The Meskwaki and Anthropologists: Action Anthropology Reconsidered

The Meskwaki and Anthropologists

Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology Series Editors regna dar nell stephen o. murr ay

The Meskwaki and Anthropologists Action Anthropology Reconsidered Judith M. Daubenmier

univer sit y of nebr a sk a press

•

lincoln a nd london

© 2008 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Daubenmier, Judith M. The Meskwaki and anthropologists : Action Anthropology reconsidered / Judith M. Daubenmier. p. cm. — (Critical studies in the history of anthropology) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8032-1732-4 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Fox Indians — Iowa — Social conditions — 20th century. 2. Ethnology — Fieldwork — Iowa — History — 20th century. 3. Action Anthropology (Program) — Influence. I. Title. e99.f7d38 2008 977.70497⬘314 — dc22 2008007108 Set in Charlotte by Bob Reitz. Designed by Ray Boeche.

To Mike

Contents Acknowledgments

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Series Editors’ Introduction

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Introduction

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1. Making the Modern Meskwaki Nation

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2. Sol Tax and the Value of Anthropology

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3. “Science Has to Stop Somewhere”

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4. Action Anthropology and the Values Question

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5. 1954—Project Nadir and Rebound

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6. Fruits of Action Anthropology

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Epilogue

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Appendix 1: Participants in University of Chicago Project at Tama, Iowa, 1948 – 1958

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Appendix 2: Publications Related to Meskwaki

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Notes

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Bibliography

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Index

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Acknowledgments

Having grown up in Iowa, I drove by the Meskwaki settlement near Tama, Iowa, countless times. Although curious about the people who lived there, I knew little more than that they held a powwow every year. Never did I dream I would one day write a book about—and with—them. Life’s journey, however, takes us places we never imagined. For that, I am grateful. When I finally did visit the settlement as a graduate student working on my dissertation, I was fortunate to meet many knowledgeable people willing to help me. I am especially grateful to the people at the Meskwaki Senior Center, who were so hospitable to me during my visits to the settlement. Thank you for being patient with my ignorance and enduring so many questions from this mukuman. Special thanks are due to Johnathan Buffalo, tribal historian for the Meskwaki settlement, and to Suzanne Wanatee. I value your insights and your friendship. Since this work is based on my dissertation, the debts I owe for its completion extend back to graduate school at the University of Michigan. I am indebted to Maria Montoya, my adviser, who perceptively steered me toward the archive of the Fox Project after I stumbled across Frederick Gearing’s book Face of the Fox and who chaired my dissertation committee. I also am grateful to the other members of my committee: John Carson, Philip Deloria, Gregory Dowd, and Richard I. Ford. Your support and encouragement kept me going during the months-long marathon of dissertation writing. Many suggestions made after my dissertation was finished also found their way into this book.

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I am grateful to Martha S. Jones, the graduate students in the History Department dissertation reading group from the fall 2002 semester, and the summer informal reading group, especially Barbara Berglund, Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor, Anna Lawrence, Andrew Needham, and Alice Ritscherle. Your criticisms and questions pressed me to rethink and hone my argument in portions of chapter 3, in particular. I want to acknowledge the support of the State Historical Society of Iowa, which provided funds to support my research. I also thank the Annals of Iowa for permission to use in this book those parts of an article that appeared in the journal under the title “Meskwaki Remember Action Anthropology” in the fall of 2003 (vol. 62, no. 4). I also am most grateful to members of my family—my parents, Robert and LaVonne Schultz of Waterloo, Iowa, who showed, by example, the value of reading and learning; my husband, Michael Daubenmier, who supported my midlife career change, and my daughter, Jennifer, who has her own academic career and appreciates my struggles. Of course, this book owes much of its existence to Sol Tax, who placed the fieldnotes and other materials relating to action anthropology in archives of the University of Chicago and the National Anthropological Archives. “If these subjects are worth study, ‘objective history’ will come better from others,” he said.1 I hope my work meets his standards.

Series Editors’ Introduction Regna Darnell and Stephen O. Murray

Sol Tax’s “action anthropology” project with the Meskwaki community at Tama, Iowa, has been lauded in the received history of Americanist anthropology as an early successful attempt to combine the scientific aims of anthropology, the ethical aspirations of the anthropologist to be useful to the community studied, and the Native American impetus to utilize the results of such study for their own purposes. Judith Daubenmier’s account, grounded in a nonjudgmental historicism, successfully alternates between the standpoints of the Meskwaki and the anthropology students Tax sent to their community over more than a decade. Unlike works by many other historians, the perspective of contemporary Meskwaki survivors is a central part of the story Daubenmier tells about past anthropological activity.1 Carrying the story forward into the contemporary circumstances of the Meskwaki is a major accomplishment by Daubenmier. The contrast of perspectives provides insights of Tax’s practice of action anthropology to be of considerable relevance to contemporary situations. At the time the project seemed to have little transformative effect on the discipline of anthropology. The effects were more impressive in the emergence of Native American radical politics in the 1960s, again with the aiding and abetting by Sol Tax. Over the course of more recent decades, anthropology has moved much closer to Tax’s vision than to that of most of his contemporaries. Moreover (some) Chicago-trained anthropologists remain in the vanguard of support for Native American activism. Student participants, largely from the universities of Chicago

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and Iowa, have been enthusiastic about the aims and results of the project, both retrospectively and at the time of their studies. The Meskwaki project, for many, has served as a model for how Native American fieldwork ought to be done, in its emerging ethic of collaborative research. Most of the students did not pursue the rhetoric of action anthropology, and none of them developed a theoretical justification for the pragmatic or applied nature of their work. Thus, the legacy, for most of the discipline, has been largely invisible for decades. The narrative often depicts the students as naive and their urges to help the Meskwaki as reproducing the very hegemonies they aspired to transcend. They lacked the funding and the structural power to initiate dramatic changes in the material fortunes of the Meskwaki. What their hosts—often bemused, one suspects—made of them has more to do with their good will and openness to establishing local friendships and relationships than it does with actual improvements in the quality of life for Meskwaki. The anthropologists are remembered as pleasant young people, not as agents of transformation of the Meskwaki community. There is no question that the fledgling anthropologists remained outsiders. Daubenmier also puts the Meskwaki project in a comparative context with two bigger and better-funded Harvard projects (in Rimrock, New Mexico, and in highland Chiapas, Mexico) and with the kind of fieldwork training school with which Tax had been involved as a student during the early 1930s. This is not a biography of Sol Tax. In fact, he is sometimes a rather shadowy and distant figure in the narrative. But his commitment to making ethnography a more intersubjective experience, for both observer and observed, remains a significant legacy. The Meskwaki project and Tax’s efforts influenced a major change in the U.S. government’s Indian policy from coerced assimilation to recognizing sovereignty and encouraging self-determination. Tax also was centrally involved in facilitating a pan-tribal gathering of Native American leaders that led directly to the Native American activism of the 1960s.

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The inclusive intention of Tax’s action anthropology provided a baseline for much of the applied anthropology that became more visible in the 1960s and 1970s, leading in turn to the more reflexive public anthropology of today. The Meskwaki project also showed Tax’s determination to internationalize the anthropological voice to include those who had formerly been the studied populations. All of these commitments remain germane and compelling.

Introduction

On July 15, 1948, Ed Davenport was glad to see his old friend Sol Tax get out of the car on the road by his home on the Meskwaki settlement near Tama, Iowa. It had been thirteen years since the University of Chicago professor had visited the community where he did research for his dissertation in anthropology, and some catching up on the health of family members was in order. Then the two men turned to the reason Tax had come, to talk about the state of the Meskwaki people and how they had changed in recent years. After answering Tax’s questions about education, a new law enforcement arrangement for the settlement, and political divisions within the tribe that had just ousted him as chairman, Davenport interrupted the flow of the conversation with his own questions. “Do you find politics everywhere, the same as here?” he asked Tax. When Tax answered that indeed he did, Davenport laid it on the line. “Then why don’t you work out some sort of a plan to fix things up, instead of just studying people?” he wanted to know. Davenport, who had served as an informant for anthropologist Truman Michelson in earlier years, must have wondered what more there was to learn about the Meskwaki after all the work Michelson and other anthropologists had done. With the community divided deeply over a new government and the possibility of reduced federal services looming, Davenport may have thought that more study was irrelevant to the pressing needs of the tribe.1 One of Tax’s students who had accompanied him on the visit, Walter Miller, delivered a defense of the social sciences based on the need

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to understand how society worked before attempting to fix it, but the answer was only a short summary of one position in a simmering dispute over the role of social sciences in the modern world. Davenport’s question touched on an issue that had stirred sharp debates among anthropologists and other social scientists in recent years. In his own way, Davenport was re-asking the question Robert Lynd had posed in his 1939 essay Knowledge for What? in which Lynd had challenged social scientists to make their research socially useful.2 As the drift of the conversation indicated, the meeting between Tax and Davenport had many layers. On one level, it represented a re-uniting of people who had not seen each other for several years and were glad to renew acquaintances. On another level, it represented two people who were not so much re-united as eying each other across an educational and cultural divide. On that level, the meeting represented the coming together of an intellectual and a common person, a social scientist and a person from the society to be studied, an anthropologist and a Native American. In coming years, the broader group of anthropologists and Native Americans represented in the Tax-Davenport meeting looked at each other across that cultural divide many times and tried to understand the context, agenda, and expectations of the other. In the crucible of cross-cultural communication, people on both sides of the divide worked out a new way of doing anthropology that came to be called “action anthropology.” The cultural divide across which Davenport and Tax viewed each other existed in part because of an imbalance in power between the two parties, an imbalance that Native Americans had experienced since the birth of anthropology in this country, but an imbalance that anthropologists rarely acknowledged. Most American anthropologists would not be ready to rethink their relationship with the people they studied until 1969, when Vine Deloria Jr. delivered his scathing critique of anthropology in his book Custer Died for Your Sins. Deloria compared anthropologists to a plague of insects that descended upon Indian communities each summer, living off grant money and gathering information for books that were irrelevant

