students had little impact on the wider community. In 1938 a revised edition of The Mind of Primitive Man appeared, and Boas tried to organize the American Committee for Democracy and Intellectual Freedom to combat the use of ‘‘race,’’ but these efforts had little effect beyond the academic community (Lieberman and Reynolds 1996:146; citing Kuznick 1976). Among the most outspoken opponents of the 19th-century model of race and its attendant racism was the British anthropologist M. F. Ashley Montagu, whose book Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race appeared in 1942. The prominence he achieved, in part with this work, was to place him in the foreground of the international efforts to combat the ideology of race. The Emergence of Antihegemonic Racism The Colonial Reaction The European industrial and world empires that saw their apogee in the late 19th century were severely shaken by World War I and finally collapsed with the end of World War II. Long before this upheaval, colonized peoples had begun to object to imperial racism and to seek ways to obtain Evolution of Racism in Guatemala

139

their independence from the domination of the metropolitan countries. Gandhi in South Africa and then India was a major model, but, as with other challenges to colonialism, his efforts were unsuccessful until after the end of World War II. Since the racism practiced by imperial powers was so clearly hegemonic in purpose, that is, based on ‘‘a belief in the inherent superiority of a particular race and the right to domination over others,’’ it is not surprising that some subordinated peoples have held that only the dominant can be racist.∫ However, the hegemonic racism that arose as part of the spread of imperial and industrial Europe into the rest of the world created antibodies. To recognize oneself as being a target of racism generates the recognition of the aggressor in racial terms too. Thus hegemonic racism readily elicited equal and opposite reactions on the part of the dominated. The colonial subordinates could and usually did become quite as prejudiced as were the imperial rulers. Racism as an antihegemonic device, therefore, emerged in the penumbra of the hegemonic and has long since become a well-honed tool with which colonial peoples have countered their oppressors. India was one area in which antihegemonic racism was quite explicit. In the early 1920s E. M. Forster’s Passage to India portrayed both Muslims and Hindus as acutely, although often ambivalently, sensitive to the racist oppression of the British rulers.Ω It may be that Islam and Hinduism effectively insulated native identity to a greater degree than seems to have been the case with African religions. In contrast, Franz Fanon argues that after 1945, ‘‘the West Indian changed his values. Whereas before 1930 he had his eyes riveted on white Europe . . . in 1945 he discovered himself to be not only black but a Negro, and it was in the direction of distant Africa that he was henceforth to put out his feelers’’ (1967:24–25). Many Indians were already in A. P. Elkin’s third phase (see the discussion in the following section). They were reacting ‘‘against the over lords’’ before World War II, whereas the West Indians moved out of the second phase, being corrupted and suffering an inferiority complex. Enter unesco Following World War II, the break-up of the empires confronted Western science, Western governments, and the new United Nations with a worldwide decolonization that brought racism clearly to the fore. unesco, then a newly formed agency of the United Nations, was directed by Julian Huxley, and Arthur Ramos headed the Department of Social Sciences.∞≠ Both were committed to dealing with the race issue, but Ramos initially played a critical role in setting up an expert committee to formulate a 140

Adams

policy statement by heavily loading it with social scientists. Ramos was a native of Brazil, part of what was becoming known as the Third World, and had a perspective on race and racism as seen in the colonial areas, which differed from those of European scholars, who tended to be more preoccupied with Nazi activities. Ashley Montagu was named rapporteur, thereby placing him in the position to formulate the final statement. The product closely reflects Montagu’s earlier work and focuses on distinguishing physical-biological race from existing human groupings; it follows Huxley and Haddon and suggests that the term ethnic groups was more apt than race for the latter. The statement then makes the particular point that ‘‘biological studies lend support to the ethic of universal brotherhood’’ (unesco 1951). The only mention of past social abuse of race is that of Nazi Germany’s policies, which are said to have led to the war. Ramos died shortly before the committee met, but in anticipation of its work, he published an essay on the general problem in 1949. It is very different from the statement later issued in 1950 by Montagu and the committee in that it focuses almost entirely on the question of the historical origins of racial inequality in the colonial world and asserts that ‘‘in the last analysis . . . racialism is a direct result of Europeanization and imperialism.’’ While he mentions the massive destruction of New World peoples, Ramos contends that ‘‘the continent which has been the scene of colonial exploitation par excellence is, undoubtedly Africa,’’ and that because of the imposition of European interests on the continent, ‘‘the ‘racial’ attitude has resulted, today, in a reawakening of African Nationalism of a hitherto unsuspected vigour’’ (1949:10). The difference between unesco’s statement and Ramos’s essay is of more than academic interest. Both are concerned with challenging the evils of race, but Ashley Montagu and the committee see the dangers in the intellectual content of the words and in the traditional European racism they reflected. Ramos sees the danger to lie in the structure of social relations that had characterized the 19thcentury model of race in the colonial world and to the centuries of oppression that it entailed. Much of his essay is concerned with applying findings of anthropology, and among these is A. P. Elkin’s model of the sequence of reactions of ‘‘primitive peoples to contact with the white man,’’ which Ramos rephrases as follows: ‘‘(a) An initial phase of surprise, opposition and resentment, (b) an intermediate phase of corruption, involving an inferiority complex and the desire, on the part of the Peoples dominated, to imitate their overlords, and (c) a final phase of reaction against the overlords and of a desire to return to the ancient culture that has been lost’’ (1949:11). It is the last of these phases that Ramos now sees emerging over much of the postwar colonial world.∞∞ Evolution of Racism in Guatemala

141

Ramos was not alone in his perception of colonialism as being responsible for racism. Hannah Arendt, as many know, was profoundly concerned with the nature of anti-Semitism and following from that, of racism in general. In 1944 she was at work on what was to become her Origins of Totalitarianism, although it was not published until 1951. In it she finds the common genesis in the practice of racism that existed between the industrial powers in Europe and their overseas empires. ‘‘Imperialism,’’ she writes, ‘‘would have necessitated the invention of racism as the only possible ‘explanation’ and excuse for its deed, even if no racethinking had ever existed’’ (Power 2004:35; see also Arendt 1951). Thus the notion that a special relationship existed between imperialism and racism was conceived before the end of the Second World War. If the problem of race could be divided into a problem of ideology in Europe, on the one hand, and a problem of the oppressive social relations in the colonial world, on the other, the unesco committee attention focused on the first and made no mention of the second, while Ramos had specifically addressed the second. One can only wonder whether, but for Ramos’s untimely death, the unesco Committee’s statement might not have taken a different direction. Perhaps it would have been more congruent with the antihegemonic arguments that were just emerging from the colonies—but not in the committee rooms of unesco, nor among the Westerners whose concern with evils of race focused more on the persecution of Jews than on the colonial world. The differences between the unesco statement and Ramos’s perspectives will become clearer later when I take up hegemonic and antihegemonic racism. The differentiation of culture and biology had an impact on social science, but the concept of biological race never lost its salience for geneticists and physical anthropologists. The 1950 unesco statement received such immediate and extensive criticism from the biological community that a second committee composed of geneticists and physical anthropologists immediately set to work, and a revision was published a year later, in June 1951. Although it ‘‘reconfirmed the lack of scientific support for race formalism,’’ it asserted that many human populations could be classified in racial terms (Barkan 1996:104). While there was some discomfiture in using the term race in the years that immediately followed, it remained a central concept. A 1985 survey asked 1,629 U.S. scholars whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement, ‘‘There are biological races within the species Homo Sapiens.’’ The results showed a strong survival of the term, while revealing a gradient of agreement by profession: 70 percent of the biologists specializing in animal behavior; 50 percent of the physical anthropologists; 36 percent of the developmental psychologists; and 142

Adams

29 percent of the cultural anthropologists (Lieberman and Reynolds 1996:157). A casual review of physical anthropological literature suggests that the term race is used, but it tends to be more carefully restricted to breeding populations or to those whose continuity can be traced through ‘‘constant and transmittable’’ characteristics; even then definitions and numbers tend to be cautious (Cavalli-Sforza and Cavalli-Sforza 1994). Finally, in spite of all claims and evidence to the contrary, race continues to tempt efforts to classify human populations hierarchically and to propose racialist schemes to explain differences in behavior (recently, for example, Rushton 1995).∞≤ The French African Formulation The major thrust that carried the antihegemonic message into the political and social world was not that of unesco but that stemming from the colonial experience in French Africa, especially through the works of Franz Fanon and Albert Memmi. Ramos’s 1949 essay argues that Africa was ‘‘the scene of colonial exploitation par excellence,’’ and in The ‘‘North African Syndrome,’’ which appeared in 1952, Fanon adopts North Africa to develop his revolutionary analyses. With regard to the emergence of the antihegemonic position in Guatemala, which I will take up later, these two theorists have been the most influential. They delineated the major dimensions of the racist models of Carlos Guzmán Böckler, Demetrio Cojtí Cuxíl, and Marta Casaus Arzú. Fanon’s and Memmi’s arguments are fundamentally similar. Fanon’s central thesis is that ‘‘racism . . . is only one element of a vaster whole: that of the systematized oppression of a people’’ (1967:33). Memmi’s basic thesis is equally straightforward: ‘‘Racism sums up and symbolizes the fundamental relation that unites the colonist and the colonized’’ (1957:94). For Fanon, ‘‘a country that lives, draws its substance from the exploitation of other peoples, makes those peoples inferior. Race prejudice applied to those peoples is normal’’ (1961:131). He argued this basic position until he died, coincidentally with the publication of his widely read work The Wretched of the Earth. Of particular importance in the present context is Memmi’s argument that ‘‘the focus on biological difference, despite its shrillness, at least among our contemporaries, is not the essential aspect of racism’’ (2000:92). After many years of reworking his ideas and taking into account the charges of adversaries, Memmi concludes with a definition: ‘‘Racism is a generalizing definition and valuation of biological differences, whether real or imaginary, to the advantage of the one defining and deploying them, and to the detriment of the one subjected to that act of definition, to the end of justifying (social or physical) hostility and assault’’ (2000:184). Evolution of Racism in Guatemala

143

For all its popularity as a political position among subordinated peoples over much of the world, the antihegemonic rejection of the biologyculture link in the definition of racism, and the substitution of structural oppositions in its place, has not been universally accepted. Michael Banton and Robert Miles argue that from another direction, it is maintained that the examination of the content of the ideological form which is called racism should be subordinated to consideration of its structure. While biological arguments are less frequently advanced, new ones have taken their place, which justify by other means the unequal treatment of the same group of people. Hence, it is argued that what distinguishes racism, as an ideology is that it asserts a deterministic relationship between a group and supposed characteristics of that group. Such a definition of racism broadens it application, but to the point where its generality renders it analytically meaningless. [1994:278] It is interesting to note that while the antihegemonic perspective emerged in the literature in the 1950s and was introduced into Guatemala in the late 1960s, it was twenty years later that an argument appeared in the social sciences that described the antihegemonic position, but with no allusion to racism. In 1987 John Comaroff argued that in contrast to totemic relations, ‘‘ethnicity has its origins in the asymmetric incorporation of structurally dissimilar groupings into a single political economy’’ (1987:307). Although he bases most of his arguments on materials from Africa, Comaroff does not relate this analysis to racism; he barely alludes to Fanon and makes no mention of Memmi. Rather, the asymmetric relations that have displaced race as the central feature of antihegemonic racism are ascribed to ethnic relations. Such a perspective effectively eliminates much of the dissonance between the antihegemonic and the scientific view of racism. It is perfectly possible to entertain the view that ethnic relations become salient when they visibly emerge in hierarchical social systems and that they involve prejudice and discrimination. However to define racism by these characteristics leaves unanswered the question of the role of race in the entire process. The Fanon-Memmi answer is that such relations only emerge from colonial situations, and race is always a feature of these relations. Irrespective of the rationality of this view, antihegemonic racism is now entrenched in contemporary social discourse where, for better or worse, it has been accorded a high level of political correctness. In comparing the antihegemonic and scientific positions, it is clear that both are challenges 144

Adams

to hegemonic racism but have evolved to speak to rather different issues. The scientific position is concerned with the relative importance of biological and cultural factors in understanding the course of human biological and social development. The antihegemonic perspective emerged with the political purposes of dealing with the consequences of colonialism. The gap between the two is illustrated in a recent overview of the history of racism by a physical anthropologist in which no reference whatsoever is made to any of the major proponents of the antihegemonic position (Shipman 1994). While both the scientific and the antihegemonic position have emerged as arguments against the hegemonic racist position, unfortunately neither is particularly well designed to combat the reality of racism or ethnic prejudice—whatever you may want to call it. The scientific position has been most active in the United States, where there is no immediate past history of colonialism. It has, since its inception, been embroiled in numerous controversies and yet has to be formulated in a way that is politically effective in combating prejudice. The antihegemonic position has taken root in much of the rest of the world where colonialism—or internal colonialism—has been a historic reality. While it has offered a convincing history of the antecedents of racism in these countries, it has failed to cope with the fact that its basic argument of repression of subordinates fails to explain why ethnic prejudice can exist apart from class prejudice. Racism in Guatemala The Latin American Context In Latin America the salience of Indian populations varies from one country to another. Findings in Argentina (Helg 1990), Mexico (Knight 1990), and from Nancy Leys Stepan’s (1991) research in the promotion of eugenics suggest that assimilationism arose in countries with very large Indian populations, whereas whitening policies characterized those with few remaining Indians. In comparing 19th-century liberal Guatemala and Costa Rica, Stephen Palmer has argued that assimilationist policies dominated in the former, whereas eugenic policies—whitening the population—were preferred by the latter (1996:105–106). Alan Knight argues that, as in Europe, Mexican ‘‘racism buttressed by racial theories became stronger in the course of the nineteenth century’’ (1990:78). Spencer’s Social Darwinism and LeBon’s ideas about degenerative racial mixture were especially influential. Toward the end of the century, arguments emerged that the Latin American mestizos, people of mixed Indian, European, and African descent, represented a promising new race.∞≥ Notions of Evolution of Racism in Guatemala

145

whitening the populations through European immigration were popular prior to World War I, although in Mexico the revolution cooled the interest. Postrevolutionary indigenista arguments altered the Mexican government’s overt policies toward Indians, but they had little effect on popular assumptions about Indian inferiority. Indeed, indigenismo emerged as a new vision of how to ‘‘deal with’’ the Indians over much of Latin America. In Guatemala most indigenista commentary arose in the context of addressing the problem of creating a nation in their ethnically divided state, where the Indians were seen as being simultaneously an obstacle and the critical factor in developing the economy. Hegemonic Racism in Guatemala The history of ethnic relations in Guatemala is conditioned by the fact of the colonial conquest and subjugation of the Indian population. It was further defined by the emergence of an export-based liberalism in the 19th century. At that time two-thirds of the population was Indian, and a very large proportion of these people were subjected to annual forced labor and worked under the most degrading conditions, practices that were legally defended, under dictatorial governments, as necessary for national development. This was accompanied by perpetuation, and probably intensification, of an ethnic or racial prejudice and discrimination that excluded Indians from all participation in national politics and resulted in the loss of much of their economic inheritance. Today Guatemala is divided approximately evenly between Indians and non-Indians. The former are 99 percent Maya, and the latter consist of a mestizo and white population. The non-Indians include various ethnic components. Most go under the general identity of Ladino, but many reject this and prefer to be seen as mestizos or more simply as Guatemalans. Although they were granted some folkloric value, the more generally held belief was that Indians culturally ‘‘weighed like a mountain against the needs of the nation’’ (Balcarcel 1927:33). Indians, it was accepted, were lazy and dishonest, but indigenistas ascribed this to the intense exploitation they suffered. They could be redeemed and be incorporated as virtuous and productive citizens into an advancing liberal nation, but for this they had to be ‘‘civilized’’—be educated and required to adopt behaviors of the Ladino or mestizo population. Thus indigenismo policy projected the image that the Indian was essentially worthwhile and that some of his customs were to be tolerated, but that he should be assimilated. The racism of Guatemalan leaders and intellectuals in this era was a variant of that of Euro America. The principal point of divergence was that this racism was focused specifically on the questions of the nature of 146

Adams

Guatemalan Indians and interethnic relations. A critical variable in the discussions of the era was the degree to which Indians could be expected to change. Guatemalan literature of the first half of the 20th century ranged from rank biological racism to varying degrees of indigenista humanism. The former argued simply that the Indians were irrevocably depraved and could not be expected to become civilized in any manner that would make them good productive citizens and, therefore, forced labor and paternalistic guidance were the only solutions. The indigenistas spoke more of the centuries of mistreatment the Indians had suffered and, therefore, how necessary it was to achieve such change. There was some disagreement about the degree to which traits—both cultural and/or biological—were immutable, but there was agreement that change would be a long and arduous process. While indigenismo was not as widely accepted in Guatemala as in Mexico, indigenista views emerged in various sectors that were concerned with national development.∞∂ Thus the army early found indigenista enthusiasts, and it can be argued that policies of the 1930s dictator Ubico were derived from an indigenista position (Adams 1996a). The position of the Guatemalan indigenistas was articulated by Antonio Batres Jaúregui in his prize-winning 1893 essay, which surely reflected the views of the judges, views that were, however, more broadly shared: ‘‘The Indian can be civilized. This is demonstrated by his austere and magnificent past, by the fact that in other countries he has already been assimilated and that, here in Guatemala, there are examples of how easily he takes on customs of the ladinos’’ (Saenz 1932:149; see also Batres Jaúregui 1893: Tercera Parte, Capítulo 40). Following the publication of this book, indigenista perspectives increasingly appeared in editorials and occasional articles in Guatemalan newspapers. After the fall of the longtime dictator Estrada Cabrera in the 1920s, a series of essays emerged that, while concerned primarily with the development of the nation, specifically addressed the ‘‘problem’’ of the Indian.∞∑ While the increase in publications may have reflected an opening for free expression made possible by the dictator’s demise, it probably also reflected the fact that Mexico had suffered a series of ‘‘caste wars’’ and the Indians had been very active in the Mexican Revolution. It therefore behooved the Guatemalans to pay more attention to the Indians lest the white and mestizo minority suffer from a similar vengeful victory. Individual views concerning the racial situation varied greatly in their details.∞∏ Jorge Garcia Granados represents a widely shared racist extreme: ‘‘Physically the Indian, although able to carry enormous loads on his shoulders or hanging from his head [with a tumpline], is of a weak Evolution of Racism in Guatemala

147

constitution and shows unquestionably degenerative signs. His height and weight are inferior to those of other races, he suffers from a narrow forehead, and his cephalic index is subnormal. . . . [The Indian is] an irrational being, closer to the beast than to man; his redemption, disgracefully, appears distant and almost impossible to achieve’’ (1927:18–20). José Luis Balcarcel takes a straightforward Social Darwinist position: ‘‘It is clear from the observable facts that the constant struggle of the two groups that divide the Guatemalan peoples is not a sign of a well-formed nation. . . . The struggle can only have a fatal result—the victory of the most fit. The inferior races are condemned to disappear. The work that most urgently needs to be realized is to prepare the conditions for the emergence of the true Guatemalan nation’’ (1927:12–14). In blaming the Indian for Guatemala’s lack of progress, Pedro Morales specifically sees race, not environment, to be the issue: ‘‘In Guatemala, disgracefully, production is very low because people work very little. Why? First, its great natural wealth and its lovely climate make its inhabitants little concerned with modifying the environment. . . . Second, elements of race: the Indian traditionally is very lazy, his style of life is very primitive, and he is not interested in improving it; and further, he does not consume; he hardly works because he has no needs to satisfy’’ (1915:16). In the years following Batres Jaúregui, the most thoughtful extended Guatemalan indigenista essay to appear was J. Fernando Juarez Muñóz’s El indio guatemalteco (1931). With the conviction that the postconquest history of the Maya had been nothing short of catastrophic, he states his intent: ‘‘To establish whether these races would be able to fulfill their historic mission as free peoples’’ (1931:33). Unlike many of his compatriots, he insists: ‘‘The Indian spirit has survived down through the centuries and is today our inheritance—because it constitutes the future of Guatemala’’ (39). Juarez Muñóz discusses directly the races and their mixtures but almost entirely in terms of their behavior; and this, he argues, came from the treatment they had been accorded since the conquest and continued to receive to that day. Thus biology and culture remained comfortably undifferentiated. Beyond this, the indigenistas agreed that the dismal condition of the Indian was due to history but were much less clear on what to do about it. Joseph Pitti has observed that ‘‘the thinkers of the 1920’s . . . failed to delineate a positive comprehensive answer to the Indian question. . . . During the next half-century many members of the otherwise sagacious generation would hold very important governmental posts. Yet, very few of these individuals would be ideologically capable of proposing radical alternatives to the traditional view of the Indians’ role in Guatemalan society’’ (1975:213–214). The indigenistas felt that the 148

Adams

responsibility of the state, of the Ladinos, was to change the environment of the Indian; but the only mechanism most could suggest was education, and the only clear goal was ‘‘civilization.’’ Juarez Muñóz lamented that many plantations failed to comply with the government’s requirement that they establish schools. ‘‘We have heard a comment that fills our heart with fear: ‘If the spirit of the Indian changes, he will become haughty and will not want to work’ ’’ (1946:22). Throughout the approach was paternalistic, and the subject of change was ‘‘nuestros indios.’’ Beyond avowing the necessity of education, Juarez Muñóz little explored the process of change and its difficulties. There were others, however, who suggested that the problems in the indigenista approach were more profound than education. In the same era, Jorge Luis Arriola, dissatisfied that serious research on the Indians had been left entirely to foreigners, decided to talk with Indians. He concluded: ‘‘The Indian has a conception of the universe that is different in certain ways from our own.’’ From this, he suggested that while the advantages of systematic study were great, there were also problems: ‘‘There are profound differences between our mental life and those determined by other imperative social influences; we believe that all efforts made to accept our point of view will be useless because they will be meaningless’’ (n.d.:7, 8). Another intellectual of the era, César Brañes, wrote an introduction, ‘‘¿Que hacemos con el indio?’’ for Juarez Muñóz’s 1946 book. A leading literary figure and journalist, Brañes bemoans the degeneration of the Ladino that had occurred since the 1870s. Until that time, he asserts, Guatemalans had respected class distinctions, and there had been only ‘‘parsimonious sexual contact’’ between the poor and the rich. At worst, the criollo segment had intermarried with the better mestizos. Accordingly, Ladinos preserved the qualities of the early criollo: ‘‘good moral and physical complexion, beauty among the women, excellence among the men, work habits, honesty.’’ However, since the 1870s, Indian-mestizo mixtures had created a new Ladino who was ‘‘morose, slow-moving, devoid of ideas, disposed to vice, and indolent’’ (Pitti 1975:218–219; see also Brañes 1930). These observations, following the title, are in the style of most of the indigenistas. However, at the end of his essay Brañes suddenly veers in a totally new direction; he quotes and then champions the words of Allan G. Harper, expressing the new Indian policies of the U.S. government:∞π The policies of the new administration have been an expansion of the previous ones, but there has been a change in the attitude toward the Indians and toward administrative problems. In part this attitude is based on the idea that the Indians should have a Evolution of Racism in Guatemala

149

decisive voice in affairs that affect them. No method has been conceived of for their assimilation. To the contrary. . . . it is held that the Indians, and not the government, should decide their destiny. In addition, it affirms that the government must respect the Indian culture. I believe that our task is to promote liberty and the opportunity for Indians without reducing the responsibility of the government for their welfare. [Brañes 1946:13–14] In suggesting these novel policies, Brañes was ahead of his time. It was not until the end of the century and another revolution had ended that the country seriously examined this kind of self-deterministic course. A Mexican indigenista, Moises Saenz, paralleled some of the ideas of Jorge Luis Arriola. Besides being instrumental in developing the Mexican educational system, Saenz traveled and observed the Indians’ situation elsewhere in Latin America. In 1932 he visited Guatemala and prepared a book-length manuscript (Saenz 1932). His observations on race strongly parallel those of the U.S. anthropologists (discussed later in this essay): The word ‘‘ladino’’ refers less to a racial or biological condition . . . than to an economic and social condition. So much is this the case that one hears of the ‘‘ladinized Indian,’’ referring to natives who, by education, economic status, or geographic removal have adopted external characteristics of the ladino. . . . The characteristics of the ladino are even more difficult to identify with scientific rigor because, dealing with a mixed population, the variation is one of their features. [Saenz 1932:98] On the other hand, Saenz also reflects ideas of César Brañes: ‘‘One must recognize that the ladinized Indian . . . is not very admirable. He is a renegade more than a rebel with enormous complexes of inferiority, he shows off in front of his own as insolent and traitorous; before whites he becomes servile, a trait that happily is not typical of Indians’’ (99). In examining the problem of assimilation, Saenz introduces an analysis that, with the exception of the work of Arriola cited previously, I have not found elsewhere in the Guatemalan literature of that era. In my opinion, it fixes on the real problem of assimilating the Guatemalan Indian. In the process of ladinization, he differentiates between an ‘‘external’’ and an ‘‘internal’’ nature of the Indian: Some people have concluded that the Indian is incapable of rehabilitation, to remove him from his condition is to prejudice him, is to lose a good Indian and create a bad citizen. Such imperfect conclusions do not take into account the double process 150

Adams

of cultural mestizaje—the internal and the external—and do not recognize that without the interior, the external is without value and can be both counterproductive, even prejudicial. [Saenz 1932:157–158] The ladinized Indian, dressed with a hat of felt or straw . . . with long trousers, jacket and a vest, carries an umbrella; this constitutes an important step in cultural mestizaje. . . . Wearing shoes is the last and much delayed step in his external cultural evolution. [Saenz 1932:134–135] The distinction was extremely important because it separated external cultural forms, artifacts and behaviors, from the internal social identity of being Indian. It was not until the 1960s that the importance of identity began to be discussed as a central component of ethnicity. To ‘‘ladinize,’’ a Guatemalan Indian needed merely to give up some Indian practices or to adopt some non-Indian culture traits. To assimilate, however, meant giving up Indian identity, and this was a much more difficult process. Both Arriola and Saenz implicitly recognized this. The fact that assimilationism was regarded as both possible and necessary was quite clearly central to the nationalist construction of the era. Few accepted the notion that biology and behavior were independent; and even when accepted, it did not imply that Indians were regarded as being the equal of non-Indians. The ambiguity of how the biology-behavior bridge was conceived reflected a realization on the part of the government that, irrespective of the source of the problem, the state could not survive without the Indians, and their numbers required that they be kept both viable and subdued. Scientific View in Guatemala While the traditional 19th-century view prevailed among Guatemalans of the first half of the 20th century, I have found two challenges to the biology-behavior connection in the writings of Guatemalans of this period. The first is by Antonio Goubaud Carrera (e.g., Goubaud Carrera 1945a:3) and those who followed him as director of the Instituto Indigenista Nacional (iin); the second is by Victor Manuel Gutierrez. Goubaud Carrera was probably influenced by his association with Sol Tax and Robert Redfield and his anthropology studies at the University of Chicago. He was explicit in his admiration of the ‘‘etnología norteamericana,’’ which proposed an approach that led away from the 19th-century evolutionist traditions (Goubaud Carrera 1945b:91). He was also bent on an assimilationist policy when he became the first director of the iin. In his Evolution of Racism in Guatemala

151

inaugural address he rejected the perpetuation of ethnic differences: ‘‘In that which concerns Guatemala, it is the intention to achieve a homogeneous nation’’ (1945b:376) His views on the role of race followed the general rejection current in Western science at the time. In discussing bases for defining the Indian in 1945, he distinguished one base as follows: ‘‘We make a distinction between the physical or biological meaning of race and that used, for example, by Gumplowitz, that involves aspects of culture. Today we reject completely the racial—that is, the physical or biological—in the classification because it does not conform to social reality’’ (Goubaud Carrera 1964:21). Joaquín Noval, who directed the iin after Goubaud Carrera’s death, further reflected the scientific perspective. He took a very strong position on the question of the cultural nature of discrimination: ‘‘The fact that the carriers of Indian culture are also racially Indian tends to cause much confusion. In other words, one differentiates people who are racially and culturally Indian, but not because they are racially Indian, but rather because they are culturally Indian. Apart from individual cases and possibly some segments of the society that discriminate against people who have Indian physiognomy but who do not manifest Indian cultural traits, I do not believe that social discrimination is based on supposed racial features to any great degree’’ (1959:34). Juan de Dios Rosales, an Indian anthropologist who was a later director of the iin and who had also worked and studied with Tax and Redfield, reiterated the position: ‘‘It is important to point out that the Guatemalan Indian is not condemned forever to be Indian, and much less his descendents. If the opportunity allows, he may well renounce the Indian culture and society and join the ladinos. If it is difficult or impossible in some parts of the country, for lack of acceptance by the ladinos, the case is exceptional. . . . The differences in Guatemala are cultural, social and economic, without the racial [biological] aspect being involved’’ (1959:110). Victor Manuel Gutierrez was a leading Guatemalan labor leader of the era, and it is probably safe to say that he was not particularly influenced by the U.S. anthropologists. His position is clearly in the indigenista tradition, but he explicitly rejected the relevance of race in dealing with Indians. However, in contrast to the position of Goubaud Carrera and the iin scholars, who held that race was secondary to culture, Gutierrez took the Marxist position that race was secondary to class: When extraordinary importance is given to the racial factor, one falls into dangerous conceptions, such as ‘‘superior races’’ and ‘‘inferior races,’’ with which one justifies the oppression or one nation over others. Thus, from this false point of view, many judge our Indians as backward elements, ignorant, degenerate, 152

Adams

with no possibility of advance, serving solely to prepare the food necessary for the material life of the society. That which in reality determines the progress of a nation is not its racial antecedents but its gifts from nature. . . . The question of the mode of production, or the economic regime, determines to an extraordinary degree the development and consolidation of nations. . . . When one speaks of national oppression—whether economic, religious, or cultural—one should not think of suppression of one race by another, that is, it is not oppression of whites against indians, but rather that the oppression of one nation over another derives fundamentally from the division of society into classes. [1979:9] In other respects, however, Gutierrez was a radical indigenista of the style of Joaquín Noval. In writing the resolutions for the II Congreso de la Confederación de Trabajadores de Guatemala in 1949, he specified: ‘‘The ctg declares itself the strongest supporter of the rights of the Indians. Therefore, it demands of the state a special policy that will tend to abolish the backwardness that they suffer with respect to their race and culture. If the basic object of the policy is to raise the Indians to the level of whites of the nation, at the same time it is advisable to respect their origin, their communal unity, their customs, and their language’’ (1949–50). Gutierrez’s Marxist emphasis on the importance of class was later adopted by Noval and reappeared in the work of Guzmán Böckler, Flores Alvarado, J. L. Herbert, and others. He did not, however, seem to have been familiar with the antihegemonic racial positions that were adopted by the latter Marxists. Guatemalan popular opinion regarding Indians ran the spectrum from a violent, biologically based, anti-Indian hatred to the view of the paternalistic indigenista who had faith that the Indian could be ‘‘civilized’’ but were far from sure how to achieve this. However, Guatemalan indigenistas, whether their positions were biologically racist, scientific culturalistic, or Marxist, all seemed to agree that Indian society needed to change, although the manner and degree varied in important ways from one position to another. U.S. Anthropologists in Guatemala U.S. anthropologists, who began working in Guatemala in the 1920s, brought with them a scientific notion of ‘‘race’’ based on three assumptions. Central was that culture was independent of race; the latter referred only to biologically inherited characteristics. Because racism was derivative of race, behavior that was not linked to biological inheritance could Evolution of Racism in Guatemala

153

not, by definition, be racist and therefore had to be cultural in nature; inversely, if a behavior was cultural, then it could not be racial. To complicate the picture, they juggled the two inherently inconsistent U.S. models, the ‘‘melting pot’’ and ‘‘Jim Crow.’’ There is nothing with which I am familiar in the work of these anthropologists that suggests they tried crudely to impose either of these models on the Guatemalan scene; but it is important to recognize that they are the models with which they had firsthand familiarity in their own country. While most U.S. anthropologists saw the ethnic differences in Guatemala to be cultural, two of the early anthropologists, Ruth Bunzel and Morris Siegel, saw the situation as essentially one of racial differences. Bunzel, a student of Boas, was perhaps the earliest of the U.S. scholars to use the term racial to label the two groups, and her picture of the relations in Chichicastenango seems to reflect the ‘‘Jim Crow’’ model: The two racial groups impinge upon each other, but they do not interlock. The line between them is clear and sharp. They maintain formal relations, but they remain two bodies, with their clear distinctions of language, costume, economy, social, religious, and political structure. They live in a state of polite antagonism, despising one another heartily. The Ladinos look down upon the Indians as a backward and subject race; but the Indian regards provincial ladino life as sordid, insecure and vicious; he believes that the ladino ‘‘lives like a dog,’’ and suffers from poverty and venereal disease; he sees him constantly harassed by debt and the shadow of political despotism. [Bunzel 1952:9] The Indian makes no distinction between the Ladino, the German and the American. . . . Ladinos, harassed from above, have little influence on the vigorous body of Indian culture. It is possible, therefore, to disregard them except at those points where their lives touch on those of the Indians, for their corruption lies outside the social body. This is not true of all sections of Guatemala. Throughout the plantation region the Indians have been exploited and pauperized, but the picture of race relations in Chichicastenango, as drawn here, is fairly typical of the Highlands, from Tecpán to Huehuetanango [sic]. [Bunzel 1952:14] Bunzel’s separation of the two populations is focused mainly as an ethnographic account of the Indian culture and gives little attention to ladinization or assimilation, and she seems unconcerned by the culturerace dichotomy. One might assume that her Boasian training would give her the cultural bias that was manifest in so many of her colleagues, but in fact it did not. 154

Adams

Morris Siegel worked in San Miguel Acatán in 1938 and describes Indian-Ladino relations in terms that seemed to fit the Jim Crow model: A fundamental principle underlies all social relations between natives and whites. This is the concept of ‘‘white racial superiority,’’ first promulgated during the Conquest and persisting practically unchanged to the present day. The importance of the idea that Indians represent an ‘‘inferior species of mankind’’ cannot be overemphasized for the political and economic organization of Guatemala clearly rests on a racial dichotomy that grants power and privilege to the ‘‘naturally superior group. . . .’’ In Guatemala . . . the mass of the white population seems firmly convinced that Indians are, in truth, biologically inferior and consequently deserving of the lower position in life. Moreover, many natives have come to believe that this dictum is accurate. [1941:420] After a visit ten years later, following the 1944 revolution, Siegel found major cultural changes among the Indians but still could report that relations between the two groups were hostile and separatist. However, he adds in a footnote: ‘‘The definition [of Ladino] is essentially sociological and cultural, though many Ladinos still cling to ideas of ‘blood’ in distinguishing themselves from Indians’’ (1954:165 n. 2). Whether this marginal comment reflects that he had been influenced by his other U.S. colleagues or had seen something new in San Miguel is not clear. Oliver La Farge and Douglas Byers, working in a region close to San Miguel Acatán in 1927, describe the scene in a manner quite different from Siegel’s: As in most parts of Guatemala, the Indian is considered to occupy the lowest position on the social scale. Above him are all the various grades of Ladinos whose superiority he frankly admits. . . . All this shows very plainly in his manner and partly because of this the Indians are past masters of passive resistance and assumed stupidity. Occasionally uprisings and acts of overt resistance show that underneath their humility is a real determination to live out their lives according to their own plans. [La Farge and Byers 1931:81] There are no formally acknowledged social divisions among the Indians themselves. . . . However, the people do fall into two groups, one of which is relatively pure Indian in its customs, the other of which is trying as hard as it can to become Ladino. It is only in Jacaltenango itself that this twofold division is at all Evolution of Racism in Guatemala

155

marked. At San Antonio and Santa Ana Huista it has come to the point where many Indians have nearly lost their language, and all belong to the Ladino-ized [sic] group. In Jacaltenango, where the Indians are of mixed blood, it is frequently difficult to tell whether one is dealing with an Indian or a Ladino. In fact, we thought a number of well-dressed and prosperous men with more or less blonde complexions belonged to the latter class until we found, by seeing them take part in the chicken pull at carnival, or by the way in which known Ladinos spoke to them, that they were socially rated as Indians. . . . It is not uncommon for a well-to-do and educated man, having been pried loose from his deep-rooted attachment to the soil by military service, to move to another section and become Ladino. [La Farge and Byers 1931:84] Charles Wisdom, working among the Chorti in eastern Guatemala in 1931–32, states explicitly that the racial question was less important than was the cultural. ‘‘The distinction between the Indian and Ladino groups is based more upon cultural than upon racial differences. A number of Ladinos of prestige in Jocotán are half or more Indian blood but are completely accepted as Ladinos because they are culturally and psychologically non-Indian in every respect. . . . The same process goes on in the case of a Ladino, usually of mixed blood, who has lived for many years in an aldea, has become somewhat Indianized, and possibly has taken an Indian wife’’ (1940:223–224). Siegel, however, was by no means alone in perceiving these ethnic relations as based on biological race. Five years later, working in San Luis Jilotepeque, also in eastern Guatemala, Melvin Tumin reports: Throughout the pueblo, the notion is widely held that the IndianLadino distinction refers, among other differences, to one in inherited physical characteristics. There is some vague knowledge of separate original provenance of the Indian and Hispanic groups who came together hundreds of years ago and have remained together since, intermingling their genetic stock all along the line, to form the present genetically mixed population. That mixture has been so thorough that it is estimated that perhaps no more than five to ten per cent of those who call themselves Ladino, and thus presumably derive from Spanish ancestors, do not have some Indian ancestry. In spite of this mixture and its apparent effects, it is still widely believed that there are distinct physical differences. Evidence can be selectively mustered at any time to ‘‘prove’’ this point. [1952:60] 156

Adams

However, Tumin’s picture contains elements that do not fit the Jim Crow model: ‘‘It became clear, after several months of pursuing this problem of identity, that all others things being equal, an individual is called Ladino or Indian depending on the known or suspected parentage. Generally speaking, this identifiable parentage tallies with the cultural and linguistic habits of the individuals being identified, so that a composite set of clues is generally employed. These non-physical clues, whose details will shortly be described, are given priority over physical appearance when the latter does not conform to stereotypical expectations’’ (1952:61). The picture became further complicated when Tumin inquired whether people could change their race or not, a thing that should not be possible if race were based on biological heritage (1952:63–64). While 90 percent of the Ladinos said it could not happen knowingly, almost 90 percent of the Indians said that it was possible.∞∫ Tumin’s observations on this apparent contradiction warrant our attention: It would seem quite clear from these figures . . . assuming the questions had the same meaning to all the interviewees—that Indians tend more than the Ladinos to view the differences between the two groups as primarily cultural and acquired rather than biological and inherited. This is borne out in the reason both groups give for their respective beliefs regarding the possibility of the change over. In those reasons we saw a significantly larger proportion of the Ladinos affirming the existence of native biologically determined differences between themselves the Indians. [1952:250–251] So long as the Ladino is determined to keep the Indian at a distance from himself—and it appears that he is so determined— it is unlikely that an Indian, no matter how Ladinoized in his behavior and appearance, will be accepted as a Ladino by the Ladinos. Projected against these resistant facts, the percentage of Indians (66.6 per cent) who indicated some kind of desire to change over to Ladino status assumes a new significance. . . . One would also expect at least some small percentage of the Indians to have contrived in one way or another to have gotten through the caste barrier and receive acceptance. However, in fact these conditions do not exist. One finds no case of an Indian ever achieving Ladino status in the pueblo. (1952:251–252)∞Ω John Gillin, working in San Luis Jilotepeque during the same period as Tumin, saw little importance in the race issue. In the following observation, he also reflects his experience on the coast of Peru. He describes things that would be difficult to find in the southern United States of that period. Evolution of Racism in Guatemala

157

Social segregation is not an essential part of the Latin American pattern. ‘‘Jim Crow’’ is unknown to most Mestizos; there is no segregation in stores, in residential districts, and in buses. Segregation in jobs, recreational privileges, and economic opportunities is of course practiced. However, it seems to me that the important thing in Latin America is that Mestizos and Indians are segregated culturally rather than physically. In North America, on the other hand, segregation is physical rather then cultural. That is to say, that among ourselves, members of the colored groups share with the whites the same cultural patterns, which also means the same culturally induced wants, desires, and goals, but are physically excluded from participation with the whites. [1948:343] Individuals who wish to make the effort can move away from San Luis and become accepted as ladinos in some other community. [Gillin 1948:342] Several ladinos are known to have had one Indian parent. The offspring of such unions are known as cruzados (‘‘crossed’’). It is a social dictum that cruzados may be ladinos but that ‘‘pure Indians’’ may not be so considered. However, this is not strictly followed in practice, although it is true that an uncrossed Indian stands a better chance of being accepted as a ladino if he moves to another community. [Gillin 1948:338] Webster McBryde, the human geographer, worked over much of western Guatemala between 1927 and 1941. He comments briefly on the ethnic situation, but with the same apparent ambiguities implicit in Tumin’s account: Ladinos and upper-class whites of Spanish descent (the aristocracy of Guatemala are not called ‘‘Ladinos’’ except in the census) are politically, socially, and economically superior to the Indians, who generally occupy a position almost comparable with that of Negroes in the South of the United States. [1945:9 n. 4] Because of the importance of the term ‘‘Ladino’’ in Guatemala, and the common misinterpretation of it by foreigners, it is well to consider the significance of the word. The greatest differences between an Indian and a Ladino are in culture rather than blood. [1945:12] Another U.S. anthropologist who, some decades later, found the physical aspect to be explicit was Rubén Reina in his study of Chinautla. 158

Adams

Social interaction between the two most important groups, Indians and Ladinos, is based in large part on a biological evaluation since they believe that they come from different razas, or stocks. To this they add a number of sociological factors. The Indians believe that, descending from an old stock of people, their ancestors from the nearby Nahtinamit ruins, they are different by virtue of their birth and must keep their old costumbres. The opposite, but parallel, position is taken by the Ladinos; they have no identification with the ruins but instead identify with national historical events, particularly the coming of the Spaniards, who left a genetic and cultural residue of which they consider themselves descendants. . . . Indians in general conceptualize Ladinos as follows: The Ladinos are a different type of people in blood and character. [1966:22–23] However, Reina cites 11 quotations by Indians about Ladinos, and not one mentions biological or racial features. In 1966 Benjamin Colby and Pierre van den Berghe undertook the first study since Tumin’s to examine with care the details of how their informants responded to questions specifically concerning ethnic relations. While different in many respects, the general picture they draw, and the generalizations they propose, fall well within the findings of the preceding U.S. studies. Their findings go into greater detail than any since Tumin but strongly reaffirm the general picture already detailed. I will cite only a few of their observations. In Nebaj, as indeed in most Guatemalan towns, the social definition of an Indian is cultural rather than racial. Of a sample of 40 Nebaj ladinos asked to name the differences between ladinos and Indians, 33 mentioned only cultural differences (clothing, language, and ‘‘customs’’ or ‘‘mode of life’’); 6 mentioned both cultural and physical traits; and none listed physical traits only. (One person did not reply.) . . . Physical differences are recognized by both ladinos and Indians, and both groups express an aesthetic preference for lighter skin and hair color, but phenotype is irrelevant to group membership. Ladinos and Indians constitute ethnic and not racial groups. [Colby and van den Berghe 1969:86–87] In a footnote they then add: ‘‘Two core elements of ‘true’ racism are generally absent in Spanish America, namely that genetically transmitted physical traits constitute basic criteria for membership in corporate groups, and that genetic characteristics be regarded as important determinants of human behavior and differential abilities. . . . Only one of our Nebaj ladino Evolution of Racism in Guatemala

159

informants and respondents spontaneously made a remark which could be interpreted as racist, and it was directed against American Negroes, a group with which he had practically no contact’’ (Colby and van den Berghe 1969:87 n. 5). In many respects the Nebaj findings duplicate those of Tumin in San Luis Jilotepeque a quarter of a century earlier: Despite the largely cultural definition of group boundaries, the ethnic line is quite rigid. For a local person to ‘‘pass’’ from one group to another without going to live elsewhere is virtually impossible, and most informants cannot give any cases. Twentythree of the 40 respondents deny that an Indian can become a ladino, and 29 deny that a ladino can become an Indian. Of those, 16 mention ‘‘race,’’ ‘‘blood,’’ ‘‘ancestry,’’ or ‘‘origins’’ as reasons which make passing impossible, but most of them also advance cultural reasons such as dietary and linguistic differences. On the basis of these findings, it may be argued that to a substantial number of ladinos, the ladino-Indian distinction is perceived at least partly as a racial one. At the subjective level, this is true to some extent, and in that sense traces of racism may be said to be present. But in terms of who is in fact classified as Indian or ladino, the criteria used are clearly cultural. [Colby and van den Berghe 1969:87–88] One topic in which mid-1960 Nebaj differed significantly from San Luis Jilotepeque of the mid-1940s concerned ‘‘passing.’’ Almost half of a sample of 40 Ladinos held that passing was theoretically possible but really could only happen by leaving the community. Indians, however, were even hostile to the idea of passing, and only 6 of a sample of 85 approved of doing it (Colby and van den Berghe 1969:88–89). Robert Redfield and Sol Tax came to Guatemala under the auspices of the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s program in social anthropology. Redfield himself did limited research in Guatemala but was responsible for hiring Tax as well as some other Carnegie-supported investigators. Both thoroughly accepted the Boasian position. Redfield was also close to the Chicago School of Sociology, whose theories of racial assimilation in the United States at the time were vigorous. Both he and Tax placed much faith in education as the major mechanism by which acculturation of the Indian would be facilitated. Their contemporary publications portray them as having been partisans of the culturalist position, giving little space to the question of race. In 1942 Tax wrote an article to refute the charge of racism that Mor160

Adams

ris Siegel had leveled at the Guatemalan Indian–Ladino relations. He had earlier made clear his position on the question of the Indian-Ladino distinction: Presumably an ‘‘Indian’’ is a pure-blooded descendant of the people of pre-Colombian Guatemala, and most of them probably are. A ladino, on the other hand, is supposed to represent a mixture of Indian and Spanish in remote times. Actually the distinction is commonly based on language and culture rather than physical type; Indians speak Indian languages, wear Indian costumes, have Indian surnames, and live like Indians. A ladino has a Spanish surname and speaks Spanish as a mother tongue; he wears European-type clothes, wears shoes, lives in a house with windows, is usually literate, and has, in general a better standard of living than his Indian neighbor. None of these criteria hold universally, but on the basis of all of them one can usually make a safe judgment. [1937:432] He later spells out the position that was commonly held by most U.S. anthropologists of the period: ‘‘It may be said with confidence, therefore, that essentially the difference between Ladino and Indian in Guatemala is not thought of as a biological difference. It follows that passage from one group to another is possible; more than that, it tends to become automatic. An Indian who loses his Indian characteristics is a Ladino’’ (Tax 1942:46). The 1942 article, however, is more convoluted, and Tax extends his argument both to a logic and to conclusions that were not paralleled by the findings of most other U.S. observers: The social problem is not Indian except in the sense that a large proportion of the underprivileged happen to be Indians, and in some respect they are as a group worse off economically and educationally and in health facilities than are Ladinos. Indians as such are not under legal handicaps, but often their ignorance and poverty prevent them from taking advantage of their legal rights. Indians as such are not exploited economically, although again their poverty and lack of education makes [sic] it more necessary for them than for ladinos to work for others as common laborers. [Tax 1942:47] Tax then argues that all the Indians’ disadvantages stemmed from the fact that ‘‘Spanish happen[ed] to be the official language, the language of the schools,’’ and therefore the only thing holding the Indian back was lack of education. Tax ignores that Indians were disproportionately subjected to Evolution of Racism in Guatemala

161

forced labor and conscription and that almost no schools existed in Indian communities. That ‘‘a large proportion of the underprivileged’’ were Indians, and the fact that the official language was Spanish, did not just ‘‘happen.’’ The journal’s editor invited commentary from John Collier, the president of the Governing Board of the Instituto Indigenista Interamericano, but also the U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs and the person responsible for the policies cited earlier in connection with the Allen Harper statement. He leveled a blistering critique of Tax’s assertions that these major ethnic differences and relations could somehow be easily changed by mere education.≤≠ Redfield shared the categorical position expressed by Tax concerning the respective roles of race and culture in Guatemalan social relations in his publications of the period. However, the published correspondence of these two scholars in these years indicates that they—particularly Redfield—found the situation ambiguous.≤∞ Tax preceded Redfield into the field in Guatemala by some two and a half years, and one has the impression that when they disagreed on ethnic issues, Tax’s views tended to prevail. In May 1937 Redfield took issue with Tax’s view on the importance of culture over biology: We have a great many sub-problems. I will begin with one: is identification with the ladino groups solely a matter of acting, as do ladinos? You say . . . ‘‘a ladino is somebody with Spanish culture and language; an Indian is somebody with Indian culture and language.’’ This sounds as if you regarded these definitions as complete. I think there are facts that throw doubt upon such a conclusion. I can get no one here who knows Juan Rosales to say that he is a ladino.≤≤ All who know him agree that he has left the ways of the Indians, that he is well educated, speaks Spanish well, and comports himself as a ladino. However, they insist he is an Indian, ‘‘because his parents were both Indians. Now his children, they will be cruzados, because one parent is ladina. . . . They will say that if Juan Rosales goes where people do not know that his parents were Indians, then for those people, Juan will be a ladino. From this point of vantage it looks as if ancestry had a good deal to do with being a ladino or an Indian. What I am suggesting is that there is a problem of passing. . . . If this were true, I do not think it makes a race problem out of it. There is no ‘‘blood’’ in it. It amounts to alleging that [Fulana] is a more lowly person than she makes out. [Rubenstein 1991:172– 173] 162

Adams

The interesting thing is that even though parentage implies a biological connection, ‘‘blood’’ clearly had a very special meaning that led Redfield to discount the ancestral connection and deny that it was ‘‘a race problem.’’ In January 1938 Tax described a shipboard conversation with a planter from Alabama that again suggested that ‘‘blood’’ had a special meaning for North Americans. ‘‘We figured out that the difference is that in the south there is something wrong with being a Negro (or having Negro blood, no matter how little), while here there is little or no attachment to the idea of Indian blood as such’’ (Rubenstein 1991:203). Both Redfield and Tax were apparently not so impressed with the oppression of Indians because they also dealt with equally poor and hardworking Ladino peasants in the region (e.g., Chitatúl, Godinez, and Aguas Escondidas), and Redfield specifically studied the last. However, there is no question that Tax downplayed the pernicious aspects of the Indian-Ladino relationship. Bunzel’s descriptions (see previous discussion) of interethnic mutual disregard and hatred in Chichicastenango contrast sharply with those expressed by Tax a few years later in the correspondence: I would like to discuss briefly the question of castes in Chichicastenango. I think . . . that the social class is not nearly as castelike as the impression of them may be (partly my fault, no doubt). Each of the classes tends to be endogamous. . . . There is a degree of servility. . . . But on the other hand, there is no oppression, or consciousness of oppression. . . . Thus conditions are really quite different from those in the American south. Indians are considered poor and uneducated, but I have never heard of them spoken of as an inferior people. Thus you don’t have the present GermanJewish situation. . . . When they are like the ladinos in some respects they are immediately identified with the ladinos in those respects. Nobody is trying to keep them down, so of course no bitterness is engendered. [Rubenstein 1991:107–108]≤≥ It is hard to believe that Tax ‘‘never heard of them spoken of as an inferior people,’’ but particularly striking here is the allusion to the ‘‘GermanJewish situation.’’ It is perhaps easy today to forget the impact that Hitler’s policies were having at the time on Jews elsewhere in the world, but Tax makes clear that—along with the ‘‘Jim Crow’’ and assimilationist models and the Boasianism that prevailed in the United States—the Nazi policies projected a version of race that may have made the Ladino treatment of Indians appear benign. Even so, he does at one point allow that race was a factor: ‘‘It seems to me illuminating, rather than misleading, to point out the respects in which the Chichicastenango situation, while Evolution of Racism in Guatemala

163

not a rigid caste-system, is a race-class system with many caste features’’ (Rubenstein 1991: 114). Redfield essentially goes along with Tax’s positions: ‘‘I agree without reservation to your paragraph stating that there is no race problem; that there is a ladino problem (or an Indian problem)’’ (Rubenstein 1991: 170). The contrast between the observations of Bunzel, Tumin, and Siegel, on the one hand, and Tax, on the other, is interesting in view of the fact that all were Jews and presumably sensitive to antiSemitism in U.S. society. Siegel, Tumin, Bunzel, McBryde, and Reina are all explicit in finding racial (i.e., biological) differences to be as significant as in the United States ‘‘Jim Crow’’ model; Colby and van den Berghe report recognition of the issue among some informants, but along with La Farge and Byers, Wisdom and Gillin do not see biological factors as being salient. The source of ambiguity in the Guatemalan materials for all these observers lay in the process of ‘‘passing’’ and assimilation that were obviously evident. Siegel and Bunzel make no mention of passing, but for Tumin, Reina, and McBryde the notion of simple biologically based racism was compromised by the fact of social passing and assimilation, and their discussions of ethnic differences focus on culture. La Farge and Byers, Wisdom, and Gillin are explicit, as are some of the others, that ladinization and passing are standing facts. Acculturation, social passing, and social relations were more important to most U.S. observers from the 1920s through the 1970s than was the presence of biology in the construction of racism. In general, the U.S. scholars from the 1920s into the 1960s were essentially in agreement on a number of points.≤∂ There were two very distinctive sectors of the population, and the terms most commonly used locally to designate them were Indian, or natural, and Ladino. Whether or not the term race was most appropriate, it continued to be used to denote human population segments with genetic continuities but was rejected from any connection with behavioral or cultural traits. ‘‘Racism’’ was a belief that behavioral differences were genetically based, and something was ‘‘racist’’ when based on this assumption. The importance of racism was that it denoted discrimination based on immutable biological inheritance; because the traits on which discrimination was based could be changed, they could not, by definition, be genetic. While some characteristics that distinguish the two ethnic sectors were clearly biological, these were vastly overridden by the importance of cultural traits in ethnic definitions. Beyond this, there 164

Adams

was some variation on other issues. The perspectives on race and culture of the Indians and Ladinos being studied were far from consistent, as were the amount and kind of assimilation that was underway. In retrospect what most of us were doing was to construct models without the biological component, and as such we were using the current, inherited terminology. At least beginning with Huxley and Haddon’s call to eject the term race from the vocabulary and substitute ethnic to label major human population segments, the North Americans were discarding race in favor of culture and, later, ethnicity. They were describing social relational systems differentiated by traditional, socially inherited traits, but which included biological traits insofar as they were part of the cultural constructions. As Sandra Wallman puts it: ‘‘Once it is clear that ethnic relations follow on the social construction of difference, phenotype falls into place as one element in the repertoire of ethnic boundary markers’’ (1986:227). Given the continuing political misappropriation, sensitivity, and confusion over the words race and racism, there was some virtue in shifting to ethnic group and ethnicity. Of equal importance is that the Boasian separation of culture and race had a very important compensation. George Stocking has suggested that the shift from race to culture, in fact, was not so difficult. ‘‘For ‘race’ read ‘culture’ or ‘civilization,’ for ‘racial heredity’ read ‘cultural heritage,’ and the change had taken place. From implicitly Lamarckian ‘racial instincts’ to an ambiguous ‘centuries of racial experience’ to a purely cultural ‘centuries of tradition’ was a fairly easy transition—especially when the notion of ‘racial instinct’ had in fact been largely based on centuries of experience and tradition’’ (Stocking 1968:266). As Malik has phrased it, ‘‘Culture seemed to provide a mechanism whereby the particularities of a people could be conveyed unchanged from generation to generation and one, moreover, which suggested an explanation for the seemingly immutable differences between different social groups’’ (1996:159). Racism up to and through World War II was of immediate concern to Euro America, in part because of an interest in advancing scientific research but more immediately because of a desire to counter the violent racism emerging in Germany. Given the continuing Western receptivity to classic 19th-century racism, one can only speculate whether, if the Germans had not launched World War II, their form of racism might have prevailed over much of the Western world in a more virulent form than that which has. It is not likely that there would have been a United Nations or a unesco; and there are few who acclaim the virtues of German anthropology of that epoch. One could argue, therefore, that the position Evolution of Racism in Guatemala

165

taken by the U.S. anthropology of the era and by unesco was scientific, humanistic, and politically acceptable. What it lacked was attention to how race relations were seen from the colonies—external and internal. Antihegemonic Racism in Guatemala Antecedents of antihegemony were early present in Latin America, as the mature 1949 statement by Arturo Ramos makes very clear. Because these voices were not willingly heard in Guatemala, the records of the indigenous perspectives are only now being unearthed. Following Estrada Cabrera’s fall in 1920, some fifty Mayas of the Coban Club Unionista ‘‘La Libertad del Indio’’ wrote to the Asamblea Nacional Legislativa: ‘‘If during the ninety-nine years that Guatemala has been independent the authorities have not recognized the citizenship and liberty of the Indian, it would be only just today for them to concede that it is not a myth but corresponds to the law set forth by Articles 16 and 17 of the constitutive law, which says: The authorities of the republic are instructed to maintain the rights of its inhabitants, which are liberty, equality and the security of the person, of his honor, and of his property.’’≤∑ They ran through a litany of abuses—unpaid forced labor in the army and in the municipalities, no educational facilities, child labor for municipalities, and the debt servitude that dominated the relations between owner and laborer. In 1921 an article by Pedro María Cojolún appeared in the Diario de Centro America, arguing in an indigenista mode that the races should be kept distinct: Thus it is understood that the Minister of Public Instruction, has created the Normal School of Indians in order to form within the race teachers of elementary and rural schools. The fact of forming teachers within their own race is a step that will reduce the obstacles to the Indian achieving civilization. . . . When the two races are in the same school, experience has proven that the division between both groups increases because the youths lack the necessary altruism to treat the poor Indians as equals. They are therefore victims of pride and accept without appeal whatever the ladinos impose and form in them passions and vices such as servility, envy, hypocrisy, and the hate for the other race is hidden, but it grows. . . . My race, the Indian race, condemns the vile interests that condone ignorance and depredation but blesses those who show the road to redemption. [1921] In 1935 Sol Tax echoed Bunzel’s statement cited earlier: ‘‘The Chichicastenango Indians are an extremely strong in-group who won’t countenance marriages even with other Indians if they can help it; they want their 166

Adams

own customs and no interference. The Padre [Rossbach] feels that they are putting up their last fight—instinctive, he calls it—for racial (or cultural) life’’ (Rubenstein 1991:77). While antihegemony was long present underground in Guatemala, its explicit public appearance in national literature occurred in the mid or late 1960s with Humberto Flores Alvarado, Jean-Loup Herbert, and Carlos Guzman Böckler, and especially with the publication of the 1970 volume of the latter two. These scholars saw their task as not only challenging 500 years of colonial oppression of the Indians, the 19th-century racism of the Ladino population, and the more generally indigenista views of the political establishment. They also had to deal with a century of the active colonialist presence of the United States that included military interventions, economic and political manipulations, and almost half a century of U.S. anthropological research, framed in terms of American historicism and functionalism, in the main antithetical to their own Marxist models. They saw their role to be one of combating a colonialist and hegemonic racist presence and of eliminating the most active intellectual aggressors on the scene, the U.S. anthropologists. They did this by ideological attacks on U.S. scholars, arguing that the very study of ladinization advanced the hegemonic and indigenista racist views and was promoting the assimilation, if not the genocide, of the Indian. This process was a minor part of an intense internal Guatemalan debate over revolutionary strategy, the pursuit of which would go well beyond the scope of the present essay. The first U.S. scholar to question why his predecessors were not using the terms race and racism to characterize the situation in Guatemala was probably Douglas E. Brintnall. He carried out his fieldwork in 1972–75, a period during which Guzmán Böckler and Herbert and Flores Alvarado were still very much in evidence. Brintnall reasoned that the LadinoIndian distinction is based on group relations and descent and as such must be seen as racial. He paid little attention to the questions that had influenced his predecessors, that is, whether Indians could become Ladinos, and simply expounded the antihegemonic argument.≤∏ There are, in my opinion, several advantages in seeing IndianLadino relations in the southeastern highlands in terms of ‘‘race’’ and ‘‘racism.’’≤π First . . . races exist only in race relationships, and not because there are physical, descent, or cultural differences. . . . The second benefit . . . is that the exploitative character of Ladino treatment of Indians is highlighted for English readers. The expression ‘‘ethnic group’’ loses this dimension of the ethnographic reality because [of ] its emotional neutrality. . . . The final advantage . . . is that to do so is also to say something very important Evolution of Racism in Guatemala

167

about the causes of race and racism: these causes need not be based on physical, somatic differences between groups. . . . The causes of racism must be sought . . . in historical and politicaleconomic factors. [Brintnall 1979:650] Carol Smith, who shares Brintnall’s view, has written a more extensive critique of U.S. anthropologists who did research in Guatemala earlier in the century, citing them for failing to recognize racism when they saw it. Smith partitions her colleagues working in Guatemala into a first generation, those who worked between 1940 and 1960; a second, those working from 1960 to 1980; and then those who came later. She argues, more or less as does Brintnall, that with few exceptions (Siegel and Tumin) the entire first generation was wrong headed in not recognizing that real racism existed in Guatemala, and that most of those in the second generation did not address the question. Most of her arguments come from texts by Redfield, Tax, and to a lesser extent me. In the second generation there was little discussion of the issue; only Brintnall stands out, besides Smith, as a partisan of what we in that generation called ‘‘antihegemonic racism.’’ Others who followed have tended to take antihegemony as the accepted position (Smith 1999). Contemporary Guatemalan Positions on Racism As with all things cultural, the antihegemonic racist construction introduced into Guatemala in the 1960s did not eliminate the older indigenismo and hegemonic racist models but created its own niche. It also served as a base for further developments as different sectors of the society attempted to define their place and identity for the future. This process is much too complex and too little studied to attempt a presentation here. I will instead close this essay with a brief look at the current modeling being done by three prominent Guatemalan intellectuals: Demetrio Cojtí Cuxil, a leading Maya scholar and political leader; Mario Roberto Morales, a Ladino (former) revolutionary and novelist; and Marta Elena Casaus Arzú, a Ladina expatriate sociologist. I will draw on their work to illustrate how the hegemonic and antihegemonic perspectives are currently active in Guatemala. In addition, it must be remembered that these are summary versions of ongoing work of single individuals and do not represent broad social movements. Moreover, the narrowness of my focus should not lead the reader to misjudge the breadth of work of the individuals being discussed. Demetrio Cojtí Cuxíl gives an extensive and detailed analysis of how he sees racism in contemporary Guatemala. His view falls clearly within the 168

Adams

antihegemonic position by ignoring the cultural-biology hinge, and, as indicated earlier, it specifically follows Memmi’s general definition that defines racism entirely as a hegemonic exercise. Racism is expressed through both biological and cultural materials, but its single objective is to differentiate and subordinate the Indian population. Because the Mayas have long had an antihegemonic perspective, the importance of the injection from North Africa was to provide the Maya intelligentsia with useful tools with which to construct a politically salient model of a national Maya étnia in the daunting context of an ongoing civil war. As portrayed by Cojtí Cuxíl, racism is a weapon created by the ruling sectors of society to favor their hegemony. It is a label only for those ideologies and prejudices directed against members of subordinate, subaltern sectors. This position therefore argues that there is no racism of the weak against the strong. Cojtí Cuxíl is explicit about this: ‘‘One may speak of a Guatemalan racism to the degree that the racists (whites, criollos, and mestizos) and victims (Negroes, Indians, and mestizos) are linked to each other by means of the phenomenon of racism’’ (1999:196–197). Cojtí Cuxíl is also explicit that racism may be formed around both cultural and biological issues and indeed argues that culturally based racist behavior is displacing biologically based prejudice (206). On the matter of charges of Mayan racism, Cojtí Cuxíl is very explicit in describing them as aspects of the newly evolving ‘‘criollo-mestizo racism,’’ the latest development in the five-century evolution of hegemonic racism. ‘‘In its adaptation to the new demands of internal colonial, racism is now succeeding in spilling over, turning Indians into racists and the Ladinos into their victims’’ (1999:215). More specifically he charges that the criollo-mestizo racism ‘‘judges the policies and compensatory means or affirmative actions that favor the Indian as means or situations of Indian racism. . . . It considers the thinking and organization of the Indians as proof of the existence of Indian sectarianism and racism’’ (214). Cojtí Cuxíl’s position on these matters is entirely understandable. One can only sympathize if those who have long been the target of racism do not feel themselves to be racist. Today many share the antihegemonic notion that racism is a one-way process. My argument, however, goes beyond that of Cojtí Cuxíl: that being subordinate or subaltern does not free one from practicing discrimination and prejudice, the hallmarks of racism. A basis of Indian identity is the claim to separate origins, and that means separate from all others. Indians have been known to categorize, disparage, and discriminate against non-Indians. To say that Indians practice racism in no way excuses non-Indians (Ladinos) for their continuing racist practices nor in any sense claims that ‘‘all’’ Indians are racist. As Evolution of Racism in Guatemala

169

Cojtí Cuxíl points out about non-Indians, the exercise of racism is an individual affair. Moreover, he also observes that indigenismo and democratic practices are improving and should continue to improve the quality of daily ethnic relations. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that among non-Indians the image of Indians mobilizing can still conjure up horrific visions of caste wars and massacres. The Indians’ claim to separate culture and identity has necessarily challenged members of the non-Indian population of Guatemala to examine the nature of their own identity. Thus whether one agrees that there are Maya racists or not, the Mayas are protagonists in a process of the construction of another national-level identity: that of the Ladino. In his much-cited 1970 article, ‘‘El ladino: Un ser ficticio,’’ Guzmán Böckler argues: ‘‘We are a people with no common purpose. . . . The collective future is so unclear and so little attractive that all effort towards group survival is carried out with no rational guidelines’’ (Guzmán Böckler and Herbert 1970:120). In the 1960s, two decades after the revolution of 1944, the interests of the Maya peoples began to take shape in a Mayan movement—disjointed and fragmented, but substantively real. This began to alert the Ladinos to the fact that such a movement could pose political problems for the traditional structure of power. The developments during this epoch are interesting because, unlike the earlier racial controversies that we must reconstruct, we can observe these processes from day to day. Although much too complex to explore here, something of the dynamics of these responses can be seen in the contrasting views of Mario Roberto Morales and Marta Elena Casaus Arzú. Morales attempts to position the non-Indians and Indians within his vision of the history of mestizaje and hybridization. During the 1990s he wrote editorials critical of the direction taken by the Mayan movement. In May 1997 he shifted his focus to specifically espousing the rights of Ladinos and promoting a movement to confront that of the Mayas. These editorials are an overt effort to construct a ‘‘Ladino’’ position, and they fulfill—in the fullest sense—the process of construction that concerns the present essay. Morales’s position has evolved from indigenista thinking and reflects what Cojtí Cuxíl calls the new ‘‘criollo-mestizo racism.’’ His thinking parallels the antihegemonic position in three areas. First, he rejects the classic position on the cultural-biological hinge. Second, he accepts the importance of structure and opposition in the definition of the ethnic sectors. This was summed up in the title of an editorial: ‘‘Ladino es el que no quiere ser indio, y punto’’ (1997a:15), that is, a Ladino is anyone who 170

Adams

does not want to be Indian. Origins are not important, he argues, because both Indians and Ladinos are irretrievably mixed and ‘‘hybridized,’’ culturally and biologically. Thus he also finds no difficulty in seeing both cultural and biological features operative in ethnic group definitions. However, he rejects the antihegemonic position that racism is a one-way affair and explicitly acknowledges that the Indians are racist too. Thus while purely antihegemonic, Morales’s construction reflects its influence. In the course of developing his position, Morales effectively addresses the quandaries exposed in the quotations cited from Cojtí Cuxíl and Guzmán Böckler: I am here today . . . to celebrate the ladino mestizaje of Guatemala, to extol the two sources of our ethnic pride. Ladinos deny neither Spain nor Mesoamerica, neither the Andalusians nor the Mayas; rather, we appropriate creatively to raise a cultural and ideological being from the mixture. . . . The Ladinos should organize themselves as part of the civil society. There are no Ladino organizations, and it appears it will be necessary to create them. . . . Ladinos ought to organize defensively against the offensive of the Maya ethnicity orchestrated, financed, and promoted by economists and foreign academics who do not understand our mixture and for whom we, the Ladinos, are the villains in the picture. [Morales 1997b:15] For Morales the problem of the Mayan movement is not merely a matter of cultural equality or privileges—multiculturalism—but the threat it poses to the Ladinos’ longstanding position of power. ‘‘The democratization of the nation should not imply a legislative subdividing because that would suggest the basis for national divisiveness, and we should soon be forming pseudo nations within the nation. In this sense Ladinos should not renounce their historic conquest nor beat their chests, but rather should negotiate an ethnic democratization from a position of power that is obvious and should be retained’’ (1997c:15). Because his concern here is with the evolution of particular ideas and not a holistic view, these observations underplay Morales’s guiding concern for the construction of a multicultural, democratic Guatemalan nation. In that, however, he holds to an essentially hegemonic position with respect to the relative roles of Indians and Ladinos. Some thinkers among the non-Indians concerned with the construction of the Guatemalan nation do not share Morales’s position on Ladino hegemony. Marta Elena Casaus Arzú’s now classic work on Guatemalan upper-class racism (1992) has made her especially sensitive to these issues. Evolution of Racism in Guatemala

171

Casaus Arzú is aligned with the antihegemonic school on all the issues under examination here. As mentioned earlier, she shares Memmi’s antihegemonic definition of racism, and unlike Morales, she rejects the notion that Ladinos should retain hegemony. She is particularly concerned with the continuing domination of hegemonic racism among the non-Indians. ‘‘It is going to be difficult to change our profoundly separatist and racist mentalities and understand that we have to get to know the ‘‘other’’ in all its complexity and respect it. . . . We do not have a culture of tolerance’’ (1996:40). Part of the solution she sees is getting Ladinos to ‘‘redefine’’ themselves to allow the emergence of a truly multicultural state: ‘‘We are hybrids, but with differences. We cannot construct a mestizo country precipitously on such a base because it would be artificial. We can build a multicultural country and try to determine the social pacts that will permit us to create conditions for consensus’’ (39). In keeping with her generally antihegemonic stand, Casaus Arzú sees the issue of opposition to override the questions of origins in the definition of ethnic identities: One of the most important problems of this country is our inability, as Ladinos, to situate our identity as an ethnic group. The Indians can do this and are functioning, and this has value both politically and for self-reaffirmation. [The fact that we lack a common descent is not important because it] is neither the only nor the most important element that justifies being called an ethnic group, not the only one nor the most important. As Ladinos we have a culture, a worldview, some customs, a territory, a common history, and, above all, a self-identification with respect to the ‘‘other.’’ I identify myself with respect to the ‘‘other’’ as a member of an ethnic group. Moreover, if we cannot in fact identify ourselves as a social-racial group, then we can be called mestizos-Ladinos. This is enough if we see it as a process of the historical construction of identity. [1996:39] In asserting that shared origins are not important in the construction of a Ladino ethnicity, Casaus Arzú and Morales both take the position that Ladino identity can be constructed on other cultural bases. Unlike for Morales, for Casaus Arzú merely denying Indian identity is not enough. In pragmatic terms, my own perspective is that Ladinos may find it difficult to organize either ideologically or politically in the absence of criteria as to who is to be included and the nature of the core identity they are supposed to share. The three most common bases for mobilizing identity in today’s world are ethnicity (e.g., common origins), religion, and the nation-state. There is no single religion that binds Ladinos, and if a com172

Adams

mon origin ‘‘is not the only nor the most important’’ source of identity, then the only core around which Ladinos might mobilize is probably Guatemalan nationalism. Because common origins are uppermost in the vision of the Mayan identity, however, one suspects that a failure to confront it will provide continuing obstacles for Ladinos in the gran debate nacional. The positions currently taken by Cojtí Cuxíl, Morales, Casaus Arzú, and Smith all reflect the influence of the antihegemonic perspective, but the construction each builds reflects the particular focus of his or her own concerns with the future of Guatemala. Cojtí Cuxíl is concerned with clarifying the new developments in classic hegemonic racism in order to help Mayas better cope with them in the course of their cultural and political development. Morales’s concern is to forge a Guatemalan nationalism that accepts all ethnic components democratically but does not shift the current imbalance of hegemony. Casaus Arzú is preoccupied with the difficulty of getting the Ladinos to negotiate their hegemony, and without doing that, real democratic nationalism may be impossible. At least one reason for Smith’s attack on U.S. anthropologists may be that the revelation about the nature of race she experienced from the antihegemonical model was so affecting that she felt the rest of the world should know. All these constructions, whether defending Guatemalan nationalism, the Guatemalan Mayan renaissance, or U.S. anthropological revisionism, are works-in-process, single voices reflecting the needs of some set of people for their ongoing social constructions. In Guatemala today there effectively exist two different notions of racism: the hegemonic and antihegemonic. It is for a moment a kind of bimodal continuum, and we know from the daily news and experience that there are people at both extremes. Most Guatemalans, however, tend to work with pieces from both models. Multiculturalism is the system that allows both models to coexist, as do the peoples of the different ethnic segments of the population. The scientific model remains what it was originally—a scientific model. As such, it is not likely to be adopted popularly because it is unlikely to serve any interest but that of scientists and social scientists, who find it a useful device for their understanding. As it must be with all things scientific, it is necessarily subject to revision as scientific understanding advances. As with all scientific ‘‘truths,’’ it stands until a better one replaces it. This essay has attempted to depict evolutionary continuities and variations in the use of ‘‘race’’ and ‘‘racism’’ over the past century in Guatemala and American anthropology. It finds extraordinary strength in the backEvolution of Racism in Guatemala

173

ground concept of peoples related through common origins or inheritance; it also recognizes a slow evolution in the challenge to hegemonic definitions prior to World War II and important inversions of the use of biology as a basis for projections of social discrimination, separation, and prejudice. While there is no reason for optimism that ‘‘racism’’ may disappear, no matter how it be defined, the evolution traced here does show important changes in how it has been perceived. On the negative side, the inability of states to govern effectively has led people across the world to seek bases of identity beyond the state’s control. Of these, the ethnic identity based on common origins and inheritance has proved to be one of the most viable and accessible. On the positive side, some governments are recognizing the importance of coping constructively with ethnic differences and the need to forge democratically multicultural societies and states. Although international agreements and peace accords have been formally signed and approved, the problems that lie ahead in achieving convivial multicultural nations remain immense and, I suspect, interminable. For their part, the Maya Indians are defining areas where they want to gain legitimate control, such as language use and education policies and programs, while sensitive areas such as agrarian tenure and land distribution are being addressed more by militant action than by either Mayas or government policy. From the Ladino perspective, the picture is, as Casaus Arzú has argued, a difficult one. While Casaus Arzú and Morales agree that the non-Indian population must better define itself before it can organize to cope with the ethnically based Mayas, the indications are slender that such is happening. The differences in the perspectives of these two authors suggest how deep the problems really are: one has already defined Ladino identity by fiat and argues for the indefinite continuation of Ladino hegemony; the other recognizes the inherent contradictions within the non-Indian population and seeks dialogue and negotiation of an identity without hegemony. The differences are profound. One benefit of Smith’s position, and my response to it, would be to draw attention to the value of the early and mid-20th-century foreign anthropologists. Their studies merit a less politically hostile and chauvinistic scholarly evaluation than has been often accorded them in Guatemalan writings. Instead of presuming to test the validity of a 1940s account by comparing it with what one sees in 1970 or 1995, these descriptions should be seen as irreplaceable primary data on the ‘‘ethnographic present’’ of a now-lost era. Whether the future Mayas become more or less Mayan, whether the Ladinos become more or less Ladino, can only be 174

Adams

known historically if we have a basis for comparison. Social historians and political commentators should see these materials as primary comparative data. Of course, they need to be examined in the context of their creation because they will inevitably reflect the structure of the social and intellectual environment in which they were constructed. The new models are the stuff of current history. They are being formulated to satisfy the particular needs of real peoples. To the degree that they become widespread social constructs, they cannot help but be part of the ongoing evolution of the Guatemalan nation-state. The complexities involved in the racial dimension have in no way disappeared but have become ever more complex with the interplay of the hegemonic and antihegemonic views on race. Notes I am indebted for helpful suggestions to Betty H. Adams, Gina C. Adams, Tani M. Adams, Walter R. Adams, Marta Casaus Arzú, Charlie Hale, Stephen Johnson, Carol Smith, Verena Stoelke, and to an anonymous reviewer. My gratitude to Arturo Tarecena Arriola for bringing useful material to my attention. Harry Edwin Rosser kindly made a copy of Saenz’s (1932) text available to me. All translations from Spanish quotations are my own. This essay is an extensive revision of the original English versions of Adams 1999. 1. Here we initially follow the classic use of the term hegemony: ‘‘The leadership or predominance of one state . . . over others’’ (Oxford English Dictionary, 1991); hegemonia: ‘‘Supremacía que un Estado ejerce sobre otros’’ (Diccionario de la Lengua Español, 1984). However, insofar as the imposition of racism goes, the Gramscian revision is very relevant in that it details the mode by which hegemony is exercised, involving intellectual leadership operating through a web of social institutions, harnessing popular practices and ideas, using persuasion as well as force. Unlike some scholars, I do not see the classic and Gramscian positions on hegemony as being antithetical. 2. Using the term scientific is dangerous because others use it in quite different ways. In the present case, Demetrio Cojtí Cuxíl uses racismo scientifico to refer to the late 19th-century work of Gobineau and the like, quite a different matter. See Cojtí Cuxíl 1999:202. 3. The term antihegemonic is a neologism devised to label the position that rejects hegemonic racism but in so doing exhibits discriminatory and prejudicial practices that warrant being recognized as another manifestation of racism. It was been called reverse racism by some. 4. Redfield married Park’s daughter, Margaret. The impact of this school among anthropologists was indicated by Warner 1936. 5. The ‘‘melting pot’’ description derives from Israel Zangwill’s eponymous 1908 play: ‘‘America is God’s crucible, the great melting pot where all races of Europe are melting and re-forming’’ (Shipman 1994:123). 6. It may be added that Grant’s view of Latin Americans was also set by his distrust of mixed races: ‘‘What the Melting Pot actually does in practice can be seen in Mexico, where the absorption of blood of the original Spanish conquerors by the native Indian population has produced the racial mixture which we call Mexican and which is now engaged in demonstrating its incapacity for self-government’’ (Hannaford 1996:124). 7. When I was an anthropology graduate student in the late 1940s, it was received dogma Evolution of Racism in Guatemala

175

that there was no relationship whatsoever between cultural and biological processes, but we were required to pass examinations in both areas. 8. Definition from Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1966). 9. The colonialist conditions that yielded racism were laid out much earlier, of course, e.g., in 1904 in Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo. 10. The events in the unesco process were set forth in Métraux 1949 and are reviewed by Barkan 1996:96–105. 11. Elkin’s original statement is not cited by Ramos. 12. ‘‘Racialism,’’ in contrast to ‘‘racism,’’ attributes to races essential qualities that can be ordered hierarchically. Ramos (1949) used the term racialism, but it has been more widely diffused through the work of Tzvetan Todorov (1993:31). 13. Particularly from Mexico, Brazil, and Chile; cf. Hale 1986:396–409. 14. The literature stemming from the indigenismo movement is large. See especially the works of Manual Gamio, Moises Saenz, Alfonso Caso, Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran, and Julio de la Fuente. 15. Among the writers who launched commentaries in this era were Miguel Angel Asturias, Jorge García Granados, Alfonso Orantes, José Luis Balcárcel, Jorge del Valle Matheu, Jorge Luís Arriola, and J. Fernando Juárez Muñóz. See Adams 1999 for references. 16. Barillas (1988) has reviewed much of the newspaper material of this era and proposes that there were two liberal attitudes toward the position of the Indian: the pragmatic and the theoretical. The pragmatic favored government forced-labor drafts to obtain their labor. The theoretical argued that one got better results from free labor than from the slavelike forced labor. 17. The Bureau of Indian Affairs had been placed under the innovative direction of John Collier. 18. While the number of cases may be statistically unimpressive, one must nevertheless accept that the differences are interesting. Respondents Indian Ladino

Yes 23 47.9% 2 10.5%

Yes, if unknown 20 41.7% 3 15.8%

No 5 10.4% 14 73.7%

Total 48 100.0% 19 100.0%

19. Tumin found it possible, however, to resolve some of these apparent contradictions within the North American historical experience: ‘‘A fairly close analogy to this situation is provided by the case of the first reactions by Southern whites to the partial emancipation of Negroes in post Civil War days. . . . Without accepting him inside white culture, a status was provided midway between Negro and white patterns. In this fashion the Negro was still ‘kept in his place’; but at the same time he was granted a status sufficiently important to . . . give him a stake in preserving that pattern of accommodation. In this way, any more aggressive demands the Negro might make were for the time being short-circuited, and partial and temporary equilibrium reached. . . . However, here the analogy stops. For at the moment, there is no concerted pressure from within the Indian group for this type of social and economic equality’’ (1952:253–254). 20. The essays were followed over subsequent issues of America Indígena (vols. 3–5) in a series of commentaries about the exchange. 21. Tax arrived in Guatemala in late October and in Chichicastenango on Nov. 21, 1934. Redfield arrived in Aguas Escondidas in April 1937. 176

Adams

22. Juan Rosales, then an assistant and later a collaborator with Tax, was an Indian from Panajachel. 23. Tax may well have been unaware of Bunzel’s views at the time, as they were not published until 1951. Relations between Bunzel and Tax were strained as the former, after some years of work with Carnegie, was replaced by the latter, under circumstances that were far from happy and apparently unwarranted (Deacon 1997:268–272). 24. I was a part of the anthropological scene in Guatemala during the years discussed here and have been correctly identified by Guzmán Böckler, Herbert, Flores Alvarado, and Smith as a member of what I call the ‘‘scientific’’ school. I rejected the use of the terms race and racism for the major dimension of Indian-Ladino relations at that time. I would not now contest many of the arguments made by the antihegemonists but would still reject the use of the terms race or racism for the material in question because of their biological implications. See Adams 1996b:17–35; 1999:159–161. 25. Archivo General de Centro America agca, Leg. 29466b, Apr. 13, 1920. I am indebted to Wade Kit for making this available to me. Almost a month later came the tendentious reply: ‘‘In the judgment of the Commission of Legislation and Constitutional Points none of these points requires special action, since all that is requested has been foreseen and regulated both in the constitution as in secondary laws, and being that the executive is responsible for complying with and executing the laws of the republic, the commission judges that the indicated request should pass to the place that corresponds to where it will be attended.’’ The passionate request was thus passed on to oblivion (agca, Leg. 29466b May 10, 1920, courtesy of Wade Kit). 26. Although Brintnall worked in Guatemala in 1972–73 and 1975, in the latter years of the hot debate in Guatemala involving Guzmán Böckler, Herbert, and Flores Alvarado, on the one hand, and Joaquín Noval, on the other, he cites neither any Guatemalan authors nor any of their sources (e.g., Fanon, Memmi). It would seem that his arguments are a case of independent invention. 27. Brintnall insists on referring to the ‘‘southeast highlands.’’ This is odd because throughout the essay he refers to other parts of Guatemala and nowhere specifies the southeast or refers to literature concerning it. It would appear from the context that in fact his text refers to all of Guatemala.