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to the day-to-day needs of the desperately poor people whom they studied.3 For Deloria, the very act of studying Indians turned them into objects for manipulation and experimentation. He blamed anthropologists’ focus on Native Americans as berry-picking food gatherers for the eagerness of Congress to force Indians into mainstream society. Indians who did not fit the primitive stereotype constructed by anthropologists became invisible, as anthropologists ignored the current needs of Indians in favor of piling up masses of irrelevant information that would justify future studies. The prestige that accrued to anthropologists for their studies of Indians gave them so much power within Indian communities that Indian leadership was stifled. Young people merely parroted the theories of anthropologists about Indians instead of thinking for themselves. Deloria urged Native Americans to refuse to be “objects of observation for those who do nothing to help us” and to demand that the “ideological vultures” do something to help the communities in which they wished to work.4 American anthropologists believed that the mirror Deloria held up to them was cracked, and most failed to recognize themselves in its image. Some anthropologists saw themselves as friends of the people they studied. They could not face the possibility that what they took to be friendship covered up an uneven, exploitive power relationship between themselves and Native Americans. Yet Deloria’s manifesto sparked a dialogue between Native Americans and anthropologists that led to a 1970 symposium on relations between the two. At the meeting, anthropologist Margaret Mead insisted that “no one in my generation had the slightest intention of ever exploiting anybody,” while anthropologist Omer C. Stewart called the relationship of Indians and anthropologists “mutually useful and amicable.”5 Some anthropologists, however, had begun to question the ethics of their relationship with Native Americans even before Deloria’s manifesto. More than twenty years earlier, anthropologists from the University of Chicago moved onto the Meskwaki settlement near Tama, Iowa, where the two groups groped their way toward a new balance

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of power based on an exchange of services rather than a one-sided extraction of information. Tax began the project as a way to provide field experience to anthropology students. It quickly blossomed into a new way of doing anthropology, labeled “action anthropology,” that demanded not just research from anthropologists but a commitment to helping the community among whom they lived and from whose expertise they benefited. The ideals of action anthropology attracted attention in the anthropological community of the 1950s, but few practitioners. Rather than embrace action anthropology, skeptics worried about the consequences for their field when social scientists abandoned their stance of detachment from their objects of study. Typical was the stiff criticism that greeted Tax at a December 1957 symposium sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation entitled “Values in Action,” where colleagues pressed Tax to say if he would be willing to help a group who wanted to practice cannibalism.6 This book presents a detailed history of the Meskwaki project. It is the first effort to present a full account of how members of the Meskwaki community experienced the project then and how it is remembered now. My work describes the genesis of the project, its functioning from a practical standpoint, the origins of action anthropology, and examples of how it worked in the ten years the Chicago project operated in Tama. It also assesses the results of the Chicago project for the Meskwaki, the broader Native American community, the individual anthropologists, and anthropology as a whole. An agenda that includes attempting to give voice to a Meskwaki view of action anthropology departs from the slim historiography of the Chicago project at Tama. Historians of anthropology have looked at the project in terms of how it is remembered within the field of anthropology. One historian of anthropology, John Bennett, placed Tax among “the opening guns of the rebellion in the ranks of anthropology in the 1960s and 1970s” when some anthropologists began to attack the colonial roots of their field and the lingering vestiges of that past. Yet, paradoxically, Bennett concluded that Tax did not receive any credit for helping foment that rebellion, and that the 1960s and 1970s critique of anthropology was only “reminiscent” of

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action anthropology. George Stocking Jr., another historian of anthropology, rejects the idea that Tax and action anthropology had any influence or impact on anthropology in general and uses the more limited term of “resonance” to describe Tax’s relationship to the field. According to Stocking, action anthropology was “kept at the margins” of anthropology.7 Other scholars have examined the program itself and found action anthropology’s impact to have been negligible even within the confines of the settlement. Iowa State University economist Elizabeth Hoyt visited the Meskwaki community in the early 1960s, and afterward she wrote an article stressing the failures of the University of Chicago program—the impending bankruptcy of a craft business started during the project and the inadequate funding of a scholarship program.8 A second critique of the project was more subdued. Working from a documentary history of the project compiled by the Chicago anthropologists, Larry R. Stucki found the project lacked continuity, both in personnel and programs. Stucki compared the researchers to “do-gooders” who are at first enthusiastic about helping a community and then move on to greener pastures after finding the situation more difficult than they expected. He also criticized the anthropologists for never arranging for an independent evaluation of the program and for failing to live up to their goal of creating programs based on what the Meskwaki wanted. Instead, Stucki said, the anthropologists came up with ideas and explained them to people with whom they chose to work.9 More recently, Douglas E. Foley described the project as “a tiny blip in the long flow of Mesquaki history,” although he credits the scholarship program with starting a trend of Meskwaki college attendance. Foley, in “The Fox Project: A Reappraisal,” devoted some space to Meskwaki memories of the anthropologists and the project in general. He summarized the Meskwaki reaction as “a wry, humorous, detached yet generous view” of the project, but generally submerged the voices of individual Meskwaki in favor of an attempt to arrive at a single community-wide assessment.10

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Former students also have added their perspectives. Anthropologist Fred Gearing, a former graduate student who lived at the settlement, wrote Face of the Fox to describe his experiences during the project, but it is more about the inability to really come to know someone from another culture than about how individual Meskwaki viewed the project. Regarding the university’s project at the settlement, Gearing said he came to the conclusion that the Meskwaki settlement was “structurally paralyzed” and “torn by mutual hostility, fear, ignorance, self-pity, and a feeling of incompetence.” As Gearing’s understanding of the community grew, he said, “the more my ‘helping’ was reduced to mere talk.”11 In trying to uncover more of how individual Meskwaki regarded the project, this book falls into the category of a “counter-story” about anthropology similar to the one that Linda Tuhiwai Smith lays out in Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Although Smith wrote as a Maori from New Zealand, her reflections on the relationship between native peoples and academic researchers (not just anthropologists) captures many of the same tensions that surfaced between Meskwaki and the Chicago anthropologists. According to Smith, while western researchers view their research as helping humanity, indigenous people offer a counter-story: “the history of western research through the eyes of the colonized.” Among native peoples, Smith said, “research was talked about both in terms of its absolute worthlessness to us, the indigenous world, and its absolute usefulness to those who wielded it as an instrument. It told us things already known, suggested things that would not work, and made careers for people who already had jobs.”12 The links between anthropology and colonialism go back to the beginnings of European exploration of the world that brought Europeans into contact with peoples previously unknown to them. Europeans had been curious about the customs and beliefs of the people they encountered, and traders, crusaders, missionaries, and other travelers acting as amateur anthropologists tried to explain them to a European audience. In the thirteenth century, for example, Marco Polo wrote of Asian customs he observed during his travels along

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the Silk Road and throughout China as a merchant, while Jacobus de Vitriaco described the Middle Eastern cultures he saw while on a crusade to the Holy Land.13 Interest in and information about other peoples reached a new plateau, however, when Christopher Columbus came ashore on an island in the Bahamas in 1492. On that voyage Columbus filled his diaries with descriptions of the Arawaks and Caribs. On at least one later expedition, however, Columbus brought along an aide, Ramon Pan, specifically to carry out the ethnological work. Later in the sixteenth century, English interested in trade learned about the people of North American from the writings of Richard Hakluyt. Later, Jesuit missionaries who came with French traders to proselytize the indigenous people of New France provided an ongoing stream of information about the inhabitants of North America through the letters they wrote to their superiors in France, later assembled in the Jesuit Relations. Over time, ethnological information became more sophisticated. In 1724, for example, Joseph Lafitau, a French Jesuit priest, wrote Customs of the American Indian Compared with the Customs of Primitive Times.14 While at first, ethnographic information was most useful for merchants and missionaries, European and American thinkers such as Lord Kames and Albert Gallatin tried to incorporate information about other societies into their theories about the development of civilization. Kames, an eighteenth-century Scottish thinker, relied on conjectural history to lay out a hierarchy of societies from the lowest, savagery, upward through hunting societies and farming societies to Western European civilization, which he assumed to be the highest. In trying to explain where Native Americans came from, Kames theorized that God had created American Indians separately, and that there had been many separate creations (polygenesis), with each pair of humans created to suit a particular climate. Gallatin, who helped found the American Ethnological Society, put forward a theory of social evolution by which peoples progressed to a European-type civilization through certain stages. Unlike Kames, Gallatin rejected polygenesis and argued that Native Americans originally came from Asia.15

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Such conjectural history, however, was not the only use for ethnological information. By 1806 Great Britain had begun training colonial administrators in ethnological information to make them more effective in dealing with residents of its empire. Britain’s use of applied anthropologists in Africa in conjunction with administration of its colonial districts was so common that British applied anthropology in its early days was often referred to as “colonialist anthropology.” By 1864 the Netherlands included ethnological studies in training programs for its colonial administrators as well.16 Americans found applications for anthropology closer to home— among the many tribes of Native Americans who inhabited the forests and plains that colonists arriving from Europe sought to make their own. As anthropologist Regna Darnell has pointed out, Americanist anthropology put the study of Native American groups at its heart in part because of the “overwhelming presence (and resistance) of aboriginal peoples.” Darnell wrote, “At the very least, there was a need to forge a common history for aboriginal peoples and foreign invaders determined to become ‘natives’ themselves.” The need for Americans to establish an identity separate from that of the European nations from which they came also motivated early efforts in ethnology, according to Raymond Fogelson. As an exemplar of such nationalism, Fogelson points to the activities of Thomas Jefferson, including his writings defending the natural environment of the North American continent in the face of European claims of its inadequacies, his interest in Native American languages, and his excavation of an Indian burial mound near his home.17 Besides Jefferson’s individual efforts, the early nineteenth century saw the formation of groups to encourage linguistic, archaeological, and ethnologic work. The American Philosophical Society, for example, relied heavily on the word lists that Jefferson assembled as a base for its early studies of linguistics and ethnology. The American Antiquarian Society encouraged archaeological work, which focused on the identity of the builders of burial mounds and finding an American pre-history predating that of Europe. The American Ethnological Society was formed in 1842, but its members were