References Adams, Richard N. 1996a. Etnicidad en el ejército de la Guatemala liberal (1871–1915). In Historia general de Guatemala. Jorge Luján Múñoz, ed. Fundación para la Cultura y el Desarrollo. 6:207–226. Guatemala: Associatión Amigos del País. ———. 1996b. Etnia en evolución social: Estudios de Guatemala y Centroamerica. Mexico: Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, Unidad Iztapalapa. ———. 1999. De la Hegemonía a la Antihegemonía. In Arenas Bianchi, Hale, and Palma Murga 1999, 127–191. Arenas Bianchi, Clara, Charles R. Hale, and Gustavo Palma Murga, eds. 1999. Racismo en Guatemala? Abriendo el debate sobre un tema tabú. Guatemala: avancso. Arendt, Hannah. 1951. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt Brace. Arriola, Jorge Luis. N.d. [ca. 1930]. Ensayos sobre psicología indigena Guatemalteca. Guatemala: Tipografia Sanchez y Güise. Balcarcel, José Luis. 1927. Nacionalismo Guatemalteco. Guatemala: Tipografia Sanchez and De Guise. Banton, Michael, and Robert Miles. 1994. Racism. In Dictionary of Race and Ethnic Relations. Ellis Cashmore et al., eds. 3rd edition. London: Routledge. Evolution of Racism in Guatemala

177

Barkan, Elazar. 1996. The Politics of the Science of Race. In Reynolds and Lieberman 1996, 142–173. Barillas, Edgar. 1988. El problema del indio durante la epoca liberal. Aportes de la Investigación 1–88, Instituto de investigaciones historicas, antropologicas y arqueologicas, Escuela de Historia. Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala. Batres Jaúregui, Antonio. 1893. Los Indios: Su historia, su civilizacion. Guatemala: Establecimiento Tipografico La Union. Boas, Franz. 1912. Changes in Bodily Forms of Descendants of Immigrants. New York: Columbia University Press. Brañes, Cesár. 1930. La degeneración del Ladino. El Imparcial [Guatemala]. Jan. 16. ———. 1946. ¿Que hacemos con el indio? In Juarez Muñoz 1946, 13–14. Brintnall, Douglas E. 1979. Race Relations in the Southeastern Highlands of Mesoamerica. American Ethnologist 6:638–652. Bunzel, Ruth. 1952. Chichicastenango: A Guatemalan Village. Publications of the American Ethnological Society 22. Locust Valley ny: J. J. Augustin. Cavalli-Sforza, Luca, and Francesco Cavalli-Sforza. 1994. Quiénes somos: Historia de la diversidad humana. Barcelona: Crítica, Grijalbo Mondadori. Casaus Arzú, Marta Elena. 1992. Guatemala: Lineaje y racismo. San José: flacso. ———. 1996. Revaloricémonos como ladinos antres de discutir un proyecto naciónal. Interview by Evelyn Blanck. Cronica (Guatemala) 16 (Aug. 1996): 40. Cojolún, Pedro María. 1921. Redimir al indio. Diario de Centro América, Apr. 20, 1921. Cojtí Cuxíl, Demetrio. 1999. Heterofobia y racismo guatemalteco: Perfil y estado actual. In Arenas Bianchi, Hale, and Palma Murga 1999, 193–216. Colby, Benjamin N., and Pierre L. van den Berghe. 1969. Ixil Country: A Plural Society in Highland Guatemala. Berkeley: University of California Press. Comaroff, John. 1992. Of Totemism and Ethnicity. In Ethnography and the Historical Imagination. John Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, eds. Pp. 49–67. Boulder co: Westview. Deacon, Desley. 1997. Elsie Clews Parsons: Inventing Modern Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fanon, Franz. 1961. The Wretched of the Earth. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. ———. 1967[1952]. Toward the African Revolution: Political Essays. Haakon Chevalier, trans. New York: Monthly Review Press. Finot, Jean. 1906. Race Prejudice. London: Archibald Constable. Fleure, H. J., and T. C. James. 1916. Geographical Distributions of Anthropological Types in Wales. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 46:31. Garcia Granados, Jorge. 1927. Ensayo sobre sociología guatemalteca. Guatemala: Tipografia Sanchez and De Guise. Gillin, John. 1948. Race Relations without Conflict: A Guatemalan Town. American Journal of Sociology 53:337–343. Goubaud Carrera, Antonio. 1945a. Del conocimiento del indio guatemalteco. Revista de Guatemala 1(1): 86–104. ———. 1945b. Discurso del Sr. A. Goubaud en la Inauguración. Boletín Indigenista Interamericano 5(4): 373–387. ———. 1964. Indigenismo en Guatemala. Seminario de Integración Social Guatemalteca no. 14. Guatemala: Ministerio de Educación Pública. Graham, Richard, ed. 1990. The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870–1940. Austin: University of Texas Press. Gutierrez, Victor Manuel. 1949–50. La ctg frente a la politica nacional e internacional, resoluciones de su II congreso. Tribuna Ferrocarrilera nos. 12 y 14, 18 de diciembre de 1949 y 1o. de enero de 1950. Reprinted in La Tradición Popular 19 (1979): 15. 178

Adams

———. 1979. El problema indigena de Guatemala. La Tradición Popular 19:9. (Probably written around 1948–50.) Guzmán Böckler, Carlos, and Jean-Loup Herbert. 1970. Guatemala: Una interpretación histórico-social. Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno Editores. Hale, Charles A. 1986. Political and Social Ideas in Latin America, 1870–1930. In The Cambridge History of Latin America, c. 1870 to 1930. 4:367–441. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hannaford, Ivan. 1996. Race: The History of an Idea in the West. Washington dc: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Helg, Aline. 1990. Race in Argentina and Cuba, 1880–1930. In Graham 1990, 37–70. Huxley, Julian, and A. C. Haddon. 1936. We Europeans: A Survey of ‘‘Race Problems.’’ London: Jonathan Cape. Juarez Muñoz, J. Fernando. 1931. El indio guatemalteco. Guatemala. ———. 1946. El indio guatemalteco. Ensayo de sociologia nacionalista. Segunda Parte. Guatemala: La Tipografia San Antonio. Knight, Alan. 1990. Racism, Revolution and Indigenismo. In Graham 1990, 1–114. Kuznick, Peter J. 1976. Beyond the Laboratory: Scientists as Political Activists in 1930s America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. La Farge, Oliver, II, and Douglas Byers. 1931. The Year Bearer’s People. Middle American Research Series Publication no. 3. New Orleans: Tulane University. Lieberman, Leonard, and Larry T. Reynolds. 1996. Race: The Deconstruction of a Scientific Concept. In Reynolds and Lieberman 1996, 142–173. MacRae, Donald G. 1960. Race and Sociology in History and Theory. In Man, Race and Darwin. Phillip Mason, ed. Pp. 76–86. London: Oxford University Press. Malik, Kenan. 1996. The Meaning of Race: Race, History and Culture in Western Society. New York: New York University Press. McBryde, Webster. 1945. Cultural and Historical Geography of Southwest Guatemala. Publication No. 4, Institute of Social Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution. Washington dc: U.S. gpo. Memmi, Albert. 1957. Portrait de Colonisé précédé du Portrait du Colonisauteur. Paris: Buchet/Chastel, Correa. ———. 2000. Racism. Steve Martinot, trans. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Métraux, A. 1949. unesco and the Racial Problem. International Social Science Bulletin 2(3): 384–390. Miles, Robert. 1993. Racism after ‘‘Race Relations.’’ New York: Routledge. Montagu, M. F. Ashley. 1942. Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race. New York: Columbia University Press. Morales, Mario Roberto. 1997a. Ladino es el que no quiere ser indio, y punto. Siglo Veintiuno (Guatemala), 23 de Junio 1997: 15. ———. 1997b. Que vivan los ladinos! Siglo Veintiuno (Guatemala), 24 de Febrero 1997: 15. ———. 1997c. Espiritualidad ladina y derecho ladino. Siglo Veintiuno (Guatemala), 13 de Junio 1997: 15. Morales, Pedro R. 1915. La producción en Guatemala. Tesis, Facultad de Derecho, Universidad de San Carlos. Guatemala: Tip. Arenales hijos. Noval, Joaquin. 1959. [Comment] Integración Social en Guatemala, vol. 2. Síntesis y transcripción de Joaquín Noval. Guatemala: Seminario de Integración Social Guatemalteca, Ministerio de Educación Pública. Palmer, Stephen. 1996. Racismo intelectual en Costa Rica y Guatemala. Mesoamerica 31:99–121. Evolution of Racism in Guatemala

179

Pitti, Joseph Apoloni. 1975. Jorge Ubico and Guatemalan Politics in the 1920’s. University of New Mexico, PhD dissertation. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms. Power, Samantha. 2004. The Lesson of Hannah Arendt. New York Review of Books 51(7) (Apr. 29): 34–37. Ramos, Arthur. 1949. The Question of Races and the Democratic World. International Social Science Bulletin (Paris) 1(3–4): 9–14. Reina, Rubén E. 1966. The Law of the Saints: A Pokomam Pueblo and Its Community Culture. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. Rich, Paul B. 1986. Race and Empire in British Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reynolds, Larry T., and Leonard Lieberman, eds. 1996. Race and Other Misadventures. Dix Hills ny: General Hall. Rosales, Juan de Dios. 1959. [Comment] Integración Social en Guatemala, vol. 2. Síntesis y transcripción de Joaquín Noval. Guatemala: Seminario de Integración Social Guatemalteca, Ministerio de Educación Pública. Rubenstein, Robert A., ed. 1991. Fieldwork: The Correspondence of Robert Redfield and Sol Tax. Boulder co: Westview, 1991. Rushton, J. Philippe. 1995. Race, Evolution, and Behavior. New Brunswick nj: Transaction. Saenz, Moises. 1932. Apuntamientos sobre el indio guatemalteco y su incorporacion al medio nacional. Mexico, D.F. Typescript. Siegel, Morris. 1941. Resistance to Cultural Change in Western Guatemala. Sociology and Social Research 25(5): 414–430. ———. 1954. Culture Change in San Miguel, Acatán. Phylon 15:165–179. Shipman, Pat. 1994. The Evolution of Racism. New York: Simon and Schuster. Smith, Carol A. 1999. Interpretations Norteamericanas sobre la Raza y el Racism en Guatemala: Una Genealogía crítica. In Arenas Bianchi, Hale, and Palma Murga 1999, 93–126. Stepan, Nancy. 1968. The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain, 1800–1960. London: Macmillan. ———. 1991. The Hour of Eugenics: Race, Gender and Nation in Latin America. Ithaca ny: Cornell University Press. Stocking, George. 1968. Race, Culture, and Evolution. New York: Free Press. Tax, Sol. 1937. The Municipios of the Midwestern Highlands of Guatemala. American Anthropologist 39:423–444. ———. 1942. Ethnic Relations in Guatemala. America Indígena 2(4): 43–48. Todorov, Tzvetan. 1993. On Human Diversity: Nationalism, Racism, and Exoticism in French Thought. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Tumin, Melvin. 1952. Caste in a Peasant Society. Princeton nj: Princeton University Press. unesco. 1951. Statement on Race. New York: Abelard-Schuman. (Issued July 18, 1950.) Wallman, Sandra. 1986. Ethnicity and Boundary Process in Context. In Theories of Race and Ethnic Relations. J. Rex and D. Mason, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Warner, W. Lloyd. 1936. American Caste and Class. American Journal of Sociology 42: 234–237. Wisdom, Charles. 1940. The Chorti Indians of Guatemala. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

180

Adams

7. Mark Hanna Watkins African American Linguistic Anthropologist Margaret Wade-Lewis

One of the underrated scholars in anthropological linguistics is Mark Hanna Watkins. His story is largely untold because the historiography analyzing the contributions of persons of African ancestry to the field of anthropology and linguistics has been for the most part neglected and only recently explored systematically (Harrison and Harrison 1999:8). Since the 1980s, however, members of the Association of Black Anthropologists have broken ground in reconstructing and interpreting their intellectual histories (Harrison and Harrison 1999:5–6).∞ Ira E. Harrison and Faye V. Harrison elaborate on the societal constraints under which these scholars labored: ‘‘African Americans, and subordinate-group analysts generally, have occupied a largely peripheral and, using W. E. B. Du Bois’ insightful metaphor, veiled or hidden position within the hierarchical order of knowledge that anthropology represents. As a consequence, much of the scholarship they have produced has been rendered largely invisible in the texts and discourses that define anthropology as the authoritative—yet overwhelmingly Eurocentric and masculine—study of humankind’’ (1999:1). Despite the constraints, Watkins and others have struggled mightily to expand the boundaries imposed on them by the racist patterns and practices of the academy and American society, to interpret the patterns of domination imposed on people of African descent, and to define the patterns of resistance, adaptation, and cultural continuity and processes of cultural ingenuity and innovation. Watkins’s journey through life was a historic one. He was a first in a number of ways—one of the first known black Americans to receive a PhD in anthropology (Moses 1999:85–100), the first American to write a grammar of an African language, the first anthropologist to participate in the creation of an African studies program in the United States, and the first black member of many professional organizations, among them the Society of the Sigma Xi.≤ He was one of the founding fathers of anthropology and linguistics in America. According to the late Joseph Applegate,

a linguist and one of Watkins’s colleagues in African studies at Howard University, ‘‘Watkins was on the ground floor of American anthropology and linguistics. By becoming the first American scholar to write a grammar of an African language and one of the first to utilize a structural linguistics format, he established a precedent and pattern for others to emulate. Like his contemporaries, he conducted extensive, productive fieldwork in both the Americas and Africa. Furthermore, for his entire career, he continued to write exemplary articles and play an active role in the organizations of the profession, serving as a shaper of the American anthropological linguistic tradition’’ (author’s interview with Joseph Applegate, Washington dc, June 21, 2002).≥ Watkins was also a model scholar/activist who saw no dichotomy between scholarship and community service. His contribution can now be assessed since his papers are housed in the Archives of Traditional Music at Indiana University, Bloomington (Watkins Archive, hereafter wa).∂ This essay illuminates Watkins’s contributions as a linguistic anthropologist, connecting the 19th with the 20th century, serving as an ‘‘ambassador’’ between the worlds of black and white scholars, between the world of South American indigenous people and the U.S. government, and between the world of Africans and that of African Americans. He was one of the founders of the first African studies program in the United States and fostered links between African Americans and Africans by facilitating faculty and student exchanges between Howard University and African universities through the African Language and Area Center. Watkins was by no means the only African American in academia to serve as a scholar/activist. Rather, he is one symbol of an excellent, socially responsible cohort of men and women of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who shaped their academic disciplines, and indeed American society, through teaching, research, publications, and social activism. The Early Years At the dawn of the 20th century, Watkins was born in Huntsville, Texas. He was the family’s Thanksgiving gift, born November 23, 1903, the last of fourteen children of Walter Watkins, a Baptist minister, and Laura Williams Watkins, a homemaker, both natives of Huntsville, Texas. Believed to be named for Marcus (Mark) Alonzo Hanna (1837–1904), the wealthy Republican senator from Ohio, who became one of the most influential political figures in America around the turn of the century, Mark Hanna Watkins was also destined for prominence. According to his birth certificate, his father and mother were 44 and 40 years old, 182

Wade-Lewis

respectively (wa), his father having been born in 1856 and his mother in 1860.∑ Available documents do not indicate whether they were born into free or enslaved status. By the time Watkins was 16 years of age, 8 of his siblings were no longer in the household. According to the 1920 United States census data for Texas, 6 of the 14 children remained in the household—Paul, a farmer, age 38; Jessinnea, a teacher, age 24; Laura, a teacher, age 22; William, a farmer, age 21; Jeff, a farmer, age 18 (all single); and Mark Hanna, age 16. The family resided in Walker County, in school district 1. By the time of the 1930 federal census for Texas, Watkins was listed alone in Waller County, township precinct 6, as the family head.∏ Given the centrality of the African American church as the strongest community institution, the source of not only spiritual life but also political, cultural, and some aspects of economic life, Watkins and his siblings, no matter how modest the family means, would have been exposed to many opportunities to develop oratorical expertise, leadership, and public interaction skills through church-related activities. As the youngest child, he no doubt also enjoyed advantages his older siblings did not. Some of them were born in the late 1870s and early 1880s, placing them psychologically much closer to the raw memories and societal impositions faced by their elders during enslavement and Reconstruction. There are, however, few records in the Watkins Archive to address the details of Watkins’s family life and history. After graduating from the Prairie View Colored High School in May 1921, Watkins attended Prairie View State College, a historically black college, and completed a bachelor of science degree in education in 1926. He remained at the college for two years (1926–28) as the assistant registrar (wa). Watkins reached adulthood during a period of change, excitement, innovation, confidence, and optimism in the United States. America, having participated in the victory of World War I, had become a world power by 1920. The Harlem Renaissance developed in New York, ushering in a new political attitude, manifested in a flowering of black music; dance; literature; theatre; newspaper, journal, and book publishing; and politics. In rural Texas, Watkins resided far from New York but no doubt felt the ripples of change. Furthermore, being one of a limited number of African Americans of his generation to gain higher education, he undoubtedly was groomed to embrace his role as a race leader. For the socially conscious intellects of his generation, half a century removed from enslavement, the opportunity to positively influence the status of the entire group was a major motivating factor. Mark Hanna Watkins

183

For Afro-Americans in the 1920’s individual achievement connoted more than personal comfort and ease. The future of the race seemed to depend on men and women making it in America. Doctors, lawyers, judges, teachers, poets, writers and actors were essential, in their achievement, because they showed that it could be done, and they leveled barriers for others. Indeed, if anyone doubted that the black man’s time had come, he needed only look at the awakening of Mother Africa as evidenced in the recent European discoveries and appreciation of African culture and civilization. [Huggins 1971:6–7] Surely just as prescient an influence in Watkins’s consciousness as he reached adulthood was his awareness of the Americanization of linguistics and anthropology. He was well positioned to participate in the development of a self-conscious movement to forge an American linguistic tradition distinct from Indo-European philology. One concrete manifestation of the movement was the creation of the Linguistic Society of America in 1924. Three major approaches characterized American linguistics in its early period—the study of Native American languages, the embracing of American English as worthy of systematic analysis, and the utilization of European linguistic theories to develop distinctively American scholarship, resulting in the international field of general linguistics (Andresen 1990:14–16). Watkins contributed to the first and third approaches. By the 1920s, theoretical approaches in anthropology were intersecting with those of linguistics. With the founding of the American Anthropological Association in 1902, anthropologists gained a new forum for sharing their research, stimulating the growth of the discipline. Until the 20th century, anthropology ‘‘practitioners were self-taught and self-identified.’’ The major shaping force in the field, ‘‘Franz Boas (1858–1942) was trained as a physicist and geographer. John Wesley Powell (1858–1902) . . . was a natural scientist turned geologist.’’ Powell played a major role in the ‘‘professionalization’’ of anthropology by founding the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1879, which provided a transition to ‘‘full professionalism’’ and subsequently, the university discipline (Darnell 2000:11–13). When Boas received a faculty appointment at Columbia University, he and his students became the first cohort of academic anthropologists. Early on, they tackled the prevailing views that the society was comprised of the ‘‘fit’’ and the ‘‘unfit,’’ with recent European immigrants and blacks comprising the latter category. Consequently, two conflicting theoretical perspectives evolved. The universalist/assimilationist perspective suggested that ‘‘race’’ was not a category essential to defining the cultural and emotional characteristics of a group and that increasing technological 184

Wade-Lewis

development in society would eventually result in the assimilation of immigrants and blacks. In contrast, the particularistic/pluralist perspective suggested the uniqueness of each culture, maintaining that each should be understood on its own terms and valued for its contributions to world civilization (Jackson 1986:96–97). The philosophy of the Harlem Renaissance ‘‘New Negro,’’ in its exploration of the uniqueness of the African American cultural experience, displayed striking parallels to the anthropological particularistic/pluralist perspective, making it logical that some social scientists would attempt to synthesize both into a coherent whole. Although the major American center for anthropological linguistics was Columbia University, the discipline at the University of Chicago was rapidly developing, as it was at Yale University, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Wisconsin, and several other centers. A major breakthrough resulted at the University of Chicago on February 18, 1929, when acting president Woodward moved to separate the joint Department of Sociology and Anthropology into two autonomous departments. Within six weeks, the new chair of anthropology, Faye-Cooper Cole, along with Edward Sapir and Robert Redfield, had proposed to the Rockefeller Foundation a five-year plan for research in anthropology. The foundation responded by allocating $75,000, ensuring for the department an impressive and auspicious beginning (Anthropology Department Archives, University of Chicago). The good fortune of the University of Chicago resulted from several circumstances. For one, George Vincent, a former faculty member in the Department of Sociology at Chicago, had become president of the Rockefeller Foundation, serving from 1917 to 1929. ‘‘The Rockefeller Foundation played a crucial facilitating role in the development of Chicago social science. . . . The foundations (of which Rockefeller was the largest and most significant for the social sciences) was interested in applied science. Based on the success of psychological testing during World War I mobilization, Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt increasingly sought scientific advice in formulating public policy.’’ In one decade, the Department of Anthropology received $2 million, resulting in ‘‘an unparalleled influence on the training of anthropologists and the growth of the profession’’ (Darnell 1990:218–219). By September 1929, Watkins, having saved funds to begin graduate study, relocated from Texas to Chicago, where he had enrolled in the University of Chicago to study anthropology and sociology. The historical records are silent on the issue of how he came to choose or be chosen by the University of Chicago or why he chose to become a student of anthropology.π He may have been recruited after the Rockefeller grant was seMark Hanna Watkins

185

cured in February 1929. It is probable that as an undergraduate Watkins read works of the British anthropologist A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, whom he later met and with whom he completed a course on the ethnography of Africa at the University of Chicago. He must have been familiar with Boas and the developing Americanist tradition in anthropology, for an August 26, 1928, document of four pages that Watkins composed at Prairie View, titled ‘‘An Outline of the Work at Pecos,’’ suggests that he had studied the Native American archaeological site in New Mexico and was involved in anthropological/archeological research before attending the University of Chicago (Watkins 1928). Chicago was becoming a major center of American linguistic anthropological activity by 1925, with many prominent figures joining its faculty. By the time Watkins enrolled in 1929, the university was a modest 38 years old. It is probable that the religious affiliation of Watkins’s father provided him access. It is also likely that one or more faculty members at Prairie View were his contacts, as it was a land-grant college with some religious affiliation. Given Watkins’s background and intellect, he would have been regarded as an ideal person to represent his race in a Euro-American university. Because of segregation, the majority of African Americans attended the historically black colleges and universities (hbcu’s) of the South. Watkins and a few others were notable exceptions. In Chicago, Watkins thrived. There he met Edward Sapir, who had been appointed to the faculty in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology in 1925, before anthropology had become a separate department. He also became friends with Robert Redfield, a student at the time, who later served as dean of the social sciences division for many years, and with whom he maintained professional contact for much of his career. Redfield recommended Watkins for the Lichtstern Fellowship in 1945, which enabled him to conduct fieldwork in Mexico. He met Sol Tax, and as a result of the long-term collegial relationship that developed between them, they both conducted fieldwork on the Mayan Project in Guatemala, Tax in 1935 and Watkins in 1946 (Watkins 1962b). Watkins became one of Sapir’s star students, profiting from Sapir’s interdisciplinary approach to scholarship, which combined the methodologies of anthropology, linguistics, and sociology. After studying traditional culture in Mexico, he was prepared to write his master’s thesis, ‘‘Terms of Relationship in Aboriginal Mexico’’ (1930). The focus of the study was seven genetically related language groups, Otomian, Tarascan, Aztecan, Mixtecan, Zapatecan, Mixean, and Mayan, and concepts utilized to define consanguine and conjugal relationships. Part 1 outlined the kinship systems among the seven language groups; part 2 presented a comparative 186

Wade-Lewis

discussion pointing out the paths of convergence and divergence among the groups; part 3 focused on reciprocal terms; and part 4 developed the conclusions. Watkins concluded that there was a great deal of similarity across the seven language groups in terms of the use of kinship concepts. Each group had developed a more complex system of consanguine relationship terms than of conjugal relationship terms because of the nature of their extended family groups, with the mother’s family being more central than the father’s (wa). ‘‘Terms of Relationship in Aboriginal Mexico’’ is a standard treatment of the subject, suggesting the matrifocal nature of the kinship groups. Watkins’s thesis added to the database on the early languages of Mexico. Simultaneously, as he continued the study of Native American languages, especially during the summers, he found that the availability of informants and other resources at his disposal presented compelling reasons for his research to take another turn. Remaining at Chicago for his PhD, he sought funds from several sources. On March 30, 1931, the Social Science Research Council awarded him one of its two Fellowships to Southern Graduate Students (Anon. 1931:491). A week later, on April 7, 1931, William Alexander of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation in Atlanta, Georgia, informed Watkins that he had been awarded $700 to assist with his graduate work in anthropology (wa). The following year, Watkins was able to supplement his PhD study with two fellowships from the General Education Board, a branch of the Rockefeller Foundation. He gained hands-on experience as a practicing anthropologist by serving as assistant curator of the Field Museum of Natural History under the directorship of Dr. W. D Hambly (wa; Wright 1976:889–890). Between 1930 and 1933, Watkins completed the requirements for the PhD. According to the list of courses detailed at the beginning of his dissertation, he completed ten courses with Edward Sapir: The American Indian, Psychological Survey of Primitive Religions, The Psychology of Culture, Introduction to Linguistics, Phonetics, Types of Linguistic Structures (two courses), American Indian Languages, The Psychology of Language, and Research Work in Linguistics. Encountering a ‘‘who’s who’’ of anthropologists and linguists in and out of class, he completed a course on the Ethnography of Africa with A. R. Radcliffe-Brown; one with Margaret Mead on Advanced Social Psychology; three with Leslie Spier, whose specialty was South American and Pacific native peoples; and four with Desmond Cole, whose specialty was the Bantu languages of Africa. His dissertation advisor was Manuel J. Andrade, who was jointly appointed in Mark Hanna Watkins

187

the Department of Anthropology at Chicago and at the Carnegie Institution of Washington dc. One of the external faculty members on Watkins’s dissertation committee was Leonard Bloomfield, who later gave voice to structural linguistics in the United States (Watkins 1933). By 1931, when Sapir resigned his position at the University of Chicago, and relocated to Yale University to accept the Sterling Professorship in Anthropology, Rockefeller Foundation funds were available there too. Sapir, in his new position, participated in the development of a Department of Anthropology and a new graduate Department of Linguistics. Some of his graduate students joined him at Yale, becoming part of the development of the first Yale ‘‘school of linguistics,’’ among them, the young married couple, Mary Haas and Morris Swadesh (Darnell 1990:367– 368). Watkins remained in Chicago to complete his dissertation research, with the assistance of his informant, Kamazu Banda. Other scholars later converged on Yale to join Sapir’s seminars, some, like Lorenzo Dow Turner and Watkins, on post-doctoral fellowships in 1938, funded by Rockefeller grants (Pierson 1955:675). By the time Sapir departed from Chicago, Watkins was well grounded in linguistic anthropology. Although Sapir viewed language as a window to understanding a culture, he did not encourage his anthropology students to specialize in linguistics, noting that employment opportunities in linguistics were limited (Darnell 1990:234). Watkins’s specialty was linguistics by choice. In his report ‘‘Project: Phonological and Morphological Analysis of a Sekwena Ideolect’’ (circa 1955), Watkins expressed a clear preference for linguistics (wa). By 1933 he had completed his dissertation, ‘‘A Grammar of Chichewa: A Bantu Language of British Central Africa.’’ In so doing, he became not only one of the first African Americans to receive a PhD in anthropology but also the first American of any race to write a grammar of an African language (Wright 1976:889–890).∫ After Sapir’s departure from Chicago, Watkins’s relationship with him continued to be positive. In the introduction to the Linguistic Society of America version of his dissertation, he acknowledged Sapir’s influence: ‘‘I am sincerely grateful to Dr. Edward Sapir (now of Yale University) for his having made my work with Mr. Banda possible, and for his numerous other acts of kindness’’ (Watkins 1937a:7). Watkins also gained from Sapir strategies for incorporating a multidisciplinary approach into his research agenda. Watkins was not alone in his admiration of Sapir. Many of his peers regarded him as a genius. By the time of his 1904 graduation from Columbia University with a bachelor of arts degree in German, Sapir had met Franz Boas, the major anthropologist at the university. Boas had inspired 188

Wade-Lewis

Sapir to remain at Columbia to complete his master’s and PhD, in German and anthropology, respectively. He was the only formally trained linguist among the many Boas students in the early 20th century. When Boas suggested that he record disappearing American Indian languages, Sapir was prepared to apply the methods of comparative Indo-European to the task. Languages became the lenses through which he interpreted culture. His only full-length theoretical analysis/book is appropriately titled Language (1921). Over time his concern for the ‘‘pragmatic classification of culture’’ was transformed into ‘‘a sensitive awareness of the meaning of culture in the human experience.’’ Sapir became a leader in the humanistic school of anthropology. Because of his fieldwork in the western states and later Canada, he ‘‘became aware . . . that cultural diversity was a human phenomenon—something to be cherished and protected. . . . Complexity was no valid measure of the good life. Simple cultures might be organized with far more sensitivity for human personality than the depersonalized life of the industrial culture of the West’’ (Voget 1975:368–369). Among those also associated with the humanistic tradition are Ruth Benedict, Robert Redfield, and Watkins. During the course of his career, Sapir’s capacity for learning and transcribing languages resulted in his recording 39 American Indian languages, more than any other linguist. When he was not involved in completing projects on languages, he proved to be a multitalented humanist, composing music and poetry and writing literary criticism (Voegelin 1966:489– 492; Darnell 1990:157–164, 174–175). In theoretical perspective, Sapir’s vision was broader than that of many of his peers in that he embraced the concept of the ‘‘functional equivalence of languages,’’ that is, the idea that though their elements may differ in style and variety, no languages are superior to others (Voegelin 1966:489– 492). His approach, therefore, held special appeal for innovative linguists such as Watkins, who specialized in Bantu languages, and Lorenzo Dow Turner, his Fisk University colleague, who studied African language– derived creoles (Wade-Lewis 2001). It must have been encouraging to work directly with a linguist steeped in fieldwork on non-Indo-European languages, who embraced the theory of ‘‘functional equivalence’’ at a time when many others still referred to non-Western and American Indian languages as ‘‘primitive.’’ The one major setback for Watkins during his fall 1938 semester at Yale was Sapir’s illness. Having experienced one heart attack during the summer of 1937, Sapir then suffered a second and was ‘‘ordered to bed by his physician.’’ During the latter portion of Watkins’s residency, Yale arranged Mark Hanna Watkins

189

for Sapir’s classes to be conducted by ‘‘a Dr. Emeneau, who had recently returned to Yale from India, where for the past three years he has been working on certain Dravidian Languages’’ (Letter from Lorenzo Dow Turner to Thomas Elsa Jones, Dec. 17, 1938, Thomas Elsa Jones Collection, Fisk University, box 42, folder 11, hereafter tej). Sapir succumbed on February 4, 1939, in the aftermath of the second heart attack. By then Watkins had returned to Nashville. Feeling the loss sharply, he saved a newspaper clipping from Science featuring Sapir’s obituary (wa; Spier 1939:237–238). Sapir’s death at midcareer at age 55 was a serious loss to the small but thriving linguistic community.Ω According to the transcript of a radio interview with Watkins, conducted by Richard D. Ralston in Washington dc in 1969, when Watkins embarked on his course work at the University of Chicago, he expected to follow the Americanist tradition of writing a grammar of a Native American language (Darnell 1990:229).∞≠ For that purpose, he began conferring with a Native American informant. Finding it difficult to gain data about the informant’s language from him, he sought another informant. Sapir introduced Watkins to Kamuzu Banda, a student from British Central Africa, now Malawi. Banda had transferred from Wilberforce University, a Methodist Church–funded institution that often sponsored African students in the United States (Ralston 1969:11–12). Because of Watkins’s work with Banda, he was able to change the face of American anthropological linguistics. Banda’s native language was Chichewa, spoken in the former British Central Africa territory extending ‘‘eastward as far as Lake Nyasa and westward to North-Eastern Rhodesia’’ (Watkins 1937a:5). As the two began a friendship that was to continue until Watkins’s death on February 24, 1976, Watkins determined to write a descriptive grammar of Chichewa, utilizing Banda as his chief informant. The two worked together from 1930 to 1932, during which time Watkins was able to gain ‘‘400 pages of text, with grammatical material, and more than 700 pages of ethnographic descriptions in English which include[d] many expressions in the native language.’’ Watkins also studied letters that Banda received from home and shared with him. In 1932, when Banda graduated from Chicago, he enrolled in Meharry Medical College in Nashville. After completing medical school, he relocated to London to practice medicine and eventually returned to Malawi (Ralston 1969:11–12; Watkins 1937a:7). For several decades, until he was defeated in the election of 1994, Banda served as prime minister of Malawi. One of the documents that graced his office bookshelf was Watkins’s Grammar of Chichewa. Watkins, in initiating in the United States the scholarly analysis of Afri190

Wade-Lewis

can languages, pioneered a trend that did not accelerate until after World War II. In the decade between 1933 and 1943, there were only three other dissertations on African languages: Ethel Gertrude Aginsky’s Grammar of the Mende Language (Columbia University, 1935); Carleton T. Hodge’s Outline of Hausa Grammar (University of Pennsylvania, 1943); and William Welmers’s Descriptive Grammar of Fanti (University of Pennsylvania, 1943). On a related historical note, two of the first six grammars of African languages prepared in the United States were written by African Americans, the sixth being Joseph Applegate’s Grammar of Shilha (University of Pennsylvania, 1955) (Stanfield 1985:84, 140–141, 194).∞∞ In 1937, Watkins’s Grammar of Chichewa was published by the Linguistic Society of America as number 24 in its Language Dissertations Series. Its publication is an indication that he was respected among his peers for the quality and innovative nature of his work. It remains an important reference grammar. To date it is the only full-length descriptive grammar of Chichewa. Watkins’s approach was novel at the time since he made use of the new structural linguistic framework associated with Leonard Bloomfield and evident in Bloomfield’s Language (1933). The critics responded favorably to Watkins’s grammar. Clement Doke, the great British Bantuist, reviewing it for Bantu Studies asserted: Mr. Watkins has produced a very valuable study of this language. In the first place he has used the International Phonetic script and has endeavoured faithfully to mark the tones, recognizing a ‘‘high register’’ and a ‘‘low register.’’ The morphology, which occupies the bulk of the book, is treated on sound principles, and it is refreshing to see that the author has got away from the outworn European classificatory methods of so many writers of Bantu grammars. The noun classes with their varying concords (verbal and qualificative) are adequately treated, there being a most useful supply of sentences illustrating the concords. [Doke 1938:147–149] In a letter to Watkins dated November 1, 1937, Benjamin Whorf praised the volume: I have been carefully reading with a great deal of stimulus and profit, your extremely interesting grammar of Chichewa. Although I know very little about Bantu languages, I have worked quite a lot in the American Indian linguistic field and as there is still, anywhere in publication, a dearth of grammars that give an account of languages in terms of their own patterns and ideologies, I have found yours a welcome addition to the list, and a Mark Hanna Watkins

191

source of ideas and examples which are very pertinent to the scientific study of language. . . . Your treatment of meanings in connection with various morphological and syntactic formations in Chichewa seems to me new and illuminating, not only as regards Chichewa itself but as throwing light on the forms of other languages. My only regret is that you did not go much further and write a thicker book with a more nearly exhaustive semantic treatment. [wa] The Linguistic Society of America considered the volume groundbreaking on two accounts. Its focus on an African language was unique for an American linguist, and its structural format was novel. The grammar is rather comprehensive, covering the major aspects of the phonology, morphology, and syntax of Chichewa. Furthermore, it is one of the first grammars of an African language to depart from the custom of analyzing the so-called parts of speech, with the pronoun being analyzed after the noun. Watkins asserted in the introduction: ‘‘It will be noted that a somewhat radical variation from established custom has been made in the order of presenting the so-called ‘parts of speech’; vis., that the pronoun is not discussed immediately after the noun. In the author’s opinion, the language may be more easily comprehended by studying the noun, verb, and qualification construction first, and in the order named. Chichewa qualificatives, pronouns, and demonstratives are closely related in both function and morphology. Hence, they are taken up in proximity’’ (1937a:7). One unfortunate circumstance in Watkins’s research process was that his analysis was based on the idiolect of one informant, an unavoidable consequence of Watkins’s having no access to fieldwork in South Africa. Watkins’s singular achievement is the writing of A Grammar of Chichewa (1933). According to the contemporary linguist and Bantuist Samuel McHombo, also a native speaker of Chichewa, Watkins’s grammar continues to be important as a milestone, theoretical model, and reference grammar. Besides providing valuable information about the phonology and morphology of the language, it makes available forms of Chichewa that prevailed during the earlier part of the last century, which are now not readily available. Using authentic textual materials [such as] letters . . . [Watkins] provided insights into the nature of the language as spoken then. Note further that his work is the only one during the era in question that focused on Chichewa rather than Chinyanja. The fact that Kamuzu Banda was the language consultant, later to become the first President of 192

Wade-Lewis

Malawi and was still passionate about the language, makes the work all the more significant. Furthermore, Watkins meticulously marked tone patterns, a practice that has become less common in subsequent publications of Chinyanja. Tones are an extremely important feature of tonal languages. Tones in Chichewa interact with morphological and syntactic structure. . . . Watkins was way ahead of his times when he indicated the Chichewa tones. [While] there are certain unresolved issues about dialectal variation, the grammar stands as a major contribution to the recording, analysis and preservation of the language and culture of a significant ethnic group or nation of Central and South-East Africa. His work did not merely incorporate major insights about the structure of Chichewa, providing details in a manner unparalleled by contemporary and even later publications; he went further to help codify an Americanist contribution to linguistic methodology. Structuralism was valued then as language studies using generative grammar are [valued] in the contemporary era. [McHombo, email to author, Oct. 20, 2003].∞≤ Although A Grammar of Chichewa is the only full-length grammar Watkins produced, he also published a number of important papers analyzing aspects of the phonology and morphology of various Bantu languages. He contributed the segment on ‘‘Bantu Languages’’ for the 14th edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica (1962a:79–81). Simultaneously, he did not neglect his research in anthropology and wrote a number of social anthropological articles. Watkins’s first published article manifested his optimism regarding the potential role of anthropology in positive societal change. ‘‘The Place of Anthropology in the Negro College’’ (1937b) advocated the establishment of departments of anthropology in hbcu’s, noting that by the late 1930s, only two or three hbcu’s had established them because the discipline was relatively new. Describing anthropology as a ‘‘laboratory’’ and a ‘‘court’’ where scholars become equipped to ‘‘face the question [of the worth of particular human groups] most frankly,’’ he asserted that ‘‘members of minority groups’’ could receive ‘‘the greatest measure of justice’’ on issues related to human variation, cultural development, and intelligence. The lesson from physical anthropology that human variation is normal; the lesson from cultural anthropology that civilizations around the world have alternately risen and fallen; as well as the lessons that ‘‘uncritical opinions’’ that describe some groups as intellectually superior and others Mark Hanna Watkins

193

as not, all pass under the telescope of the anthropologist. The ideal outcome is that ‘‘the student might view the whole aspect of man and nature, a storybook in which he might read the true life of man, and knowing the truth he might thereby be made free.’’ Watkins concluded that both selfconcept and interracial/cultural relations were remediable through the serious application of the lessons of anthropology (1937b:60–64). ‘‘The West African Bush School,’’ one of Watkins’s more extensive articles, was based primarily on data collected from the Liberian princess Fatima Massaquoi and her brother, S. Ciaka Massaquoi of Pendembu, Sierra Leone. Utilizing the particularistic/pluralist perspective, Watkins’s thesis was that West African societies among the Mende, Vai, Kpelle, Krima, Gola, and related groups were ‘‘intermediate’’ in their degree of complexity, therefore necessitating a ‘‘specialized environment’’ to accomplish the education of youth. The environment resulted in socialization requiring years of residency in specially constructed villages in the ‘‘bush,’’ instructed by a hierarchy of well-prepared same-gender community leaders, the most prestigious accorded the status of deities. The highest position was hereditary, with the namu, or ‘‘grandmaster,’’ and the zó: bà representing the spirits of the male ancestors and those of the female, respectively. The organizations were secret societies: póró (males) and bòndò (females). During the course of education, youth were socialized to function effectively as adults in all the social institutions—family, religion, education, politics, economics, and military. After ‘‘graduation,’’ they reentered their home villages in triumph, having completed the ritualized cycle of education, tests, death, rebirth, and the return to society in new attire. Watkins implied that the groups practiced natural selection or survival of the fittest, as he stated: ‘‘It is said that abnormal characters experience no rebirth; weaklings . . . do not return. This had elicited some disturbance among the missionaries and humanitarians . . . but the natives feel that those who cannot endure the test are no loss to society’’ (1943:672). Assessing the significance of the male and female schools, Watkins emphasized their intrinsic value: ‘‘These institutions, considered in relation to the cultures of which they are a part, are more genuinely educative and efficient than many of the formal schools of occidental culture. There are no cultural lags and ‘useless knowledge’ stored in symbols remote from the contemporary social order.’’ He concluded with a word of caution to the West related to the importance of appreciating cultures as a unique entities: ‘‘Some of the activities and subject matter of the ‘bush’ school may be rejected on the basis of the standards of modern civilization, but the system should be considered with sympathetic appreciation be194

Wade-Lewis

fore missionary or other efforts are made to modify it fundamentally’’ (1943:666–675). In the process of grappling with issues of race, Watkins published ethnographies on both the United States and Haiti, in ‘‘The Racial Situation in Denver’’ (1945), ‘‘The Social Role of Color in Haiti’’ (1946a), and ‘‘Race, Caste and Class in Haiti’’ (1948). In the last article, Watkins took issue with former assessments of the central indices of stratification and concluded that social class was a more defining reality than race: ‘‘The clearly distinguishable divisions in Haitian society are the elite and peasants, not the ‘mulattoes’ and ‘blacks.’ ’’ He cited race as a complicating factor. Looking to the future, Watkins concluded that racial barriers would be lessened if ‘‘a more homogeneous physical type’’ evolved, a process he viewed as being underway, and if societal improvements such as access to education, economic stability, health care, sanitation, and the end of political corruption were achieved (1948:14–15). During the course of his career, Watkins authored 45 book reviews, which appeared in a variety of journals, some of them the most prestigious in the disciplines of anthropology, linguistics, and education: Language, Studies in Linguistics, American Anthropologist, Journal of Negro Education, Journal of Negro History, and American Sociological Review. Often the reviewed volumes were grammars of African languages; sometimes they were historical or sociological studies of life in particular African countries. Some were novels and biographies. A number were the major books on a topic, among them, Melvin Herskovits’s Myth of the Negro Past (1941), Lorenzo Dow Turner’s Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect (1949), and Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved Country (1949). Occasionally, they were written in German, which Watkins read and spoke. According to Watkins’s widow, Charlotte Crawford Watkins, he loved the challenge of studying languages. He was fluent in Spanish, sometimes utilizing it to write letters and reports. On more than one occasion, though, he was asked to review a book in a language less familiar to him. In at least one case, he spent a year preparing a particular review of a book written in German because he wished to acquire greater reading competency in the language first (author’s telephone interview with Charlotte Crawford Watkins, June 20, 1993). Immediately after completing the PhD in 1933, Watkins accepted a position as professor of anthropology at the Municipal College for Negroes in Louisville, Kentucky (Watkins 1962b). When the opportunity arose to join the faculty of Fisk University in fall 1934, Watkins answered the call. His wife, Alma Taylor Watkins, a specialist in Romance languages and literature, joined him, also becoming a Mark Hanna Watkins

195

professor at Fisk (Anon. 1970–71:1294). Fisk became Watkins’s academic base for thirteen of the early years of his career, until 1947 when he joined the faculty of Howard University (Watkins 1962b). Watkins joined the faculty at Fisk at the height of its prominence as a star in the constellation of historically black liberal arts colleges. By the end of the 1920s, Fisk’s endowment had reached several million, with significant support provided by Rockefeller, Carnegie, Rosenwald, and Morgan funds. Therefore, although the Great Depression was grinding on, the college was able to continue some of its growth and development under the leadership of Thomas Elsa Jones, the last president of EuroAmerican extraction. Jones was moderate in political perspective and generally supportive of the aspirations of African Americans. The context was a fertile ground for intellectual development. The faculty and staff included many notable creative intellects, including Arna Bontemps, the poet; Aaron Douglas, the artist; Charles Johnson, the sociologist; Lorenzo Dow Turner, the linguist; John Work Jr., the musician; and, by 1943, Robert Park, the sociologist (Anon. 1942:5–9). Watkins’s development as a linguistic anthropologist was encouraged by the opportunities available to him during his decade-long tenure at Fisk University. He was granted leaves to pursue fieldwork opportunities in Mexico (1943–44) and Guatemala (1946). Fisk arranged for his fieldwork trip to Haiti (1946) and regularly provided the funds for informants for his classes. Six of his twelve articles resulted from opportunities he gained at Fisk. A Race and Cultural Ambassador Watkins’s fieldwork in Guatemala was sponsored by the U.S. government. In 1945, twelve years after the completion of his dissertation, he traveled there on a state department grant. During the course of one year, he gathered data from 15 major informants, ages 24–66 years, and from a number of others from 36 different villages and towns. From the data, Watkins planned to prepare practical alphabets for use by American missionaries. More importantly, his larger goal was to collect enough lexical, syntactic, and morphological data from the Cakchiquel region to prepare a basic primer, utilizing the Spanish alphabet. His long-range goal was to remain long enough to ‘‘supervise advanced students’’ to continue the Indian language research. Eventually, Watkins planned to analyze all the native languages of Guatemala—Cakchiquel, Tzutuhil, Quiche, Mam, Quekchi, Pokomchi, and Pokomam—so that textbooks could be prepared. The government would then be able to foster literacy and indigenous language/Spanish bilingualism among the one-and-a-half million native Guatemalans (Anon. 1948; Watkins 1946b). 196

Wade-Lewis

During one year in the Cakchiquel-speaking region, Watkins developed sufficient rapport with a number of the local men so that they were willing to discuss their ambivalence about the fieldwork project with him. Some felt that bilingual literacy would result in the disparagement of their native languages and in their languages becoming ‘‘interesting only as an object in the museum of the past.’’ According to Watkins, ‘‘the majority were quite anxious to have a system of writing for Cakchiquel, with bilingual dictionaries and other aids to a fuller comprehension of Spanish, without allowing the mother tongue to fall into disuse. . . . Spanish for them [was] not a better language, but a symbol of a more comfortable level of living’’ (1946b:11). Soon after he began work, he developed a bond with members of the indigenous population. In his ‘‘First Report’’ he notes: ‘‘After learning that I was not merely an outsider interested in getting information in order to write a book which they would never see, but that I was attempting to prepare literature for their own consumption, their interest increased and they placed emphasis upon my obtaining their pronunciation and not the faulty sounds used by the Ladinos. The only skepticism expressed after this was concerning the possibility of prohibitive cost and delay in receiving books’’ (1946b:11–12). Unfortunately, that ideal was not to be realized. With no reliable funds to continue his research, Watkins accepted a position at Howard University beginning in fall 1947 and returned to the United States (Watkins to President Johnson, July 7, 1947, wa). He was never able to complete his analysis of the Guatemalan data and bring either a book or articles to print.∞≥ Watkins’s reputation as a scholar ensured that he was in demand in national organizations and on boards. On March 19, 1942, he corresponded with Marion H. Britten, the secretary for the National Research Council. His letter was apparently in response to one he had received requesting that he serve on the Committee on the Ethnography of Africa of the Division of Anthropology and Psychology. Watkins replied in part, ‘‘I wish to say that I am happy to accept the appointment. . . . Please inform Dr. Carmichael that I shall be glad to give the committee my full cooperation’’ (wa). By December 23, 1942, Watkins had engaged in an assignment for the National Research Council. He contacted Alfred L. Kroeber at the University of California, Berkeley, stating in part, ‘‘The Committee on African Anthropology of the National Research Council is attempting to compile a roster of all Africans who are residing in this country. . . . Such information will be useful to anthropologists who wish to employ informants for research purposes.’’ Then Watkins listed the members of the committee, every one a high-profile figure in the world of anthropology: Mark Hanna Watkins

197

the chair Melville Herskovits, Walter S. Cline, Carlton S. Coon, A. Irving Hallowell, Wilfrid D. Hambly, George Herzog, Heinz A. Wieschoff, and himself (wa). Later that same year, on October 12, 1942, Watkins received a letter from R. W. Ogan, associate director of the American Council on Education, confirming that he had agreed to serve as a liaison officer for the Cooperative Study in General Education. After congratulating Watkins on becoming the liaison officer for Fisk University, Ogan offered: ‘‘I predict plenty of hard work but that you will be more than adequate to this labor. . . . I shall look forward to seeing you at the next meeting of the liaison officers, November 5 to 7 inclusive’’ (wa). One of the colleagues with whom Watkins maintained ongoing correspondence was Melville Herskovits. The two shared articles and book reviews and discussed current material and innovations in anthropology. They addressed each other familiarly as ‘‘Mel’’ and ‘‘Mark.’’ On December 13, 1955, Watkins corresponded with Herskovits, having seen him and his wife, Frances, at a conference in Chicago, where Herskovits had served as the discussant for a paper by Clyde Kluckhohn. After several personal statements, Watkins commented on a book for which Herskovits had written the foreword: The reprinting of Joe Greenberg’s Studies in African Linguistic Classification is a real service to those of us who are attempting to study African languages, even on the descriptive level, and as you point out in the Foreword, these papers have wide implications for linguistic theory and for African ethnology. Enclosed are some reprints of book reviews which I do not remember sending you, although they may be of little interest. . . . My sincere best wishes to your family for the holiday season. [wa] Because of Herskovits’s prominence and influence in anthropology, Watkins, like other anthropologists, knew the value of ensuring that Herskovits was familiar with his research and developments in his career. Herskovits’s letter of December 22, 1955, indicates high regard for Watkins’s research: Thanks for your letter and the reprints. I am glad to have them, and was particularly interested in your discussion of the Laganda grammar by Ashton and others. It seems to me you did a very complete job on the thing, and they don’t come out too well. It is a very interesting thing in Africa to see the way in which they are interested in languages and not linguistics, and the way in which their top people, like Tucker, are quite at a loss in the face of 198

Wade-Lewis

methodological and conceptual sophistication of the linguists in this country. Perhaps your comments will help educate them, though from what I know of them, I doubt it. On the other hand, certainly some of the comparative linguists who are working in Rhodesia, like Charman, and some of the Belgians and French, are thoroughly aware of these developments, and are fully in sympathy with the point of view you indicate. [wa] A Founder of African Studies Watkins’s second major contribution, serving as a founder of African studies in the United States, was one of the highlights of his career. When he joined the faculty of Fisk University, he served as professor of anthropology from 1934 to 1947. In 1943, nine years after his arrival, the African Studies Program was founded at Fisk, making it the first in the nation (Richardson 1980:117–118).∞∂ There were six faculty members: Charles Johnson, director, and chair of the Department of Social Sciences; Lorenzo Dow Turner, linguist and specialist in Gullah creole; Robert E. Park, sociologist and professor emeritus from the University of Chicago; Edwin Smith, president and cofounder of the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures in Great Britain; Ina C. Brown, a social anthropologist; and Watkins. The program offered a broad range of courses. Its catalog stated its multifold mission: to widen students’ social and intellectual horizons, while releasing their thoughts and feelings from the ‘‘limitations of a restricted national, ethnic and monocultural vista’’; to provide a scientific treatment of African culture and issues for university students, especially the scientific investigation of cultural, psychological, and biological data; and to prepare African students for service in their home countries. The program was well known and attracted each year for its Spring Fiesta speakers such as Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain and Melville Herskovits.∞∑ Watkins and his colleagues, foreseeing the end of colonialism, looked forward to the collaboration between Africans and African Americans in the process of building a stronger, freer Africa, as is evident in the objectives of the African Studies Program: There is some basis for belief that in the Western Sudan especially, perhaps also in Nyasaland, and other places . . . the native people will have a larger share in the development of their country and in the shaping of their own destinies. It is not a disparagement of their inherent abilities or their present accomplishments to say that Africans will need assistance in these tasks. The American Mark Hanna Watkins

199

Negroes, related as they are genealogically and historically to the Africans, would appear to be distinctively adapted for work in this sphere. Their claim for the privilege and opportunity for the undertaking must be supported by adequate preparation. The human urge for such alliance must be buttressed with the acquaintance, forbearance, and objectivity which result from long and careful study. Action that is based on concrete data and rational attitudes will have greater efficacy than that which is motivated by romantic impulses alone, however noble may be the intentions that are bound up with the latter. [Fisk University Brochure on African Studies, 1943, wa] Some of the goals of the Peace Corps are evident in Fisk University’s visionary African Studies Program, especially the ideal of Americans expanding their vision with ‘‘concrete data and rational attitudes’’ toward the people and cultures while assisting in nation-building on the continent of Africa. The Fisk program predated the Peace Corps by 20 years. Between 1935 and 1945, a combination of the Great Depression and World War II resulted in fewer grant opportunities. Watkins continued to teach in African studies for at least 50 percent of his course load and sociology for the remainder. According to his 1944 African studies report to Fisk University president Jones, Watkins offered Anthropology 201– Introduction to Anthropology and Anthropology 391–Research Work in African Linguistics in the fall semester, and Anthropology 202–General Ethnography and Anthropology 392–Research Work in African Linguistics in the second semester. His sociology assignment included courses from among the seven groups in the Fisk curriculum—Introductory Sociology, Social Theory and Social Research, Social Psychology, Social Organization and Social Institutions, Social Problems, Statistics, and Anthropology (Anon. 1942:80–81). He maintained an active research agenda, collaborating with Princess Fatima Massaquoi on her autobiography and collecting data in Vai, a Niger-Congo language from the Mande branch, from her, expanding his competence beyond the Bantu languages. Further, he collected data in Setswana from Jacob Motsi, while spending his summers conducting research in Mexico, Guatemala, and Costa Rico. His interest in both African languages and indigenous languages of the Americas continued. He added creole to his samples when, during the summer of 1946, he collected Haitian creole and cultural anthropology data in Haiti.∞∏ At Fisk, as is typical of small universities, Watkins’s teaching load and administrative responsibilities were burdensome. Furthermore, during most of his academic career, given the options open to him, he was con200

Wade-Lewis

strained to accept appointments in universities dedicated to teaching, where fewer funds were available for research than at large universities. After relocating to Howard University, he faced a similar dilemma. In the late 1940s, he continued to analyze data from Bantu and Mayan. When Watkins attended the annual conference of the Linguistic Society of America in New York in December 1948, his presentation was titled ‘‘Some Parallels in the Expression of Aspect in the Bantu and Mayan Languages.’’ He offered data to demonstrate that precise parallels between the Mayan and the Bantu languages occur in the momentaneous, durative-inceptive, and resultative aspects, concluding that the similarities were the result of parallelism or ‘‘genetic origin . . . as the repetition of the phenomena in the two families [exists] without there having been, in the light of our present knowledge, any demonstrable mutual influence or original common source of development’’ (wa). The opportunity for Watkins to pursue the study of Vai and to branch into historiographic research presented itself when Princess Fatima S. Massaquoi, the daughter of Momolu Massaquoi, Liberian consul general to Germany from June 12, 1922, to December 8, 1929, matriculated at Fisk University in 1938.∞π Watkins contacted Robert Redfield, by then dean of the Division of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago, to ask if Redfield knew of resources to assist with his research. Watkins viewed working with Massaquoi as an opportunity to analyze the life of a continental African whose experiences were cross-cultural and international. By adulthood, she had resided on three continents, during the process learning a number of African and European languages as well as cultural practices. She played violin and demonstrated both African and European dances. Her life represented a fieldwork opportunity on the campus of Fisk. On March 4, 1941, Watkins wrote to Redfield, ‘‘We have a young Liberian (Vai) woman whose autobiography I am attempting to write. I do not know whether or not you met her when you were here last year. The plan of procedure is that of analyzing her personal development, fundamentally upon the African background, and describing the behavior, overt and subjective, of this personality in contact and interaction with Western culture in Europe and America. . . . I am also studying her language.’’∞∫ According to Watkins’s letter to Redfield, although Fatima Massaquoi was born in Liberia, by the time she reached adulthood her cultural exposure was at least as much German/Swiss and American as African. Massaquoi had lived in Germany ‘‘for about nine or ten years . . . where she . . . studied at an Oberrealschule in Hamburg. . . . She also spent a school year at a French école supérieure in Switzerland. Her native language was Vai.’’ A major quest in her life was to find identity and commuMark Hanna Watkins

201

nity. Fisk University, situated in Nashville, a southern city with a large African American population comprised of all social classes, maintaining an integrated faculty and a talented middle-class student body, was an ideal context in which to pursue that quest (wa). For Massaquoi economic solvency was a serious concern and also for Watkins on her behalf. Her stipend as an informant was $75 per month (Watkins Answer to Massaquoi Injunction, May 27, 1944, tej, box 43, folder 5), a pittance for a princess born into luxury. Watkins pointed out her predicament to Redfield: ‘‘She, like so many others, is having a rather difficult go of it meeting her living expenses. The school budget affords her a small sum and I have been supplementing it myself. We shall have to care for her at least until the end of this school year.’’ He projected that by then Massaquoi’s autobiography would be complete and could generate some revenue for her (Watkins to Redfield, Mar. 4, 1941, wa). On March 7, 1941, Redfield responded enthusiastically: ‘‘The work you are doing with the Vai woman interests me, and I should like to be able to help it along’’ (wa). The help did not arrive soon enough, though. Three-and-a-half years later, in 1944, it materialized in the form of the recently created Lichtstern Fellowship at the University of Chicago. By that time Fatima Massaquoi had abandoned Nashville for Boston, her autobiography still unfinished. She departed during the summer of 1942, informing neither Watkins nor his wife, Alma, that she was doing so. According to her October 6, 1942, letter from Boston to the Watkinses in Nashville, Massaquoi did not wish to feel that she was a burden to them (wa). She subsequently returned to Fisk in fall 1943, at Watkins’s request, with plans to remain until the end of the spring semester 1944. On her return, she requested a faculty appointment, as her master’s in sociology was complete. The change in status would have resulted in a living wage. Her request was denied. By April 1944, Massaquoi was thoroughly disillusioned. She dramatized her dissatisfaction by informing Watkins that she would no longer serve as an informant, prompting Watkins to write President Jones recommending that her stipend be discontinued. Massaquoi left Fisk for Boston again, never to return. Before departing, however, she visited Watkins’s office to request the draft of the unfinished biography, which he kept under lock and key. He refused the request (tej Collection, Fisk University, box 43, folder 5). There appears to be no further correspondence between Watkins and Massaquoi. However, in May 1944, the Rosenwald Fund in Chicago awarded Watkins funding to assist Massaquoi in completing her autobiography (Rosenwald Fund to Watkins, May 1, 1944, wa). By then the relationship between the two had deteriorated beyond repair. Watkins 202

Wade-Lewis

had concluded that Massaquoi was unreliable. Massaquoi, on the other hand, had wearied of the hand-to-mouth existence she was forced to lead in Nashville. She believed, and rightly so, that a large city would provide greater opportunities for gainful employment. There were further complications in their professional relationship. She became convinced that Watkins planned to publish her autobiography, listing himself as the author, and to claim any revenue and acclaim it generated. Watkins believed it necessary to revise the portions she submitted to him for clarity. The tension between them heightened so that any semblance of trust evaporated, resulting in Massaquoi seeking a lawyer to file an injunction against Watkins. Watkins delivered his response to President Jones on May 27, 1944 (tej Collection, Fisk University, box 43, folder 5). Years later Massaquoi completed the autobiography after her return to Liberia, with no further consultation or assistance from Watkins. A draft, mostly in Massaquoi’s handwriting, appears in countless blue books in the Watkins Archive.∞Ω A dedicated researcher, Watkins carried on a perpetual quest for precise and ideal informants. For that purpose, Jacob Ramokoena Motsi was a dream come true. Having entered the United States from South Africa in 1926, he still retained accurate memories of the Sefokeng dialect of Setswana. On October 14, 1943, Watkins first corresponded with Motsi, who was then residing at the Cedar Avenue Young Men’s Christian Association in Cleveland, Ohio. Watkins’s letter was apparently in response to one from Motsi expressing interest in working with Watkins at Fisk. Sight unseen he offered Motsi the position of ‘‘special research fellow.’’ It is possible that Motsi had been referred to Watkins by some colleague whose evaluation he trusted. The decision was a pivotal one in Watkins’s career as Motsi was an excellent informant. Further, Watkins’s background in Setswana, which he was able to gain from Motsi, ensured that he was well prepared to study it in the South African context 20 years later when he conducted fieldwork in 1958. According to Watkins’s February 22, 1944, letter/report to President Jones of Fisk University, Motsi served as informant for two anthropology classes. Anthropology 202 incorporated ‘‘an intensive study of his tribe.’’ In Anthropology 352, Motsi discussed problems ‘‘which are presented to the seminar’’ and furnished ‘‘data on his own people and the area with which he [was] familiar.’’ Further, he assisted students ‘‘in private consultation with their problems of investigation’’ (wa). By 1944 Watkins, age 41 and in his prime, was eager to embrace new experiences. A range of circumstances prompted his desire to move elsewhere. Since fieldwork is the lifeblood of anthropology, surely among his Mark Hanna Watkins

203

reasons was his desire to gain access to more resources and blocks of time to collect and process research data. Another was the dissolution of his relationship with his wife, Alma. There were no children. Opportunity met with professional need. On April 27, 1944, Redfield, still dean of the Division of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago, wrote Watkins, informing him of the recently established Lichtstern Fellowship in Anthropology: ‘‘The holder is expected to take up residence here for three quarters of the academic year. The present incumbent is Julio de la Fuente. . . . Having heard some report to the effect that you are soon to enjoy a sabbatical year, I am wondering if you have some research— perhaps that study based on materials obtained from that African girl— which you would like to carry forward, and if you would like to spend three quarters with us under the fellowship. I believe all members of the Department would be delighted to have you here’’ (wa). Watkins responded to Redfield on May 10, 1944, indicating interest and noting that he would consult with President Jones, requesting his consent as soon as Jones returned to the campus (wa). On May 27, 1944, after Watkins and Jones met, he followed up with a letter the same day, requesting a leave for the entire academic year, 1944–45, at half salary. Watkins declared, ‘‘You know the circumstances underlying my request; hence I need not explain them here’’ (Letter from Watkins to President Jones, May 27, 1944, wa).≤≠ While he did not elaborate on his rationale for wishing to leave Fisk, he did outline his research agenda. I have an opportunity for helpful contacts and research experience in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago, as Dean Redfield and the staff of the Department of Anthropology have invited me to spend the year with them in case I should be able to obtain a leave from Fisk University. I anticipate analyzing and preparing for publication the materials (linguistic and otherwise) which I have collected on the Vai of Liberia, as well as developing a study of the Bechuana (language and social organization) with the aid of Mr. Motsi, whom I shall attempt to assist in studying at the University of Chicago in exchange for being my informant. This work, of course, will be credited to the Program in African Studies at Fisk University. [wa] At the University of Chicago, Watkins taught three courses each quarter, two of which were an introductory course in linguistics and a course titled Phonetics and Phonemics, usually taught by A. Halpern (Letter from Halpern to Watkins, Aug. 22, 1944, wa). Then, according to a letter of June 20, 1945, to Pablo Martinez del Rio, for the academic year 1945–46, 204

Wade-Lewis

his sabbatical year, he was invited to the Escuela National de Antropologia in Mexico. Watkins returned to Fisk University for some summer work in 1945, before leaving for Mexico on July 15, 1945 (wa). By 1945 President Jones was formulating plans to resign from the presidency at Fisk to accept the presidency of his alma mater, Earlham College, a Quaker college in Indiana. Jones’s 20-year administration had been effective; he had championed and hired black scholars, personally recommending them to foundations for grants. During the early 1940s, however, financial support had waned, partly because of America’s involvement in World War II. Consequently, a program of retrenchment had been undertaken, and with the resignation of Jones, the immediate stability of Fisk was uncertain (Richardson 1980:102–103, 132–135). Watkins, therefore, found it prudent to engage in an active search for an appointment at another university. In a November 16, 1945, letter, Sol Tax, still at the University of Chicago, contacted Watkins in Mexico, informing him that he had recommended Watkins to Antonio Goubaud, director of the Indian Institute of Guatemala. Tax indicated that he had recommended Watkins to Wayne State University in Detroit as well. There was an opening for an anthropologist at Wayne State. ‘‘They keep talking about having a Negro on the staff because it is a City College, and there are many Negro students and so on’’ (wa). The position at Wayne State did not materialize. The position in Guatemala did. On September 1, 1946, Watkins requested a leave for 1946–47, through the social sciences director, Charles S. Johnson, to conduct research in Guatemala through the Division of International Exchange of Persons, of the United States Department of State. According to Watkins’s letter, he had requested leave in a conversation with Johnson in August (wa). On September 7, 1946, Johnson responded: I have your request for a leave of absence for the year beginning September first to direct the linguistic survey of the Republic of Guatemala under the Institute Indigenista Nacional de Guatemala and the Division of International Exchange of Persons of the Department of State. This is precisely the kind of field program that we ourselves would have sponsored for you if we had been in as fortunate a position to do so as the National Indian Institute. The experience will be valuable to our own general program when you return, and I am happy to recommend to the Dean that this request be granted. [wa] Watkins did not return to his faculty position at Fisk. On July 7, 1947, he mailed a missive from Guatemala to Johnson, his colleague from AfriMark Hanna Watkins

205

can studies, who had by then become the first African American president of Fisk. His purpose was to inform Johnson that he was resigning to accept the position of professor of anthropology at Howard University. He had mentioned the possibility to Johnson a few weeks earlier. Watkins then alluded to his reasons for leaving: ‘‘It is with some concern and regret that I feel it necessary to take this step, as my relations with you personally and with the Department of Social Sciences during the past years have been all that I could have desired, and I hope that under the changed situation there may be opportunity to continue them in terms of scholastic cooperation or in any manner that it may be possible.’’ Watkins added, ‘‘Fisk, I am sure, will suffer no real loss by my absence.’’ Johnson replied on July 14, 1947: We are all greatly disappointed that you have decided not to return to Fisk. Your place will be difficult to fill. In my opinion, you brought to the institution and to the department sound scholarship, excellent teaching, a most agreeable personality and a spirit of loyalty and cooperation that have not been excelled. We shall all miss you greatly. Howard University is to be commended for getting your professional services. I am sure you will find it a good setting for your work. [wa] In fall 1947, Watkins relocated to Washington dc to begin his work as professor of anthropology at Howard University.≤∞ There he remained until his retirement in May 1972. His long-term contribution to African studies was made at Howard, where he served as both a professor and an administrator for 25 years. United States–African Exchange Programs Watkins’s third major contribution, the encouraging of exchange programs between students in America and Africa, was carried out while he taught at Howard University. Under his direction, the Program in African Studies was founded in 1954 with a grant from the Ford Foundation. In his ‘‘Report from Howard University African Studies Program, 1958– 1962,’’ Watkins stated three goals. They were almost identical to those at Fisk, but an additional one was to prepare graduate students to continue in African studies toward the PhD at other universities and/or to relocate to Africa to work (Watkins 1958–62). The data in the Howard University report covering 1958–62 indicate that each year continental Africans comprised between 18.0 and 26.8 percent of the students enrolled in African studies courses. The peak 206

Wade-Lewis

number was 62 African students from 13 countries during 1960–61 (Watkins 1958–62). In addition to serving as head of African studies, Watkins taught a number of courses, among them Yoruba, KiSwahili, Setswana, and various anthropology courses. A good percentage of his students returned to Africa or participated in exchange programs there (Watkins 1958–62). Watkins continued to collect data from Jacob Motsi. In an undated report titled ‘‘Project: Phonological and Morphological Analysis of a Sekwana Ideolect,’’ written in the mid-1950s before he traveled to South Africa, Watkins noted that he had ‘‘recorded a small vocabulary’’ from Motsi in 1944. He described Sekwana as ‘‘one of the divergent forms, or dialects of the Setswana cluster of the South-Central Bantu languages’’ (wa). Motsi and Watkins crossed paths again in 1948, after they had both relocated to Washington dc They collaborated ‘‘at somewhat irregular intervals thereafter’’ in preparation for a ‘‘grammar and dictionary’’ of Sekwana. Watkins reported on the status of his research: These data, in vocabulary and texts, now seem ample to justify all the phonetic and phonemic features, although a great amount of analysis remains to be made, especially of particularities in phonetics, morpho-phonemics, morpheme boundaries, and syntax. Also, to be arranged according to some lexicographically useful system are morpheme lists for Sekwana-English (already somewhat advanced) and English-Sekwena (now only initiated). When the study is sufficiently advanced, I shall be in position to have the invaluable criticism of such distinguished linguists as Professors [George L.] Trager, [Edwin] Smith, [Carleton] Hodge, [Archibald A.] Hill, and others who are located here, and it will not be difficult for me to communicate with linguists in other localities. [wa] He estimated that the grammar would be complete within a year (wa). It would have become Watkins’s second full-length grammar of a Bantu language, but neither the dictionary nor the grammar of Sekwana reached the point of publication. One of the highlights of Watkins’s career was his opportunity to conduct fieldwork in Africa in 1958, when he arranged an exchange with Professor E. G. M. Njisane from the University of Natal in Transvaal, South Africa. Howard University had already developed an exchange program for students with the University of Natal. For six months Professor Njisane taught at Howard as a Bantu lecturer in sociology, while Watkins served as a visiting lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Social Mark Hanna Watkins

207

Work at the University of Natal. From September 20 to October 15, 1958, Watkins engaged in fieldwork, collecting data in Phokeng, the main village of Bafokeng. The data was from Sefokeng (a dialect of Setswana), which became the basis for one of his major papers, ‘‘Setswana Phonemics,’’ which appeared posthumously in 1978, in a collection honoring Archibald Hill (Anon. 1959:37). For fifteen years, Watkins had looked forward to the opportunity to conduct field study on Sefokeng. While in South Africa, he was able to build on the study he had begun with Motsi by working with ‘‘headmen of the tribe’’ with whom he was able to learn much about the details of phonology and semantics. These men included Shoksabai Shakgala and Mosabai Seth K. Makgala (Watkins to George Molotlegi, Oct. 20, 1958, wa). Watkins, ever in search of ideal informants, continued the quest in South Africa. The effort to build bridges between African Americans and Africans was also on his mind. His perspective was that if excellent informants could come to Howard University, a multifold purpose could be fulfilled. American students could learn African languages and culture from native speakers, and Africans would be able to receive higher education while they shared African culture with Americans. Toward that end, when Watkins was in South Africa, he wrote George Molotlegi, a chief employed at Kilnerton Training Institute in Pretoria, who had apparently extended some kindness to him earlier in his stay in South Africa. Watkins had experienced enough of Molotlegi’s talents to view him as a potential informant. His letter of October 20, 1958, was in part a recruitment effort: My study of Setswana (Sefokeng) was successful to a large extent, although I did not obtain all the materials I needed. The time was somewhat brief and the man with whom I worked, Mr. Mosabai Seth K. Makgala, was not so good when it came to the analysis of verbs. I wish that I had a person of your intelligence and interest to provide the various forms of the verb. . . . If you should go to America to study, I feel sure that I could get scholastic aid for you at my university in return for your assisting me with the study of your language. [wa] There is no evidence in the Watkins Archive that Molotlegi ever came to the United States. After Watkins returned to Washington dc, he compared his field notes with data he had collected from Jacob Motsi over time. In doing so, Watkins discovered that the data from Motsi was quite accurate, even 208

Wade-Lewis

though he had been away from South Africa for 32 years. Utilizing the data from Motsi and from the South African villages, Watkins had hoped to write the first full-length grammar of Sefokeng, a dialect of Setswana, one of the Sotho languages (Anon. 1959:37). Because of time constraints, Watkins was unable to complete the fulllength grammar. Among the unpublished papers in the Watkins Archive are his field notes on Setswana and a notebook with learning exercises for textbook units 1–33, an indication that he had made significant progress in the compilation process (unpublished manuscripts, wa). Even without the grammar, Watkins’s 1978 article on the subject is an important reference document: He identified 42 phonemes in the Sefokeng dialect, noting that 9 were vowels and 27 were consonants. He also described the use of the two tones and four junctures (1978:358). His article was the first to analyze the dialect. During the years that Watkins served as director of the African Language and Area Center at Howard University, he produced several Africanlanguage documents, among them Experimental Exercises in KiSwahili (1966), a document of 41 pages plus seven tapes featuring drills; Experimental Exercises in Yoruba (1967a), with three tapes; and Swahili Basic Course–Units 1–125 (1967b). By the time Watkins retired in May 1972, only four years remained in his life. He succumbed while in intensive care at George Washington Hospital in Washington dc on February 24, 1976, after a brief illness. He was three months into his 73rd year (author’s telephone interview with Charlotte Crawford Watkins, Mar. 15, 1991). Three major foci defined Watkins’s research agenda: studies of African, Native South American, and diasporic culture; studies of African American social behavior; and studies of Bantu languages. His major thesis related to African cultural institutions was that they were appropriate for the context and should not be disparaged or destroyed by outsiders. On issues of race, intelligence, and African American social behavior, Watkins, as a number of other early African American anthropologists, maintained that socioeconomic circumstances, rather than heredity, were the cause of African American academic and test performance, while simultaneously significantly and adversely affecting their social gestalt. Related to Bantu languages, Watkins’s preference was to analyze the morphophonemics, particularly the intonation patterns, the phonemics, and morphemic boundaries, though he sometimes treated syntax as well. Between 1937 and 1960, Watkins published ethnographic anthropological studies. Between 1960 and 1978 (which includes the publication of Mark Hanna Watkins

209

one posthumous article), his publications focused on linguistic issues, particularly, studies of Bantu languages.≤≤ His book reviews were published between 1948 and 1960, with the first appearing the year after he resigned from Fisk to join the faculty of Howard University. The final one appeared in 1960, two years after his return from South Africa. Watkins’s widow, Charlotte Crawford Watkins, was dismayed and disquieted until the end of her life that Jerome Wright, one of Watkins’s junior colleagues who joined the faculty at Howard, described him in his obituary as ‘‘not a prolific writer’’ (Wright 1976:890). From her perspective, the assessment discounted the nuances of the milieu in which Watkins struggled to make a contribution. She noted his 12 articles, at least 3 government documents, and the steady stream of book reviews he had produced, while meeting the challenges of balancing time and resources to pursue fieldwork and to bring the results to print. She pointed to his array of yet to be published documents. She emphasized that while Watkins lay on his deathbed in 1976, he strained to concentrate on his research, dictating the final revisions of ‘‘Setswana Phonemics: Sefokeng Dialect’’ to her before he succumbed. It appeared posthumously in 1978 (author’s interview with Charlotte Crawford Watkins, Aug. 5, 1994).≤≥ Opportunities resulting from the development of African studies in the United States enabled Watkins to produce the bulk of his research on African languages and culture. From June 20 to August 12, 1955, he taught at Georgetown University for the 1955 Summer Linguistic Institute, an experience that confirmed his importance as an anthropological linguist specializing in Bantu languages. According to the 1955 Linguistic Institute brochure, Watkins offered a graduate course titled ‘‘The Structure of a Bantu Language.’’ The opportunity resulted when Archibald Hill, who was on the faculty of Georgetown University, wrote to him on November 29, 1954, inviting him to teach. The brochure described the course as ‘‘a study of the phonemics, morphology, and syntax of Chichewa, with attention to the differences between this type of structure and more familiar types. Four hours weekly’’ (Anon. 1955). The offering of the course predated the development of the Peace Corps by almost a decade, which suggests that the Linguistic Society of America was aware of the need to prepare scholars for competence in African languages, occasioned by the end of colonialism. In his circa 1955 report, ‘‘Project: Phonological and Morphological Analysis of a Sekwena Ideolect,’’ Watkins asserted, ‘‘My objectives in connection with my profession, teacher of courses in general anthropology and linguistics, are constantly to grow and continually to improve my personal acquirements for research work in the field of linguistics’’ (wa). 210

Wade-Lewis

A reading of the record shows that, although he wished to complete more of his research, he did fulfill his major objectives. Simultaneously, Watkins was ‘‘a splendid teacher. He generated in his students a great enthusiasm for anthropology. There is perhaps no single individual who has been more responsible for introducing the field of anthropology to black students.’’ He touched the lives of an entire generation of students and colleagues. In his administrative role, he ‘‘guided the faculty through many trying times’’ (Wright 1976:889). Watkins would be gratified to observe the trends in the research of contemporary linguistic anthropologists and of linguists conducting crossdisciplinary research. One of the most rapidly developing thrusts is in the area of pidgin and creole studies. The number of scholars who consider the creole continuum, analyzing the innovative syncretic language and cultural forms resulting from the collision of African and European languages and cultures during the transatlantic slave trade, is growing at an impressive rate.≤∂ During his lifetime, Watkins was an energetic scholar. In addition to teaching and administration, he participated in a number of professional organizations, among them the Linguistic Society of America, the Modern Language Association, the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, and the African Studies Association. He presented his unfolding research often at national conferences. Based on the directions and quality of his research and the range of his professional activities, he deserves a more prominent place in the constellation of founders of the American anthropological linguistic tradition. It is worth noting that Watkins is remembered at his alma mater. The Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago offers a Mark Hanna Watkins Dissertation Year Fellowship and a Mark Hanna Watkins Post-Field Fellowship. Since his archive is housed at Indiana University, Bloomington, it is the hope of this researcher that much more study and analysis of his contribution will be undertaken. Properly set forth, it shows him to be a meticulous researcher and scholar; one of the early shapers of anthropology, linguistics, and African studies; a good colleague among African, African American, and Euro-American academics; an ethical representative for the American government at home and abroad; and a conscious representative for people of African ancestry in the academic world and American society. Notes This research was made possible by a Grant for Research and Creative Projects from the State University of New York at New Paltz. My appreciation is extended to Marilyn Graf, Mark Hanna Watkins

211

archivist, and the staff of the Archives of Traditional Music, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana; Joellen El Bashir, curator, the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University; Clifford Muse, director of the Howard University Archives, Howard University, Washington dc; and Beth Howse, curator, the Fisk University Archives of the Franklin Library, Nashville, Tennessee, for assistance. For comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this article, I am indebted to Arthur Spears and Regna Darnell. For comments on Watkins’s Grammar of Chichewa, I wish to thank Samuel McHombo. 1. Watkins’s contribution is mentioned but not explored in Harrison and Harrison 1999:6 and 25n8. See also Drake 1980; McClaurin 2001; and the Association of Black Anthropologists’ journal, Transforming Anthropology. 2. Until recently, Watkins was considered the first African American to achieve a PhD in anthropology. However, according to Yolanda Moses, Laurence Foster received the PhD in anthropology in 1931 from the University of Pennsylvania, graduating two years before Watkins. Watkins’s PhD was awarded by the University of Chicago in 1933 (Harrison and Harrison 1999:85–100). 3. Cf. Williams 2001:113–121. 4. In Oct. 1990 and Aug. 1996, I conducted research in the Watkins Archive, which is housed in the Archives of Traditional Music at Indiana University, Bloomington. This analysis is based on primary research, i.e., Watkins’s intellectual properties—four boxes of letters, annual reports, newspaper articles, audio recordings, and unpublished documents. The footnotes herein do not specify box and folder numbers as the Watkins Archive is still being cataloged. 5. Birth Certificate, Texas State Department of Health, filed Aug. 28, 1937, issued to Watkins Jan. 9, 1969, wa. In 1947, when the Teacher’s Insurance Annuity Association (tiaa) required verification of Watkins’s age, he provided an affidavit signed by his mother on Aug. 21, 1937. 6. Federal Census for Texas 1920, roll T 625-1851, p. 1-b, ed. 156; Federal Census for Texas for 1930, roll T 626-2405, p. 16-b, ed. 7, image 1171. 7. The University of Chicago was founded in 1890 by the American Baptist Education Society and the oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller. ‘‘Although the University was established by Baptists, it was non-denominational from the start. It also welcomed women and minority students at a time when many universities did not.’’ ‘‘A Brief History of the University of Chicago,’’ University of Chicago News Office, http://www-news.uchicago.edu/resources/ brief-history.html. Cf. Storr 1966:3–17. 8. See also Wright 1976:889–890; and Anon. 1933. 9. Not all of Sapir’s students of African ancestry found him as supportive as Turner and Watkins did. The case of Charles Blooah, a Christianized Liberian, is one tragedy illustrating the disparity in treatment. Writing about the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, one funding agency emblematic of many, John H. Stanfield notes: ‘‘[I]n the late 1920s and early 1930s, there was a faddish interest in African and Afro-American cultures among American anthropologists, which created a demand for fieldworkers to collect ethnographic data on these cultures. During this period a number of Blacks were recruited into anthropology departments at Chicago, Columbia and Harvard. But none of the memorial-sponsored black anthropology students finished their work, although most were competent researchers’’ (1985:34). Sapir and his colleague Fay-Cooper Cole described Blooah, a Gweabo speaker from Liberia, as a ‘‘rare gem’’ when he arrived at the University of Chicago at their invitation, a transfer from Wooster College in Ohio. After Blooah completed his bachelor’s degree in anthropology, Sapir was anxious for him to serve as a fieldworker in Liberia for George Herzog but unwilling to support his application for a fellowship to gain an advanced de212

Wade-Lewis

gree in anthropology so that he could become an independent field anthropologist. Blooah and Herzog, a musicologist, spent 1929–30 on a Rockefeller Fellowship in Liberia studying Gweabo ethnology and music. Sapir subsequently described Blooah’s work with his own culture as less than satisfactory, a notion imbedded in the assumption stated by both foundation boards and academicians at major research institutions that persons of African ancestry were too close to material about African culture and culture in the African diaspora to maintain ‘‘objectivity.’’ Finding himself without financial support, Blooah subsequently disappeared from anthropological history. See Stanfield 1985:84–86; see also Darnell 1990:229–230. 10. During Watkins’s Chicago years, Sapir actively assisted students in pursuing American Indian linguistics. Stanley Newman studied Tanoan and Yokuts, Walter Dyk studied Wishram Chinook, Harry Hoijer studied Navajo and Apache, Morris Swadesh studied Nez Perce, and Victor Riste studied Creek. Charles Blooah, a native speaker of Gweabo of Liberia, studied his own language (Darnell 1990:229). Watkins stood alone as the one nonnative speaker to pursue competence in an African language. 11. One unfortunate chapter in anthropological history concerns the exclusion of African Americans from fieldwork in Africa. The assumptions on the part of Euro-Americans were that the presence of black Americans would offend the colonial governments, that they would perhaps participate in the awakening of the masses, and that, being of the same ancestry as continental Africans, they would lack ‘‘perspective’’ and ‘‘objectivity’’ to analyze their experiences. These assumptions resulted in exclusionary practices until after World War II. Watkins, therefore, was unable to conduct fieldwork in Africa until 1958, after the founding of an African studies program at Howard University. Lorenzo Dow Turner was unable to conduct fieldwork in Africa until 1951, after the Fulbright Scholar’s program had been founded (Stanfield 1985:84, 140–141, 194; and Wade-Lewis 2001:235–266). By the 1960s, opportunities had improved because of the Ford Foundation Fellowship Program. More recent anthropologists, such as Johnetta Cole, have conducted fieldwork in Africa (Harrison and Harrison 1999:28). 12. McHombo is the author of a number of articles on aspects of Bantu syntax and semantics and the book Syntax of Chichewa (2004). 13. Inadequate research funding is a central issue for scholars in general. However, a recurrent theme in the lives of black researchers and scholars has been limited funds for leave time and for fieldwork, resulting in frustration in their attempts to pursue their research agendas. The impact of this reality on the scholarly output of the linguist and father of Gullah studies, Lorenzo Dow Turner, is discussed in Wade-Lewis 1992:391–412; and WadeLewis 2001:235–266. See also Stanfield 1985:191–197. Among the defining issues limiting opportunities for grants are tokenism (when Lorenzo Dow Turner applied for a Guggenheim in 1930, so did the anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. Only one grant was awarded to an African American. Hurston received the grant; Turner’s research had to wait). Another is the low priority placed on topics persons of African ancestry wish to explore and a limited number of benefactors for researchers of African ancestry (for example, the folklorist, Elsie Clews Parsons, a student of Franz Boaz, just as were Hurston and Herskovits, provided the initial grants to fund Melville Herskovits’s and Frances Herskovits’s trips to Suriname and Dahomey and later paid for the publication of one of Melville Herskovits’s manuscripts on Suriname. Franz Boas ‘‘sponsored the Surinam project and the research in Dahomey and obtained further financial support for both trips’’). See Simpson 1973:9; and Zumwalt 1992. Neither Watkins nor Turner was ever so fortunate as to receive any substantial funding from a private benefactor, although each was accepted as ‘‘the negro scholar’’ in his specialty. Mark Hanna Watkins

213

14. Fisk University’s distinguished history is one of prestige and innovation. Having been founded six months after the end of the Civil War, it opened its doors on Jan. 9, 1866. Its alumni have been among America’s most distinguished intellectuals. The list includes W. E. B. Du Bois, Judith Jamison, and Nikki Giovanni. Given its history, it is not surprising, then, that it would have become a leader in the African studies movement of the 1940s. See Richardson 1980:117–118; and Cohen 2001:7–22. 15. The purpose of the fiesta was to celebrate African culture in the Western Hemisphere. Hence, the speakers were usually proponents of the African retention hypothesis. The April 14–16, 1943 Seminar on Africa featured Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain of the University of Haiti. Her topic was ‘‘The Influence of African Languages on Haitian Creole Speech.’’ Comhaire-Sylvain was a logical choice as she had initiated the body of research on the retention of Africanisms in North American culture with her study Le Créole Haitien: Morphologie et syntaxe (1936), in which she described the morpheme classes and noun and verb phrases of Haitian Creole. At the end of each section, she outlined ‘‘la base française’’ and ‘‘la base africaine.’’ Her careful evaluation led her to conclude that the lexical items in Haitian Creole derive from French, with Ewe-Fõn as the major source of Haitian morphosyntax. Another featured speaker was Melville Jean Herskovits, from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, whose topic was, ‘‘Patterns of Music in Africa and the New World,’’ which he illustrated with recordings. [See Seminar on Africa Program Brochure, Apr. 14–16, 1943; and Fisk University Brochure on African Studies, 1943, both in wa] 16. Letter from Watkins to President Thomas Elsa Jones, Feb. 22, 1944, wa. According to Watkins’s ndea Summer Language Institute Information Form of July 27, 1962, he conducted research in Mexico in the summers of 1935, 1938, 1941, and 1945. He was a professor at the Universidad National de Anthropologia e Historica in Mexico from July to Dec. 1945; a researcher for the National Indian Institute in Guatemala for 1946–47; and a visiting professor at the Universidad de San Carlos, Guatemala in Summer, 1948 (wa). 17. Fatima Massaquoi had attended Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee, after arriving in the United States in 1936. In 1938 she relocated to Fisk University for graduate work in the social sciences (letter from Watkins to Dr. Howard M. LeSourd, Dean at Boston University, Jan. 9, 1941, wa). Her professional relationship with Mark Hanna Watkins will be the subject of another article by this researcher. 18. Having spent two years at Fisk, Massaquoi applied to enter graduate school in Boston. In Watkins’s letter of recommendation to Dean Le Sourd, he mentioned that Massaquoi had served as his informant for the Vai language at Fisk University for two years (letter from Watkins to Le Sourd, Jan. 9, 1941, wa). The Fisk University experience played a major role in shaping Massaquoi’s adult identity (letters from Watkins to Fatima Massaquoi and letters from Fatima Massaquoi to Watkins, 1942–44, wa; see also Fatima Massaquoi-Fahnbulleh 1973; Hans J. Massaquoi 1999:5– 16). Among Massaquoi’s other publications are a children’s book, The Leopard’s Daughter (1961). 19. Fatima Massaquoi-Fahnbulleh 1973 is her autobiographical document. According to Watkins, he and Massaquoi collaborated on the ‘‘story of her life as a tribal child, in contact with and reaction to European culture as represented in Monrovia and the mission school, life and education in Germany and Switzerland; life in America. There remain[ed] to be completed sections on family and social relations; travels, contacts . . . attitudes in Germany . . . and philosophy of life’’ (letter from Watkins to President Jones, Feb. 22, 1944, wa). 214

Wade-Lewis

20. Letter from Watkins to President Jones, May 27, 1944, wa. In 1944 Watkins was ordered to pay $36 per month in alimony to Alma Watkins upon their divorce. In 1951, when he was 48 years old, he married Charlotte Crawford Watkins, a Howard University English professor and 1933 graduate of Wellesley College. Her PhD in English was from Yale University. 21. Like Fisk University, Howard University is one of the oldest and most prestigious of the historically black universities, founded in November 1866, soon after the end of the Civil War. See Logan 1969:3–40. 22. Among his articles on Bantu languages are Watkins 1960a,b, 1962a, 1972. 23. After an illustrious career as an English professor and literary critic, Charlotte Crawford Watkins died on Apr. 15, 1997, in Falls Church, Virginia, where she resided in a retirement community. See Anon. 1997. 24. See, for example, Mufwene 1993; Spears and Winford 1997; Rickford 1999; Smitherman 2000; and Makoni et al. 2003.