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mainly amateur armchair anthropologists rather than scientists. In the decade of the 1850s one of its members, Henry R. Schoolcraft, published six volumes on Native Americans and presented the books to President James Buchanan in hopes that a more humane government policy toward Indians would result from knowledge of their customs and beliefs. Lewis Henry Morgan studied the social evolution of the Senecas, focusing on kinship relations, and theorized that societies of humans progressed from savagery through barbarism and finally to civilization. His deterministic theory of evolution had a major influence on the early American anthropologists in the late nineteenth century.18 Starting in 1879 John W. Powell and the Bureau of American Ethnology that he headed gathered information on the cultures of Native Americans for use by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. Although Powell hoped the information the bureau gathered would help reduce conflicts between the government and Indians, much of the bureau’s work focused on recording the old civilizations of tribes and was not useful to the government. An exception was the work of James Mooney, a bureau field-worker who testified before Congress concerning the Ghost Dance religion in the 1890s.19 In the 1920s and 1930s anthropologists such as Bronislaw Malinowski and A. R. Radcliffe-Brown urged intensive studies of nonEuropean peoples and encouraged the use of such data by British colonial administrators in planning development programs. In the Netherlands, colonial personnel in training at Leiden and Utrecht universities were required to take courses in anthropology, and the Colonial Institute in Amsterdam sponsored research projects on the peoples of the Dutch West Indies. In the United States, Bureau of Indian Affairs commissioner John Collier created an anthropology unit in 1934 to try to bring the fruits of that field to bear on government policy toward Indians.20 Such participation in current problems was not widespread, nor without controversy. The creation of action anthropology forms part of the ongoing struggle within anthropology to define its relation to the world outside of academia and its relation to the people being

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studied. Throughout the history of anthropology, this definitional issue has appeared and reappeared dressed in the vocabulary of succeeding generations. In the 1920s and 1930s anthropologists asked each other whether they should be detached scientists or intellectuals committed to the improvement of society. Robert Lynd framed the issue as “Knowledge for What?” In the 1940s many anthropologists put aside that debate to participate in the war effort, leading to the emergence of applied anthropologists as a self-conscious branch within anthropology. The birth of action anthropology in 1948 occurred soon after applied anthropology had emerged with the formation of the Society for Applied Anthropology in 1941 and two decades prior to a crisis within the field over the roots of anthropology in imperialism. The crisis erupted in the 1960s as the social turmoil of that decade prompted anthropologists to ask themselves about the proper role for anthropology in a postcolonial world. Increasingly, anthropology came to be seen as a project of imperialism. First, in 1965 Project Camelot, an attempt by the United States Army to use anthropologists for a study of ways to suppress rebellions in Latin America, led to a reexamination of cooperation between anthropologists and the U.S. government. Within a few years of that scandal, anthropologists were shocked to learn that the U.S. military was using anthropologists to study the people of Thailand under a counterinsurgency program called Project Agile. As the war in Vietnam dragged on and became more controversial, social scientists increasingly examined their involvement with government work and questioned the notion of value-free social sciences. The issue surfaced in a public and contentious manner at the 1966 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, where members voted to condemn American tactics in Vietnam, including the use of napalm, chemical defoliants, bombing, and torture, and to demand an end to the war. The parliamentary procedures surrounding adoption of the resolution demonstrate the passion of the debate. American Anthropological Association members offered the resolution from the floor, only to see it ruled out of order by the chair, a maneuver that was then

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overturned by a vote of the assembly. The resolution was amended, narrowly survived being tabled, and then finally was adopted by more than two-thirds of those present.21 Anthropologists in 1968 brought the hot debate over the role of their profession in the world versus the demands of a value-free science to the pages of Current Anthropology. Writers’ criticisms of anthropology showed the breadth and depth of the emerging critique of the discipline in the context of the Vietnam War. In one article Gerald D. Berreman asked if anthropology was still alive or if it was dead to the world. He called the belief that anthropologists were value-free a myth. Berreman argued that non-involvement in the world’s problems actually was an expression of values because it supported the status quo. “For students of human behavior to decline comment on human behavior is irresponsible in a democracy, no matter how controversial the issue,” Berreman wrote. He urged anthropologists to choose research with an eye on its possible uses and implications, demanding the right to have a say in how the research is used or risk becoming “instruments for inhumanity in the guise of humane scientists.”22 In the same issue Gutorm Gjessing called value-free anthropology a delusion. He argued that the values of anthropologists so closely paralleled those of a capitalist establishment that the values merely became invisible. Furthermore, Gjessing urged anthropologists to develop a “problem-oriented” discipline that was relevant to the twentieth-century conditions of the people they studied rather than focusing on isolated field studies.23 Kathleen Gough, who along with her husband, David F. Aberle, had sponsored the anti-Vietnam resolution at the 1966 aaa meeting, suggested that anthropologists study modern issues, such as the effects of imperialism and comparisons of the effectiveness of foreign development programs funded by the United States and communist nations.24 The turmoil among American anthropologists over involvement with their nation’s military coincided with international pressures on anthropologists exerted by the former colonies in which anthropologists had once worked. Talal Asad captured the complaints of

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newly independent peoples regarding anthropologists in a book of essays he edited called Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter. Asad focused on the colonial roots of anthropology and how the unequal power relationships of colonialism created a safe and accessible space for anthropologists to work. He wrote: It is this encounter that gives the West access to cultural and historical information about the societies it has progressively dominated and thus not only generates a certain kind of universal understanding, but also reenforces the inequalities in capacity between the Europeanized elites and the ‘traditional’ masses in the Third World. We are today becoming increasingly aware of the fact that information and understanding produced by bourgeois disciplines like anthropology are acquired and used most readily by those with the greatest capacity for exploitation.25 When Asad and others spoke of anthropology being “used” to exploit the Third World, he was referring not primarily to colonial administrators who sought advice from anthropologists but to more fundamental connections. Asad said that although individual anthropologists may have opposed colonialism, “they chose to live professionally at peace” with colonialism and failed to either subject the system to serious study or envision alternatives to it. Other scholars saw the matter differently. In writing about anthropologists in the Sudan, Abdel Ghaffar M. Ahmed argued that while anthropologists were not policy makers, “administrators by combining their general knowledge with the anthropologist’s special knowledge of specific peoples were able to develop their policy over time. But it can be legitimately argued that anthropologists, being in such a position, did at least indirectly contribute to policy making.”26 Dell Hymes tried to answer these challenges to the integrity of the field with a call for anthropology to be re-fashioned to take into account the concerns of the people being studied. Conceding that the idea of a profession dedicated to studying other people had built-in

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problems, Hymes noted: “People everywhere today, especially (and rightly) third world peoples, increasingly resist being subjects of inquiry, especially for purposes not their own; and anthropologists increasingly find the business of inquiry and knowing about others a source of dilemmas.” He urged anthropologists to try to publish their works in the local language, provide reports of their work to the community being studied, train local researchers, and do studies that would be helpful to the people being studied.27 Vine Deloria Jr.’s attack on anthropologists added spice to this simmering stew of self-criticism and gave a distinctly American flavor to the charge of colonialism among anthropologists. As a Standing Rock Sioux, Deloria spoke from the perspective of one of the colonized. Yet, his attack described generalized, hypothetical encounters between Native Americans and anthropologists. His hyperbole focused on the anthropologists’ actions and presented the people being studied only as the people being studied, with little else to do than wait for the next anthropologist to show up and few defenses against the visitor’s nosy questions and prying eyes. Other Native Americans added their complaints about anthropologists at a meeting held in 1970 in response to Deloria’s work. Ron Evans, representing the Saskatchewan Society of Métis of Canada, complained about anthropologists who tried to obtain secret information on native religions, and said, “they do not accept us as people who have the right to secrets. They try to pry the secrets out of us.” Even Native Americans who were less hostile to anthropologists than Deloria admitted being ambivalent about the relationship. Agnes Savilla said she was thankful for the opportunity to work with anthropologists, and that all had treated her well. “Sometimes, though, you do feel like a little bug under a microscope when they come in and ask you questions. Some can be very foolish questions, but you have to remember that they do not know us,” she said.28 Native American scholars who commented at the conference included Beatrice Medicine, who complained about the way anthropologists represented Indians, making them seem static and primitive, and about how anthropologists avoided working with Indians

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in Native Studies programs because it seemed too much like applied anthropology and therefore “unscientific.” Alfonso Ortiz followed a more moderate tack, noting how some anthropologists have interrupted their own activities to help a tribe. He suggested that anthropologists attract criticism because they generally come to an Indian community alone and are more visible than other academics who have more influence with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, federal grant programs, and missionaries. Yet even he noted that much anthropological research is irrelevant, and many anthropologists are insensitive, acting as if they had a right to the information. Such behavior, he said, “also serves as painful reminder, however, that anthropology is a science born of imperialistic and colonial powers and that, at best, all too many of its practitioners still approach their tribal and peasant subjects with a neo-colonist attitude.” He described the problem of Indian-anthropologist relations as “truly a festering sore” that “will not just go away of its own accord.”29 At the end of the session, Jeannette Henry Costo said that Native Americans wanted the American Anthropological Association to develop a code of ethics for anthropologists. She signaled the beginning of a new relationship between Indians and anthropologists when she said, “Now, my friends, the Indians are beginning to talk back to the anthropologists.”30 Some of those talking back to anthropologists and other academics were themselves intellectuals. They have produced a body of work critiquing anthropology that continues to grow, both in size and in scope. Beatrice Medicine amplified the perspectives she voiced earlier in Learning to Be an Anthropologist and Remaining Native. The articles Devon A. Mihesuah edited for Natives and Academia: Researching and Writing about American Indians question not so much the presence of anthropologists or other academics such as historians but their research techniques. Mihesuah complains about scholars who fail to include Indian voices in their work because they doubt the reliability of oral history or do not look hard enough for knowledgeable people to interview. Other scholars in the volume object to tribal members who divulge tribal knowledge, whether by

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cooperating with researchers or through their own writings. Even fiction writers come in for criticism. Paula Gunn Allen, for example, admits that reading parts of the novel Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko “makes my skin crawl” because of the details it reveals. While refraining from criticizing other Native Americans, Donald L. Fixico does ask scholars to acknowledge a code of ethical responsibility for dealing with tribes that includes visiting Indian sources in their homeland and trying to think like an Indian by understanding the logic and ideology they use to construct reality.31 Non-Indian scholars have contributed to this debate. Rachel A. Bonney and J. Anthony Paredes offered a regional perspective on the debate with articles they assembled about anthropologists working among the Cherokee and other southern tribes in Anthropologists and Indians in the New South. Thomas Biolsi and Larry J. Zimmerman brought the issue of academic-Indian relations up to date with Indians and Anthropologists: Vine Deloria, Jr., and the Critique of Anthropology. Going beyond repeating the criticisms of the past, Biolsi and Zimmerman include articles looking for how Deloria’s critique affected anthropologists, past and future, as well as how some anthropologists have worked cooperatively with Indians.32 Admittedly, this work fits rather awkwardly into the literature on the relationship between native people and academics. Written by a Euro-American, it nevertheless attempts to give voice to an Indian critique of anthropology that differs both in its timing and source from these recent works by indigenous academics. Meskwaki (and most likely other Native Americans) began talking back to anthropologists much earlier than the crisis in anthropology and Deloria’s 1969 critique. The challenges they presented and the accommodations they demanded constituted a critique of anthropology by grassroots Native Americans, not Indian intellectuals. This critique was not an abstract statement, but a question delivered by people with their own contexts, personalities, and agendas—Why are you here? What good is anthropology anyway? The Meskwaki critique of anthropology came fully twenty years before Indian leaders voiced it publicly and loudly. The Meskwaki critique suggests that underneath

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the hyperbole and polemics Deloria used in his attack on anthropologists were real complaints that grassroots Native Americans had been registering with anthropologists for years. Deloria reflected, magnified, and amplified those complaints to gain a public forum for their discussion. In constructing his highly readable account of the Indian-anthropologist encounter, Deloria also oversimplified it. This work attempts to recover some of the complexity of such encounters. In this book the “other” emerged as complete a person as the colonial “master,” with a context and agenda, not at all awed by the colonial master but able to co-opt the colonial master into serving the other’s needs and agendas. The master and the other were sometimes friends rather than always engaged in an intellectual tug-of-war. Instead of always being in charge, the colonial master sometimes felt uneasy, unsure, off-balance, not in control, even manipulated. The power relationship was more fluid, not residing solely in the white colonial master. Rather than reacting to the colonial master, the other sometimes called the tune. The colonial master came away, not just with information for a book or article, but changed. The colonial other cooperated not just in the production of knowledge, but also in the creation of a new method of doing anthropology in which people, who are different but also equal, meet to carry out an exchange of services and friendships. Instead of the encounter adulterating a “pure” native culture, the encounter adulterated a “pure” science, forcing anthropology, in this one instance at least, to become an innovative science that re-created itself as a result of its contact with Meskwaki cultural expectations, much as native cultures change and adapt to other outside influences. Fitting an encounter between Native Americans and anthropologists into the framework of a colonial encounter is ironic in this case—ironic because the concept of internal colonialism thus implied was one of the byproducts of this encounter. A student of Sol Tax, Bob Thomas, was one of the first scholars to think of American Indians as being in a colonial situation analogous to that of colonies of European nations in Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere.

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Sources This project was blessed with a cornucopia of written and oral history sources, but their use opened up an equally bountiful supply of issues regarding the production and reading of texts, representations of others in fieldnotes, selectivity in remembering, writing, and recording events, and so on. Before his death in 1995, Sol Tax deposited his personal papers with the University of Chicago’s Regenstein Library. The 147 linear feet of documents comprise papers from throughout his life, beginning with his early years in Milwaukee. A significant portion of these papers deals with the establishment of the Meskwaki project. Other records in the Regenstein Library pertaining to this subject include Tax’s correspondence with Robert Redfield, his mentor and eventual colleague at the University of Chicago, and the records of the Anthropology Department itself. Tax donated the project papers to the National Anthropological Archives (naa) at the Smithsonian in Washington dc, with copies of many of them microfilmed and kept at the University of Chicago Regenstein. This mass of documents includes much material gathered by students at the settlement including fieldnotes, monthly reports, formal papers for course work or publication, interviews with whites and Meskwaki, and results of educational and personality tests given to Meskwaki. Besides material that the students gathered, the papers include a variety of other types of written materials—letters to Bureau of Indian Affairs officials or from Tax to students; financial records of the program; newspaper articles that were redacted or copied; magazine articles about the project; papers written by students for class credit; transcripts of class discussions; memos from university officials to Tax about the project; official reports from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and so on. Tax also donated to the naa the papers from a second, smaller action anthropology at Fort Berthold, North Dakota, and his papers dealing with the American Indian Chicago Conference. Among all these documents, the most problematic from the point

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of view of a historian or an anthropologist is the collection of fieldnotes. From the perspective of anthropologists, reading someone else’s fieldnotes, or having someone else read one’s own, approaches invasion of privacy. Anthropologist Jean E. Jackson surveyed seventy anthropologists about fieldnotes and found that talking about the subject is “complex, touchy, and disturbing for most of us.” Part of the mix of emotions regarding fieldnotes is fear that notes will be misused by law enforcement, Jackson said, but concerns go deeper than that. Jackson found that talking about fieldnotes can bring out positive and negative feelings in some anthropologists, ranging from pride in fieldnotes as an emblem of their professionalism to disappointment, guilt, or anxiety about the possibility that their notes are worthless.33 Another anthropologist, Simon Ottenberg, associates fieldnotes with childhood. As a graduate student, he found that the negative comments written on his fieldnotes by the wife of his professor, Melville Herskovits, made him feel like a child being corrected. Furthermore, the notes reminded him that at the beginning of his fieldwork his status was similar to that of a child learning the culture. Yet, Ottenberg said, the fieldnotes also show his cultural growth within the community he studied and chart his success as an anthropologist. He said, “I sometimes fantasize about persons using my notes after my death and even think of providing an explanatory guide to them.”34 If Tax had any qualms about letting others see his fieldnotes, he apparently mastered them early in his career. In the summer of 1931, Tax participated in an anthropology field school in New Mexico under the direction of Ruth Benedict, who required students to share their notes in the belief that a diversity of views would produce a fuller picture of a culture.35 When Tax taught anthropology in Mexico City in 1942–44, he also required students to share notes. In fact, Tax went even further than Benedict had, allowing students to read his notes and diary, prompting his mentor, Robert Redfield, to admit he was “greatly respectful” of Tax’s ability to let students read his diary even when he admitted in it that he had made mistakes in run-

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ning the course.36 Tax continued his openness regarding fieldnotes in the Meskwaki project, allowing students access to his fieldnotes from his graduate work at Tama in the 1930s, as well as to the notes of other students. As Ottenberg noted, these notes that are being shared or not shared exist in several different forms. He uses the term “scratch notes,” for example, to identify the snippets of information he wrote down during interviews or observations and later wrote or typed up into fieldnotes. For Ottenberg, the process was highly selective, as he sometimes completely overlooked some aspects of an interview and concentrated on others. Nearly as important as the scratch notes and typed fieldnotes for Ottenberg were the head notes, consisting of the many impressions and experiences that were never written down but remained in his memory. “My head notes and my written notes are in constant dialogue, and in this sense the field experience does not stop. Things that I once read in my fieldnotes in one way I now read in another. Evidence that I thought excellent, I now question,” Ottenberg wrote.37 In the case of the Chicago anthropologists, the head notes for the most part are fading or gone. Interviews with five associates of Sol Tax knocked the cobwebs off some of the head notes. In some cases an anthropologist clearly recalled incidents that had been recorded in the fieldnotes fifty years earlier. Other times they had no recollection at all of incidents they had described. The passage of time, along with disuse of the head notes, has interrupted the dialogue between the head notes and fieldnotes, leaving the historian primarily with the fieldnotes with which to work. The fieldnotes left behind by the twenty-eight students who participated in the Chicago project vary in quality, quantity, and form. Most students called their daily writings field journals or field diaries. Others supplemented those with typed versions, usually based on memory, of formal interviews. Some, like Robert Rietz, appear not to have kept a regular diary but rather produced interviews or capsules of significant incidents that are scattered throughout the files, making it difficult to ascertain any sort of consistent theme

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in his relations with Meskwaki or changes in his thinking.38 Fred Gearing also did not so much keep a diary as produce sequential summaries of contacts with people or of events over several days. After the 1952 powwow, Gearing began his fieldnotes on the event with the statement, “The following items were all gathered during the days [sic] proceedings and the days during which the Powwow was in session.”39 Tax instructed the students to write up their fieldnotes daily, and some did so faithfully. Some of the anthropologists did their writing in the morning, when they were fresher mentally, even though the handwritten notes taken the day before might have lost some of their meaning. Others wrote at the end of the day regardless of how tired they were. For example, after a five-hour visit with some settlement residents who came by one evening, Lisa Redfield Peattie and Lloyd Fallers stayed up and “threw together some notes on this interview, and staggered off to bed” around 3 a.m.40 Some notes seem to be missing, including those from two students who were among the most controversial of the participants—Eugene Fugle and Richard Kluckhohn, both of whom are now deceased. There are no notes from Kluckhohn, and notes only for one of the two summers that Fugle spent at the settlement. It is impossible to determine whether they withheld their notes from the archives or if Tax or someone else deleted them.41 Besides the questions of what is or is not in the record, who wrote it, and when, the question remains how to read what is there. Rena Lederman has noted that even when an anthropologist uses his or her own notes, “that activity shows fieldnotes to be not a fixed repository of data from the field but a reinterpretable and contradictory patchwork of perspectives.”42 Fieldnotes are even more reinterpretable and fragmentary when someone other than the author uses them. Many aspects of the ways fieldnotes were produced and reproduced by the Chicago students provide support for Lederman’s perspective, including the cryptic nature of some comments, evidence of collaboration between or among students, and differences in writing style.