References Aginsky, Ethel Gertrude. 1935. A Grammar of the Mende Language. PhD dissertation, Columbia University. Andresen, Julie Tetel. 1990. Linguistics in America, 1769–1924: A Critical History. London: Routledge. Anonymous. 1931. Anthropology Notes and News. American Anthropologist. 33(3) (July– Sept.): 487–495. ———. 1933. Race Man Wins Rare Honor at Chicago University (Clipping from an African American Newspaper. No name, date, or page). Watkins Archive. ———. 1942. Fisk University Bulletin (Apr.): 5–9. ———. 1948. News Letter of the Institute of Ethnic Affairs. 3(4) (May–June): 4–5. ———. 1955. Linguistic Institute Brochure. Georgetown University, Washington dc. Watkins Archive. ———. 1959. American Expert Works on Tswana Language. South African Panorama (Jan.): 37. ———. 1970–71. Alma Taylor Watkins. In Who’s Who of American Women: With World Notables. 6th edition. P. 1294. Chicago: A. N. Marquis. ———. 1997. In Memoriam: Dr. Charlotte C. Watkins. Capstone (Howard University) 18(7) (June 16): 12. Applegate, Joseph. 1955. A Grammar of Shilha. PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. Bloomfield, Leonard. 1933. Language. New York: Holt. Cohen, Rodney T. 2001. Fisk University. Charleston sc: Arcadia. Comhaire-Sylvain. 1936. Le Créole Haitien: Morphologie et syntaxe. Wetteren, Belgium: Imprimerie de Meester; Port-Au-Prince, Haiti: Chez L’Auteur. Darnell, Regna. 1990. Edward Sapir: Linguist, Anthropologist, Humanist. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 2000. And Along Came Boas: Continuity and Revolution in American Anthropology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Doke, Clement. 1938. Review of A Grammar of Chichewa, by Mark Hanna Watkins. Bantu Studies 12(2): 147–149. Drake, St. Claire. 1980. Anthropology and the Black Experience. The Black Scholar 11(7): 2–31. Mark Hanna Watkins

215

Harrison, Ira E., and Faye V. Harrison, eds. 1999. African-American Pioneers in Anthropology. Urbana: University of Illinois. Hodge, Carleton. 1943. An Outline of Hausa Grammar. PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. Huggins, Nathan Irvin. 1971. Harlem Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press. Jackson, Walter. 1986. Melville Herskovits and the Search for Afro-American Culture. In Malinowski, Rivers, Benedict and Others: Essays on Culture and Personality. George W. Stocking Jr., ed. Pp. 95–126. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Logan, Rayford W. 1969. Howard University: The First Hundred Years—1867–1967. New York: New York University Press. Makoni, Sinfree, Arthur K. Spears, Geneva Smitherman, and Arnetha Ball, eds. 2003. Black Linguistics: Language, Society and Politics in Africa and the Americas. London: Routledge. Massaquoi, Hans. 2000. Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany. New York: William Morrow. Massaquoi-Fahnbulleh, Fatima, trans. 1961. The Leopard’s Daughter: A Folk Tale from Liberia. Boston: Bruce Humphrey. ———. 1973. Writings and Papers of Fatima Massaquoi-Fahnbulleh. New York: African Imprint Library Services. McClaurin, Irma. 2001. Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis and Poetics. New Brunswick nj: Rutgers University Press. McHombo, Samuel. 2004. Syntax of Chichewa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moses, Yolanda. 1999. Laurence Foster: Anthropologist, Scholar and Social Advocate. In Harrison and Harrison 1999, 85–100. Mufwene, Salikoko S., ed. 1993. Africanisms in Afro-American Language Varieties. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Pierson, George Wilson. 1955. Yale: The University College, 1921–1937. New Haven ct: Yale University Press. Ralston, Richard D. 1969. Transcript of Radio Interview: Professor Mark Hanna Watkins, Department of Anthropology, Howard University, February 24: 1–14, Watkins Archive. Richardson, Joe M. 1980. A History of Fisk University, 1865–1946. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Rickford, John. 1999. African American Vernacular English: Features, Evolution, Educational Implications. Malden ma: Blackwell. Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language. New York: Harcourt, Brace. Simpson, George Eaton. 1973. Melville J. Herskovits. New York: Columbia University Press. Smitherman, Geneva. 2000. Talkin That Talk: Language, Culture and Education in African America. London: Routledge. Spears, Arthur, and Donald Winford, eds. 1997. Structure and Status of Pidgins and Creoles: Including Selected Papers from Meetings of the Society of Pidgin and Creole Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Spier, Leslie. 1939. Edward Sapir (obituary). Science. 2307(89) (Mar. 17): 237–238. Stanfield, John H. 1985. Philanthropy and Jim Crow in American Social Science. Westport ct: Greenwood Press. Storr, Richard J. 1966. Harper’s University—The Beginnings: A History of the University of Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Turner, Lorenzo Dow. 1949. Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 216

Wade-Lewis

Voegelin, Carl F. 1966. Edward Sapir. In Portraits of Linguists: A Biographical Source Book for the History of Western Linguistics, 1746–1963. Thomas A. Sebeok, ed. Vol. 2. Pp. 489–492. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Voget, Fred W. 1975. A History of Ethnology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Wade-Lewis, Margaret. 1992. The Impact of the Turner/Herskovits Connection on Anthropology and Linguistics. Dialectical Anthropology 17:391–412. 2001. Lorenzo Dow Turner: Beyond Gullah Studies. Dialectical Anthropology 26(3⁄4): 235– 266. Watkins, Mark Hanna. 1928. An Outline of the Work at Pecos. August. Typescript. wa. ———. 1930. Terms of Relationship in Aboriginal Mexico. Master’s thesis, University of Chicago. ———. 1933. A Grammar of Chichewa: A Bantu Language of British Central Africa. PhD dissertation, University of Chicago. ———. 1937a. A Grammar of Chichewa: A Bantu Language of British Central Africa. Language Dissertation Series no. 24. Philadelphia: Linguistic Society of America. ———. 1937b. A Place for Anthropology in the Negro College. Quarterly Review of Higher Education among Negroes 2 (Apr.): 60–64. ———. 1943. The West African ‘‘Bush’’ School. American Journal of Sociology 48 (May): 666–675. ———. 1945. The Racial Situation in Denver. The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races 52 (May): 139–240. ———. 1946a. The Social Role of Color in Haiti: Some Facts and Impressions. A Monthly Summary of Events and Trends in Race Relations 3(8) (Mar.): 250–251. ———. 1946b. First Report of Specialist in Linguistics from the Ministerio de Educacion Publica, Instituto Indigenista Nacional, Guatemala, December 23. Watkins Archive. ———. 1948. Race, Caste and Class in Haiti. Midwest Journal 1(1) (Winter): 6–15. ———. 1958–1962. Report from Howard University African Studies Program. Watkins Archive. ———. 1960a. Swahili Phonology, with Special Emphasis on Intonation Patterns. In Report of the Ninth Annual Roundtable Meeting on Linguistics and Language Study. William Austin, ed. Monograph Series on Languages and Linguistics no. 11. Pp. 25–42. Washington dc: Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. ———. 1960b. Some Problems of Morphemic Boundaries (Word Division) in the Writing of KiSwahili. In National Conference on the Teaching of African Languages and Area Studies. John G. Bordie, ed. Pp. 24–27. Washington dc: Georgetown University. ———. 1962a. Bantu Languages. In Encyclopaedia Britannica. 14th edition. Vol. 3. Pp. 79– 81. ———. 1962b. ndea Summer Language Institute Report from Howard University, July 27. Watkins Archive. ———. 1966. Experimental Exercises in KiSwahili. Washington dc: Language Development Branch of the United States Office of Education, the Department of Heath, Education and Welfare. Contract sae-8927. ———. 1967a. Experimental Exercises in Yoruba (with three tapes). Washington dc: Foreign Service Institute of the United States Department of State. ———. 1967b. Swahili Basic Course: Units 1–125. Washington dc: Foreign Service Institute of the United States Department of State. ———. 1972. Yoruba Phonemics. In Studies in Linguistics in Honor of George L. Trager. M. Estellie Smith. Pp. 380–394. The Hague: Mouton. Mark Hanna Watkins

217

———. 1978. Setswana Phonemics: Sefokeng Dialect. In Linguistic and Literary Studies in Honor of Archibald A. Hill. M. A. Jazayery, Edgar C. Polomé, and Werner Winter, eds. Vol. 2, Descriptive Linguistics. Pp. 353–358. The Hague: Mouton. Welmers, William. 1943. A Grammar of Fanti. PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. Williams, Clarence. 2001. Technology and the Dream: Reflections on the Black Experience at mit—1941–1999. Cambridge: mit Press. Wright, Jerome. 1976. Obituary of Mark Hanna Watkins. American Anthropologist 78 (Dec.): 889–890. Zumwalt, Rosemary Levy. 1992. Wealth and Rebellion: Elsie Clews Parsons, Anthropologist and Folklorist. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

218

Wade-Lewis

8. Jacob Ezra Thomas Educator and Conservator of Iroquois Culture Michael K. Foster

At the time that this essay was written in 1994, Jacob (‘‘Jake’’) Thomas, Ha-Dah-Gih-Grenh-Ta (Hatahts{ikr˛éhtha{ ‘he makes the clouds descend’), of the Six Nations Reserve on the Grand River in southern Ontario was a leading proponent and interpreter of Iroquoian culture, both on the reserve and off.∞ While the success of his efforts to promote his Native culture and languages awaits the judgment of the Iroquois, who are heir to those efforts, and of historians of North American ethnology, ethnohistory, and linguistics, who will assess his efforts over the span of his lifetime, it is likely that he will take his place among distinguished native Iroquoian apologists such as Ely S. Parker (Parker 1919; Armstrong 1978; Tooker 1978a), Arthur C. Parker (Fenton 1968; Hertzberg 1978, 1979), John Arthur Gibson (Goldenweiser 1912; Woodbury et al. 1992), Seth Newhouse (Fenton 1949; Weaver 1984), Jesse Cornplanter (Fenton 1978), J. N. B. Hewitt (Swanton 1938; Rudes 1994), and Alexander General (Shimony 1978). In some circles Jake Thomas was known primarily as a craftsman: a carver of false-face masks and Condolence Council canes and a manufacturer of horn and turtle rattles, wampum replicas, and other traditional artifacts. But he was also a condoled Cayuga chief (hoyá⭈ne{ or hahs˛enowá⭈n˛eh) of the Iroquois Confederacy, a longhouse speaker (hahthá⭈ha{), at one time a longhouse official, or ‘‘faithkeeper’’ (hotrího⭈t), ˛ at the Onondaga Longhouse on the Six Nations Reserve, a singer (hatr˛énotha{), a ‘‘preacher’’ of the Code of Handsome Lake (haw˛enaHsáweHá{ Kaihwí⭈yo⭈h), a master of the Condolence Ceremony for mourning a dead chief and installing a successor, and an authority on the KayaneHsra{kó⭈wah, or ‘‘Great Law of Peace’’ of the Confederacy.≤ With his second wife, Yvonne, he founded two cultural institutes on the Six Nations Reserve. Off the reserve, he was in frequent demand by civic and educational groups. At one stage he was a museum curator, and later he held a university appointment. His carvings have been exhibited numerous times, and he acted as a consultant on Native artifact collections to several museums.

Over the years, he collaborated with anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, and linguists on diverse cultural and linguistic projects. Underlying Chief Thomas’s many involvements was a special concern that Iroquois traditions somehow be passed on to younger Iroquois, fewer and fewer of whom spoke the original languages that were the vehicles of those traditions.≥ For him it was not enough to dictate texts to anthropologists and linguists for the sake of scholarship or posterity. Urgent steps needed to be taken to ensure the widest possible dissemination of the old culture. The desire to foster the traditions nevertheless came up against the stark reality of an accelerating rate of linguistic and cultural loss, and the Native practitioner has had to choose whether simply to resign himself to the loss, as many have, or to take a more active and sometimes nontraditional approach to keeping the core ideas of the culture alive, including the use of electronic media and translations. Such approaches involve conflicts at different levels. In taped interviews, Chief Thomas can be heard at times discoursing as eloquently as any diehard linguist on the inseparability of language, thought, and culture, and particularly on the inadequacy of English to express the fundamental ‘‘spirituality’’ of Iroquois culture; at other times, he can be heard defending with equal conviction the practice of giving recitations of traditional texts, such as the Great Law of Peace, in English in order to reach the largest number of younger Iroquois and interested non-Natives, both of which groups, he averred, needed to better understand Iroquoian culture and political organization. For many longhouse people, the conflicts inherent in attempting to gear the old traditions to the modern world have led to apathy or even despair; for Thomas they served as wellsprings of energy and imagination. But this came at a price and made him a controversial figure in Iroquoian communities, a person at once respected for the extraordinary breadth of his knowledge and much in demand as a speaker at traditional events, but also criticized for ‘‘popularizing’’ the old culture and stepping over the line by occasionally using English for these events and including non-Natives in the audience. Yet for Thomas, the moment of decision about the future of his cultural heritage was at hand, and he believed there was no choice but to take bold steps. That conviction motivated much of his work and activities during the last two decades, and it won him both friends and enemies. The Early Years Thomas was born on the Six Nations Reserve on January 6, 1922, the youngest of seven children by Elizabeth Sky (or Skye), Kowahé⭈ki⭈{ ˛ (meaning unknown) (d. ca. 1924), a Cayuga, and David (‘‘Dáwit’’) Thomas, 220

Foster

(Oo) A{shae{kó⭈nah, Big Knife (1886–1973), an Onondaga. Following the dictates of Iroquois matrilineality, he was born a Cayuga and a member of the Sandpiper clan (Tostowí⭈ hoti{neHsí⭈yo{ ‘snipe, sandpiper kind’). His Cayuga maternal grandmother, Kowan˛ ˛ etshí⭈ne{ ‘someone is leading her’, a Christian, selected his name from the pool of Sandpiper clan names.∂ His mother died when he was barely a year and a half old, and he was raised in his father’s household by his paternal grandmother, Julia Thomas. The house, which no longer stands, was located on the Onondaga Road, just south of Stone Ridge on the Fourth Line. The Thomases were Christian Onondagas, and Jake’s first language was Onondaga. But he also maintained close ties with Kowan˛ ˛ etshí⭈ne{, his maternal grandmother, who lived a couple of miles north up the Onondaga Road, just past Mackenzie Creek where it flows below the Onondaga Longhouse. As she always spoke Cayuga to him, it became his second language. When Thomas was growing up, Mohawk served as a lingua franca on the Six Nations Reserve, much as English does today, and he recalled hearing Mohawk spoken often by his father and grandmother when they had visitors from the Upper End (the mainly Christian sector) of the reserve. This became his third Iroquoian language. In later years he gained sufficient fluency in Oneida, which is closely related to Mohawk, and in Seneca to use these languages when traveling to the Thames Reserve, near London, Ontario, and the Seneca reservations in New York state. The only extant Northern Iroquoian language he did not feel comfortable using was Tuscarora. If his matrilineage gave him his identity and his name, his knowledge of Iroquois culture descended to him largely through a line of males marrying into his matrilineage, particularly his father, Dáwit Thomas, and his maternal grandfather, David Sky (or Skye), (Oo) Tyo⭈tyo{ (meaning unknown), both prominent ritualists in their day.∑ The terms William Fenton uses to describe Dáwit Thomas’s education at the feet of his father-in-law, David Sky, come close to characterizing how Jake, in his turn, received his education from Dáwit: The old chief used to rise early before daylight; Dáwit would get up and ‘‘make fire,’’ when the old man would begin to talk about the old people, their customs, traditions, and ceremonies. Once fairly started, Chief Skye would keep on whether or not anyone was listening. But Dáwit, then a young man, would listen—chin in hands, elbows on knees, and eyes shut—concentrating on the old chief’s words. Thus he heard much of the Deganawiídah legend of the League’s establishment; that is how he became versed Jacob Ezra Thomas

221

in the lore of the longhouse, the religious festivals of thanksgiving; and by participating in the ceremonies and by dint of long practice he became a longhouse speaker. [1946:119] Although he was born a Cayuga, Thomas preferred to attend the Onondaga Longhouse, where he had received his name.∏ He remembered vividly when his father and Joseph Logan Sr. were the leading speakers of the Wolf moiety and the Deer moiety, respectively, and sat opposite each other on the front benches reserved for chiefs and speakers. It was from them that he learned the traditional texts and the art of oratory. ‘‘What is it that Dáwit has that others lack? He waits for his audience before speaking. Then he commences slowly in a low, well-modulated tone of voice. He is master of the period, allowing as much time for his words to sink in as passed in utterance, meanwhile standing with eyes nearly closed concentrating on what follows. As he warms up to his topic, the pace quickens and the words flow in swift cadence at a high tonal plane, which falls away at the end of a clause or sentence’’ (Fenton 1946:119). Thomas recalled that he made his first efforts at speaking in the Onondaga Longhouse when he was 14 or 15 years old. He delivered short versions of the Thanksgiving Address (Kanóh ˛ ony ˛ ohk) ˛ and announced dances at ‘‘socials.’’ He gained additional confidence delivering the Kanaháo⭈wi{ speeches of ‘‘Our Uncles’’ (ethín{os˛e{), who travel from house to house in January with long wooden paddles to ‘‘stir the ashes’’ (th˛ena{k˛eH˛éw˛enye⭈{ ‘they are stirring ashes there’) in the wood stoves of the separate households to invite the faithful to the Midwinter Ceremony.π Two developments particularly contributed to his taking a more active role as a speaker: his appointment as a ‘‘faithkeeper’’ (hotrího⭈t) ˛ in the Onondaga Longhouse in the early 1940s, and the passing of a generation of seasoned speakers on the reserve that included his father, Joseph Logan Sr. and Alexander General.∫ The death of a mature speaker precipitates a crisis in the longhouse, which is resolved only when a neophyte from the back benches becomes available as a replacement (Shimony 1994:89–90; Foster 1974:30–41). It is a pattern that once ensured an orderly succession of speakers but is now much in jeopardy. Among those comprising the new leadership at the Onondaga Longhouse in the 1960s was Howard Sky, who invited Thomas to sit on the front bench on the Wolf side of the longhouse and encouraged him to attempt some of the more challenging speech events. Thomas’s approach was to learn one speech at a time until he felt confident enough to try another. In time he could be called on to deliver any of the speeches in the annual ceremonial round, including the spoken sections of the Kaného⭈{ ˛ (Drum Dance) and the Kay˛é{kothw˛ ˛ eh (Tobacco Burning Invocation) at the Midwinter and Green Corn festivals. 222

Foster

In the meantime he had also gained experience giving funeral and wake speeches and was learning, though not yet performing, the Code of Handsome Lake and the speeches for the Condolence Ceremony, both of which his father had excelled in. Thomas’s second career, as a craftsman, began when he was eight or nine years old. He remembered especially wanting to make a water drum and horn and turtle-shell rattles. It was, he said, in his blood. He described his early efforts as being quite crude. His first masks were miniatures. When his grandfather, David Sky, died, he inherited a set of fine chisels from him, and this helped him in his work. By the mid-1970s, Thomas had exhibited in a number of galleries and museums and had been commissioned to produce masks and other artifacts for the McMichael Canadian Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, and the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Hull, Quebec. He had also sold works to a number of private collectors. Two of his masks adorn the ethnographic collection of Prince Charles. Another aspect of Thomas’s early life was his induction into several medicine societies, some while he was still an infant.Ω The significance of membership for him was that he eventually became an authority on the program, songs, and ritual paraphernalia of the societies he joined. The usual pattern for gaining membership is for a patient to suffer an illness, which is diagnosed by a ‘‘fortuneteller’’ (teHatiya{towéhtha{, lit. ‘they judge it’), who prescribes a specific healing ritual. If a cure is effected, the patient becomes a member of the society, placing him or her under an obligation to honor the tutelary of the society periodically with a feast. For many that obligation is discharged during the ‘‘pass dance’’ days of the Midwinter Ceremony (Shimony 1994:178–184). Neglect of the tutelary can result in a recurrence of the illness or other complications for the patient. Thomas became a member of the Bear Society (hnyakwáe{keHa⭈{) when he was an infant. Although he could not recall the illness from which he had suffered, one consequence of his joining the society was that he became ‘‘medicine friends’’ (atáo{thra{) with an adult woman, a relationship that was perpetuated after the woman’s death by his becoming, in succession, medicine friends with still other members of the society. As a result of infantile cures, he also became a member of the Red Mask and Black Mask societies; in these cases he was able to carve the masks needed for the ceremony himself.∞≠ When he was around twelve years old, he almost cut off his big toe with an axe and was administered the most powerful and secret of Iroquois cures, the Little Water medicine. When he Jacob Ezra Thomas

223

had recovered from the accident, he was inducted into the H˛ená{itos society (glossed by Iroquois as the Shake Pumpkin or Gourd Society), whose members are the custodians of the Little Water medicine. Thomas was also inducted into the Dark Dance Society (TeyotaHsotái⭈k ˛ oh), ˛ the Otter Society (Skwá⭈y˛eh), and the Eagle Dance Society (Kanre{kwá⭈{e⭈{). He recounted how in later years he developed severe headaches, which a fortuneteller told him resulted from his neglecting the spirit of the Eagle Dance: ‘‘Every time it flaps its wings, you’ll show the symptoms.’’ After he put the ceremony through, the symptoms disappeared, and thereafter he was careful to renew his obligations to the eagle spirit from time to time.∞∞ In 1943, when Thomas was 21 years old, he married Doris Keye, (Oo) Tewatyá⭈{t˛è⭈tus ‘it’s shaking’, who was a year younger than he. She came from a traditional Onondaga family and belonged to the Wolf clan.∞≤ Doris brought one child to the marriage, and the Thomases had fourteen children of their own, who, of course, took the tribe and clan of their mother. Two of their sons, Gerry and Donnie, died in infancy, and one son, Milton, was killed in an automobile accident when he was 21. Several of Thomas’s sons have demonstrated their father’s artistic inclinations (see, e.g., Cinader 1975). At first the Thomases lived with Doris’s mother on the River Road in the northeastern part of the reserve, and Jake learned the art of splint basket making from his wife and his mother-in-law. This was primarily a wintertime activity and provided the young family with a modest income. After his grandfather, David Sky, died in the 1930s, Thomas and two other grandchildren inherited the old homestead and some property north of the Onondaga Longhouse. In time Jake and Doris moved their household to that location. During the warm months they were occupied with farming, including the traditional food cycle. As soon as the planting season came, they would plant seeds for beans, corn, and squash. When the beans matured, there was a dependable supply that lasted all summer. Green corn came in later, and finally the squash. They raised livestock and depended heavily on fish, which they caught in local creeks. To augment their income, they traveled as a family to fruit and vegetable farms near the communities of Oakville, Jordan, and Clarkson, where Jake and Doris worked as pickers. They earned just enough to buy the necessities for winter: large quantities of flour for ‘‘fry bread,’’ sugar, tea, and other essentials. Apples came in last in the season. After apple picking, they would return home in time for the fall hunt. The deer had been hunted out on the reserve and environs by the 1940s, so Thomas would trap muskrats and hunt rabbits and squirrels to supplement their diet. Eventually he found time to get back to his 224

Foster

carving, and with the help of some outside contacts, he created a market among museum and private collectors for his masks and other artifacts. But then in November 1964, his life took a devastating turn when Doris died of cancer, and Thomas found himself alone, intensely saddened by the loss, and suddenly responsible for a large family. His children ranged in age from two-and-a-half to twenty-one years. Although his stepdaughter, Betty Keye Henry, was able to shoulder many household duties, Thomas found the situation overwhelming, and he later freely acknowledged that it marked the beginning of a two-year battle with alcoholism that nearly destroyed him and his relationships with his children. He credited his clan matron with saving him: in this, she was exercising a difficult but essential part of her traditional role. He remembered her as emphasizing two things especially: he must give up hanging around with his drinking companions, and he must find a way to honor the special ‘‘gifts’’ the Creator had bestowed on him as a budding spokesman for the longhouse. In time he not only overcame his drinking problem but also rose to become one of the leading authorities of his generation on Iroquois culture. One other development helped him to come to terms with Doris’s death. At one point, in a downhearted frame of mind, he sought the services of a fortuneteller, who advised him that he could overcome his loneliness by entering into a new ‘‘medicine friendship’’ (atáo{thra{). The fortuneteller indicated that the person lived nearby and was someone whose company he had always enjoyed; and so, after making some inquiries, he became a medicine friend of Raymond Spragge (Haohyé⭈n˛ ˛ e{s ‘he makes the sky fall’). Their friendship was ‘‘tied’’ by an Eagle Dance Ceremony, committing them, as Annemarie Shimony notes about such friendships generally, to a ‘‘life-long relationship . . . with culturally defined rights, obligations, and statuses’’ (1994:218).∞≥ This friendship remained especially important to him throughout his life. The Mature Years Three events occurred in 1973, when Thomas was 51 years old, that mark that year as a turning point in his life: his father died, he was installed as a chief, and he remarried. One effect of his father’s death was to move him closer to assuming full responsibility as a ceremonial leader in the Onondaga Longhouse. The process had begun with the death in 1971 of one of Thomas’s mentors, Howard Sky, who had been head faithkeeper of the Wolf moiety (Fenton 1972; Foster 1972), and had culminated with the deaths in the early 1980s of Joseph Logan Jr. and Roy Buck, speakers for the Deer moiety and the Wolf moiety, respectively, at the Onondaga LongJacob Ezra Thomas

225

house. All four men were leading ceremonialists and strong advocates of the longhouse religion and the confederacy. His father was one of the ‘‘finest orators among the Six Nations’’ of his generation (Fenton 1946:119; cf. Shimony 1994:110; Michelson 1988:71–72); moreover, he was an established preacher of the Code of Handsome Lake and an authority on the Condolence Ceremony and the political traditions of the league.∞∂ With his death, Thomas realized that he no longer had anyone to whom he could regularly turn for guidance on the major ceremonial complexes—that he was now largely on his own. By the mid-1980s he was feeling more at ease with the role of elder and ceremonial leader. This gradually maturing attitude is reflected in some of Thomas’s activities during this period. He was invited to speak for the Clearminded Side at Condolence ceremonies held at the Onondaga Reservation in New York in 1976 and 1978, and he played a similar role at the Tonawanda Reservation and at the Onondaga Longhouse at the Six Nations Reserve later on. At one time or another, he was called upon to recite the story of the founding of the league and perform the On the Journey (or Roll Call) ritual, the Near the Thorny Bushes ritual (or Woods’ Edge Welcome), the Wiping Their Tears ritual (or Requickening Address), the Six Songs, and the speeches used to install a new chief.∞∑ On one occasion he traveled to the Kanesatake Mohawk Reserve at Oka, Quebec, to speak for the Clearminded side and ended up also being borrowed by the Mourning side to give the response, since no one present was able to assume that role.∞∏ As a chief and a spokesman for the Four Brothers tribal moiety (the Cayugas, Oneidas, and various adopted tribes), Thomas should have had the privilege of using his tribal language in council and had a translator at his disposal, but operating as he did in an environment of everdiminishing numbers of ritualists and fluent speakers, he often found it necessary to use Onondaga or Mohawk. His polyglot abilities, combined with his broad grasp of Condolence procedures, equipped him well for the role and placed him in high demand at Condolence ceremonies at the Six Nations Reserve and elsewhere. The same applied in the case of recitations of the Great Law, which he conducted in Onondaga at the Onondaga Reservation in New York in 1982 and 1987 and at the Onondaga Longhouse at Six Nations in 1988, and in Mohawk at Kanesatake (Oka, Quebec) in 1986 and at Oneida, New York, in 1987.∞π In 1992 he took the unprecedented step of reciting the Great Law on the Six Nations Reserve in English, first in a five-day version in January at the Community Hall in Ohsweken and then in a nine-day version in September on the grounds of his home. The first event attracted about two hundred people, mostly from the reserve. As many as 226

Foster

two thousand people may have been present for the second event, a large number of them non-Iroquois. Two years later, during the summer of 1994, he repeated the event. These events received considerable local media coverage on and off the reserve, and the second 1992 recital won some national coverage.∞∫ Some of the chiefs and orthodox longhouse members were highly critical of the departure from tradition, however, since the recitations were given in English and included whites in the audience. But Thomas defended his decision to open up the events precisely on the grounds that those most needing to learn about the Great Law were Iroquois young people and whites: ‘‘I say to the young people, ‘What language do you want to hear it in?’ And they say, ‘Well, we want to hear it in English because that’s the only thing we understand. We’d like to hear it in Indian, but we don’t have that language. We wish we did have that language.’ ’’ With regard to there being whites in the audience, Thomas commented: ‘‘I think the white man needs to understand. It isn’t that he’s going to take the law and use it himself. . . . They already did! The 13 colonies already took the Great Law for their so-called Constitution. So what should we be afraid of? . . . If they want to learn it, they have a right to. That should have been done 500 years ago, to study and respect the Confederacy. Maybe we wouldn’t have the problems we have today if they would have studied our people, and [would now] understand and honor and respect [us].’’∞Ω Thomas did not minimize the problems posed by translating the Great Law or any other traditional text into English: ‘‘I always think [in] Indian with anything pertaining to Indian questions or anything to do with our traditions or history. I’ve got to think in Indian first. Then I have to translate the native language into English, and this is where it’s very difficult.’’≤≠ The process, which begins by ‘‘thinking in Indian’’ and then moves to English, entails more than merely finding equivalent words in the target language; it involves what are perceived by many Iroquois to be profound, possibly incommensurable, differences between the Native and white cultural worlds: ‘‘When you say something, it actually comes out from your heart. Using your culture is showing your feelings. It’s got something to do with spirituality. . . . You can’t divide culture and language; they work together. The old people used to say a long time ago: ‘Language opens the door to your culture.’ It’s like a key. . . . It provides the tools to your culture.’’ The task of translation might thus seem hopeless, and Thomas confessed that at times he found the undertaking daunting. In addition to the lack of cultural grounding in the context of spoken English, the traditional texts are full of archaisms and elaborate symbolism, which even fluent speakers of Iroquoian languages today sometimes find inexplicable. Jacob Ezra Thomas

227

Thomas compensated for these problems when giving an English recitation by taking the time to explain more obscure concepts as he went along, all the while trying to keep his place in the narrative sequence. That he was able to do this is a tribute to his maturity and skill as a speaker. His father’s death affected still another facet of Thomas’s career. Dáwit Thomas was a recognized preacher of the Code of Handsome Lake, the Seneca prophet, who lived from 1735 to 1815 (Wallace 1970, 1978). Dáwit had learned an Onondaga version of the code (Kaihwí⭈yo⭈h ‘The Good Message’) from his father-in-law, David Sky, and he passed it on to his son.≤∞ Although Jake learned his father’s version at an early age, he did not contemplate becoming a preacher until he was older. Among other things, he did not feel he had been leading a sufficiently exemplary life to assume the role. For years the code had remained somewhat submerged in his memory, but that began to change in 1975, when Jack Campisi called my attention to an Onondaga manuscript of the code, which had been dictated by Chief Frank Logan to George Van Every at Onondaga, New York, sometime between 1900 and 1909 (Foster 1976).≤≤ Campisi and I arranged to have a copy of this manuscript sent to Thomas, whose interest was immediately piqued, particularly because it was in Onondaga, the language of the version he knew from his father. Between 1976 and 1981, a series of contracts was drawn up with the Canadian Museum of Civilization, in which Thomas tape-recorded and translated first the Logan/Van Every manuscript and then several other versions of the code.≤≥ As a result of this project, he refamiliarized himself with the code and began to prepare for the possibility of preaching it, should he be asked to do so. The first request came in the spring of 1986 from Chief Teyoo˛ hyó⭈koh ˛ (Edgar Martin) to preach the code in Cayuga at a so-called chiefs’ convention at Sour Springs Longhouse held before the Strawberry Festival (cf. Shimony 1994:194). This was followed by requests the same year and in 1987 to preach in Onondaga at the Onondaga Reservation in New York. He also preached at the Lower Cayuga Longhouse and at one of the regular Six Nations conventions at the same longhouse (cf. Shimony 1994:192–193). The effect of the Logan/Van Every manuscript of rekindling Thomas’s interest in the code, leading finally to his becoming a preacher, provides a fascinating example of the value of archival materials and collaborative efforts in helping to perpetuate Native oral tradition. A second important event in Thomas’s life in 1973 was his elevation as a hereditary chief (hoyá⭈ne{) in the spring of that year. A candidate who shows promise and is qualified by virtue of belonging to a chiefly lineage usually serves for some years as a deputy, or ‘‘runner’’ (háotan ˛ oh ˛ ‘he 228

Foster

guards the tree’), to the chief whose title he is expected to inherit upon the incumbent’s death (Shimony 1994:81–82). Thomas had been appointed runner to Augustus (Gus) Williams, who held the Cayuga title Teyoho˛ wé⭈tho⭈{ ˛ (meaning unknown).≤∂ The runner is so called because he should perform services for the chief and at the chief’s death speedily notify the chiefs of the opposite tribal moiety, who will act as the Clearminded side at the Condolence Ceremony. It was a period of learning for Thomas. His father had taught him the intricacies of the Condolence Ceremony and chiefs’ council procedures from the point of view of the Three Brothers tribal moiety (the Mohawks, Onondagas, and Senecas); he was schooled by Gus Williams in those procedures from the viewpoint of the Four Brothers (the Oneidas, Cayugas, and assorted adopted tribes).≤∑ When Gus Williams died in November 1972, Thomas carried out his duty by notifying the Three Brothers of the death with a string of wampum, and the process of Condolence and installation was set in motion. Thomas’s clan matron was Ida Sky (Kayá{t˛es ‘falling body’), who had been Gus Williams’s matron later in his life. Although he was an obvious candidate for the vacant position, he at first turned down Ida’s low-key inquiries about his availability for the role. He was really buying time. He was, he later explained, genuinely unsure about his suitability for the role; besides, he had a job off the reserve and was busy with many other activities. His immediate excuse was that Ida had not approached him in the way prescribed by the Great Law: she should not have asked him about his availability but simply have informed him of her decision to nominate him. As a result, the Condolence Ceremony for Gus Williams, which should have taken place in late 1972, was delayed until the spring of 1973, when Ida approached Thomas a second time, on this occasion with a wry smile on her face, simply to inform him of her decision as a fait accompli. In the meantime, he had reluctantly been coming around to the idea; he knew, among other things, that the chiefs needed him for his broad knowledge of the machinery of the confederacy and for his polyglot speaking ability. The Condolence Ceremony was scheduled for May. In brief, a candidate is nominated by a clan matron from the lineage suffering the loss of the candidate’s predecessor. The matron’s and the candidate’s tribe falls within either the Four Brothers moiety or the Three Brothers moiety, and that side comprises the Mourning side at the Condolence Ceremony. The tribes of the opposite moiety comprise the Clearminded side. The ceremony takes place at the longhouse of the Mourners, where, during the installation phase, the new candidate is either endorsed or rejected by the Clearminded side. Thomas remembered that at his installation Roy Buck was the principal speaker for the Clearminded Jacob Ezra Thomas

229

(Three Brothers) side, a number of whose members had trekked ‘‘over the forest’’ from the Onondaga Longhouse to the Lower Cayuga Longhouse, where the mourning Four Brothers had built a fire at the end of the entrance road to the longhouse. Here the Clearminded visitors were greeted ‘‘at the woods’ edge’’ with the Near the Thorny Bushes ritual and the first part of the Wiping Their Tears (Requickening) address.≤∏ Gordy Buck, Harry Fish, and George Buck spoke for the Four Brothers side, but Thomas himself had to be enlisted to recite the ‘‘burdens’’ of the 15 wampum strings from the Wiping Their Tears ritual.≤π He recalled the dramatic moment during the installation when he was asked to ‘‘show his face’’ and the suspense that followed as the chiefs on the Clearminded side one by one signaled their consent to his installation by each separately taking hold of the notification string. For the first two years after his installation, Thomas did not regularly attend the monthly meetings of the confederacy council held at the Onondaga Longhouse, but in time he became more active. After Ida Sky’s death in 1988, Helen Johnson was appointed as his clan matron. She died in 1992, and he was without a properly installed matron after that time. His attendance at council meetings began again to fall off, as the controversy over his reciting of the Great Law in English heated up, and some of the chiefs balked at supporting his educational efforts on the reserve. Whatever the cause, his lack of attendance stirred resentment and opened him to the criticism that he was neglecting his duties as a chief. In October 1973, Thomas married Yvonne Frances Hill (b. 1944), (Mo) Kanhotú⭈kwas ˛ ‘it opens the door’, a member of the Seneca tribe and the ≤∫ Snipe clan. He left the family property below the Onondaga Longhouse to move in with his wife, her two children by a previous marriage, and her adoptive mother on Townline Road along the southern boundary of the reserve. In time the energetic and aspiring Yvonne would exert a strong influence on the direction of Thomas’s career. Since 1972 Thomas had been employed as Curator of Iroquoian Culture at the Woodland Indian Cultural Centre in nearby Brantford, and he was frequently on the road making contacts at other museums as well as arranging for artifact loans and the purchase of specimens for the new museum at the center. He wanted to document the longhouse culture and enlisted one of his mentors, Roy Buck, to help him tape-record some of the speeches of the annual ceremonial round and the False Face rituals. His other duties included authenticating artifacts donated to the museum and working on exhibits. In the fall of 1974 he resigned his position at the center. He felt he had been hired to document traditional Iroquoian culture but was assigned a number of other duties that eventually proved to be onerous and a distraction from his fundamental purposes. 230

Foster

He continued his rather peripatetic career, moving for eight months to Cornwall, Ontario, the site of the Akwesasne Reserve, to take a position as cultural coordinator with the North American Indian Travelling College. His fluency in Mohawk enabled him to fit in easily with the college’s programs in traditional education. After the college ran into financial difficulties in the summer of 1975, he spent a month at Manitou Community College in La Macaza, Quebec, as an instructor in Mohawk and Iroquois culture. During this time he also collaborated on the production of a Mohawk teaching grammar (Deering and Harries-Delisle 1976). In September 1976, Thomas joined the Department of Native Studies at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, as an assistant professor. His classes in Iroquois culture and traditions and Mohawk, Onondaga, and Cayuga attracted both Native and non-Native students. He commuted to Peterborough three days a week to teach his classes. This pattern continued with occasional interruptions until his retirement in 1991.≤Ω In the mid-1980s, Thomas and his wife began to offer private classes in the languages and traditional Iroquois crafts in the basement of their home. For a time he also taught language classes on the reserve as an extension of the Trent University outreach program, and he had a similar arrangement with Mohawk College. These activities provided the germ of the idea for the Iroquoian Institute, which the Thomases formed in 1986. The institute’s purpose was spelled out in a fund-raising letter distributed in 1988, which also announced an ambitious building program: The Iroquoian Institute is a non-profit organization situated among the Six Nations in Grand River Country. The education[al], resource, [and] recreational complex will preserve and revitalize the Iroquoian languages and culture. It will provide . . . educational programming rich in Iroquoian philosophy, values and traditional teaching. The operation is directed under a Council of Elders, comprised of specialists and linguists. . . . When construction is completed the Institute will house a library, resource and publishing house, a language development centre, an audio-visual facility, cafeteria snack-bar, a recreational facility, and residential accommodation.≥≠ The original plans called for a $5 million facility, which would, in effect, be a college of Iroquoian culture and languages. It was to be built on land donated by the Thomases, with ground to be broken in 1990. An architect was hired to draw up plans. Although the general tone of the project would be set by Thomas, a staff of specialists would teach classes in the Jacob Ezra Thomas

231

languages and cultural subjects. There would be a board of directors and an advisory board. Yvonne Thomas, whose position carried the title of administrator, would provide the energy and executive direction necessary to handle development and guide the institute’s day-to-day operations. Indeed, the project was in many respects Yvonne’s brainchild. An office was set up in the Thomases’ home, and the place hummed with activity. A computer, a fax machine, and a photocopier were brought in. Yvonne’s son, Wayne, drew on his training in computer science to set up the institute’s system, and her daughter, Phyllis, acted as secretary and bookkeeper for the operation. The institute built up an extensive collection of texts and classroom materials on tape and in hard-copy form for distribution to students. The linguistic materials were generated using an Iroquoian font developed by William H. Cook. Courses in Mohawk and Cayuga were offered, along with workshops on Iroquoian oral traditions and wampum and headdress and rattle making. Respectable numbers of students on and off the reserve attended the sessions. Throughout this time, Thomas continued to teach at Trent University. By the fall of 1989, as the difficulties of fund-raising during an economic recession began to weigh ever more heavily, plans were substantially scaled back to a more functional building at around one-tenth the original estimated cost. Architects’ plans were also drawn up for this more modest facility. Although grants were received from several private organizations, and some income was generated from courses taught in the Thomases’ home as well as from memberships and private donations, funding even on the scale of the reduced plan never reached viable levels. In the meantime, overhead costs continued to mount, and the Thomases faced what proved to be insuperable legal problems in their attempts to transfer part of their land to the institute. In many ways the recitation of the Great Law in 1992, which was sponsored by the institute, marked the high point in its development. Soon after that, tensions that had been building between the Thomases and the board of directors over finances and the delegation of authority erupted into a public dispute, which was picked up in the reserve’s newspaper.≥∞ When events reached an impasse, the Thomases announced, in January 1993, that they had severed all formal links with the institute. Although the events of 1992 took a severe emotional toll on the Thomases, they remained deeply committed to the idea of developing an educational and resource center on the reserve, and all through 1993 they continued to discuss plans for a new organization with a group of loyal supporters. They had been chastened by past experience, however: any building constructed to house the center would have to be extremely mod232

Foster

est. Even more important, the organization should not be modeled along the lines of a typical off-reserve corporation. The Thomases felt that the most serious problem they had encountered with the Iroquoian Institute was the lack of any formal means for resolving disputes between themselves and the board of directors. The Great Law, they decided, provided a more reliable organizational model. The new organization would be called the Jake Thomas Learning Centre, and it would not ‘‘be incorporated, [would] not have a Board of Directors and [would] not be restricted by the laws of Canada.’’≥≤ Its bylaws would be ‘‘modeled on the Kaianerenkó⭈wa [Great Law] . . . , and therefore . . . its Principles of Peace, Power & Righteousness should be kept in mind when interpreting these By-Laws.’’≥≥ In lieu of a board of directors, the center would be overseen by a ‘‘council.’’ A good portion of the draft bylaws statement is devoted to the role of the ‘‘councillors’’ and reads very much like sections of the Great Law relating to the comportment of chiefs. The centerpiece of the new organization would be the periodic recitations of the Great Law, which the Thomases fervently hoped would provide a blueprint for restoring traditional values and healing the many divisions within contemporary Iroquoian society. At an inaugural meeting on December 11, 1993, the center was officially launched. In 1994 classes and workshops appeared to be in full swing, and a second recitation of the Great Law took place between June 25 and July 6 at the Thomases’ home. Consultant and Collaborator Thomas’s consultancies with outside academics, museum workers, filmmakers, and community organizations are too extensive to list individually.≥∂ In terms of more focused collaboration with anthropologists and ethnohistorians, he worked with William N. Fenton, who knew his father especially well; Denis Foley, a graduate student of Fenton’s at the State University of New York at Albany; Francis Jennings; Mary Druke Becker; Annemarie Shimony; Hanni Woodbury; and myself. In May 1980, Thomas and I traveled to the Newberry Library in Chicago, where he led a colloquium on treaty protocol, wampum use and symbolism, and Iroquois political history, which was organized by Francis Jennings and his collaborators for the Interdisciplinary Guide to the Treaties of the Six Nations and Their League (see Jennings 1985:xvi).≥∑ Like Fenton, Shimony had known Thomas’s father well and had consulted with Thomas himself in preparing the revised edition of her Conservatism study (1994). Woodbury consulted with Thomas for her Concerning the League monograph in order to clarify certain ‘‘central ideas and concepts of the Iroquois Condolence’’ (Woodbury et al. 1992:v). Jacob Ezra Thomas