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The nature of the anthropology project at the Meskwaki settlement also influenced the production of fieldnotes by limiting the time available to work on them, potentially restraining criticism of other students or Tax, and reducing the novelty of the fieldwork experience. Once the project became oriented toward action as well as research, the students maintained an open-door policy at their residence. Occasionally students complained that having to entertain Meskwaki who stopped by to visit in the evenings interrupted journal writing. On other occasions students tempered the comments they made about each other, perhaps aware that all could read them. Another problem with the nature of the project was that students read the fieldnotes from previous years. As a result, those who went to the settlement in the later years tended to become jaded or even cynical. For example, they occasionally dismissed certain people whom they interviewed, noting as one student did that one man “keeps repeating the same things each year.”43 All the cautions that a reader of the fieldnotes must keep in mind, however, do not lead to the conclusion that the fieldnotes are worthless. It means instead that the fieldnotes cannot be taken at face value. They must be read against and in conjunction with each other and material gleaned from Tax’s university files, Bureau of Indian Affairs files, and information from Meskwaki. They must be read several times so that subtle themes become more apparent and isolated comments can be put into context. In short, the fieldnotes should be read as texts rather than as a record of indisputable facts. Toward Meskwaki Perspectives Not surprisingly, statements about what Meskwaki did and said, along with the students’ inferences or interpretations, make up the bulk of the fieldnote material. The fieldnotes, however, provide only the anthropologists’ perspective of what was happening between them and individual Meskwaki. Thus, Meskwaki viewpoints in the fieldnotes are highly mediated. It is far from certain whether any Meskwaki would agree with the interpretation of his or her behav-

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ior offered in the fieldnotes. Part of this book, however, involves the reaction of the students to Meskwaki cultural expectations, and the fieldnotes do portray the students’ struggles to understand those expectations, reconcile them with the scientific demands of anthropology, and satisfy them. In some cases, they even reveal students’ rejection of those expectations. Using the fieldnotes in this way is, in a sense, using them backward. Rather than trying only to learn about Meskwaki, the goal also is to gain some insight into how the students were reacting to their hosts. Reading the notes backward makes the students seem to be less in control of the situation than critics of anthropology might assume. The Meskwaki had the students on edge, measuring their words carefully, taking into account how their every action would affect their standing with community residents. The image of a colonial master who strides into the midst of colonial subjects and steals their cultural secrets will not be found in these fieldnotes. Instead, there is self-doubt, frustration, and puzzlement. Whether the Meskwaki intended to make the visitors feel that way is beside the point. The highly filtered nature of Meskwaki perspectives of the Chicago project contained in the fieldnotes, however, does not mean that the fieldnotes are useless in getting at something of how Meskwaki experienced the encounter. The fieldnotes were used in conjunction with oral history interviews to try to recapture Meskwaki perspectives. In some cases, Meskwaki were asked to interpret a portion of the fieldnotes. For example, several Meskwaki were shown fieldnotes recording the incident that opens this book in which tribal chairman Edward Davenport questioned Tax about the value of anthropology. They commented that Davenport’s doubts about the uses of anthropology were commonly held by members of the community, both then and now. Although the fieldnotes from the project are available in repositories that are open to the public, having the fieldnotes used in this manner was a new experience for the Meskwaki. Scholars who worked with the Meskwaki previously declined to share the notes with members of the community. On the other hand, I showed cop-

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ies of fieldnotes to members of the community in order to check my interpretations of an event, to jog someone’s memory, or simply because I thought they might like to see them. In one case, I copied a portion of a 1948 interview with the father of one of the men I interviewed in 2001. The early interview described how the father lovingly held and played with his son as he talked to the anthropologist. I thought the son, a grown man, would like to see how affectionate his father, now deceased, was toward him. Indeed, he did. Sometimes, I deleted the names of individual Meskwaki from the fieldnotes if I thought that the information they contained was derogatory and that including the names might only cause hard feelings within the community. Clearly, Meskwaki have every right to see whatever is in the fieldnotes since Tax deposited them in a public repository. I, however, do not have to be the one spreading derogatory information, no matter how well known it already may be in the community. An exception was when I shared fieldnotes with tribal historian Johnathan Buffalo because I thought that as a professionally trained historian, he might find the names valuable for his research, and I knew that he would be discreet in using the information. When I did so, I made clear that I was not agreeing with the sentiments expressed. Sharing the fieldnotes in this way did indeed provide Meskwaki with some insight into part of their past. One incident discussed in fieldnotes concerned a student’s encounter with the doctor who provided medical care to the Meskwaki community under contract with the federal government. The student’s notes record the doctor as saying that he had used a fresh needle to give her an allergy shot, but that he generally saved used needles for giving Meskwaki children their inoculations. Johnathan Buffalo included a small article based on the fieldnotes in the tribal newsletter, noting that the used needles may have accounted for the fear of shots that tribal members had as children.44 Copies of photographs from the settlement in the 1950s found in archives also were given to Buffalo for his use. Fortunately, the representations of Meskwaki depicted in the fieldnotes are not the only source for how Meskwaki remembered

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the experience of hosting the anthropologists. Although most of the generation of Meskwaki who were adults between 1948 and 1958 had died, many who were in their teens and early twenties were still living early in the twenty-first century. Interviews with about twenty-five individuals provided the core of Meskwaki reaction to the project and revealed memories that ranged from intimate contact with the anthropologists to little knowledge of or concern for their presence. Unlike the Chicago students whose university bought a house on the edge of the settlement, I had no place to live nearby and could not enter into the life of the community in the ways that they did. I confined my interviewing to a series of three-and four-day visits over eighteen months. Noon meals at the Meskwaki Senior Center provided a convenient meeting place for interviews. The process of arranging and carrying out those interviews paralleled in many ways the process that the anthropologists used in carrying out their research. In other areas, however, it diverged, reflecting changes in the relationship between Native Americans and academics that have occurred in the half-century since the Chicago project. While Tax had asked the Bureau of Indian Affairs rather than the Meskwaki for permission to do research at the Meskwaki community, I began my project by contacting the tribal historian, Johnathan Buffalo, to solicit his advice on how to proceed. Based on his advice, I wrote to Tribal Executive Director Larry Lasley and then met with Lasley to describe my project. Later, I was introduced to the tribal council, whose members welcomed me to the community. I also received approval from the University of Michigan’s Institutional Review Board for the methods I used to recruit people to interview and to obtain their informed consent for interviews. Chicago anthropologists had no such concerns, as concern for people being studied did not figure prominently into the planning of research projects until 1981, when the U.S. government adopted regulations for protecting research participants in federally funded research.45 In other ways I felt myself making the same mistakes in etiquette that anthropologists had admitted making when they wrote in their field journals fifty years earlier. Like the students, I also learned

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about Meskwaki expectations for give-and-take in a relationship. As I asked community residents about how they had manipulated the students to meet their own needs, I began keeping a list of the things Meskwaki asked of me—copies of articles, help proofreading an article, information on how to obtain grants for library books, and so on. No request was unreasonable or made in the form of a demand. Some requests were made subtly, as in, “I sure would like to have a copy of that.” If it turned out I could not fulfill what was asked of me, I made it a point to explain what I had done in attempting to meet the request to avoid being labeled as one who failed to keep promises. One request clearly demonstrated the differences in working with Native Americans in the twenty-first century versus fifty years earlier. Tribal Executive Director Larry Lasley explicitly asked how Meskwaki might be compensated for their intellectual property rights to the material that I was gathering. Having anticipated the request based on the advice of members of my dissertation committee, I committed to sharing equally any proceeds from my work. Like the students, I also worried a lot about what settlement residents thought of me and why a few declined to talk to me, but I comforted myself with the knowledge that other people seemed glad to see me when I came back for a visit. Conversely, I also marveled at those who did talk to me, wondering why they would do it and whether my own community would be as hospitable to such a nosy visitor. The topic I was studying no doubt smoothed my way into the community. Rather than seeking tribal religious secrets or knowledge of an ancient past, I was looking for ways that Meskwaki had interacted creatively with whites as a modern community. I also gained some small insight into the challenges faced by a person from another culture living in a world dominated by white culture. As I prepared for each visit, I reminded myself of the mistakes I had made previously in approaching interviewees and tried to figure out how to avoid them. I became conscious of having to adjust my behavior to a different culture, of crossing a cultural boundary. I watched what I said and how I said it. I read a study on differences in Meskwaki and white etiquette written by Lucinda Sangree in 1955

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to learn a little about how to behave among community residents of that generation. It dawned on me how difficult it must be to cross that boundary every day, as does a settlement youth who attends high school in Tama or an adult who works in a nearby town. I also appreciated how relieved they must be at the end of the day to return to a place where they can let their guard down. The experience increased my respect for those who make such cultural crossings and my understanding of why some might refuse to do so. I was glad I did it, if only on a few occasions. I understand better why Tax came to the conclusion that Indians would not disappear into the white mainstream anytime soon. The Meskwaki, in fact, have remained distinct from whites for more than three hundred years. This book, however, focuses more on recent Meskwaki history than its distant past. Chapter 1 explores the condition of the Meskwaki settlement in the 1930s and 1940s, when Tax first visited it and when he began sending students there to do fieldwork training. Chapter 2 considers what in Tax’s background and academic training prepared him for the encounter with the Meskwaki, what his personal relationships with individual Meskwaki were like, and what his position was in the internal struggle of the anthropology profession regarding the proper role of anthropologists in the world. Chapter 3 describes the operation of the Chicago project and its beginning in late June 1948 as a way to train anthropology students in fieldwork. This chapter pays particular attention to the early days of the project, when its focus shifted from studying Meskwaki to helping them, and tries to uncover Meskwaki participation in the creation of action anthropology. How action anthropology operated in practice is the primary concern of chapter 4. It explores the difficulties students faced in meeting the twin goals of the project—helping and researching at the same time—and how the relationship between students and settlement residents ebbed and flowed. Chapter 5 considers why relations between the anthropological party and the community soured several years into the project.

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The extra ethical responsibilities assumed by action anthropologists are examined through several incidents involving students and Meskwaki in the summer of 1954, along with how the students struggled to resolve them and what settlement residents thought of the resolutions. The chapter ends with the beginning of a rebound in relations in the form of a scholarship program Tax started for settlement youth. Chapter 6 examines the results of the Chicago project for the Meskwaki, the anthropologists, and the broader area of federal Indian policy. It asks whether Tax’s rhetoric about action anthropology matched the results of the programs carried out on the settlement, such as an arts and crafts manufacturing project and a scholarship program. The chapter asks how Meskwaki reacted to those programs and how they remember the programs. Beyond that, it considers broader consequences of the Chicago project, including its impact on Sol Tax’s ideas about Native Americans and about federal policy toward them. The chapter considers Tax’s involvement in the 1961 American Indian Chicago Conference in light of the tenets of action anthropology. An epilogue provides a twenty-first-century view of the settlement and tries to determine ways the settlement has and has not changed since the Chicago project. How the project affected the careers of the individual anthropologists involved and how the field of anthropology was affected by it are part of the epilogue. It considers in what ways action anthropology anticipated Deloria’s complaints and how influential action anthropology was in moving the field toward greater sensitivity toward the people anthropologists studied. The epilogue also asks whether anthropology has successfully dealt with the problems between academics and the people being studied that action anthropology tried to address. Conclusion No doubt other Native Americans interacted with anthropologists the way the Meskwaki did. Perhaps other anthropologists experienced some of the same feelings as did the University of Chicago

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students in response. A new way of doing anthropology, however, did not emerge from those contacts. The difference in this case was Sol Tax’s willingness to make things happen and the Meskwaki persistence in holding him to it. Ultimately, he was not influential enough within the field to head off Vine Deloria Jr.’s complaints, nor to spur quick change in the field of anthropology. In many ways, Tax and the Meskwaki were ahead of their time.

1. Making the Modern Meskwaki Nation

In 1934 the four hundred residents of the Meskwaki settlement were as much in need of a new deal as the rest of the nation. They lived in small, wood-framed houses without electricity or running water, as did many of their white neighbors in the days before Franklin D. Roosevelt’s rural electric cooperatives lit up the countryside. Meskwaki women drew water from outside hand pumps and carried it to their homes, did their washing by hand, and chopped the wood they burned to stave off the bitter cold of long Iowa winters. Still, their two-room houses often were cold. In warm weather people compensated for their small houses in part by the widespread use of summer houses—rectangular pavilions with plank floors and benches along the walls—where families slept, lounged, and ate during pleasant weather. Women did much of their food preparation and other work outside beneath a cook shack—a roof of tree branches supported by four poles. Even twenty years later, anthropology students who stopped by for interviews sometimes took note of a stew simmering in an iron pot suspended over a fire by a chain.1 Many families lacked their own wells, and some had to carry their water a mile or more. Washday was particularly difficult for women with large families, who did the washing outside in the summer in a tub or, in some cases, with the aid of a gas-powered washing machine. “When I have to wash . . . hard work,” said a mother of nine who had only a washtub for laundry. The settlement school tried to make up for the lack of indoor plumbing by offering weekly baths for children. Although white medical care paid for by the federal government was available from a Tama doctor, some people preferred

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their own cures and picked special plants to make teas or soups for stomach aches and other ailments. Despite the hard conditions, the Meskwaki community grew steadily during the 1930s, adding an average net of ten people a year from 1934 to 1944.2 Some men farmed portions of the tribe’s 3,253 acres, but the tribe’s informal land assignment system over the years had resulted in wide variances in land distribution. A few families had as much as 60 acres of land while others had only enough for a homestead and garden. Even the larger holdings were not viable farming operations given the glutted commodity markets of the 1930s. The jobs in surrounding towns that had been the backbone of the Meskwaki cash economy mostly vanished when the Great Depression erased much of the nation’s economic activity. In the late 1930s, as the low prices of the Depression-era farm economy choked off business activity in rural areas, half of the Meskwaki depended on federal relief. Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace, an Iowan, noted that the Depression left the cash-poor Meskwaki with little to live on besides corn, beans, and squash.3 In 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt named John Collier to be head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (bia), and the same year Collier promised Native Americans a new deal to parallel that being designed for the rest of society. The centerpiece of the Indian New Deal, the Indian Reorganization Act, passed in 1934 and was intended to give tribes more independence in running their own affairs, greater religious freedom, and more ways to improve their local economies. On the Meskwaki settlement the Indian New Deal also brought immediate relief in the form of Civilian Conservation Corps (ccc) jobs and paychecks to some people. Young men planted a pine forest as the start of a timber program, installed erosion control measures on Meskwaki farmland, and built a road three-fourths of a mile long. ccc workers also started, but did not finish, a stone building on Meskwaki land bordering U.S. Highway 30 that was designed to be used for selling souvenirs to passersby on the transcontinental highway. In 1937 the Works Progress Administration set up a cannery that helped women preserve a portion of their garden produce for winter consumption. It

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closed, however, when the government employee who started it died. For those without jobs, the Indian New Deal also brought government relief in the form of surplus commodities such as butter and flour that were distributed free to needy families. Even with the assistance of the Indian New Deal, Meskwaki families had only about $500 a year to live on in the mid-1930s, less than a quarter of the $2,085 average gross income reported for white Iowa farm families.4 While Meskwaki shared the economic struggles of their white neighbors, the settlement continued to exist in a fashion that kept the Meskwaki culturally, as well as physically, separate in many ways. Little intermarriage with whites had occurred, except in the nineteenth century, although some Meskwaki had married Winnebago or other Indians. Few of the Meskwaki were Christian despite the presence of a United Presbyterian mission near the settlement since 1883 and occasional forays onto the settlement by missionaries of other denominations. Most people continued to worship in the traditional Meskwaki fashion with a liturgy that revolved around sacred bundles held by clans within the tribe, feasts for honoring the dead, adoptions to replace a deceased family member, and so on. A few men still fasted for visions, although the practice was beginning to decline. About three out of every four children grew up speaking Meskwaki and learned English only when they entered the Sac and Fox Day School on the settlement. Although adults had jobs in nearby towns and worked with or for whites, some young children were so unaccustomed to seeing white people that they ran into the house when they saw one approach. One man said he was eighteen years old before he ever visited the town of Tama just a mile away. Many elderly people—between 10 and 15 percent of the entire community—spoke only Meskwaki and could not speak or write English. A few storekeepers in the nearby town of Tama spoke a little Meskwaki to accommodate them.5 Who the Meskwaki Are and How They Got to Iowa One factor that may have facilitated Meskwaki separateness was the fact that, unlike most American Indian tribes, they do not live on a

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reservation. They call their home a “settlement” because, since 1857, they have owned the land themselves and paid property taxes on it, just as their white neighbors do. The story of how this came to be forms an important part of Meskwaki identity and has its roots in the community’s deep past.6 An Algonquin woodlands tribe, the Meskwaki had trod a zigzag path of defeat and resurgence before ending up in eastern Iowa. Meskwaki who know their oral history say their ancestors originally lived on the Atlantic seaboard, perhaps in present-day Maine. By the seventeenth century, the Meskwaki were living in Michigan but left there possibly due to repeated attack from the Iroquois. When the first recorded contact with whites came in 1666 or 1667, the Meskwaki were living around Green Bay, Wisconsin, and relying on an economy based on small-scale farming and hunting.7 In the face of constant friction with the French and their Indian allies through the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the Meskwaki had moved south from Wisconsin into Illinois, along with their close relations, the Sac. By 1750 the Sac were living along the east bank of the Mississippi River in present-day Illinois, and the Meskwaki were living along the west bank in what is now Iowa. The tribes lost most of their land as a result of the 1832 military conflict involving the Sac leader Black Hawk, who had refused to vacate land in Illinois allegedly relinquished to the U.S. government in an 1804 treaty. Although most Meskwaki had stayed out of the fighting, the federal government punished them along with their relations and pushed them west again into central Iowa along the Des Moines and Iowa rivers. By 1842 the tribe was deeply in debt to white traders and had to sell the last of their land to the U.S. government to settle their accounts. The purchase agreement called for the Meskwaki to move west again, this time to Kansas, to live on a reservation with the Sac.8 Many Meskwaki never left Iowa for Kansas. They camped in woods along riverbanks, hunted, and sometimes even begged for food to get by. Of those who did move west, many drifted back for a variety of reasons, especially dislike of an effort by the federal government