233

As best I can recall, I first met Thomas when he was on staff at the Woodland Indian Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ontario, in early March 1973. The most memorable early meeting, however, took place on March 22 of that year, in a Laundromat in Brantford, where, between washes, I learned from Thomas how to distinguish Iroquoian headdresses (kastó⭈wa{) for the different Five Nations tribes by counting the number of protruding eagle feathers and got him to explain the tribal seating arrangement at chiefs’ councils.≥∏ Over the next two years, I learned of Thomas’s knowledge of the Condolence Ceremony and his familiarity with the contents of some wampum belts that are especially important to the confederacy. In 1975 I was conducting library research on 17th- and 18th-century Iroquois-white treaties as these have been voluminously reported in the colonial records, and I was gratified to discover that among the many things Thomas had learned from his father was the set of traditional procedures for conducting a council between sovereign governments. Since the protocol for secular councils derives largely from the Condolence Ceremony, this did not come entirely as a surprise. I was anxious to record what Thomas could recall of the council-speaking tradition in an Iroquoian language, in order to provide a Native perspective on a ubiquitous phenomenon of the colonial period, known otherwise almost exclusively from accounts penned by white men. It turned out that Thomas’s knowledge extended beyond simple recall to being able to enact the speeches appropriate to both visiting and host delegations at a council. In February 1976, we tape-recorded a seven-and-one-half-hour sequence, with Thomas alternately assuming the speaking roles of the ‘‘two sides of the fire.’’ The language chosen for the project was Cayuga, the Iroquoian language I was most familiar with and Thomas’s birthright language. The first step was to prepare a detailed outline of an ideal council sequence. A situation was imagined in which the chiefs were meeting at Onondaga, New York, with white officials from Washington to renew (or ‘‘polish’’) agreements made in colonial times and contained in the Friendship and Two Rows (or Paths) treaty belts. The second step was for Thomas to speak the respective roles of the hosts and visitors in sequence into a tape recorder through the extended greeting sequence and the business and closing phases of the council. As a third step, Thomas provided a rapid English translation of the Cayuga text, using a second tape recorder: the latter machine was kept running while the first was played back and translated line by line (Foster 1976).≥π Several publications have appeared relating to the project (Foster 1984, 1985, 1988a), and a monograph containing interlinear analysis and translation of the texts is in preparation (Foster, in preparation). 234

Foster

Thomas had an opportunity to move the project into the political arena in February 1981, when he traveled with a delegation of chiefs to Ottawa to read the Friendship and Two Rows/Paths treaty belts to Governor General Edward Schreyer at Rideau Hall. There was insufficient time on this occasion to go through the entire sequence for a council as prescribed by Iroquois custom, so a condensed reading of the belts was given. The governor general asked a number of questions afterward, postponing his formal response until a later date—a common practice in colonial times.≥∫ Later in 1981, Thomas gave readings of the Friendship and Two Rows/ Paths belts at the Onondaga Longhouse at Six Nations Reserve and at the Oneida Longhouse at the Oneida Reserve in Southwold, Ontario. When 11 wampum belts from the collection of the Museum of the American Indian (the Heye Foundation) were deaccessioned and returned to the chiefs at Six Nations in May 1988, Thomas was asked to interpret them, and since the Friendship and Two Rows/Paths treaty belts—rare originals of these pieces—were among the belts returned, this provided still another occasion for him to give a public reading of them.≥Ω Thomas and the Americanist Tradition Iroquois have a long tradition of contributing to the ethnographic literature on themselves, whether it be as famous collaborators such as Ely S. Parker, who was Lewis Henry Morgan’s principal source for the League of the Ho-dé-no-sau-nee or Iroquois; John Arthur Gibson, who provided J. N. B. Hewitt and Alexander Goldenweiser with definitive texts on the Iroquois creation legend (Hewitt 1928) and the league tradition (Woodbury et al. 1992), respectively; and Alexander General, who schooled Frank Speck, W. N. Fenton, Floyd Lounsbury, Annemarie Shimony, and others on the intricacies of Cayuga ceremonialism, political organization and language; or as professional anthropologists and writers in their own right, such as Arthur C. Parker at the New York State Museum and J. N. B. Hewitt at the Bureau of American Ethnology. As with the contributions of his predecessors, Chief Thomas’s is unique, although it can be compared with theirs. In terms of the breadth of his knowledge of Iroquois traditions, the range of his talents when it came to performing them, and the demand for his services, Thomas fulfilled much the same role at the Six Nations Reserve that earlier ceremonial leaders such as John Arthur Gibson and Alexander General had fulfilled; but two factors have made for very different circumstances with regard to ceremonial leadership in later decades. First, the languages and the different cultural complexes, such as the annual round of longhouse ceremonies, the Great Law, the Code of Jacob Ezra Thomas

235

Handsome Lake, and the medicine societies, have become far more endangered than in Gibson’s and General’s days. This has placed later ceremonialists under considerable pressure to move beyond mere performance as longhouse speakers to take an active role in helping to preserve the traditional culture. As noted earlier, Chief Thomas’s response to the contemporary situation made him a controversial figure within his community, even as he was greatly admired outside it. Second, the availability of modern electronic media to assist in preserving and disseminating the materials of an oral culture has given the process an enormous boost, and the Thomases took full advantage of it. It is a sad irony that just as tape recorders, video cameras, and computers have come into such wide use on Iroquois reserves, Iroquoian languages and culture have been rapidly losing ground. While Thomas remained deeply committed to the notion of educating young Iroquois and the outside world in the intricacies of Iroquois culture, he showed little interest in the usual academic outlets for his endeavors: his publications list is short, consisting mostly of collaborative efforts, and he did not often attend conferences. In this respect, he chose a rather different path from the paths chosen by Arthur C. Parker and J. N. B. Hewitt, both of whom published extensively and made successful professional careers at museums. Although it might seem patronizing to link Thomas’s misgivings about the academic world to his eschewing of formal education in the white world, one may recall his statement that, when it came to traditional subjects, he always thought first ‘‘in Indian,’’ and this meant, among other things, that he greatly valued the spoken word over the written word. Indeed, he could be highly critical of the published literature on the Iroquois. The issue was a philosophical one. He saw the written word as invariably leading to the ossification of oral tradition: the production of ‘‘standard versions’’ undermined the variability that lay at the heart of the oral composition process. Moreover, a published text gave a spurious impression of definitiveness, whereas, as he saw it, a given performance was only one of a number of possible interpretations, each of which might, in different ways, contribute to people’s understanding of what is popularly called the subtext. Finally—and somewhat paradoxically—a range of interpretations made it possible to achieve, at times, the Iroquoian ideal of consensus, sk{aníkoHa⭈t ˛ ‘unity of mind’, whereas the written word always threatened to create dissension and disunity. This is not to say that Thomas avoided committing texts to paper, but it may explain why he kept making new recordings of the same core speeches and transcribing and translating them: in this he was attempting to validate the process of oral composition. 236

Foster

Thomas’s contributions to Iroquoian studies can be summed up by referring to a comment Edward Sapir once made regarding the value of Native testimony for providing the hard data of cultural descriptions: ‘‘I’m not particularly interested in ‘smoothed-over’ versions of native culture. I like the stuff in the raw, as felt and dictated by the natives . . . [t]he genuine, difficult, confusing, primary sources. These must be presented, whatever else is done. . . . There are too many glib monographs most of which time will show to be highly subjective performances. We need to develop in cultural anthropology that anxious respect for documentary evidence that is so familiar to the historian, the classical scholar, [and] the Orientalist.’’∂≠ By making available a great deal of the stuff in the raw, Jake Thomas added immeasurably both to Iroquoian studies and to North American ethnology. And the archive of his recordings and manuscripts is a priceless gift to his people. Notes 1. Chief Thomas died in August 1998. I have not updated this essay to include his activities and accomplishments between 1994 and 1998. During the time that I knew him, I often talked with him about his culture and the Iroquoian languages, noting facts about his life from time to time. The present essay draws on this information, but particularly on a taped interview conducted on May 20, 1994, and on follow-up interviews conducted in October 1994. I am grateful to Thomas and his wife Yvonne for answering my questions and for reading and commenting on a draft of this essay. I am also indebted to William N. Fenton, Douglas R. Parks, Annemarie Shimony, Elisabeth Tooker, and Hanni Woodbury for reading and commenting on the draft. Finally, I would like to thank Miriam B. Spectre, senior processing archivist at the American Philosophical Society Library, for answering my queries about the library’s copy of the Frank Logan/George Van Every manuscript of the Code of Handsome Lake, and Dennis Fletcher of the Library Services Division of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, Hull, Quebec, for answering my queries about Thomas’s audiovisual holdings at the museum. The syllabified spelling of Thomas’s name is one of several he used over the years. Words in parentheses or in the body of the text are phonemicized Cayuga forms, unless preceded by ‘‘Oo’’ for Onondaga or ‘‘Mo’’ for Mohawk. One Seneca word is cited. The orthographic conventions used by most Northern Iroquoian specialists today have been summarized by Mithun (1978:161–180), and I have used them here. Onondaga words are written according to the conventions provided in Woodbury et al. 1992. The first letter of Iroquoian proper names is capitalized, although this has no phonemic or phonetic significance. 2. Of the terms for a condoled Cayuga chief, Thomas preferred hoyá⭈ne{, although hahs˛enowá⭈n˛eh, which means ‘his name is big’, is also in use. Perhaps influenced by the title of Parker 1916, the Great Law of Peace has long been referred to in English as the Iroquois ‘‘constitution,’’ but ‘‘Great Law’’ is a more precise gloss of the term KayaneHsra{kó⭈wah, as Parker himself indicates in his subtitle (1916:7). The term has cognates in Mohawk: Kayanervhsera{kó⭈wah; Onondaga: Kaya⭈n˛éhsæ⭈{kò⭈na; ´ and Seneca: Kayaneshæ{ko⭈wa⭈h (Woodbury et al. 1992:xxvi; Chafe 1967:86, no. 1852). The Mohawk word in widest use today, Kayanerv{kó⭈wa, which Thomas wrote as KaiJacob Ezra Thomas

237

anerenkó⭈wa in texts and public announcements, omits the nominalizer suffix -hsera- (cf. Michelson 1973:121). For a recent reeliciting, translation, and analysis of an early 20thcentury Onondaga text of the league tradition, which includes a reading of the Great Law, see Woodbury et al. 1992. 3. Estimates of the numbers of native speakers of Iroquoian languages in the late 1970s in Canada and the United States yielded the following breakdown: Mohawk, 3,000; Oneida, 250; Onondaga, 100–150; Cayuga, 370; Seneca, 425; Tuscarora, 47; most speakers were middle-aged or elderly (Foster 1982). By the mid-1990s the numbers had dropped significantly for all the languages except Mohawk (Foster 1999). Figures for the Six Nations Reserve alone have been compiled by workers at the Sweetgrass First Nations Language Council, Inc., of Brantford, Ontario, which provided a valuable resource by listing all the remaining fluent speakers’ names for that reserve (see Shimony 1994:xvii, 295–298). 4. Thomas conceived of his mother’s name, (Kowahé⭈ki⭈{), ˛ and his maternal grandmother’s name, (Kowan˛ ˛ etshí⭈ne{, as being Cayuga, but they show some Onondaga influence in the selection of the interactive pronominal prefix -kowa˛ (properly -kuwa-) ˛ ‘someone-to-her’, rather than the expected -(y)otat˛ of Cayuga. 5. His father and maternal grandfather were Onondagas and held chiefly titles. His father’s title, (Oo) Hahí⭈hu, ˛ was the 9th in the Onondaga roster (27th in the overall list of 50 chiefs); his grandfather’s title, (Oo) Honú⭈wiyèhti, ˛ was the 7th in the Onondaga roster (25th in the overall list of chiefs) and the official wampum keeper of the confederacy (Tooker 1978b:424–425). Details regarding the titles and David Sky’s and Dáwit Thomas’s claims to them are provided by Shimony (1994:110). Given the oft-noted polarity between Christians and Longhouse people on Iroquois reserves, it may seem curious that Dáwit, who was one of the most respected traditionalists of his day, was raised as a Christian. The polarity, however, is somewhat overdrawn, in that many families participate to varying degrees in both the church and the longhouse; moreover, there are Christian supporters of the confederacy and, in Canada at least, longhouse supporters of the elective band council system. Jake Thomas commented simply that his father started as a Christian but gradually went over to the longhouse. Rare copies of photographs of both men are in Jake Thomas’s archive, and on file in the photographic archives of the Canadian Museum of Civilization: negative no. 79-2494 (David Sky) and negative no. 79-2490 (David Thomas). David Sky appears in the photograph of the ‘‘Council of the Six Nations at Grand River, ca. 1900,’’ which faces page 7 in Parker 1916. He is the sixth figure from the left, holding a cane. 6. For the seating arrangements in the Onondaga Longhouse for different ceremonies, see Shimony 1994:67. Thomas sat with the Wolf moiety in the southwest quadrant of the longhouse when seating was by moiety, and in the northwest quadrant when seating was by sex. 7. The Stirring Ashes ritual continues at the longhouse after the Midwinter Ceremony starts. The paddles are used to stir the ashes in wood-burning stoves at opposite ends of the building, which represent the ‘‘hearths’’ of the two moieties. The purpose of the ritual is to commence the renewal of society following the winter solstice (Shimony 1994:175–178; Foster 1974:113, 116–117, and field notes in Foster’s possession). 8. He learned later that the position of ‘‘faithkeeper’’ did not actually belong to his clan. He formally resigned the position when he became a chief in 1973. Aside from whether he had a legitimate claim to being a faithkeeper, he felt that the two positions involved rather different duties and should not be held simultaneously by the same individual. 9. For an overview of these societies at the Six Nations Reserve, see Shimony (1994:281– 285) and the sources she cites. 10. The latest and most comprehensive discussion of false face masks and the curing ceremonies associated with them is Fenton 1987. 238

Foster

11. The Eagle Dance has been described at length by Fenton (1953). 12. Doris’s mother, Annie Keye, had been the clan matron for her brother, Sam Green, who held the title (Oo) Teha⭈yá{tkwà⭈i{, the 6th in the Onondaga roster and 24th in the overall list (Tooker 1978b:425; Shimony 1994:109). When Doris’s mother died, Doris herself became the clan matron. The title has been vacant since Sam Green’s death. 13. In the course of a May 20, 1994, interview, Thomas described three medicine friendships he had formed at different stages of his life and for different reasons: the one previously mentioned, which was tied through a Bear Ceremony; the one with Spragge; and a third one with Alex Nanticoke, tied by means of a ritual lacrosse game. The pattern and significance of medicine friendships in the lives of orthodox Longhouse Iroquois are described by Shimony (1994:218–228). 14. Both Thomas and his father were present at a Condolence Ceremony that took place at the Sour Springs Longhouse on the Six Nations Reserve in 1962 (Michelson 1988). The contrast between the father’s major role as a ceremonialist at this time and his son’s relatively minor role is evident from this account. In a few years, Thomas would assume his father’s mantle. 15. Following Woodbury et al. 1992, I designate the entire complex comprising the story of the league’s founding, the Great Law, and the Condolence Ceremony as the ‘‘league tradition.’’ For the significance of terms used to describe the two moieties that conduct a Condolence Ceremony and the names of the rituals the ceremony comprises, see Woodbury et al. 1992:xxxii–lv. In 1979–80 I tape-recorded certain sections of the league tradition from Thomas, including the story of the founding of the league, the Great Law as given by the Peacemaker, parts of the On the Journey ritual (Roll Call of the Chiefs), the 15 burdens (wampum strings) of the Wiping Their Tears ritual, first when the Four Brothers are in the role of the Clearminded and the Three Brothers are in the role of the Mourners, and then when the roles reversed. In Thomas’s versions, the major parts of the league tradition are linked with wampums that are among the pieces the Iroquois value most highly: the Prophecy or Remembrance belt (Parker 1916, plate 7 [third belt from left]); the Hiawatha (properly [Mo] Ayuhwátha{) ˛ belt (Fenton 1971:443); the Circlet of the League (Woodbury et al. 1992:xxx); the Thadodaho belt and the (Oo) Honú⭈wiyèhti, ˛ Wing or Evergrowing Tree (both shown in Fenton 1971:445). The 15 strings used in the Wiping Their Tears ritual are illustrated and described in Tooker 1978b:438–439. It may be of interest to note that all the original belts mentioned here, which were in the collection of the New York State Museum in Albany, were among those returned to the Central Fire Keepers, the Onondagas at Nedrow, New York, in October 1989 (Anon. 1989). The Circlet of the League, which was in the collection of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, was returned along with two other highly valued pieces, to the chiefs at the Six Nations Reserve in January 1991 (Foster 1991). In July 1989, Thomas recorded another performance of the Condolence Ceremony on videotape for the American Indian Program at Cornell University (reported in The Web, a publication of the Indigenous Communication Resource Center, for December 1989). 16. The Great Law allows for this procedure and names the speaker who alternates between the two sides teHakoHshái⭈k ˛ oh ˛ ‘he’s two-faced’. 17. Tape recordings were made of some of these performances. 18. The 1992 recital was discussed on Peter Gzowski’s ‘‘Morningside’’ program on the cbc on Sept. 21, 1992, and Thomas was interviewed by Gzowski on ‘‘Morningside’’ on October 19. The interview took place against a backdrop of the constitutional debates in Canada at the time, in which Native self-government was a hot issue. Jacob Ezra Thomas

239

19. In his statement that the U.S. Constitution derives from the Great Law, Thomas echoes a belief widely held among Iroquois today and supported by some historians, e.g., Grinde and Johansen (1991); but cf. Tooker (1988, 1993). 20. From an interview with Peter Gzowski on the cbc program ‘‘Morningside’’ (Oct. 19, 1992). 21. Preachers try to establish ‘‘lineages’’ that link them ultimately to Handsome Lake. Shimony (1994:192 n.) reports that David Sky may have learned the code from John Arthur Gibson, who may have learned it from his grandfather, who may have heard it from Handsome Lake directly. 22. The importance of the manuscript lies in the fact that it represents a slightly different apostolic tradition of the code from the better-known Seneca version by Edward Cornplanter (Parker 1913; cf. Fenton 1968:33–34). Photostatic copies of the original manuscript, the location of which is unknown, exist in the archives of the American Philosophical Society Library and at Syracuse University (Freeman 1980:274, items no. 2582, no. 2590). The date of the manuscript can be inferred only approximately, since the upper right corner of the first page, where the date appears, is torn, leaving only ‘‘Feb. 26 190.’’ There is a brief reference to Van Every as the ‘‘Onondaga Fire-Keeper’’ in Frans M. Olbrechts’s correspondence with Boas (letter dated Nov. 8, 1929), not, as the Freeman guide has it, a ‘‘biography’’ of Van Every (Freeman 1980:274, item no. 2589). Some notes about Chief Frank Logan and his work with Van Every will be found in a field notebook of Olbrechts (Freeman 1980, item no. 2590). Parker (1913:5) mentions Frank Logan as being one of the ‘‘six authorized ‘holders’ of the Gai’wiioh [Good Message]’’ in the early 20th century, and as watching ‘‘the waning of his prophet’s teachings [at Onondaga] with grave concern.’’ In November 1976, Thomas interviewed Irwin Powless and Margaret Gibson Cook at the Onondaga Reservation, New York, in an attempt to learn more about Van Every. The interview, which was conducted in Onondaga, was tape-recorded by Thomas and is in his private collection. In October 1994, I reviewed this tape with Thomas and found that it contained disappointingly little substantive information about either Van Every or Logan. 23. Following his treatment of the original manuscript, Thomas taped a Mohawk translation of it. He also taped a Cayuga translation of the best-known version of the code, the English translation of Edward Cornplanter’s Seneca version (Parker 1913). His work was enhanced at this time by having a photocopy of a Seneca version at his disposal, made available through the kindness of Elisabeth Tooker. (This was not the original Edward Cornplanter version, which has been lost, but a translation back into Seneca by Jesse Cornplanter based on Parker 1913.) Thomas then recorded and translated what he could recall of his father’s Onondaga version. He found this to be quite close to the Logan/Van Every text. As a result, he commented, ‘‘I began to adopt some of the George Van Every to put into my father’s version, . . . and maybe a little of the Parker version, too.’’ He discovered that the different versions complemented each other and compensated for each other’s gaps. This led him finally to synthesize what he knew from all the versions he had worked on, producing on tape a new ‘‘integrated’’ version, which he regarded as the definitive one. In addition, he recorded the procedures to be followed in issuing invitations to Handsome Lake conventions. Thomas’s English translation of the Logan/Van Every manuscript, supplemented in some details by the Parker version, has appeared in print (Thomas and Boyle 1994), although the original manuscript is not explicitly identified and its date is erroneously reported as 1918 (Thomas and Boyle 1994:6–7). 24. Teyohowé⭈th ˛ o⭈{ ˛ is the 8th title in the Cayuga roster and 40th in the overall list of 240

Foster

50 chiefs (Tooker 1978b:425). Gus Williams’s clan matron had been Mrs. Alex Nanticoke (Shimony 1994:115); the matron appointed on her death was Ida Sky, mentioned later in this essay. 25. He also credited Alex Nanticoke, Chauncey Isaac, and Alexander General for the knowledge he gained of Four Brothers’ Condolence procedures. 26. This Condolence Ceremony was not recorded, and only a few memories of it have survived. The general pattern of the ceremony is described by Woodbury et al. (1992:xxxiii– lv, and see especially table 1 on p. xxxii). Fenton (1946) provides a colorful eyewitness account of a Condolence Ceremony, which took place at the same longhouse on the Six Nations Reserve in 1945, with a much younger Roy Buck playing a similarly prominent role. Michelson (1988) also gives an eyewitness account of a Condolence Ceremony, which took place at the Sour Springs Longhouse on the Six Nations Reserve in 1962. 27. According to Thomas, 15 strings of wampum are used in the Wiping Their Tears ritual when a chief is installed at what he calls a ‘‘big Condolence,’’ and 14 strings are used at the shorter Ten Day Feast for a chief, which he calls the ‘‘small Condolence.’’ This interpretation is borne out by Shimony (1994:258–260). The question regarding the proper number of strings hinges on the meaning and use of the 10th string, called (Oo) tewash˛é niyóihwa{ ‘Twenty Matters’ (Woodbury et al. 1992:xliii, 665–666). It is sometimes claimed that 15 strings are used only when the chief’s death is the result of a homicide (cf. Fenton 1946:120, 121–122; and Shimony 1994:258–259), but Thomas rejected this interpretation. 28. Although there are several varieties of Snipe clan, they are all united under the term Tostowi{kó⭈wah ‘the big snipe [clan]’, and this means that Jake and Yvonne came from the same clan ultimately. Jake insisted that the old rule of clan exogamy was still in effect in the longhouse community, although a good deal of confusion existed and some people ignored it altogether (cf. Shimony 1994:28–34). In their own case, Yvonne explained that for many years she thought she was Mohawk and a member of the Turtle clan, since these were the identities of her adoptive mother, and she only discovered her roots as a Seneca and a member of the Snipe clan after she and Jake were married and she had investigated her family history through distant relatives at the Tonawanda Reservation. 29. Some facts about Thomas’s formal schooling and other experience in the world of education may be noted here. He completed grade four of elementary school. He once commented, ‘‘I was not educated in the white world, and I always thought in Indian all the time.’’ During the summers of 1982 and 1984, he completed course work to earn a Native Language Instructor’s Diploma in a program sponsored by Lakehead University in Thunder Bay and the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. In 1981 he gained tenure at Trent University. In 1992 he was appointed to the board of governors of McMaster University in Hamilton for a term that ran until 1996. 30. For a lengthier statement of the institute’s purposes, see Wiles-Heap 1989. 31. See Tekawennake for Nov. 4, 11, 18, and 25, 1992. 32. Statement of members and friends of the Jake Thomas Learning Centre, Nov. 26, 1993. 33. Preamble to the draft of the bylaws of the Friends of the Jake Thomas Learning Centre, distributed Oct. 18, 1993. 34. Thomas and his wife prepared a detailed curriculum vitae for him, which listed such contacts chronologically by categories. I would only mention the two trips Thomas made to the Canadian Museum of Civilization in 1982 and 1988 to perform ritual ‘‘feedings’’ of the masks in the museum’s collection, a form of spiritual conservation paralleling other forms of artifact conservation. The first occasion was videotaped by museum staff, and the second was photographed by the staff and received considerable local press coverage. Jacob Ezra Thomas

241

35. In another publication, Jennings referred to the same colloquium where, drawing on oral traditions, Thomas confirmed his suspicions that the Delawares had not, as often assumed by historians, been subjugated by the Iroquois but had merely been adopted into the confederacy to ‘‘cement alliance[s] between Iroquois and Algonquian nations’’ (Jennings 1984:23–24). 36. A minor project on which we collaborated was the recording of two short versions and one long version of the Kanóh ˛ ony ˛ ohk ˛ (Thanksgiving Address) in Cayuga (Foster and Thomas 1980). 37. The initial work led to a major research project, supported from 1982 to 1985 by a translations grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and in 1991 and 1993 by Phillips Fund grants from the American Philosophical Society Library. Both funding sources are here gratefully acknowledged. This collaborative effort required not only the patient assistance over several years of Chief Thomas, but that of four other Six Nations persons: Greta Wright, Alta Doxtador, Lorna Hill, and Evelyn Bomberry, all of whom have greatly assisted me with the process of translating and analyzing the texts of the speeches. 38. The event took place on Feb. 26, 1981, and was attended by six chiefs from Six Nations, 11 other reserve residents, the governor general, and his deputy secretary, W. M. Agnes. Thomas spoke in Mohawk, and Don Richmond from the Akwesasne Reserve acted as his interpreter (Foster 1981). The use of an interpreter is mandated in council protocol and is constantly attested in the colonial accounts of Indian-white councils. In May 1984, the chiefs returned to Ottawa for a dinner at Rideau Hall, in which the governor general presented them with medals and responded formally to the request to renew the old agreements contained in the belts. The event was covered in the reserve’s newspaper Tekawennake (June 6, 1984: 2). As mentioned, Thomas learned the procedures for conducting a council and the contents of the Friendship and Two Rows/Paths treaty belts from his father. A photograph taken in July 1954 shows his father and a delegation of confederacy chiefs meeting with the commissioner for Indian affairs in Washington to ‘‘polish’’ the agreements contained in the two belts. (Copies of the photograph are on file at the photo archives of the Canadian Museum of Civilization [identical negatives 79-2491 and 79-2492].) Thomas also recalled the occasion in 1930 when his father, Joseph Logan Sr., Alexander General, and Art Anderson traveled to England to read the belts to representatives of the British government in a vain attempt to establish Iroquois sovereignty in Canada (cf. Shimony 1978:168). 39. Accounts of the 1988 return are supplied by Foster (1988b) and Fenton (1989), and the event was covered in the early summer 1988 edition of Akwesasne Reserve’s newspaper Akwesasne Notes, which carried several photographs of Thomas and the other chiefs, and in the summer 1988 edition of Turtle Quarterly. Figure 2 on p. 396 of Fenton’s paper shows the Friendship and Two Rows/Paths belts. The entire event was videotaped by a crew hired by the Canadian Museum of Civilization. The tapes are in the museum’s photographic archives. This is the only known instance of a videotape of Thomas interpreting the two belts, and it provides a glimpse of how a wampum ‘‘reading’’ is done with an interpreter, who on this occasion was Bob Jamieson, although this version is considerably shorter than the one taped in 1976. The eleven returned belts were put on display in an exhibit called Council Fire at the Woodland Indian Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ontario, from mid-September 1989 to midFebruary 1990. 40. Quoted by Darnell (1992:42) from a letter from Sapir to Fay-Cooper Cole, the chairman of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Chicago, dated Apr. 25, 1938, and located in the University of Chicago archives. 242

Foster

References Anonymous. 1989. Wampum Belts Returned to the Onondaga Nation. Man in the Northeast 37 (Fall):109–117. Armstrong, William H. 1978. Warrior in Two Camps: Ely S. Parker, Union General and Seneca Chief. Syracuse ny: Syracuse University Press. Chafe, Wallace L. 1967. Seneca Morphology and Dictionary. Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology 4. Washington dc: Smithsonian Institution Press. Cinader, Bernhard. 1975. Introduction. In Sculptures by Jacob E. Thomas and Sons: 28th March–13th April, 1975, Samuel J. Zacks Gallery, Stong College, York University, Toronto. Reprinted in The Indian Trader (Dec. 1979): 3, 10, 53. Darnell, Regna. 1992. The Boasian Text Tradition and the History of Anthropology. Culture 12(1): 39–47. Deering, Nora, and Helga Harries-Delisle. 1976. Mohawk Teaching Grammar (preliminary version). Ecowi qc: Thunderbird Press. Fenton, William N. 1946. An Iroquois Condolence Council for Installing Cayuga Chiefs in 1945. Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 36(4): 110–127. ———. 1949. Seth Newhouse’s Traditional History and Constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 93(2): 141–158. ———. 1953. The Iroquois Eagle Dance: An Offshoot of the Calumet Dance; with an Analysis of the Iroquois Eagle Dance and Songs, by Gertrude P. Kurath. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 156. Washington dc: U.S. gpo. ———. 1968. Introduction. In Parker on the Iroquois. W. N. Fenton, ed. Pp. 1–47. Syracuse ny: University of Syracuse Press. ———. 1971. The New York State Wampum Collection: The Case for the Integrity of Cultural Treasures. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 115(6): 437–461. ———. 1972. Howard Sky, 1900–1971: Cayuga Faith-Keeper, Gentleman, and Interpreter of Iroquois Culture. American Anthropologist 74(3): 758–762. ———. 1978. ‘‘Aboriginally Yours,’’ Jesse J. Cornplanter, Hah-Yonh-Wonh-Ish, The Snipe; Seneca, 1899–1957. In American Indian Intellectuals. Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society, 1976. Margot Liberty, ed. Pp. 177–195. St. Paul: West. ———. 1987. The False Faces of the Iroquois. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ———. 1989. Return of Eleven Wampum Belts to the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy on Grand River, Canada. Ethnohistory 36(4): 392–410. Foster, Michael K. 1972. The Obsequies for Howard Sky, or Cloudy-on-Both-Sides. American Anthropologist 74(3): 762–763. ———. 1974. From the Earth to Beyond the Sky: An Ethnographic Approach to Four Longhouse Iroquois Speech Events. National Museum of Man, Canadian Ethnology Service, Mercury Series Paper 20. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada. ———. 1976. Field Report for . . . 1975–76. Typescript in Foster’s possession. ———. 1981. The Reading of the Friendship (Covenant) and Two Rows Belts at the Governor General’s, scheduled for 4:00 p.m. on 26 Feb. 81. Typescript in Foster’s Possession. ———. 1982 Canada’s First Languages/Les langues autochtones du Canada. Language and Society/Langue et Société 7 (Winter–Spring): 7–16. ———. 1984. On Who Spoke First at Iroquois-White Councils: An Exercise in the Method of Upstreaming. In Extending the Rafters: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Iroquoian Studies. M. K. Foster, J. Campisi, and M. Mithun, eds. Pp. 183–207. Albany: State University of New York Press. Jacob Ezra Thomas

243

———. 1985. Another Look at the Function of Wampum in Iroquois-White Councils. In The History and Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy: An Interdisciplinary Guide to the Treaties of the Six Nations and Their League. F. Jennings, W. N. Fenton, M. A. Druke, and D. R. Miller, eds. Pp. 99–114. Syracuse ny: Syracuse University Press. ———. 1988a. Iroquois Interaction in Historical Perspective. In Native North American Interaction Patterns. R. Darnell and M. K. Foster, eds. Pp. 22–42. Canadian Museum of Civilization, Canadian Ethnology Service, Mercury Series Paper 112. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada. ———. 1988b. Field Trip Report [for May 1988]. Typescript in Foster’s possession. ———. 1991. The Return of Three cmc Wampums to the Iroquois Confederacy: Phase I. Typescript in Foster’s possession. ———. 1999. Native People, Languages. In The Canadian Encyclopedia. James H. Marsh, ed. Year 2000 edition. Vol. 2. Pp. 1585–1587. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. ———. In preparation. The Fire, the Path, and the Chain: The Iroquoian Council-Speaking Tradition according to Chief Jacob E. Thomas. Foster, Michael K., and Jacob E. Thomas. 1980. The Cayuga Kanóh ˛ ony ˛ ohk ˛ (Thanksgiving Address). In Northern Iroquoian Texts. M. Mithun and Hanni Woodbury, eds. International Journal of American Linguistics, Native Texts Series 4. Pp. 9–25. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Freeman, John F. 1980. A Guide to Manuscripts Relating to the American Indian in the Library of the American Philosophical Society. Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society 65. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. Goldenweiser, Alexander A. 1912. The Death of Chief John A. Gibson. American Anthropologist, n.s., 14:692–694. Grinde, Donald A., Jr., and Bruce E. Johansen. 1991. Exemplar of Liberty: Native America and the Evolution of Democracy. Los Angeles: American Indian Studies Center, University of California. Hertzberg, Hazel W. 1978. Arthur C. Parker; Seneca, 1881–1955. In American Indian Intellectuals. Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society, 1976. Margot Liberty, ed. Pp. 129–138. St. Paul: West. ———. 1979. Nationality, Anthropology and Pan-Indianism in the Life of Arthur C. Parker (Seneca). Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 123(1): 47–72. Hewitt, J. N. B. 1928. Iroquoian Cosmology, Second Part. In vol. 43 of the Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology for the Years 1925–1926. Pp. 449–819. Washington dc: U.S. gpo. Jennings, Francis. 1984. The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire: The Covenant Chain Confederation of Indian Tribes with English Colonies from Its Beginnings to the Lancaster Treaty of 1744. New York: W. W. Norton. ———. 1985. Introduction. In The History and Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy: An Interdisciplinary Guide to the Treaties of the Six Nations and Their League. F. Jennings, W. N. Fenton, M. A. Druke, and D. R. Miller, eds. Pp. xiii–xviii. Syracuse ny: Syracuse University Press. Michelson, Gunther. 1973. A Thousand Words of Mohawk. National Museum of Man, Ethnology Division, Mercury Series Paper 5. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada. ———. 1988. An Account of an Iroquois Condolence Council. Man in the Northeast 36 (Fall): 61–75. Mithun, Marianne. 1978. Iroquoian. In The Languages of Native America: Historical and Comparative Assessment. Lyle Campbell and Marianne Mithun, eds. Pp. 133–212. Austin: University of Texas Press. 244

Foster

Parker, Arthur C. 1913. The Code of Handsome Lake, the Seneca Prophet. New York State Museum Bulletin 163:5–148. (Reprinted in Parker on the Iroquois, W. N. Fenton, ed., Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1968.) ———. 1916. The Constitution of the Five Nations. New York State Museum Bulletin 184:7– 158. (Reprinted in Parker on the Iroquois, W. N. Fenton, ed., Syracuse ny: Syracuse University Press, 1968.) ———. 1919. The Life of General Ely S. Parker: Last Grand Sachem of the Iroquois and General Grant’s Military Secretary. Publications of the Buffalo Historical Society 23. Repr., New York: ams Press, 1985. Rudes, Blair A. 1994. John Napoleon Brinton Hewitt: Tuscarora Linguist. Anthropological Linguistics 36(4): 466–481. Shimony, Annemarie. 1978. Alexander General, ‘‘Deskahe’’; Cayuga-Oneida, 1899–1965. In American Indian Intellectuals. Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society, 1976. Margot Liberty, ed. Pp. 159–175. St. Paul: West. ———. 1994[1961]. Conservatism among the Iroquois at the Six Nations Reserve. Repr., Syracuse ny: Syracuse University Press. Swanton, John R. 1938. John Napoleon Brinton Hewitt. American Anthropologist, n.s., 40: 286–290. Thomas, Jacob E., and Terry Boyle. 1994. Teachings from the Longhouse. Toronto: Stoddart. Tooker, Elisabeth. 1978a. Ely S. Parker; Seneca, ca. 1828–1895. In American Indian Intellectuals. Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society, 1976. Margot Liberty, ed. Pp. 15–30. St. Paul: West. ———. 1978b. The League of the Iroquois: Its History, Politics and Ritual. In Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15: Northeast. Bruce G. Trigger, ed. Pp. 418–441. Washington dc: Smithsonian Institution. ———. 1988. The United States Constitution and the Iroquois League. Ethnohistory 35(4): 305–336. ———. 1993. Review of Exemplar of Liberty: Native America and the Evolution of Democracy, by Donald A. Grinde Jr. and Bruce E. Johansen. Northeast Anthropology 46 (Fall): 103–107. Wallace, Anthony F. C. 1970. The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ———. 1978. Origins of the Longhouse Religion. In Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15: Northeast. Bruce Trigger, ed. Pp. 442–448. Washington dc: Smithsonian Institution. Weaver, Sally M. 1984. Seth Newhouse and the Grand River Confederacy at Mid-Nineteenth Century. In Extending the Rafters: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Iroquoian Studies. M. K. Foster, J. Campisi, and M. Mithun, eds. Pp. 165–182. Albany: State University of New York Press. Wiles-Heap, Brian. 1989. New School Begun for Iroquois Languages and Traditions at Six Nations. Akwesasne Notes (Early Winter): 8. Woodbury, Hanni, et al. 1992. Concerning the League: The Iroquois League Tradition as Dictated in Onondaga by John Arthur Gibson. Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics Memoir 9. Winnipeg: Linguistics Department, University of Manitoba.