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to divide their reservation land into individual homesteads for families to farm. Each spring federal troops would try to round up all the Indians they could find in Iowa and force them back to Kansas. The spectacle aroused the sympathy of white settlers in the area, who petitioned the governor of Iowa to allow them to stay. Gov. James W. Grimes agreed, and on July 13, 1856, the Iowa Legislature approved a measure permitting the Meskwaki to stay in Iowa and asking the War Department to pay them their share of the Sac and Fox annuities.9 Using money saved from the annuities they received in Kansas, Meskwaki representatives on July 13, 1857, purchased 80 acres of land along the Iowa River for $1,000 and took up residence there. The governor of Iowa, not the federal government, held the land in trust for them. The bureau, in fact, refused to recognize the Meskwaki as a distinct tribe and paid their share of annuities to the Sac in Kansas. Finally, in 1866, the federal government agreed to begin paying annuities to the Meskwaki but recognized them only as a band of the Sac and Fox, rather than as the Meskwaki. The Indian service assigned agents to the Meskwaki, but they usually were local people who did little but pay out the annuities. In 1873 the government appointed a man to teach the Meskwaki how to farm, and in 1876 it opened a school. Few Meskwaki showed interest in such innovations. Gradually, the tribe bought more land until the settlement reached 3,253 acres in 1915. The community celebrates the initial land purchase each July 13 as a holiday, often holding Proclamation Day ceremonies, to which heirs of the white family who sold them the first 80 acres of land are invited. The Meskwaki and their land remained under state jurisdiction until the end of the nineteenth century, when Indian rights groups successfully pushed for the transfer of jurisdiction to the federal government. That was completed in 1908.10 Because of their peculiar history, the Meskwaki avoided the federal government’s allotment policy contained in the Dawes Act of 1887. After the passage of the act, the federal government had chopped up most reservations into parcels of land that individual Indian families were expected to farm for their livelihood, and then sold the excess to whites. The policy devastated the land base of most tribes, as total

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Indian land holdings shrank from 132 million acres when the policy began in 1887 to 52 million in 1934 when Bureau of Indian Affairs Commissioner John Collier halted it. Since the Meskwaki settlement in Iowa was under state, not federal, jurisdiction in the late nineteenth century, the federal government had no authority to impose the allotment policy. After the Meskwaki were returned to federal supervision, the federal government tried in 1910, 1916, and 1923 to force the Meskwaki to divide up the land among individuals. Each attempt failed, however, due to Meskwaki resistance and the government’s uncertainty about whether it had the power to force such a change on a tribe that owned its land.11 Instead, the community retained its system of assigning lands in which individual families picked out parcels on which to farm or build houses, and others tacitly accepted their rights to use the parcels. Gradually, families began to pass on to their heirs the land they had selected, and the heirs continued to farm or live on it. Actually, few Meskwaki were interested in being farmers. Although the settlement was surrounded by the fertile black soil from which white farmers annually extracted the world’s highest yields of corn and soybeans, more than half of the Meskwaki’s 3,253 acres of land were unsuitable for farming. Much settlement land was either wooded, hilly, or both, or in the flood plain of the Iowa River, which regularly rose out of its banks to wash out crops and force families temporarily to higher ground. A few families engaged in commercial farming, but most families maintained only large gardens that provided an important share of their food. Instead of farming, many Meskwaki sought jobs in the town of Tama, about a mile away. By 1929 about half of the Meskwaki men had jobs at small industries in the area, such as a paper mill or wood-preserving plant.12 Another source of cash for the Meskwaki was the annual powwow held on the Meskwaki settlement for four days each August. The commercial enterprise evolved in the 1870s, shortly after the Meskwaki’s return to Iowa, when members of the tribe invited local whites to watch the Meskwaki’s annual harvest ceremonies. A local newspaper account contended that in 1912 a white suggested that

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the Meskwaki set up bales of hay for seating and charge admission, but one Meskwaki version is that some young men of the tribe came up with the idea and asked the approval of Chief Pushetonequa to start it. Even though some settlement residents laughed at the idea, the dancers collected a few hundred dollars when the first powwow was over.13 Over the years the powwow became both an important social gathering for the community and a commercial enterprise that drew thousands of tourists who paid to watch Meskwaki dancing. The performances excluded dances associated with the religious ceremonies of the community. The Meskwaki never put those on display. Instead, the dances were public ones that celebrated a successful harvest or hunt, depicted warriors in battle, or illustrated other such secular themes. As time went on, Meskwaki began to incorporate dances from other tribes. Tourists apparently could not appreciate the difference, and through the early 1950s the powwow was well attended. Proceeds from ticket sales were divided among Meskwaki based on the amount they participated in the event. An adult who worked all four days of the powwow could earn more than $20, and a child half that. Families made additional money by setting up stands to sell refreshments or souvenirs.14 Perhaps because of the cultural separateness maintained by many in the community, the idea of white-style education for children was a frequent source of controversy, both internally and with outsiders. In 1897 the federal government built a boarding school for Meskwaki children in nearby Toledo, but after a year of operation, only four children were enrolled. The Bureau of Indian Affairs officials summoned the chief, Pushetonequa, and three council members to Washington to discuss the future of the school. The bureau offered Pushetonequa federal recognition as chief and an annual salary of $500 if he would enroll his children in the boarding school and encourage others to do the same. When Pushetonequa accepted the offer and sent his children to school, some Meskwaki reacted by forming an opposition group, called the Old Bears, objecting to Pushetonequa’s status as a federally appointed chief.15

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Meskwaki schools were the center of controversy again in the 1930s, but this time it was an attempt to close schools that sparked the dispute. The federal government had replaced the boarding school with two day schools on the settlement, but in 1934 the Meskwaki’s bia agent decided to close them. Instead of settlement schools, Meskwaki children would be sent to a public school with white children in the nearby town of Montour. Residents of the settlement were furious. The council threatened to blockade the settlement roads to keep school buses from entering the community and taking their children to the town school. Sol Tax, then a University of Chicago anthropology graduate student visiting the settlement to do research on his dissertation, decided to try to help. Without consulting any Meskwaki, Tax wrote to bia commissioner John Collier to take the Indians’ side in the dispute. In his letter to Collier, Tax proposed a compromise: the Meskwaki children would go to school with the white children in Montour that fall, and the bia would promise to reopen the settlement schools the following year. While the Indians would have had to make a temporary concession, in the long run Tax’s compromise would have allowed them to keep their own schools. In the letter, Tax described himself as “a personal friend of many of the Indians at Tama,” an admission of the difficulty of remaining objective in the field despite the norm of scientific detachment imposed by his profession in that era.16 Tax did not know Collier and feared his letter might be regarded as presumptuous, but the bia acted swiftly on the matter. bia director of education W. Carson Ryan Jr. notified the Meskwaki’s agent in North Dakota to leave for Tama immediately and settle the dispute. He passed along Tax’s proposed compromise. In the end, the children stayed in their own school, as the Indians desired. Ryan noted that the Indians’ motives might have been mixed, as one man on the settlement was trying to get the bus contract for $10 more than the lowest bid. Still, Collier’s rapid response to Tax illustrates the value he placed on anthropology’s potential contribution to the Indian service’s responsibility toward Native Americans, as would be clear in his effort to use anthropologists in the formulation of the Indian New Deal.17

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Meskwaki Government Of more lasting significance to Meskwaki than the relief programs was the new form of government that the Indian New Deal brought to the settlement. The Meskwaki experience with its new government presents a ground-level view of the effects of the Indian Reorganization Act (ira) on Native American communities. In all, 181 tribes with 129,750 members voted to come under the act, while 77 tribes representing 86,365 Indians rejected it. Although the Meskwaki saga deals with the efforts of just one tribe to reorganize, it may well illustrate broader themes. The story reveals how Native American and European ideas of authority and governance clashed in the implementation of the ira. It shows how John Collier personally shepherded tribes toward inclusion under the act, how he experimented with new approaches to Indian policy, such as using the expertise of social scientists, and how staff shortages prevented more effective assistance to Indian communities. It also puts opposition to the act in terms of day-to-day, bread-and-butter issues for Native Americans, replacing the vague, simplistic characterization of the struggle as “progressive” versus “conservative” factions often employed by Bureau of Indian Affairs agents. The story of Meskwaki organization under the Indian Reorganization Act is one local version of the national story of the revolution in Indian policy that John Collier attempted in the 1930s. It demonstrates that occasionally small, little-known tribes outside the Far West impacted the formation of national Indian policy.18 Although most Euro-Americans may not have recognized it as such, the Meskwaki had their own structure and style of government long before the arrival of the Indian Reorganization Act. In place of a strong central authority, the Meskwaki government consisted of several chiefs and a tribal council. A war chief took charge in times of military conflict, but in times of peace a village chief was the community leader. Although the village chief generally was drawn from the Bear Clan within the tribe, the twelve-member tribal council had to endorse the chief and could pass over a rightful heir who was

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judged too young or incompetent. The village chief held little actual power but instead represented the authority of the whole community. Rather than following the rule of the majority, the tribal council traditionally acted only after obtaining unanimous consent among its members. Council members discussed an issue until all agreed on an action. Without agreement, the council did not act. On some occasions, all adult members of the tribe met to decide matters. A major task of the chiefs was trying, with more or less success, to keep young men in the tribe from starting war parties against other tribes in order to gain prestige within the community. Some whites considered Meskwaki chiefs to be relatively weak, as noted by an agent serving the Meskwaki in 1824, who said that Meskwaki braves did not listen to their chiefs the way their relatives the Sacs did.19 More recently, the Meskwaki had demonstrated the ability of their government to get things done, despite its lack of a European-type structure of government. Relying on their long-standing use of consensus-style governing, the Meskwaki had engineered their return to Iowa from Kansas and established the unusual relationship with the state of Iowa that allowed them to buy their own land. They had survived without federal government supervision from 1856 to 1896 and did not even receive federal annuities from 1856 to 1866. Without the benefit of elected officials, Meskwaki had agreed on using their later annuities to buy more land. Meskwaki government had passed a key test for any government—the ability to accomplish what was necessary to safeguard the future of its citizens. After the Meskwaki returned to federal control in 1896, the federal government upset the balance within Meskwaki government with its recognition of Pushetonequa. The traditional tribal council had selected Pushetonequa as chief in 1883 when the old chief died and the council considered his son too young to take over. Meskwaki accepted Pushetonequa’s rule until the federal government intervened to recognize him as chief in order to entice more settlement residents to send their children to school. In 1914 the Bureau of Indian Affairs agent began appointing members of the council, and when Pushetonequa died in 1919, the federal government refused