Jacob Ezra Thomas

245

9. The Influence of Herbert Spencer on the World of Letters

Robert L. Carneiro

History has not been kind to Herbert Spencer. If he is remembered at all today, it is probably for his steadfast allegiance to laissez-faire economics and the associated doctrine of Social Darwinism (Hofstadter 1955). For that, he is not only recalled but also derided. In a recent book, for example, Peter Bowler (2003:301) cannot resist reminding his readers that Spencer’s ideas ‘‘were welcomed with enthusiasm by the robber barons who masterminded the development of American industry in the late nineteenth century.’’ But while Spencer cannot reasonably be held responsible for the uses to which his outmoded doctrines were put, neither can it be denied that he adhered to them. However, he has also been branded with charges of which he can be absolved. One often reads, for example, that Spencer was a typical Victorian. Just what that means is not always spelled out, but in general, calling someone a ‘‘Victorian’’ implies that he stood foursquare behind Queen and country, regardless of the circumstances. But as we shall see, Spencer resoundingly cleared himself of these charges. During Victorian times, England was at the height of its colonial expansion, a practice toward which Spencer was unalterably opposed. Indeed, he repeatedly offered stinging indictments of colonialism, as when he railed against ‘‘the aggressive tendencies displayed by [the British] all over the world—sending, as pioneers, missionaries of ‘the religion of love,’ and then picking quarrels with native races and taking possession of their lands’’ (Spencer 1926, vol. 2:375). Again, in a letter to Algernon Swinburne, he called for a ‘‘scathing exposure of the contrast between our Christian creed and pagan doings, our professed philanthropy and our actual savagery’’ (Duncan 1908b, vol. 1:293). Pointing specifically at British colonial adventures in Africa, Spencer lamented ‘‘the cowardly conquests of bullet and shell over arrow and assegai, which demoralizes one side while slaughtering the other’’ (Spencer 1893:193). And finally, Britain’s instigation of the Boer War at the

close of the 19th century greatly saddened Spencer and led him to declare, more than once, ‘‘I am ashamed of my country’’ (Duncan 1908a:449). Another supposed attribute of ‘‘Victorianism’’ was the belief that England during Queen Victoria’s reign was the culminating stage toward which cultural evolution had been pointing and, once reached, no further advance could be expected. Even anthropologists, who might well have delved more deeply into Spencer’s writings before leveling such a charge, generally failed to do so. Thus, with Spencer primarily in mind, Julian Steward (1956:69) wrote that ‘‘the 19th-century school of cultural evolutionists—mainly British—reasoned that man had progressed from a condition of simple, amoral savagery to a civilized state whose ultimate achievement was the Victorian Englishman.’’ And, according to Ralph Linton (1936:314), ‘‘since the actual history of most cultures was unknown,’’ the British evolutionists ‘‘assumed that the institutions characteristic of Victorian England . . . represented the last evolutionary stage.’’ Adding to this chorus, Anthony Leeds (1974:464) affirmed that for Spencer, ‘‘social conditions, like those of Victorian England, represent the ultimate in human achievement.’’ The facts, however, show otherwise. Writing in The Study of Sociology, Spencer (1891) made it abundantly clear that by no means did he consider Victorian England to be the pinnacle of civilization, never to be surpassed: The social states toward which our race is being carried, are probably as little conceivable by us as our present social state was conceivable by a Norse pirate. [1891:120] The changes which have brought social arrangements to a form so different from past forms, will in future carry them on to forms as different from those now existing. [1891:122] And again Spencer affirmed: ‘‘After observing how the processes that have brought things to their present stage are still going on, not with a decreasing rapidity indicating approach to cessation, but with an increasing rapidity that implies long continuance and immense transformations; there follows the conviction that the remote future has in store, forms of social life higher than any we have imagined’’ (1891:399–400). Erroneous allegations about Spencer thus continue to abound. At the same time, his positive contributions to the advancement of human understanding are all but forgotten. By mid-20th century, Raymond Mortimer (1942:411) could accurately declare that Spencer’s many volumes ‘‘stand on the shelf beneath the dust of decades signifying oblivion.’’ In Spencer’s heyday, however, things were vastly different. His works were extensively read, and his influence was enormous. And he was even Influence of Spencer on the World of Letters

247

more celebrated in the United States than in his native England. But his popularity did not long survive his death, and he is now all but forgotten. Who today, for instance, has any notion that a mountain peak in California and a street in New York City were named after Herbert Spencer? Critics of Spencer sometimes allege that his influence was superficial and ephemeral. But in point of fact, it was pervasive and profound. It was Spencer’s fate, though, that his most important contributions were absorbed into the intellectual bloodstream of the time, their ultimate source being eventually forgotten. Already before Spencer’s death, many of the ideas he had proposed had become coin of the realm. By 1894, for example, John Fiske could say that ‘‘[t]he ideas of which Mr. Spencer is the greatest living exponent are to-day running like the weft through all the warp of modern thought’’ (Fiske 1894:181). However, some fifteen years after his death, James Sully could attest to the fact that Spencer’s ideas ‘‘had become so largely assimilated into our thought . . . that we had forgotten their originator’’ (Sully 1918:294). Chief among Spencer’s contributions—and one for which today he receives virtually no credit—was the fact that he, and not Charles Darwin, was the one who introduced the word evolution into scientific discourse (Carneiro 1981:158). But more than that, he extended its meaning and application beyond the realm of the organic to all aspects of nature, from the formation of crystals to the birth of stars. Indeed, Darwin himself called Spencer ‘‘the great expounder of the principle of Evolution’’ (1890:10). Next to opening up the vistas of cosmic evolution, the major effect of Spencer’s writing was to turn those who sought to describe the world and its inhabitants toward the philosophy of naturalism. The latter half of the 19th century was a period of intellectual turmoil and upheaval. Many who were born in this period were no longer content with the beliefs in which they had been reared. They sought new answers to old questions. And the ideas Spencer was then propounding provided those new answers. ‘‘The whole rising generation of naturalists’’ whose ideas were being shaped in the 1870s, wrote Henry Fairfield Osborn, ‘‘dropped the Bible and eagerly read Herbert Spencer, whose philosophy and biology became a new gospel’’ (1926:72). And this ‘‘new gospel’’ directed men’s search not to the kingdom of heaven but to the earth around them. Reminiscing about the intellectual climate of England at this time, George Holyoake (1905, vol. 2:35) underscored this point: ‘‘The fascination of Mr. Spencer’s pages to the pulpit-wearied inquirer was that they took him straight to Nature. Mr. Spencer seemed to write with a magnifying pen which 248

Carneiro

revealed objects unnoticed by other observers. His vision, like a telescope, descried sails at sea invisible to those on shore.’’ Or, as a recent observer put it more succinctly, ‘‘Spencer offered . . . what many were searching for, a system which substituted natural law for divine law’’ (Pizer 1957:154). At the core of Spencer’s naturalism was the affirmation that the world and everything in it had been brought forth, not in a moment of divine creation, but through a gradual evolution. The impact of this transforming view can hardly be exaggerated. Evolution was, as Harry Elmer Barnes (1939:48) aptly noted, ‘‘the most momentous conception in the whole history of human thought.’’ And this broad, general, illuminating principle was first unfolded to the world by Herbert Spencer. Even William James, usually an outspoken critic, was nonetheless unstinting in his admiration of Spencer for having seized on the idea of evolution and demonstrated its occurrence on a vast scale: ‘‘The fact remains that long before any of his contemporaries had seized its universal import, he grasped a great, light-giving truth—the truth of evolution; grasped it so that it became bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh; and with a pertinacity of which the history of successful thought gives few examples, had applied it to the whole of life, down to the minutest details of the most various sciences’’ (1904:22). Even though, in tracing the trajectory of this great transformation, Spencerian evolution substituted natural causation for divine will, it nevertheless had a strong appeal to those still unwilling to abandon supernaturalism altogether. Of the young American intellectuals drawn into the magnetic field of Spencer’s thought during the last quarter of the 19th century, Vernon Parrington wrote that if by so doing ‘‘they had lost something of the . . . transcendental faith that beheld God plowing furrows in Brook Farm,’’ nonetheless the exchange had armed them ‘‘with a scientific faith that by tapping stone and comparing fishes they should find His plan in an evolving series of forms’’ (1930:201). The philosophy initially espoused by these transcendentalists had a rigidity that was no longer congruent with the times. Those who held to it, wrote the historians Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager, ‘‘lived in a paradise of absolutes, where truths were ‘self-evident.’ . . . Their universe was fixed, not growing; their philosophy constant, not dynamic. . . . It was necessary to elaborate a new philosophy which would conform to and explain an organic world and a dynamic society’’ (1942, vol. 2:270). And ‘‘an organic world and a dynamic society’’ were precisely what was being depicted and explored in the writings of Herbert Spencer. Of all his works, the book in which Spencer most explicitly, systematically, and Influence of Spencer on the World of Letters

249

compellingly set forth the concept of evolution and showed how it had manifested itself in all domains of nature was First Principles. As early as 1858, Spencer had conceived the grand scheme of surveying the major fields of human knowledge from an evolutionary point of view. By 1860 his ideas had crystallized to the point that he issued a prospectus announcing the future publication, in successive parts, of a great new ‘‘Synthetic Philosophy,’’ which altogether would run to ten volumes. They were to include The Principles of Psychology (2 volumes), The Principles of Biology (2 volumes), The Principles of Sociology (3 volumes), and the Principles of Ethics (2 volumes). They would follow an initial volume— First Principles—that would erect the framework and lay out the approach to be followed in the subsequent volumes. Influential as those other nine volumes proved to be, it was First Principles, first published in 1862, that most powerfully affected those who were turning to Spencer. As this essay unfolds, we shall see how author after author testified to the profound indebtedness he felt to the ideas propounded in this book. In the half-dozen chapters that form the heart of First Principles, Spencer, piling stone upon stone, carefully built up his conception of evolution, which culminated in his classic definition of the process. Evolution, he said, is ‘‘a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity, to a definite, coherent heterogeneity; through continuous differentiations and integrations’’ (1863:216). First Principles had a promising start. Even before its actual publication, Thomas Henry Huxley, whom Spencer had asked to read proofs of the book and to offer suggestions, wrote to him saying: ‘‘It seems as if all the thoughts in what you have written were my own, and yet I am conscious of the enormous difference your presentation of them makes in my intellectual state. One is thought in the state of hemp yarn, and the other in the state of rope’’ (Huxley 1900, vol. 1:229). Alfred Russel Wallace, who read the book shortly after its appearance, found it an imposing achievement. Writing to Charles Darwin, he declared, ‘‘I am now reading Herbert Spencer’s First Principles, which seems to me a truly great work, which goes to the root of everything’’ (Darwin 1997:438). Later, having finished the book, Wallace wrote even more glowingly about it, saying that it presented ‘‘a coherent exposition of philosophy, coordinating and explaining all human knowledge of the universe into one great system of evolution everywhere conforming to the same general principles, [and thus it] must be held to be one of the greatest intellectual achievements of the Nineteenth Century’’ (Shermer 2002:285–286). A number of writers who surveyed the intellectual landscape of the latter half of the 19th century voiced a similar opinion of First Principles. 250

Carneiro

John M. Robertson, for example, remarked that ‘‘when we consider what the book does for enquiring minds in the way of reducing a miscellany of ideas to luminous order, it is not easy to find any praise for it that is too high. How many a young intelligence has entered as it were a new sphere of order and coherence at the contact of Spencer’s generalising thought’’ (1891:238). Other writers testified to the effect the book had had on them. For example, in her autobiography, Beatrice Webb said, ‘‘First Principles has had certainly a very great influence on my feelings and thoughts’’ (1926:37). And John Beattie Crozier remarked, ‘‘By putting this theory of Evolution once for all on a deep philosophic basis, [it] filled up the gaps in my theory of the World, [and] revolutionized my method of thought’’ (1898:242). Spencer’s influence, although in attenuated form, continued into the 20th century. It remained most prominent in the social sciences, where it was never completely extinguished and where its recent resuscitation began and has been most actively pursued (e.g., Carneiro 1973, 1974, 1981; Perrin 1975, 1976, 1993; Carneiro and Perrin 2002). However, almost completely lacking has been an awareness that Spencer also exerted a profound influence on many writers outside the domain of science, men and women whose work lay in the field of literature. Today, a hundred years after his death, it seems appropriate to marshal this evidence and make it more widely known. Who, one might ask, were these writers, and in what ways and to what degree did Spencer affect not only the way they looked at the world, but also how they practiced their craft? Without a doubt, Spencer’s closest association with a literary figure was his relationship with the celebrated English novelist George Eliot. Eliot was a dedicated reader of Spencer’s works. For ‘‘emotional relaxation’’ after she’d finished writing Adam Bede, she read through The Principles of Psychology for a second time (Robertson 1929:243 n.). And while she had read The Study of Sociology twice already, at the time of her death she was reading it for the third time. However, the effect Herbert Spencer had on George Eliot was even more personal than intellectual. As Marian Evans, before adopting her pen name, Eliot grew up in a strict religious household that ‘‘pinched her mind and crushed her spirit.’’ By the time she met Herbert Spencer, though, she had already become deeply disaffected with religion and was ‘‘a rationalist in matters of faith’’ (Craigie 1911:275). This outlook was further strengthened by her contact with Spencer and other freethinking intellectuals at the newly founded Westminster Review, where she had become an assistant editor. Influence of Spencer on the World of Letters

251

As Spencer was then writing articles for that journal, he had occasion to have frequent contact with George Eliot and became progressively more impressed by her intellect. He wrote to his father on April 23, 1851: ‘‘Miss Evans whom you have heard me mention as the translatress of Strauss and as the most admirable woman, mentally, I ever met. We have been for some time past on very intimate terms. I am very frequently at Chapman’s [editor of the Westminster Review] and the greatness of her intellect conjoined with her womanly qualities and manner, generally keep me by her side most of the evening’’ (Spencer 1926, vol. 1:394–395). The relationship became increasingly close, and Spencer frequently took Evans to the opera, to the theater, and to concerts. But then he started to become uneasy. Describing his feeling to his American friend and disciple, Edward L. Youmans, he later wrote: ‘‘After a time I began to have qualms as to what might result from this constant companionship. Great as was my admiration for her, considered both morally and intellectually, and decided as was my feeling of friendship, I could not perceive in myself any indication of a warmer feeling, and it occurred to me that mischief would possibly follow if our relation continued’’ (Schoenwald 1976:364). What Spencer feared did, in fact, occur. Marian Evans fell in love with him. To try to forestall matters, Spencer wrote her a letter in which he clumsily—by his own admission—explained that he could not reciprocate her feelings. She, trying valiantly to submerge her disappointment, responded on July 22, 1851, in a letter in which she said, stoically, If, as you intimated in your last letter, you feel that my friendship is of value to you for its own sake—mind on no other ground—it is yours. Let us, if you wish, forget the past, except in so far as it may have brought us to trust in and feel for each other, and let us help make life beautiful to each other as far as fate and the world will permit us. Whenever you like to come to me again [at her country place], to see the golden corn before it is reaped, I can promise you such companionship as there is in me, untroubled by painful emotions. [Schoenwald 1976:369] But Evans could not long dam up her strong feelings for Spencer, and in a subsequent letter, they came cascading forth: I know this letter will make you very angry with me, but wait a little, and don’t say anything to me while you are angry. I promise not to sin any more in the same way. My ill health [referred to in her previous letter] is caused by the hopeless wretchedness which weighs upon me. I do not say this to pain you, but because it is the 252

Carneiro

simple truth which you must know in order to understand why I am obliged to seek relief. I want to know if you can assure me that you will not forsake me, that you will always be with me as much as you can and share your thoughts and feelings with me. If you become attached to some one else, then I must die, but until then I could gather courage to work and make life valuable—if only I had you near me. [Schoenwald 1976:369–370] And, in the same vein, she continued: I do not ask you to sacrifice anything—I would be very good and cheerful and never annoy you. But I find it impossible to contemplate life under any other conditions. If I had your assurance, I could trust that, and live upon it. . . . Those who have known me best have always said, that if ever I loved any one thoroughly my whole life would turn upon that feeling, and I find they said truly. You curse the destiny which has made the feeling concentrate itself on you—but if you will only have patience with me you shall not curse it long. You will find that I can be satisfied with very little, if I am delivered from the dread of losing it. [Schoenwald 1976:370] Then, realizing what an abject entreaty she had just written, she added the words: ‘‘I suppose no woman before wrote such a letter—but I am not ashamed of it, for I am conscious that in the light of reason and true refinement I am worthy of your respect and tenderness, whatever gross[?] men or vulgar-minded women might think of me’’ (Schoenwald 1976:370). Many years later, in a letter to Youmans written shortly after George Eliot’s death, Spencer revealed the whole story, which had never before come to light, emphasizing the great distress they both had suffered during those months: It was a most painful affair, continuing thru the summer of 52, on through the autumn, and, I think, into the beginning of 53. She was very disponding and I passed the most miserable time that has occurred in my experience; for, hopeless as the relation was, she would not agree that we should cease to see one another. So much did I feel the evil that I had done involuntarily . . . that I hinted at the possibility of marriage, even without positive affection on my part; but this she at once saw would lead to unhappiness. (Schoenwald 1976:364) However, an unexpected solution presented itself. Spencer again explained in his letter to Youmans: ‘‘At length it happened that being with [George Influence of Spencer on the World of Letters

253

Henry] Lewes one day when I was on my way to see her, I invited him to go with me. . . . This happened two or three times; and then, on the third or fourth time, when I rose to leave, he said he should stay. From that time he commenced to go alone, and so the relation began. . . . When I saw the turn matters were taking, it was of course, an immense relief to me’’ (Schoenwald 1976:364). Why did Spencer find it impossible to fall in love with George Eliot? For that, too, he had an explanation. In the same letter to Youmans, after commenting again on the sustained intimacy that had brought about the unhappy situation, Spencer said: ‘‘By and by, just what I feared might take place, did take place. Her feelings became involved and mine did not. The lack of physical attraction was fatal’’ (Schoenwald 1976:364). Years later, writing in his Autobiography, while still purposely vague, Spencer became a bit more specific—if less chivalrous—in explaining his reasons for failing to find in the otherwise magnificent woman, George Eliot, someone with whom he could fall in love. Speaking first of his ingrained propensity to find fault, he wrote: ‘‘It seems probable that this abnormal tendency to criticize has been a chief factor in the continuance of my celibate life. Readiness to see inferiorities rather than superiorities, must have impeded the finding of one who attracted me in adequate degree’’ (Spencer 1926, vol. 2:445). Then, narrowing the discussion down to cases, he added: ‘‘Lest the above . . . be taken to imply deficient appreciation of physical beauty, I must add that this is far from being the fact. The fact is quite the reverse. Physical beauty is a sine qua non with me; as was once unhappily proved where the intellectual traits and the emotional traits were of the highest’’ (Spencer 1926, vol. 2:445). For her part, George Eliot once referred indirectly to her having learned that compatibility of ideas was not enough to establish a bond of love between two people: ‘‘I have had heart-cutting experience that opinions are a poor cement between human souls’’ (Berman 1965:549). While lamenting George Eliot’s lack of physical beauty, Spencer was unstinting in his praise of her powerful intellect and literary skill. Indeed, it was he who first suggested and thereafter repeatedly urged that she undertake the writing of novels (Spencer 1926, vol. 1:398, 492; vol. 2:38). As he later wrote, ‘‘I thought I saw in her many, if not all, of the needful qualifications in high degree—quick observation, great power of analysis, unusual and rapid intuition into others’ states of mind, deep and broad sympathies, wit and humour, and wide culture. But she would not listen to my advice. She did not believe she had the required powers’’ (Spencer 1926, vol. 1:398). Eventually, though, she decided to try her hand at writing fiction. One 254

Carneiro

day in 1856, when Spencer visited George Eliot, he ‘‘was told by her that she had commenced, and had then in hand ‘The Sad Story of the Rev. Amos Barton’ [the first segment of Scenes of Clerical Life]: this confession being made under the promise on [his] part of absolute secrecy’’ (Spencer 1926, vol. 1:492). When, in 1858, the book was published, Marian Evans, wishing to retain the anonymity of her authorship, adopted the pen name of George Eliot. The following year, with the publication of the even more successful Adam Bede, speculation about the identity of ‘‘George Eliot’’ became widespread. Eventually, it began to be suggested that the author was none other than Marian Evans. Curiosity reached a fever pitch as everyone in London literary circles tried to solve the mystery. Then, as Spencer noted in his autobiography: [ John Chapman], knowing that if anyone knew, I did, one day suddenly addressed me—‘‘By the way, Mrs. Dunn told me the other night that Miss Evans is the author of Adam Bede: is it true?’’ ‘‘Mrs. Dunn!’’ I replied; ‘‘who told Mrs. Dunn any such thing?’’ ‘‘Oh, that she didn’t say.’’ ‘‘I do not see how Mrs. Dunn should know anything about it; she can have no means of learning.’’ Thus I fenced as well as I could, but all to no purpose. Chapman soon returned to the question—‘‘Is it true?’’ To this question I made no answer; and of course my silence amounted to an admission. [Spencer 1926, vol. 2:38] When George Eliot learned that, thanks to Spencer’s inability to lie, she had been unmasked, she was greatly distressed. And for a time, this unintended revelation had a chilling effect on their relationship. But then on September 29, 1859, having just finished reading Adam Bede, Spencer wrote to her with high praise for the novel: ‘‘What am I to say? That I have read it with laughter and tears and without criticism. Knowing as you do how constitutionally I am given to fault finding, you will know what this means’’ (Haight 1954:170 n.). With this expression of esteem for her novel, George Eliot’s resentment toward Spencer appeared to soften. To a close friend she wrote: ‘‘This morning I have had quite an enthusiastic letter from Herbert Spencer about ‘Adam Bede.’ Forgive him his trespasses! He says he has not changed toward us, and what a man is not conscious of he must not answer for’’ (Haight 1954:169–170). Eliot found another reason for thinking more kindly of Spencer, for it was he who, shortly after Adam Bede appeared, brought her the news that a member of Parliament had just quoted from the book on the floor of the Influence of Spencer on the World of Letters

255

House of Commons. Objecting, no doubt, to some measure too hastily introduced into the House, the member quoted the remark of Mrs. Poyser, the sharp-tongued farm wife in the novel, that ‘‘it wants to be hatched over and be hatched different’’ (Wylie 1917:ix). Toward the end of Adam Bede, George Eliot interrupts the narrative and addresses the reader with these words: ‘‘It would be a poor result of all our anguish and our wrestling if we won nothing but our old selves at the end—if we could return to the same blind loves. . . . Let us rather be thankful that our sorrow lives in us as an indestructable force, only changing its form, as forces do, and passing from pain into sympathy’’ (Eliot n.d.:460). One cannot help but wonder if, when she wrote those words, George Eliot didn’t have herself in mind. With but minor exceptions, relations between Spencer and George Eliot remained cordial until her death. Thus in 1862 she wrote to another friend: ‘‘We were pleased to hear that you had seen Mr. Spencer. We always feel him particularly welcome when he comes back to town: there is no one like him for talking to about certain things’’ (Haight 1955:57). However, it may be that, deep down, she still smarted at the rebuff she had received from Spencer years before. In 1862, for example, writing to a close friend, while not naming him directly, she referred to him obliquely as ‘‘a poor shrivelled-hearted bachelor’’ (Haight 1955:71). And George Eliot may have exacted a slight measure of revenge when she made Spencer the model for the excessively bookish, austere, and remote Casaubon in Middlemarch (see Eliot 1976:227–228, 231).∞ Another English writer influenced by Spencer was the poet and novelist George Meredith. According to his biographer, Meredith ‘‘is rightly recognized as ‘the poet of evolution’ ’’ (Petter 1939:199). ‘‘His poetic fancy makes the dry theories of Comte, Mill, and Spencer glow with animation’’ (Petter 1939:215). It was as a novelist, though, that Meredith is best known, and here Spencer’s influence is once more apparent. To quote his biographer again, ‘‘Evolution was the basis of the whole of Spencer’s philosophy, and it is woven in the texture of Meredith’s novels. The author’s ideas are built upon it, and he makes it a part of his realism’’ (Petter 1939:290). Spencer’s influence on Meredith, however, was not confined to evolution. In his best known novel, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, Meredith showed his whole-hearted agreement with Spencer’s progressive philosophy of education, satirizing a father’s tyrannical upbringing of his son (Gretton 1926:29; Sassoon 1948:25). 256

Carneiro

Robert Louis Stevenson was also indebted to Spencer. We have the testimony of his father that reading Spencer caused his son to question the religion he’d been taught. Writing to a friend, the older Stevenson bitterly complained of the disturbing effect Spencer had had on his son’s mental state: ‘‘It is very sore upon a man come to my time of life to have all this to put up with. . . . I lay all this at the door of Herbert Spencer. Unsettling a man’s faith is indeed a very serious matter’’ (Beinecke 1958, vol. 4:1635). Of Spencer’s impact on his thought, Stevenson himself wrote: ‘‘Close upon the back of my discovery of Whitman, I came under the influence of Herbert Spencer. No more persuasive rabbi exists. . . . His words, if dry, are always manly and honest; there swells in his pages a spirit of highly abstract joy, plucked naked like an algebraic symbol, but still joyful. . . . His intellectual vigor makes him a bracing writer. I should be much of a hound if I lost my gratitude to Herbert Spencer’’ (1912:274–275). Nor did Stevenson’s interest in Spencer wane in later years. Finding himself in the Hawaiian Islands, he sought out David Kalakaua, the last king of Hawaii, whom he described as ‘‘a picturesque, dusky viveur, with a good fund of common sense, more of human nature, and culture enough, notwithstanding his colour, to discuss Herbert Spencer intelligently’’ (Steuart 1924, vol. 2:142–143). Next in the catalog of English writers affected by Spencer, we can cite H. G. Wells. Wells’s mother, having no great ambitions for her young son, apprenticed him to a draper. One day, though, ‘‘an angry shop-walker found him hidden away in a corner of the cellar, reading Herbert Spencer.’’ And, his biographer observed, ‘‘no boy of sixteen can read Spencer’s First Principles and remain orthodox!’’ (West 1930:40, 44). Another English writer powerfully influenced by the same book was Arnold Bennett, author of a number of naturalistic novels, including The Old Wives Tale. Referring to First Principles in his Journal, Bennett remarked: ‘‘Continuous reading of this kind is like a series of physical exercises and cold baths—invigorating’’ (1932:263) And summing up the effect the book had had on him, Bennett wrote: ‘‘By filling me with the sense of causation everywhere, [it] has alerted my whole view of life. . . . You can see First Principles in nearly every line I write’’ (1932:392). The South African novelist Olive Schreiner, who made her mark with The Story of an African Farm, may next be cited. When, late in her life, she was asked what impact reading Spencer had had on her, she replied with an analogy: ‘‘If one has a broken leg and the doctor sets it, when once it is set one may be said to have no more need of the doctor, nevertheless one always walks on his leg. I think that is how it is with regard to myself and Herbert Spencer. I have read all his works since, some three or four times, Influence of Spencer on the World of Letters

257

now I read him no more. He helped me to believe in a unity underlying all nature; that was a great thing’’ (Cronwright-Schreiner 1923:82). Occasionally, Herbert Spencer even appeared in the pages of a novel as the subject of a dialogue between two characters in the story. In Anton Chekhov’s novella ‘‘The Duel,’’ for example, Layevsky (the protagonist) reminiscences about a past romance: ‘‘I fell in love with a married woman; and she fell in love with me. . . . In the beginning there were kisses, quiet evenings, vows; there was Spencer, and ideals, and common interests’’ (1965:63). Later in the story, though, Von Koren, a young zoologist, berates Layevsky: ‘‘And as for Schopenhauer and Spencer, he treats them like little boys, paternally clapping them on the shoulder. . . . He hasn’t read Spencer, of course, but how charming he is when he says of his lady, with light, casual irony: ‘She’s read Spencer!’ And everyone listens to him and no one cares to realize that this charlatan hasn’t the right to kiss the sole of Spencer’s foot, much less speak of him in that tone!’’ (81). As the subject of a conversation, Spencer also made an appearance in D. H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers. Paul Morel, talking with his mother, laments the fact that except for his lover, there is no one with whom he can converse about serious matters. When his mother asks, ‘‘Is there nobody else to talk to?’’ He replies: ‘‘Not about the things we talk of. There’s a lot of things that you’re not interested in, that–’’ ‘‘What things?’’ Mrs. Morel was so intense that Paul began to pant. ‘‘Why—painting—and books. You don’t care about Herbert Spencer.’’ ‘‘No,’’ was the sad reply. ‘‘And you won’t at my age.’’ ‘‘Well, but I do now—and Miriam does–-’’ (Lawrence 1976:212). Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim recounts the adventures of an orphan boy in the northwest frontier of India. Seeking to learn if a character named Hurree Babu is afraid of Russian spies in the area, Kim asks him, ‘‘Will they kill thee?’’ To which Hurree Babu replies, ‘‘Oah, thatt is nothing. I am good enough Herbert Spencerian, I trust, to meet little thing like death’’ (1959:224). Spencer’s standing in the world of English letters was encapsulated by Edmund Gosse in his Short History of Modern English Literature, written at the end of the 19th century: ‘‘There are two reasons, among many, why the name of Mr. Herbert Spencer must not be omitted from such a sum258

Carneiro

mary as ours: firstly, because no Englishman of his age has made so deep an intellectual impression on foreign thought . . . and secondly, because of the stimulating effect which his theories have exercised over almost every native author of the last twenty years’’ (1898:377). Beyond the positive influence just described, there was also what might be called the influence of antagonism. For those with a hearty dislike of his philosophy, Spencer was still a force to contend with, especially with some of his more outspoken pronouncements. For example, Spencer was disdainful of classical scholars who placed the study of Latin and Greek above that of science, deriding them as men who ‘‘would blush if caught saying Iphigénia instead of Iphigenía, or would resent as an insult any imputation of ignorance respecting the fabled labours of a fabled demigod, [but] show not the slightest shame in confessing that they do not know where the Eustachian tubes are, what are the actions of the spinal cord, what is the normal rate of pulsation, or how the lungs are inflated’’ (1862:43). At such aspersions, pointedly cast in their direction, the classicists bristled. But in the battle between classicism and science—the first salvo of which he had fired in his little book Education (1862)—Spencer was largely successful. More than a decade after his death, Harold Laski summed up the outcome of this fray, noting that Spencer had done ‘‘a great work in destroying the comfortable doctrine that in Latin and Greek lies the primrose path to educational salvation’’ (1917:224). Unwilling to concede defeat, however, classical scholars continued to wage a rearguard action and answered Spencer’s derision with their own. In her autobiography, for example, Jane Harrison, the renowned student of ancient Greece, declared: ‘‘By nature . . . I am not an archaeologist— still less an anthropologist—the ‘beastly devices of the heathen’ weary and disgust me’’ (1925:83). Among literary humanists who were not classicists but still bore a decided antagonism toward science, there was a similar passionate dislike of Spencer and his doctrines. Matthew Arnold, a devout Christian as well as a poet and writer, sneered at ‘‘the philosophical liberals, who believe neither in angel nor spirit but in Mr. Herbert Spencer’’ (1902:316). And as for Spencer’s carefully crafted definition of evolution—‘‘that rock against which Matthew Arnold’s little wave of criticism shattered itself’’ (Allen 1890:2)—the poet had nothing but ridicule. In his book God & the Bible, Arnold scoffed at the phrasing of Spencer’s ‘‘formula,’’ declaring: ‘‘We are almost ashamed to quote it to readers’’ (1883:196). John Ruskin, in a similar vein, mocked Spencer with the taunt that while ‘‘Plato threw out systems like the gleam of foam . . . Herbert Spencer Influence of Spencer on the World of Letters

259

throws them out like boys blowing bubbles full of dirty air’’ (Cook and Wedderburn 1906:509). In a letter written to Frederic Harrison, Spencer was again the target of Ruskin’s wrath: ‘‘I only got your note at Hereford—on my way home here,—and I was so furious at your praising Herbert Spencer that I couldn’t speak’’ (Cook and Wedderburn 1909:479). When it came to fulminating against an adversary, Thomas Carlyle took a backseat to no one. Word of one of his diatribes against Spencer reached the other side of the Atlantic. Charles Eliot Norton, the president of Harvard, reported to James Russell Lowell on a spirited conversation he had had with Carlyle: ‘‘One day last week I met Carlyle. . . . The chief subject of his objurgation was Herbert Spencer’’ (Norton 1913, vol. 1:423). Upon hearing that Spencerian sociology had made inroads in India, G. K. Chesterton was led to complain vehemently in his weekly column in the Illustrated London News: ‘‘What are the young men of India doing that they allow such an animal as a sociologist to pollute their ancient villages and poison their kindly homes? . . . If there is such a thing as India, it has the right to be Indian. But Herbert Spencer is not Indian; ‘Sociology’ is not Indian; all this pedantic clatter about culture and science is not Indian. I often wish it were not English either’’ (1909:387). Even those who at times were critical of Spencer—as long as their objections did not have a religious basis—were able to appreciate his contributions. Thus it was that George Bernard Shaw, a dedicated socialist, who took exception to Spencer’s characterization of socialism as ‘‘nothing but ‘the coming slavery’ ’’ (1932:292), nonetheless saw him as a great force for enlightenment. Writing with his customary piquancy, Shaw held that Spencer ‘‘would have been lynched if the common Englishman of his day had been intelligent or erudite enough to find out what he really believed and disbelieved.’’ Earlier Shaw had eulogized the human side of Spencer: ‘‘Even those who take no interest in his philosophy will feel a quaint affection for the man who, when he was not faithfully straightening out the tangled thought of his century, was inspiring himself with Meyerbeer’s music; giving up his horse because, on its discovery of his intense dislike to coerce any living creature, it went slower than he walked. All the horses in paradise are probably now struggling for the honor of carrying him at full gallop to whatever destination he may be seeking uncoercively’’ (1931:260). If Spencer’s influence was great in England, it was even more so in the United States. In his well-known study Main Currents in American Thought, Vernon Parrington has given a spirited account of its extent: 260

Carneiro

The appeal of Spencer to the generation born after the Civil War was extraordinary. Ardent young minds, for whom the candles of theology were burnt out and who were seeking new light to their feet, were drawn to him irresistibly. Young rebels who had thrown off the guidance of their elders and were bent on discovering fresh paths through the tangle of dead faiths—independent souls like Hamlin Garland and Jack London and Theodore Dreiser who were to become leaders of the realistic revolt against the genteel tradition in life and letters and faith—went to school to him to prepare themselves for the great work of freeing the American mind from the old theological inhibitions. . . . Everywhere the influence of the great Victorian penetrated, and wherever that influence spread, the old theological prepossessions disintegrated. It is probably no exaggeration to say that Spencer laid out the broad highway over which American thought traveled in the later years of the century. [Parrington 1930:197–198] Let us look now at Spencer’s influence on individual American writers. Though by no means a hero worshiper, Mark Twain did not hesitate to heap praise on the accomplishments of Spencer. In ‘‘The Secret History of Edddypus,’’ a manuscript that remained unpublished during his lifetime, Twain cataloged the great contributions of a dozen men of science, from Newton to Darwin, culminating in Spencer’s ‘‘mighty law of Evolution, binding all the universe’s inertness and vitalities together under its sole sway and command—and the History of Things and the Meaning of them stood revealed!’’ (Cummings 1988:205–206). Henry Holt, who went on to found a leading publishing house, spoke fervently of Herbert Spencer’s impact on him. Writing in his autobiography, Garrulities of an Octogenarian Editor, he said: ‘‘About 1865 I got hold of a copy of Spencer’s First Principles, and had my eyes opened to a new heaven and a new earth’’ (1923:46–47). A few years later, as a student at Yale, Holt took a course from Noah Porter, the president of the university, who chose the selfsame volume as his text: ‘‘Dear good old Noah Porter, who of course was a Platonist, took a class thru Spencer’s First Principles, for the sake of guarding them against its dangerous influences; and every man-jack of them came out a confirmed Spencerian’’ (1923:306–307). A parallel instance of an attack on Spencer misfiring was reported by the poet Edwin Arlington Robinson. And at the losing end of the encounter was William James, who in his Harvard classes habitually used Spencer as an ‘‘intellectual punching bag’’ (Perry 1935, vol. 1:475). After reading Influence of Spencer on the World of Letters

261

one of James’s books (probably The Will to Believe), Robinson, while acknowledging that it contained some worthwhile parts, nevertheless remarked, ‘‘[ James’s] attitude toward Spencer makes me think of a dream my father once had. He dreamed he met a dog. The dog annoyed him, so he struck him with a stick. Then the dog doubled in size and my father struck him again with the same result. So the thing went on till the universe was pretty much all dog. When my father awoke, he was . . . halfway down the dog’s throat’’ (1940:15). In 1882, for the only time in his life, Spencer visited the United States. A dinner was held in his honor at Delmonico’s, then considered the finest restaurant in New York. After the dinner, many of those present paid tribute to Spencer for the enormous influence his ideas had had on them. The liberal minister Henry Ward Beecher professed that Spencer’s works had been ‘‘meat and bread’’ to him and, addressing Spencer directly, he said, ‘‘To my father and my mother I owe my physical being; to you, sir, I owe my intellectual being’’ (Youmans 1883:66; Carnegie 1920:336). One of the principal speakers of the evening was Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., author of the immensely popular Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. ‘‘Mr. Spencer,’’ said Holmes, ‘‘has come nearer to the realization of Bacon’s claim of all knowledge as his province than any philosopher of his time. . . . We look with amazement upon the reach and compass of his vast triangulation of the universe’’ (Youmans 1883:84). Few American writers were affected as profoundly by Spencer as Hamlin Garland. Not only was this true of Garland’s general outlook, but it also manifested itself in the genre of fiction he undertook to write. According to his biographer, ‘‘It is not surprising that Garland turned to Spencer more than to any other writer on evolution. . . . Spencer offered what many were searching for, a system that substituted natural law for divine law’’ (Pizer 1960:7–8). Garland himself wrote that ‘‘[w]hile Darwin and Wallace studied animal life . . . and the derivation of man, to Herbert Spencer had come the grandest intellectual conception ever wrought out in a human brain,—the conception of the law of progress’’ (1891:xxv). Later, in his autobiography, A Son of the Middle Border, Garland wrote glowingly of Spencer’s continuing influence on him: ‘‘Herbert Spencer remained my philosopher and master. With eager haste I sought to compass the ‘Synthetic Philosophy.’ The universe took on order and harmony as, from my five cent breakfast, I went directly to the consideration of Spencer’s theory of the evolution of music or painting or sculpture. It was thrilling, it was joyful to perceive that everything moved from the simple to the complex’’ (1925:323). 262

Carneiro

The concrete effect of Spencer’s theories on Garland’s fiction was pointed out by his biographer, Donald Pizer in the following way: His full application to literature of Spencer’s doctrine of the progression from incoherent homogeneity to coherent heterogeneity now led him to stress local color as the literature best capable of expressing the diversity of America’s ‘‘sentiments.’’ It is difficult to overstate the influence of this critical belief on Garland’s future work and thought. His practice and defense of local color were not, as was so often true of other writers, simply the result of a personal inclination. . . . They were also based on what he considered to be irrefutable natural law, the law of evolution as stated by Herbert Spencer. [1960:20–21] Another writer who applied Spencer’s principles to the development of literature was Sidney Lanier. To quote Pizer again, ‘‘Lanier interpreted Spencer’s theory of evolution to mean the emergence of individualism and used it as his unifying theme in tracing the development of fiction. As Spencer saw the growth of individual personality as one aspect of increased heterogeneity, so Lanier saw the movement reflected in the treatment of personality in literature, from the total absence of distinct personality in Aeschylus to the intense study of complex personalities in George Eliot’’ (1957:158). Probably no American writer was more indebted to Spencer, or expressed this indebtedness more unreservedly, than Jack London. The initial impact came, as it did with so many others, through the reading of Spencer’s First Principles. London’s biographer, Irving Stone, gives a vivid account of how that spark was ignited: ‘‘One night, after long study-bouts with William James and Francis Bacon, and after writing a sonnet as a nightcap, he crawled into bed with a copy of First Principles. Morning found him still reading. He continued reading all the next day, abandoning the bed for the floor when his body tired. . . . Jack was more thrilled by this discovery than he had been at the discovery of gold on Henderson Creek’’ (1948:98). In his largely autobiographical novel Martin Eden, Jack London himself tells of the effect First Principles had produced in him: ‘‘And here was the man Spencer, organizing all knowledge for him, reducing everything to unity, elaborating ultimate realities, and presenting to his startled gaze a universe so concrete of realization that it was like the model of a ship such as sailors made and put into glass bottles. There was no caprice, no chance. All was law’’ (1957:99). Later in the novel, London has Martin Eden say that ‘‘[t]o give up Spencer would be equivalent to a navigator throwing the compass and chronometer overboard.’’ And when Influence of Spencer on the World of Letters

263

his hero hears a California judge disparage Spencer, he bursts into a rage, declaring, ‘‘To hear that great and noble man’s name upon your lips is like finding a dewdrop in a cesspool’’ (Cowley 1950:304). Jack London affords an unusual example of someone who, somewhat like George Bernard Shaw, was both a socialist and a Spencerian. He could absorb from Spencer his materialism, determinism, and evolutionism, as they were laid out in First Principles, but at the same time, set aside what Spencer had written elsewhere about individualism and laissez faire. Like Jack London, Theodore Dreiser chose to portray Spencer’s influence on him through the mouth of a character in one of his novels. Eugene Witla, the hero of The ‘‘Genius,’’ reads Spencer and finds himself a man transformed. This novel, one of Dreiser’s biographers tells us, was, ‘‘in all essential respects an account of Dreiser’s own career’’ (Elias 1949:155). Years later, in his actual autobiography, A Book about Myself, Dreiser said, ‘‘I had the fortune to discover Huxley and Tyndall and Herbert Spencer, whose introductory volume to his Synthetic Philosophy (First Principles) quite blew me, intellectually, to bits’’ (1922:457). In a letter to H. L. Mencken, Dreiser said of Spencer (and of Huxley and Tyndall), ‘‘They shifted my point of view tremendously, confirmed my worst suspicions and destroyed the last remaining traces of Catholicism’’ (Elias 1959, vol. 1:211). Specifically, regarding the effects of First Principles, Dreiser wrote enthusiastically that in this book Spencer marshaled ‘‘the whole universe in review before you . . . showing you how certain beautiful laws exist, and how, by these laws, all animate things have developed and arranged themselves’’ (Matthiessen 1951:40–41). A number of other literary figures in the United States whose formative years came shortly before the turn of the century have also left testimony of how Spencer had changed their way of thinking. For Edgar Lee Masters, best remembered for his Spoon River Anthology, reading Spencer was a way of ‘‘feeding [his] hungry mind’’ (Masters 1969:85). William Allen White, who later gained fame as editor of the Emporia Gazette, wrote that, along with Whitman and Dickens, Spencer ‘‘became at the turn of the century one of [his] spiritual inspirations’’ (1946:326). H. L. Mencken (1940:175) recalled, ‘‘[Around 1888 there appeared a] series of cheap reprints of scientific papers, including some of Herbert Spencer. I read them all, sometimes with shivers of puzzlement and sometimes with delight, but always calling for more’’ (1940:175). And finally, since this catalog, already much extended, must come to an end, we may cite Edith Wharton. Late in her life, after listing the evolutionists whose works had molded her outlook—among whom Spencer held a prominent 264

Carneiro

place—she concluded that it was ‘‘hopeless to convey to a younger generation the first overwhelming sense of cosmic vastness which such ‘magic casements’ let into our little geocentric universe’’ (1934:94). Not only did Spencer intrude into the literary world through the expanded perspective he presented of the universe; he also ventured to advise those who chose to become writers on how to express their thoughts most effectively. Early in his career, he published an article titled ‘‘The Philosophy of Style’’ (1852). Though now all but unknown, this work, later expanded into a pamphlet (1871), became recognized in its day as an incisive guide to good writing. Ambrose Bierce ‘‘always recommended Spencer’s essay on style to beginning writers’’ (Grattan 1929:125), and Edwin L. Godkin, editor of the Nation, after reading The Philosophy of Style, once remarked, ‘‘I don’t know anything about [matters in dispute between Spencer and his critics], but I do profess to know something about English style. Spencer’s work on it is a masterpiece’’ (Holt 1923:292). Many years after its publication, the literary critic Theodore Watts-Dunton described The Philosophy of Style as ‘‘an essay so searching in its analysis, and so original in its method and conclusions, that the workers in pure literature may well be envious of science for enticing such a leader away from their ranks’’ (Douglas n.d.:214). Spencer’s essential argument in this work was simple and straightforward: the reader has only a limited amount of mental energy to invest in the reading of a piece of writing, and the more his energy is absorbed in trying to understand the language in which the ideas are expressed, the less he has left over to contemplate the ideas themselves. When it came to his own writing style, how well did Spencer measure up to his canons? Like everything else, Spencer subjected his writing to the closest scrutiny, and from this examination he did not come away entirely pleased. Looking back over his vast literary output, Spencer wrote in his Autobiography: I have always felt a wish to make both the greater arguments, and the smaller arguments composing them, finished and symmetrical. In so far as giving coherence and completeness is concerned, I have generally satisfied my ambition; but I have fallen short of it in respect of literary form. The aesthetic sense has in this always kept before me an ideal which I could never reach. Though my style is lucid, it has, as compared with some styles, a monotony that displeases me. There is a lack of variety in its verbal forms and in its larger components, and there is a lack of vigour in its phrases. [1926, vol. 2:481] Influence of Spencer on the World of Letters

265

Once, in a conversation about the effect that doing away with copyright laws would have on lowering the price of books, Spencer remarked, wistfully, ‘‘However much you lowered the price of cod-liver oil, you would not largely increase the number of purchasers, and most people would much rather take a spoonful of cod-liver oil every day, than read one of my books’’ (Grant Duff 1905, vol. 1:186–187). In judging his own writing style, though, Spencer was perhaps overly severe. It is true that Charles Darwin found him difficult to read and confessed, ‘‘I did not even understand H. Spencer’s general doctrine, for his style is too hard work for me’’ (Fisk 1940:336). Others, though, did not share that opinion. Reviewing The Data of Ethics, one of Spencer’s other books, the historian Goldwin Smith found it written ‘‘in a most lucid and attractive style’’ (1882:340). And reviewing the same volume, William James remarked on ‘‘the carefulness of the composition, the wealth of illustrations, and clean-cut perspicuity of the style’’ (1879: 178). In a cluster review of several of Spencer’s volumes, the biologist St. George Mivart found his writing style ‘‘clear and forcible, abounding in picturesque illustrations, aptly chosen for the purpose they are intended to subserve, and often possessing even a poetical beauty’’ (1873:509) Finally, in an obituary of Spencer that surveyed all the domains of nature on which he had shed light, C. B. Waite concluded: ‘‘And what he saw so clearly himself he had the faculty of explaining in language so simple, so lucid and elegant, that to read his writing is a positive pleasure’’ (1904:16). Given the enormous range, power, and influence of his works, it is not surprising that, toward the end of his life, Herbert Spencer was proposed for the Nobel Prize in literature by the Society of Authors—there being no British Academy of Letters (Hutchinson 1914, vol. 2:164–165). However, in 1901, the first year the prize was awarded, it went instead to the French poet and literary critic Sully Prudhomme. In 1902 Spencer was again nominated, but this time lost out to the German historian Theodor Mommsen (Schück 1962:87). During his lifetime, Spencer’s successful efforts in expanding the breadth of human knowledge became increasingly recognized. Between 1871 and 1903, he was offered no fewer than 32 academic honors, including memberships in learned societies, honorary degrees, fellowships, professorships, and presidencies. But almost without exception, he declined them (Duncan 1908a:588–589). When Spencer died in 1903, many of his friends and admirers felt that some memorial to him should be placed in Westminster Abbey, by tradition the place where England’s most illustrious figures were formally com266

Carneiro

memorated. In May 1904 a letter with more than fifty signatories, including England’s most distinguished names, was sent to Armitage Robinson, dean of Westminster, requesting that a bust of Herbert Spencer be allowed a place in the abbey (Bell 1935, vol. 1:1177). But Dean Robinson rejected the request and gave as his reason: ‘‘When I ask what important achievement in philosophy or natural science, or with what permanent contribution to thought his name is destined to be connected, I meet with no satisfactory reply’’ (Duncan 1908b, vol. 2:243). In this assertion, Dean Robinson was, of course, wide of the mark. The very opposite was true. During the latter half of the 19th century, Spencer had stood at the very forefront of philosophic and scientific advance in England. And his illuminating ideas, widely disseminated and absorbed into the intellectual bloodstream of modern thought, would continue to permeate the literate world well into the 20th century. Dean Robinson’s argument, then, was altogether false. A more likely explanation of his refusal to allow the memorial is that he found Spencer’s ‘‘vast triangulation of the universe,’’ which had broadened the horizons of so many of the best minds in England, too large to be encompassed within the narrow Christian confines of Westminster Abbey. Note 1. It should be noted, however, that the leading George Eliot scholar, Gordon S. Haight, regarded as the archetype of Casaubon, not Herbert Spencer, but the pedantic Dr. R. H. Brabant, whom George Eliot had known in her youth.

References Allen, Grant. 1890. The Gospel according to Herbert Spencer. Part I. Pall Mall Gazette, April 26: 1–2. Arnold, Matthew. 1883. God & the Bible. New York: Macmillan. ———. 1902. Literature and Dogma: An Essay toward a Better Apprehension of the Bible. New York: New Amsterdam. Barnes, Harry Elmer. 1939. Society in Transition. New York: Prentice-Hall. Beinecke, Edwin J. 1958. A Stevenson Library Catalogue. 4 vols. New Haven ct: Yale University Press. Bell, G. K. A. 1935. Randall Davidson: Archbishop of Canterbury. 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press. Bennett, Arnold. 1932. The Journal of Arnold Bennett, 1896–1910. New York: Book League of America. Berman, Morton. 1965. Afterword. In The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot. Pp. 548–558. New York: New American Library. Bowler, Peter J. 2003. Evolution: The History of an Idea. 3rd edition. Berkeley: University of California Press. Carnegie, Andrew. 1920. The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Influence of Spencer on the World of Letters

267

Carneiro, Robert L. 1973. Structure, Function, and Equilibrium in the Evolutionism of Herbert Spencer. Journal of Anthropological Research 29:77–95. ———. 1974. Herbert Spencer’s The Study of Sociology and the Rise of Social Science in America. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 118:540–554. ———. 1981. Herbert Spencer as an Anthropologist. Journal of Libertarian Studies 5:153– 210. Carneiro, Robert L., and Robert G. Perrin. 2002. Herbert Spencer’s Principles of Sociology: A Centennial Retrospective and Appraisal. Annals of Science 59:221–261. Chekhov, Anton. 1965. The Duel. In Ward Six and Other Stories, by Anton Chekhov. Ann Cunningham, trans. Pp. 61–161. New York: New American Library. Chesterton, G. K. 1909. Our Note Book. Illustrated London News 135(3674)(Sept. 18): 387. Cook, E. T., and Alexander Wedderburn, eds. 1906. The Works of John Ruskin. Vol. 22. London: George Allen. ———. 1909. The Works of John Ruskin. Vol. 37: The Letters of John Ruskin, 1870–1889. London: George Allen. Cowley, Malcolm. 1950. Naturalism in American Literature. In Evolutionary Thought in America. Stow Persons, ed. Pp. 300–333. New Haven ct: Yale University Press. Craigie, Pearl Mary Teresa. 1911. Eliot, George. Encyclopaedia Britannica. 11th edition. Vol. 9. Pp. 275–277. New York. Cronwright-Schreiner, S. C. 1923. The Life of Olive Schreiner. Boston: Little, Brown. Crozier, John Beattie. 1898. My Inner Life, Being a Chapter in Personal Evolution and Autobiography. London: Longman’s, Green. Cummings, Sherwood. 1988. Mark Twain and Science. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Darwin, Charles. 1890. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. 2nd edition. Francis Darwin, ed. London: John Murray. ———. 1997. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin. Vol. 10. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Douglas, James. N.d. Theodore Watts-Dunton, Poet—Novelist—Critic. New York: John Lane. Dreiser, Theodore. 1922. A Book about Myself. New York: Boni and Liveright. Duncan, David. 1908a. The Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer. London: Methuen. ———. 1908b. Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer. 2 vols. New York: D. Appleton. Elias, Robert H. 1949. Theodore Dreiser: Apostle of Nature. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ———. 1959. Letters of Theodore Dreiser. 3 vols. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Eliot, George. 1976. Middlemarch. New York: Penguin Books. ———. N.d. Adam Bede. New York: New American Library. Fisk, Ethel F. 1940. The Letters of John Fiske. New York: Macmillan. Fiske, John. 1894. Excursions of an Evolutionist. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin. Garland, Hamlin. 1891. Review of Natural Selection, by Alfred Russel Wallace. The Arena 4 (Oct.): xxv–xxviii. ———. 1925. A Son of the Middle Border. New York: Macmillan. Gosse, Edmund. 1898. A Short History of Modern English Literature. London: William Heinemann. Grant Duff, Sir Mountstuart E. 1905. Notes from a Diary. 2 vols. London: John Murray. Grattan, C. Hartley. 1929. Bitter Bierce: A Mystery of American Letters. Garden City ny: Doubleday, Doran. 268

Carneiro

Gretton, Mary Sturge. 1926. The Writings & Life of George Meredith. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Haight, Gordon S., ed. 1954. The George Eliot Letters. Vol. 3. New Haven ct: Yale University Press. ———. 1955. The George Eliot Letters. Vol. 4. New Haven ct: Yale University Press. Harrison, Jane. 1925. Reminiscence of a Student’s Life. London: Hogarth Press. Hofstadter, Richard. 1955. Social Darwinism in American Thought. Boston: Beacon Press. Holt, Henry. 1923. Garrulities of an Octogenarian Editor. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Holyoake, George Jacob. 1905. Bygones Worth Remembering. 2 vols. London: T. Fisher Unwin. Hutchinson, Horace G., ed. 1914. The Life of Sir John Lubbock, Lord Avebury. 2 vols. London: Macmillan. Huxley, Leonard. 1900. Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley. 2 vols. New York: D. Appleton. James, William (unsigned). 1879. Herbert Spencer’s Data of Ethics. The Nation 28:178– 179. ———. 1904. Herbert Spencer. The Critic 44:21–24. Kipling, Rudyard. 1959. Kim. New York: Dell. Laski, Harold J. (‘‘H. J. L.’’). 1917. Herbert Spencer. Review of Herbert Spencer, by Hugh Elliot. New Republic 11(138): 224–225. Lawrence, D. H. 1976. Sons and Lovers. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books. Leeds, Anthony. 1974. Darwinism and ‘‘Darwinian’’ Evolutionism in the Study of Society and Culture. In The Comparative Reception of Darwinism. Thomas F. Glick, ed. Pp. 437–485. Austin: University of Texas Press. Linton, Ralph. 1936. Error in Anthropology. In The Story of Human Error. Joseph Jastrow, ed. Pp. 292–321. New York: D. Appleton-Century. London, Jack. 1957. Martin Eden. New York: Macmillan. Masters, Edgar Lee. 1969. Across Spoon River: An Autobiography. New York: Octagon Books. Mathiessen, F. O. 1951. Theodore Dreiser. New York: William Sloane Associates. Mencken, H. L. 1940. Happy Days, 1880–1892. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Mivart, St. George (unsigned). 1873. Review of Principles of Psychology, First Principles, and Essays, by Herbert Spencer. Quarterly Review 135:509–539. Morison, Samuel Eliot, and Henry Steele Commager. 1942. The Growth of the American Republic. 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press. Mortimer, Raymond. 1942. Books in General. New Statesman and Nation 24:411–412. Norton, Charles Eliot. 1913. Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, with Biographical Comment by His Daughters Sara Norton and M. A. DeWolfe Howe. 2 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Osborn, Henry Fairfield. 1926. Evolution and Religion in Education. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Parrington, Vernon. 1930. Main Currents in American Thought. Vol. 3: The Beginnings of Critical Realism in America, 1860–1920. New York: Harcourt, Brace. Perrin, Robert G. 1975. Durkheim’s Misrepresentation of Spencer. Sociological Review 16:544–550. ———. 1976. Herbert Spencer’s Four Theories of Social Evolution. American Journal of Sociology 81:1339–1359. ———. 1993. Herbert Spencer: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography. New York: Garland. Perry, Ralph Barton. 1935. The Thought and Character of William James. 2 vols. Boston: Little, Brown. Influence of Spencer on the World of Letters

269

Petter, Guy B. 1939. George Meredith and His German Critics. London: H. F. and G. Witherby. Pizer, Donald. 1957. Herbert Spencer and the Genesis of Hamlin Garland’s Critical System. Tulane Studies in English 7:153–158. ———. 1960. Hamlin Garland’s Early Work and Career. Berkeley: University of California Press. Robertson, John M. 1891. Modern Humanists. London: Swan Sonnenschein. ———. 1929. A History of Freethought in the Nineteenth Century. London: Watts. Robinson, Edwin Arlington. 1940. Selected Letters of Edwin Arlington Robinson. New York: Macmillan. Sassoon, Siegfried. 1948. Meredith. New York: Viking Press. Schoenwald, Richard L. 1976. George Eliot’s ‘‘Love Letters.’’ Bulletin of the New York Public Library (Spring): 362–371. Schück, H., at al. 1962. Nobel: The Man and His Prizes. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Shaw, George Bernard. 1931. Has Herbert Spencer Really Triumphed? Review of Herbert Spencer, by Hugh Elliot. In The Works of Bernard Shaw. Vol. 29: Pen Portraits and Reviews. Pp. 259–267. London: Constable. ———. 1932. Essays in Fabian Socialism. London: Constable. Shermer, Michael. 2002. In Darwin’s Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, Goldwin. 1882. Has Science Yet Found a New Basis for Morality? Contemporary Review 41:335–358. Spencer, Herbert. 1852. The Philosophy of Style. Westminster Review, n.s., 2:435–459. ———. 1862. Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical. New York: D. Appleton. ———. 1863. First Principles. London: Williams and Norgate. ———. 1871. Philosophy of Style: An Essay. New York: D. Appleton. ———. 1891. The Study of Sociology. New York: D. Appleton. ———. 1893. Evolutionary Ethics. Athenaeum, no. 3432 (Aug. 5): 193–194. ———. 1926. An Autobiography. 2 vols. London: Watts. Steuart, J. A. 1924. Robert Louis Stevenson, Man and Writer. 2 vols. London: Sampson Low, Marston. Stevenson, Robert Louis. 1912. The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson. Vol. 16. London: Chatto and Windus. Steward, Julian H. 1956. Cultural Evolution. Scientific Monthly 194: 69–76, 78, 80. Stone, Irving. 1948. Sailor on Horseback. London: Bodley Head. Sully, James. 1918. My Life and Friends. London: T. F. Unwin. Waite, C. B. 1904. Herbert Spencer. Liberal Review l:16–17. Webb, Beatrice. 1926. My Apprenticeship. London: Longmans, Green. West, Geoffrey. 1930. H. G. Wells: A Sketch for a Portrait. London: Gerald Howe. Wharton, Edith. 1934. A Backward Glance. New York: D. Appleton-Century. White, William Allen. 1946. The Autobiography of William Allen White. New York: Macmillan. Wylie, Laura Johnson. 1917. Introduction. In Adam Bede, by George Eliot. Pp. ix–xxiv. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Youmans, Edward L., ed. 1883. Herbert Spencer on the Americans and the Americans on Herbert Spencer. New York: D. Appleton.

270

Carneiro

10. Trends in Image and Design Reflections on 25 Years of a Tribal Museum Era Patricia Pierce Erikson

Although precedents to contemporary tribal museums emerged in the early 19th and 20th centuries, Native American communities founded their own museums predominantly in the latter half of the 20th century. The Makah Indian community of Washington State was one of them. Now in its 25th year, the Makah Cultural and Research Center (mcrc) shares the title of tribal museum with more than one hundred nationwide (Cooper 1996; Fuller and Fabricius 1994). The mcrc’s 25th anniversary, marked by the exhibit, qwidiˇccˇ a{a⭈txˇ Clothing: Trends in Image and Design, is one of many important benchmarks in an era of tribal museums. The proliferation of tribal museums has coincided with a period when anthropology, including museum anthropology, has critically analyzed how power relationships have shaped the methodology, ethics, and research design of the disciplines (Marcus and Fischer 1986; Rosaldo 1993). Native American ‘‘source communities’’ have sought to clearly define and disseminate members’ lifestyles, values, and concerns for themselves and the public. The result has been widespread development of community-based museums or collaborative representational projects (Phillips 2003). A large body of work crossing social sciences and humanities has argued that an imperial vision has for centuries distorted images and understandings of colonized people, reducing indigenous notions of humanity to Eurocentric constructions of an ‘‘authentic Other’’ (e.g., Fabian 1983; Said 1978). The academic study and representation of indigenous peoples has remained part of an ongoing legacy of this imperialism (Tuhiwai Smith 2002). Creating idealized versions of specifically Native American identity—some noble, some savage—has been part of this larger process. The appropriation and stereotyping of Native American identity have contributed to processes of nation-building and individual and collective identity production. Historically, ‘‘staging Indianness’’ has helped European Americans to create a uniquely ‘‘American’’ (as opposed to

European) identity (e.g., Deloria 1998), or a more ‘‘authentic’’ American identity for one region relative to another (Gleach 2003), or a nostalgic, antimodern identity. These appropriations have been accomplished through a creative, political practice that is older than the nation itself (Taylor 1990). The stereotypes inherent in representing Indianness and ‘‘playing Indian’’ have repeatedly overwritten the existence and persistence of actual Native American communities. As stereotypes, they replace complex and dynamic identities with often static and anachronistic pan- or pasticheIndian ones. Frequently, the ‘‘imagined Indian’’ has inhered to persistent narrations of Native American extinction (Hill 2000). Over time many of these modes of representation have become embedded in a variety of institutional practices, particularly those of museums (e.g., Hinsley 1994; Krech and Hail 1999; Ames 1992; Clifford 1991; Maurer 2000). Over the course of more than two centuries, however, American museums have diversified, reevaluated their social roles, and developed new exhibition strategies. Given the range of museums of art, history, natural history, ethnology, technology, and so forth, there is clearly no single concept of ‘‘the museum.’’ Nonetheless, it is possible to map how various tropes and types of exhibition have structured the museum-going public’s experience of distinctions, for example, those between ‘‘art’’ and ‘‘artifact’’ (Clifford 1988; Nason 2000; Penney 2000). It is also possible to discern how these conventions have been resisted or appropriated and modified by a growing cadre of Native American museologists and social scientists and some of their non-Native colleagues. Although Native American protests and resistance to ethnographic study, collecting, and exhibition began early in colonial and national history, these objections intensified and became more overt in the context of civil rights and feminist movements in the 1960s. Since that time, a wide array of Native American activists, scholars, and artists have challenged how their communities have been researched, analyzed, collected, and represented through ethnographies and museum installations (Cooper 1996). For decades Native American communities have complained that social scientific interpretations of cultural history have overlapped little with Native American oral history or perspectives (Mihesuah and Wilson 2004); moreover, the research process has been neither collaborative nor inclusive, and its objectives have seemed irrelevant to contemporary life (Biolsi and Zimmerman 1997). One of the many ways that Native communities have responded is to counteract Eurocentric depictions of their history and humanity with auto-ethnographic museum exhibitions. 272

Erikson

Living with the Past It is June 4, 2004, and I am guiding my car around several hairpin turns in a road that tries, and sometimes catastrophically fails, to cling to the shore of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Although daylight is almost spent, I can glimpse the mountainous peaks on Vancouver Island across the strait and more rarely, the bluffs of Cape Flattery, Washington, where I am headed. I am entering the homeland of the Makah Tribal Nation, known in their own language as qwidiˇccˇ a{a⭈txˇ (pronounced kwee-ditch-chuh-aht), or People Who Live on the Cape by the Rocks and Seagulls (Pascua 1991). My arrival is timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary celebration for the Makah Cultural and Research Center on the Makah Indian Reservation. Also known as mcrc, or ‘‘the Makah museum’’, this institution opened in 1979 to coordinate and direct research and educational projects that pertain to the cultural, linguistic, archaeological, and historical resources of the Makah Indian Nation. Tens of thousands of visitors annually come to the Makah museum. Most travel by car, as I do. Some walk to the museum after docking their boat in Neah Bay’s harbor. Many are drawn to Cape Flattery to step onto the northwesternmost point of the lower 48 states, or to look out on a 19th-century lighthouse, or to fish for salmon. Nearly all who end up in the village of Neah Bay tour the museum. I have come to write a review of the anniversary exhibit in the hope that I can offer some insight into the importance of this institution to its hosting community, particularly given the mutable relationship between Native communities and museums nationally. But I have also come simply to help celebrate the museum’s anniversary. In part, this will mean helping to stretch rolls of cloth down tables that stretch from one end of the community hall to the other. Hundreds will come to sing, dance, share a feast, and honor those who helped make the mcrc possible. Many Makah speakers will remind listeners of the prior generations that faced institutions, policies, and individuals hostile to their values and lifeways. As they do this, they will mention some of the historic obstacles that have made concepts such as ‘‘cultural restoration’’ or ‘‘cultural preservation’’ a part of contemporary Makah reality. They will link all of this to their museum. A place known as bi{id{a (Baadah), not far from the Makah museum, is a site saturated with some of the historic challenges the Makah people faced. In many ways, the mcrc is an outcome of this history, in spite of it. The story of what took place at bi{id{a replays a story known to indigenous communities throughout the hemisphere. At the time of European contact, the qwidiˇccˇ a{a⭈txˇ people are thought to have been organized Trends in Image and Design

273

into five semiautonomous villages (Renker and Gunther 1990). Extended family households congregated in these winter villages in longhouses and dispersed to fishing and gathering sites in summer. bi{id{a was one of these winter villages. When the qwidiˇccˇ a{a⭈txˇ saw the sailing vessels of the English, Spanish, Russian, and other early explorers, they called them babalid, or ‘‘people who live in houses on the water’’ (Pascua 1991:40). As elsewhere, early encounters with ships and trading posts exposed the qwidiˇccˇ a{a⭈txˇ to European diseases. The epidemic that swept Makah villages in the mid 1800s killed as much as two-thirds of the population (Pascua 1991:40). Smallpox hit the village of bi{id{a hard. By 1852 survivors had shifted their residence to di⭈ya⭈, or Neah Bay, and abandoned bi{id{a (Renker and Gunther 1990). Attracted to the character of this harborside site, entrepreneurs and federal employees intermittently sought to situate trading posts and a government school at bi{id{a. On the Makah Reservation, as elsewhere, day schools and boarding schools were one effective means for introducing and imposing the English language, Christianity, and European American personal habits. How Makah men and women dressed (along with how they prayed, whom they married, and how they supported and governed themselves) was a primary target for government teachers, agents, and religious reformers. Makah culture was profoundly changed by a long history of trade and colonization, particularly in the century after the 1855 Treaty of Neah Bay. The Makahs stubbornly resisted many aspects of dominant policies while they also creatively and pragmatically accommodated them when necessary. Introducing one collector from this 19th-century era helps to illuminate the contemporary importance of community museums for Native American communities, both rural and urban. James Gilcrest Swan first visited Neah Bay in 1859; by 1862 he was on the Indian agency payroll as a teacher for the Office of Indian Affairs’ Agricultural and Industrial School. The relationship he developed with the Makah people was one complicated by the nature of the colonial encounter. Collectively, he befriended, admired, assisted, mapped, studied, collected, and exploited them (Erikson et al. 2002; McDonald 1972). Like countless others before and after him, he felt he was acting appropriately and benevolently by trying to ‘‘civilize’’ a people considered ‘‘savage’’ in his day. He built the Makah Reservation’s first government school and began the process of driving a wedge between children and the traditional education provided by their parents. Ironically, Swan and other collectors were agents of the rapid cultural assimilation that their collecting was meant to mitigate. Swan tried to carve out a niche for himself by building a career in 274

Erikson

science; he began contributing to what he called the ‘‘treasury of universal knowledge’’ (McDonald 1972:108). Like others across the country, Swan received an 1863 Smithsonian Institution circular titled Instructions for Research Relative to the Ethnology and Philology of America, which called for assistance in ‘‘extending and completing its collection of facts and material relative to the Ethnology, Archaeology, and Philology of the races of mankind inhabiting, either now or at any previous period, the continent of America’’ (Gibbs 1863:1). In response, Swan eagerly collected natural history specimens and a wide array of Makah material culture items. Swan’s collecting practices were an extension of Washington Territory’s efforts to colonize and incorporate its indigenous populations as ‘‘productive citizens.’’ Developing a taxonomy of Native peoples was another aspect of charting colonized terrain. Makah material culture and knowledge were considered part of this natural history (Erikson et al. 2002). In the end, he produced the first ethnography that focused exclusively on one Northwest Coast group (Cole 1985). Swan also followed the Smithsonian directive to collect Makah human remains. He recorded that he gathered what he ‘‘believed to be heads of chiefs or prominent men, as no slaves are ever buried in that place’’ where he gathered them.∞ Swan was part of the long history of amateur and professional excavation of Native American graves, the associated rendering of Native American bodies, mummies, and skeletons as ‘‘artifacts’’ (rather than as ‘‘persons,’’ ‘‘family members,’’ or ‘‘ancestors’’) and the fortification of a ‘‘vanishing American’’ paradigm (Erikson 1999). This is a practice of the past, however. The 1991 passage of a federal law, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (nagpra), is one of the attempts in the United States to address past research practices that are now considered human-rights transgressions. The Makah human remains disinterred by Swan have been repatriated to the mcrc and reburied. In his correspondence with the Smithsonian Institution, Swan described the ties between himself, Washington Territory’s governor Isaac Stevens, American oversight of Indian tribes, the Indian Bureau, and the Smithsonian. Swan was relying on the fact that the same politico-economic systems related to treaty making and territorial settlement would support the collecting of Makah culture in the five villages of the tribe (Cole 1985:9–47). This salvage collecting and salvage ethnography project mirrors others throughout the hemisphere. As partial and biased as some of these ethnographic records may be, they remain important sources of information for various contemporary cultural projects. Many collecting Trends in Image and Design

275

activities to ‘‘salvage’’ purportedly dying cultures occurred in tandem with government or church efforts to eradicate Native cultures. Contemporary Native communities are aware of this juxtaposition, and resentment toward this aspect of colonialism continues to fuel the animosity that many anthropologists have experienced while trying to work in ‘‘Indian Country.’’ Once the mcrc was founded, staff members began to identify the publications and collections of Swan and the many chroniclers and ethnographers that preceded and followed him. As one of its many projects, the mcrc devoted itself to bringing back copies of archival documents, manuscripts, and photographs to build a library and archive that would serve Makah scholars, artists, and community members, in addition to visiting scholars (Bowechop and Erikson 2005). The Ozette Excavation and the MCRC The archaeological excavation of Ozette village and the opening of the mcrc (1979) are dramatic examples of turning points in the history of how research is conducted with respect to and by Makah people. The Ozette excavation began in 1970 when a winter storm exposed artifacts at the Ozette village site on the Pacific Ocean about fifteen miles south of the present-day village of Neah Bay. An entire section of the embankment collapsed toward the ocean, exposing a longhouse structure and its wellpreserved contents (Claplanhoo 1994). The Makah Tribal Council called in Richard Daugherty of Washington State University, who had previously conducted archaeological work in the immediate vicinity. The Makah tribe, in collaboration with Washington State University, the National Park Service, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs began an excavation that would last 11 years and uncover over fifty-five thousand precontact Makah artifacts and fifteen thousand structural remains from at least four houses that were buried in a mudslide (Bowechop 2003, 2004). Because the excavation was located on tribal land, the Makah tribe retained ownership and control over the artifacts, despite the involvement of university, state, and federal funds and agencies. During the excavation the tribe realized the significance of the Ozette artifacts and planned to build a museum in order to share the collection with the Makah community and with the interested general public. Makah students who excavated Ozette and the Hoko River site and conducted associated archaeological surveys and lab work laid the groundwork for a new generation of Makah cultural specialists and researchers. The emergence of artifacts raised questions in the minds of the younger 276

Erikson

generation about material culture and practices, questions that they then took to elders. This created an extraordinary environment for learning (Bowechop 2001). The museum was originally planned to care for the Ozette material, but as Greig Arnold and Ann Renker (the first and the second director of the museum, respectively) note, the project evolved: ‘‘The goals for the Makah museum began to expand beyond the exhibit of artifacts for tourists. Old and young Makah people working to build the museum and identify artifacts started to include the Makah language, Makah photographs, and other Makah information in their plans to document Makah information and educate the community about ancestral Makah traditions’’ (Renker and Arnold 1988:304). The initial museum concept was influenced by a community-wide belief in the importance of remembering and honoring ancestors, traditions, and values. The construction of a new curatorial facility in 1993 provided an additional opportunity for developing a system that reflected Makah values and concerns (Mauger and Bowechop 1995). As you read the description of the mcrc galleries in the next section, remember that the Makah museum currently consists of a number of departments to handle its wide range of functions, including the Archive/Library, the Makah Language Program, Education, and Curation/Historic Preservation. Exhibitions—whether temporary or the permanent Ozette installation—are only a portion of what the museum does. The MCRC Galleries The mcrc’s permanent installations first orient visitors in a curved, lowceilinged gallery. Critical juxtapositions immediately occur as the Introductory Gallery invokes both contemporary Makah presence and historical experience. Reproductions of late-18th-century sketches and late-19th or early-20th-century photographs are placed side by side with contemporary photos of elders and text panels that detail excerpts of Makah oral history. Graphics demonstrate the location of the five traditional villages and the contraction in traditional territory effected by the treaty process. Panels also describe the reservation economy and some contemporary Makah traditions, all before beginning to narrate the story of Ozette. The curatorial voice of the Introductory Gallery frames the Ozette artifacts as family possessions linked to Makah humanity, memories, and values. A synthesis of oral historical information, historic photographs, and geologic and archaeological data narrates the chronology of events: a portion of the Ozette village was buried and preserved by an earthquaketriggered mudslide in precontact times after having been repeatedly buried over the previous centuries. Trends in Image and Design

277

When visitors leave the Introductory Gallery, they enter the broad and high-ceilinged Spring Gallery, the first in an elliptical path of galleries organized by season. They then walk through the remainder of the permanent galleries. By employing a first-person curatorial voice and by including Makah oral history and bilingual label text, the mcrc provokes visitors to consider contemporary Makah presence and to think about how language and oral history have linked generations amid dramatic change. The Spring, Summer, Fall, and then Winter galleries collectively depict how qwidiˇccˇ a{a⭈txˇ lifeways adapted to the available resources of each season, including whaling, sealing, hunting, fishing, wood and stone technology, intertidal and plant gathering, basketry, and wool spinning and weaving. In the Winter Gallery, visitors enter a reconstructed Ozette longhouse, move through the spatial arrangement of the household, and immerse themselves in the qwi⭈qwi⭈diˇccˇ aq oral-history recordings and the smell of fish drying in the rafters. The exhibit case representing precontact qwidiˇccˇ a{a⭈txˇ wool spinning and weaving sits at the transition between permanent and temporary galleries. The Ozette excavation provided ample evidence of this weaving technology in precontact times. The permanent case exhibits an Ozette wool beater and an upright, roller bar loom. The text panels explain the processing of fleece—how it was cleaned, twisted, and then spun with a hand spindle before being woven with cedar into capes and blankets. Unfortunately for visitors, the dog’s-wool blanket artifact, found in the Ozette site, remains frozen in storage and unavailable for viewing until a technique is developed for better stabilization and exhibition. Nonetheless, by including historic sketches of loom weaving elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest, drawn by Paul Kane and John Webber, the exhibit evokes a sense for Makah weaving technology. Unlike other tribes whose wool weaving tradition continued uninterrupted to the present, the Makah tradition of weaving with dog’s fleece and cedar bark phased out by the mid to late 19th century. As James Swan recorded in his diary on March 6, 1862, he exchanged a dog-hair blanket with J. Burton Webster for a ‘‘2 1⁄2 point woolen blanket,’’ most likely one of the Hudson’s Bay blankets that had become a precious trade item. For years, the mcrc staff has been aware that the permanent Ozette installation was unable to visually convey the wide range of precontact qwidiˇccˇ a{a⭈txˇ clothing (Maria Parker Pascua, telephone conversation with the author, Aug. 23, 2004). The mcrc staff realized that explorers and early colonists recorded encounters with Makah people wearing skins of sea otter, seal, and bear. They also recorded that the Makah traded blankets they had woven of dog’s hair and cedar on upright looms. Although 278

Erikson

the anaerobic environment of the Ozette site yielded prolific organic artifacts, including cedar-bark capes and skirts, the skins and furs did not preserve well (Maria Parker Pascua, telephone conversaton with the author, Aug. 23, 2004). In reflecting on the upcoming 25th anniversary, the staff decided to convey the diversity of pre- and postcontact Makah clothing through a temporary exhibit. qwidiˇccˇ a{a⭈txˇ Clothing: Trends in Image and Design Years in advance of the 25th anniversary, the staff discussed how they might complement the permanent Ozette installation with a new look at some aspect of Makah culture. Since the museum’s founding, the temporary exhibit space had hosted a number of installations to balance and augment the permanent galleries. It is a small space that answers the question, ‘‘What happened after Ozette?’’ Original museum plans called for a main gallery devoted to representing recent historic and contemporary Makah life. However, a lack of funds at the time the mcrc was built generated a disparity familiar to most museums—the gap between the ideal and the real museum. Without the more reflexive style of the mcrc’s current ‘‘bookends’’—its introductory and temporary galleries—the museum, at first glance, would appear similar to ethnological displays representing a distant cultural space in the past. The mcrc’s temporary exhibits have documented missionary influence, effects of tourist trade and the cash economy, processes of cultural adaptation and crisis, and changes and continuity in Makah worldviews.≤ In planning for this anniversary, the staff discussed their interest in clarifying the historic changes in Makah clothing. They also agreed on other overarching objectives: stimulating the participation of a large number of Makah community members and fostering interest in reviving or mastering some of the traditional technologies associated with creation of clothing (Maria Parker Pascua, telephone conversaton with the author, Aug. 23, 2004). At the exhibit opening, Executive Director Janine Bowechop and Makah Language Specialist Maria Pascua welcomed the crowd of guests in the museum foyer and explained that a team of Makah women had created scaled-down reproductions of clothing worn by Makah people from the 15th to the 21st century. The crowd then moved to the temporary gallery for the ceremonial opening (see Figure 1). I later learned that mcrc staff member Theresa Parker had succeeded in assembling a large curatorial team by combining exhibit preparation with educational programming. Parker offered classes in wool spinning and regalia construction at the mcrc through Northwest Indian College. Participants simultaneously Trends in Image and Design

279

reproduced artifacts and, if they chose to, earned college credits (Maria Parker Pascua, telephone conversation with the author, Aug. 23, 2004). Staff member Maria Pascua Parker researched historic sources that documented qwidiˇccˇ a{a⭈txˇ clothing; collectively, the staff combined this with their knowledge of precontact Ozette artifacts (ca. 1460–1660) to plan the model regalia, displayed on dolls. The first of three sections in the Trends in Image and Design exhibit addresses the gaps in popular perceptions of qwidiˇccˇ a{a⭈txˇ clothing as limited to cedar skirts and capes. A pair of large exhibit cases that contain 11 model regalia comprise the first section. Arranged chronologically, these model regalia show Makah clothing trends from precontact through early European contact and trading-post eras to the present. The first text panel introduces the various material preparation methods, such as beating and shredding bark and mixing materials such as bark cordage, dog wool, fur, and bird down. Five of the six models in this case—spanning the mid 15th century to the early 1800s—feature the manner of wearing animal skin or dogs’-wool woven blankets. The figure of an 18th-century hunter, for example, prepared by Linda Trettevick, wears a tanned black bear-fur robe, secured over one shoulder and tied with a twisted cedarbark belt. As with the other figures, extraordinary attention was given not only to reproduction of the clothing but also to the accessories associated with the activity depicted. The hunter carries his miniature quiver made of tanned black bear fur with a twisted cedar shoulder strap. The five model regalia of the second case, spanning the 1800s to the present, collectively emphasize the influence of contact with European American cultures and the inherently changing function of clothing. One figure wears a blue trade wool blanket. Another, prepared by Polly Debari, represents a pintlachi dancer wearing a machine-sewn cloth cape and dress, decorated with wooden branch and dagger dangles, and a spreading fan headpiece (see Figure 2). The text panels on this case emphasize Makah culture as dynamic and enduring: ‘‘The Makah have always been creative, innovative people. Costume design has changed over time, but the essence of Makah, the shell work, the designs portrayed on regalia or modern silkscreen shirts and jackets show the cultural connections with various animals, birds, and supernatural beings highly regarded by our Tribe. Representing ourselves [through clothing, manners, and skills] in the best possible way is an important aspect of Makah philosophy.’’ The second section of the exhibit, comprised of one small exhibit case, again highlights the transition from wearing handmade clothing to trade clothing. The third area continues to reinforce the earlier explanation of the Makahs’ long history of acquiring trade goods from the Astoria 280

Erikson

1. At the June 2004 exhibit opening, the curatorial team of the mcrc staff, volunteers, and students honored their collaboration by joining hands and touching Theresa Parker as she cut the ceremonial ‘‘ribbon’’ of woven cedar bark adorned with cedar-bark roses. From left to right: Maria Parker Pascua, ‘‘Babe’’ Markishtum, Vicki Waddell, Theresa Parker, Yvonne Wilkie, and Polly Debari. Exhibit participants not shown are Keely Parker, Deanna Buzzell-Gray, Linda Trettevick, Dwayne Northrup, Melissa Peterson, Lina Markishtum, and Christen Pascua. Photo by Patricia Erikson.

2. One of the model regalia in the 1800s-to-the-present section of the exhibit. Shown here is the 1900s-era regalia of the pintlachi dancer prepared by Polly Debari. Behind this figure, a visitor examines examples of 21st-century clothing, including raingear and dancewear currently used in the community. Photo by Patricia Erikson.

trading post, the Northwest Company, the Hudson’s Bay Company, and subsequent forts and trading posts in the Puget Sound area. A cluster of five large late-19th-century photographs illustrate Makah individuals wearing trade clothing such as calico, denim, and machine-woven shawls. Collectively, the exhibit narrative, paired with a chronological representation of Makah clothing up to the present, counters the dominant paradigm that frames ‘‘genuine’’ Native American culture as eroding since contact. Instead of locating Makah culture in a timeless past, Trends in Image and Design contextualizes Makah creativity and adaptation in a dynamic flow of human history. Some readers might question why the museum format would be an appropriate choice for a Native American community in their attempt to forward cultural revitalization, especially since museums have inhered to colonization. Yet the mcrc is clearly recognizable as a museum. It deploys a number of familiar exhibition strategies, for example, full-size dioramas portraying habitats and a miniature diorama representing the Ozette village site before European contact. The galleries incorporate, without critique, the images of Edward S. Curtis, a photographer whose staging of ‘‘authentic’’ Native Americanness is legendary. Additionally, the temporary exhibit highlighted here seeks to meticulously reproduce the context and function of regalia, much as anthropologists have done since the 19th century (e.g., Jacknis 1985). Despite this, the Makah people have not adopted the colonial-derived museum format wholesale. I find it helpful to consider the Makah Cultural and Research Center as a form of ‘‘auto-ethnography’’ (Erikson et al. 2002:27–31). By this I mean a Makah self portrait that engages with dominant cultural systems yet still maintains a large degree of local control over content and the process of representation. Practices such as archaeology, museology, and linguistics, to name a few, are combined with Makah values and aspirations to express and continue Makah senses of self. Although we can discern in the mcrc’s curatorial voice, exhibition strategies, and collections management policies some significant divergence from mainstream museum practices, much of the mcrc’s distinctive function remains invisible to gallery visitors. However, perhaps more than any other temporary exhibit thus far, Trends in Image and Design provides a window onto the value of the museum for the community today. Like many other projects, this exhibit brought together Makah members of the community to learn qwi⭈qwi⭈diˇccˇ aq language, recover technologies, raise community awareness, and work as a team to preserve that which is valued by the community. Some of these auto-ethnographic strategies are being translated across institutional Trends in Image and Design

283

boundaries. Mainstream museums are listening, opening the possibility for restructuring how knowledge is presented to the public. Notes I would like to thank the Makah Tribal Council and the mcrc Board of Trustees for granting permission for me to research the history of Neah Bay and the Makah museum. I am particularly grateful to Janine Bowechop, Maria Parker Pascua, and Theresa Parker for assisting me in gathering information for this review. 1. Letter from James Swan to Spencer Baird, July 10, 1864, Smithsonian Institution Archives Acc. 494 2. These temporary exhibits include Portrait in Time: Photographs of the Makah by Samuel Morse, 1896–1903; Riding in His Canoe: The Continuing Legacy of Young Doctor; and In Honor of Our Weavers: Makah Cultural and Research Center’s Twentieth Anniversary.

References Ames, Michael M. 1992. Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes: The Anthropology of Museums. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Biolsi, Thomas, and Larry J. Zimmerman. 1997. Indians and Anthropologists. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Bowechop, Janine. 2001. The Makah Tribe and the Archaeological Community: A Thirty Year Perspective. Paper presented at On the Threshold: Native American Archaeologist Relations in the Twenty-First Century. Dartmouth College, Hanover nh, May 25–27. ———. 2003. Working outside of nagpra. Paper presented at Western Museum Association Conference, October 20, 2003. ———. 2004. Contemporary Makah Whaling. In Coming to Shore: Northwest Coast Ethnology, Traditions, and Visions. Marie Mauzé, Michael E. Harkin, and Sergei Kan, eds. Pp. 407–420. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Bowechop, Janine, and Patricia Pierce Erikson. 2005. Forging Indigenous Methodologies on Cape Flattery: The Makah Museum as a Center of Collaborative Research. American Indian Quarterly (in press). Claplanhoo, Edward. 1994. Oral history interview from transcription by Patricia P. Erikson. mcrc Archives, Neah Bay wa. Clifford, James. 1988. Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ———. 1991. Four Northwest Coast Museums. In Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display. Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine, eds. Washington dc: Smithsonian Institution Press. Cole, Douglas. 1985. Captured Heritage: The Scramble for Northwest Coast Artifacts. Vancouver bc: Douglas and MacIntyre. Cooper, Karen. 1996. American Indian Protests of Museum Exhibition Policies and Practices. PhD dissertation, University of Oklahoma. Deloria, Philip. 1998. Playing Indian. New Haven ct: Yale University Press. Erikson, Patricia Pierce. 1999. Making the Invisible: Harris Hawthorne Wilder and the Smith College Anthropology Museum. Paper presented at the panel session The Past Is Present: Revealing Community Persistence in Museums, American Society for Ethnohistory Meeting, Mashantucket ct, October 21, 1999. 284

Erikson

Erikson, Patricia Pierce, with Helma Ward and Kirk Wachendorf. 2002. Voices of a Thousand People: The Makah Cultural and Research Center. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Fabian, Johannes. 1983. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia University Press. Fuller, Nancy, and Suzanne Fabricius. 1994. Tribal Museums. In Native America in the Twentieth Century: An Encyclopedia. Mary B. Davis, ed. Pp. 655–657. New York: Garland. Gibbs, George. 1863. Instructions for Research Relative to the Ethnology and Philology of America. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 160. Washington dc: Smithsonian Institution. Gleach, Frederic W. 2003. Pocahontas at the Fair: Crafting Identities at the 1907 Jamestown Exposition. Ethnohistory 50(3): 419–445. Hill, Richard W., Sr. 2000. The Indian in the Cabinet of Curiosity. In The Changing Presentation of the American Indian: Museums and Native Cultures. Pp. 103–108. Washington dc: National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution. Hinsley, Curtis. 1994[1981]. The Smithsonian and the American Indian: Making a Moral Anthropology in Victorian America. Washington dc: Smithsonian Institution Press. Jacknis, Ira. 1985. Franz Boas and Exhibits: On the Limitations of the Museum Method of Anthropology. In Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture. George W. Stocking Jr., ed. Pp. 75–111. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Krech, Shepard, II, and Barbara A. Hail, eds. 1999. Collecting Native America, 1870–1960. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press. Marcus, George E., and Michael M. J. Fischer. 1986. Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mauger, Jeffrey E., and Janine Bowechop. 1995. Tribal Collections Management at the mcrc. A Resource for Tribal Museums 2. Washington dc: Smithsonian Institution. Maurer, Evan M. 2000. Presenting the American Indian: From Europe to America. In The Changing Presentation of the American Indian: Museums and Native Cultures. Pp. 15– 28. Washington dc: National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution. McDonald, Lucile. 1972. Swan among the Indians: Life of James G. Swan, 1818–1900. Portland or: Binfords and Morts. Mihesuah, Devon A., and Angela C. Wilson. 2004. Indigenizing the Academy: Transforming Scholarship and Empowering Communities. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Nason, James. 2000. ‘‘Our’’ Indians: The Unidimensional Indian in the Disembodied Local Past. In The Changing Presentation of the American Indian: Museums and Native Cultures. Pp. 29–46. Washington dc: National Museum of the American Indian; Seattle: University of Washington Press. Pascua, Maria Parker. 1991. A Makah Village in 1491: Ozette. National Geographic 180(4): 38–53. Penney, David W. 2000. The Poetics of Museum Representations: Tropes of Recent American Indian Art Exhibitions. In The Changing Presentation of the American Indian: Museums and Native Cultures. Pp. 47–65. Washington dc: National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution. Phillips, Ruth. 2003. Introduction to Community Collaboration in Exhibitions: Toward a Dialogic Paradigm. In Museums and Source Communities: A Routledge Reader. Laura Peers and Alison K. Brown, eds. Pp. 155–170. London: Routledge. Renker, Ann, and Greg Arnold. 1988. Exploring the Role of Education in Cultural Resource Management: The mcrc Example. Human Organization 47(4): 302–307. Trends in Image and Design

285

Renker, Ann, and Erna Gunther. 1990. Makah. In Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 7: Northwest Coast. Wayne Suttles, ed. Pp. 422–430. Washington dc: Smithsonian Institution. Rosaldo, Renato. 1993[1989]. Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis. Boston: Beacon Press. Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon. Taylor, Alan. 1990. Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier, 1760–1820. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Tuhiwai Smith, Linda. 2002. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

286

Erikson

List of Contributors

Richard N. Adams, Rappaport Centennial Professor Emeritus, University of Texas at Austin Robert L. Carneiro, Curator, American Museum of Natural History Quetzil E. Castañeda, Founding Director, Open School of Ethnography and Anthropology Regna Darnell, Professor, University of Western Ontario Patricia Pierce Erikson, Independent Scholar Michael K. Foster, Curator Emeritus, Canadian Museum of Civilization Frederic W. Gleach, Senior Lecturer, Cornell University Herbert S. Lewis, Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin at Madison Stephen O. Murray, Director, El Instituto Obregón Robert Oppenheim, Assistant Professor of Asian Studies, University of Texas at Austin William J. Peace, Independent Scholar David H. Price, Associate Professor, St. Martin’s University Margaret Wade-Lewis, Associate Professor, State University of New York at New Paltz