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to appoint a successor. A council of five members appointed by the agent became the only form of government.20 Charles Davenport, father of Edward Davenport, recalled years later how he came to be on the council. One winter when Pushetonequa was chief, the council needed to fill three vacancies that had occurred due to deaths. “Now I was up working in the fields one day and this man came up to me and he said, ‘They want you.’ I asked him what for, and he said he didn’t know, you just go, they want you,” the elder Davenport said. He followed the man to the place where Pushetonequa and the council were meeting. Meskwaki expect their leaders to be reluctant to serve, so like a virtuous Meskwaki, Davenport told them: “I didn’t want the job. But they told me that they wanted me, so I had to do it.” Pushetonequa gave a long talk to the three new council members and explained their duties. “We had to help the people—in everything,” Davenport recalled. “The council had to watch over, take care of everything that happened to the tribe— everything. Anyone gets sick, or anything like that, we have to take care of that.” After Pushetonequa’s death and the government’s refusal to recognize another chief, the council refused to meet for a year, until the agent called Davenport and four other men together and appointed them the members of the new council. The bia-appointed council met irregularly throughout the 1920s and into the early days of Collier’s reign as bia commissioner, and even the Meskwaki’s agent admitted the body “has little or no authority.”21 Collier’s promise of an Indian New Deal appealed to residents of the Meskwaki settlement such as Ed Davenport, thirty-three years old and just back from two years of living in Washington dc. The grandson of a Meskwaki woman and a white man who was once the tribe’s agent, Davenport was born on the settlement in 1900. Growing up in the midst of a tribal dispute over the propriety of adopting white education, Davenport did not start school until he was eleven years old, but then he went every day, rain or shine, at the urging of his mother. “I went so I could learn how to deal with my white brothers,” he told an audience years later. One of Davenport’s first lessons from white boys ended unhappily. He tried to roll weed leaves in

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paper and smoke them “just like the white boys did. I didn’t feel so good.” In 1916 Davenport was baptized into the United Presbyterian Church near the settlement. He took part in Indian ymca activities on the settlement, such as debate, and also began managing the Meskwaki band, which hired out to play at fairs, celebrations, or other events. Davenport played the coronet, and his father, Charles, played the trombone.22 Davenport later transferred to the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, where he had dreams of becoming as great an athlete as the legendary Olympic competitor Jim Thorpe, a Sac and Fox from Oklahoma. While Davenport never starred on Carlisle’s athletic fields, friends later said that Davenport came away from the school’s military-style drilling with more maturity. After finishing high school at Carlisle, Davenport lived in Washington dc and worked for the Smithsonian Institution as a consultant to Truman Michelson in his anthropological studies of the Meskwaki. He also worked for an insurance company in Toledo, Iowa. During his time away from the settlement, Davenport said he had been turned down for jobs by employers who hired a white man instead. Despite such discrimination, Davenport became comfortable around whites and learned how they did things.23 Even before the Indian Reorganization Act became law, Davenport had persuaded the Meskwaki tribal council to call a meeting of the entire tribe and to put him in charge of a four-person committee to set up a tribal business committee. After the ira passed, the committee began working to draft a constitution under the new law. As head of the constitution committee, Davenport embraced his responsibility with zeal. He collected copies of constitutions from other tribes, as well as the constitutions of the United States and the state of Iowa. He gathered copies of regulations and memos from the U.S. Department of the Interior. He studied them all to learn what a constitution should do and how one should be structured. Later, Bureau of Indian Affairs officials described the committee as “extraordinarily painstaking” and “one of the most exacting” groups with which they had worked. As field agent Benjamin Reifel put it, “It

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is the wish of the Chairman, Mr. Davenport, to proceed very slowly and not make any changes in the Constitution or submit it to the Tribal Council until they themselves are certain that such changes or submission is the proper thing to do.” Critics of Davenport later said he had done nothing more than take the constitution of another tribe and write “Mesquaki” wherever the name of the other tribe appeared. Nevertheless, under Davenport’s direction and with minimal help from the bia, the Meskwaki committee had drawn up a nearly complete constitution by mid-1935.24 Other Meskwaki besides Ed Davenport saw the value of a more formal arrangement that, while following white men’s rules, would still be run by the members of the tribe. Horace Poweshiek, who served on the constitution committee with Davenport and was head of a parent advisory group for the day schools, thought the old system had become too arbitrary and unrepresentative. He told an interviewer nearly two decades after the constitution was adopted that “before (the constitution) just a few people had the say so and they could decide to have someone’s head cut off and it would be done.” Charles Davenport attributed the interest in the constitution to young men who wanted a change but were ignorant of the way Meskwaki government should work. Davenport supported the work of the constitution committee on which his son served and eventually was elected to the new council himself, where he claimed the young men relied on him for advice on how to govern.25 Besides being young, the four men who served on the constitution committee shared other attributes as well. Like Davenport, all had attended white schools, were members of the United Presbyterian Church, and had impressive lineages within the tribe. Horace Poweshiek was forty-one when he began serving on the committee. He had attended Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and Chiloco Trade School in Oklahoma, where he trained as a painter and carpenter. His brother Willie, also on the committee, was forty years old. They were the great-great grandsons of Chief Poweshiek, who sold large portions of Meskwaki land to the government in the nineteenth century, and the great-grandsons of one of

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five men delegated by the tribe to buy the first eighty acres of land in Iowa in 1857. Their father had been a federal policeman on the Meskwaki settlement for thirteen years and was one of the organizers of the first Meskwaki powwow in 1912. The third member, George Young Bear, was thirty-five and the grandson of Pushetonequa, the last chief of the Meskwaki to be recognized by the U.S. government. He had graduated from Tama High School and Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas, before studying journalism for two years at Drake University in Des Moines. In the 1920s, he worked as a correspondent for the Tama Chronicle, writing obituaries and other stories about the Meskwaki settlement.26 The committee’s caution in developing the constitution, which was noted by bureau officials, must have stemmed in part from the members’ knowledge of opposition within the tribe to the Indian Reorganization Act. In Indian communities across the nation, many Native Americans were suspicious of the measure, which some viewed as a way for bia commissioner John Collier to increase his control over Indian affairs. Some Meskwaki were equally suspicious, but they framed their suspicions in terms of a fear that the new government would disturb the Meskwaki’s communal land system. In 1934 John Tataposh, Jack Old Bear, and two other men had written Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes to complain that as owners of the land and as taxpayers, the Meskwaki “should not be held to the action as set out in the Wheeler Howard Bill. We feel that we are capable of self-government.” They stated that they should be able to organize their own council as they wished.27 The Meskwaki demand for self-government may have puzzled Collier, because self-government is what he thought the Indian Reorganization Act gave them. But to the Meskwaki, self-government was defined by the decision-making process, not by the structures that Collier had in mind. Nevertheless, Collier personally wrote to the men to reassure them that the new law would not affect Meskwaki ownership of the land but would help young people obtain a better education and make money available for economic development projects. He promised that bureau staff would visit the settlement

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and discuss the law’s benefits. In a blind postscript to Ira D. Nelson, superintendent of the Sac and Fox Sanatorium, Collier asked for a report on “what influences, if any, are at work among them to create a wrong impression of this legislation,” and when a vote should be scheduled, given the need to have at least 30 percent of the tribe participate in the election. Nelson assured Collier that Jack Old Bear “is an elderly Indian who has the reports [sic] of opposing anything in the nature of a change” and that his opinion did not reflect that of others in the tribe.28 Despite the opposition of Old Bear and others, the community in June 1935 voted 63 to 13 in favor of coming under the Indian Reorganization Act, clearing the way for adoption of a constitution. Opposition was much greater than the number of “no” votes would indicate, however, because many who were opposed to changing their form of government refused to vote. Fearful of further undermining support for a constitution, the committee searched fruitlessly to devise a satisfactory way to address three potentially explosive issues within the constitution: eligibility for tribal membership given the presence of Indians from other tribes on the settlement, assignment of tribal land to members given the tradition of tacitly recognized rights to parcels of land, and the precise powers of the council. These conflicts remained for more than a year.29 In 1936 Collier formed the Applied Anthropology Unit within the bureau to help tribes draw up constitutions. He envisioned that the anthropologists would study the social life of tribes so that the new tribal constitutions and economic development programs that were the core of the Indian New Deal would fit particular Native American communities and their values. As the first employee of the Applied Anthropology Unit, Collier hired D’Arcy McNickle, a member of the Flathead tribe in Montana. Although not an academically trained anthropologist, McNickle had been interested in Indian anthropology since the 1920s. Collier thought that an Indian such as McNickle would be more effective than a white at explaining the details of the Indian Reorganization Act to Indians suspicious of bia motives. McNickle began working for the bureau in February 1936,

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and one of his early assignments was to visit the Meskwaki of Iowa to assist them in writing their constitution.30 After meeting with people from the Meskwaki community, McNickle came away with the impression that the community was ready to adopt a constitution and would have done so sooner with more attention from the bureau. He reported that during his meeting with the Meskwaki “none of the questions were put with the point of challenging the Government’s purpose but rather for the sake of gaining information.” McNickle took the lack of opposition at the meeting as representative of the entire community without consulting Meskwaki who failed to attend. More surprisingly, McNickle said he had read old bia files on the Meskwaki and found “that there has always been on their part a willingness to work in cooperation with the Department. The Department, however, has not always responded with equal good faith.” Somehow, McNickle missed the controversy over the hereditary chief that had been part of Meskwaki history for decades. Perhaps he wanted to put the tribe in the best light so that the bureau would give them more attention. Or perhaps he had too little time to spend at the settlement to get a full appreciation of its situation. It is unclear how long he was in Tama, but McNickle noted that he did not take the time to read the rough draft of the Meskwaki constitution.31 McNickle did isolate several problems on the settlement that needed federal attention. For example, he pointed out that although the Meskwaki paid property taxes to Tama County on their land that were supposed to cover road maintenance, the federal government had actually paid for recent roadwork. McNickle also opened up the issue of law enforcement, noting that although the state had retained jurisdiction over Meskwaki criminal matters, “the State actually will prosecute only such cases as it chooses.” Furthermore, he said, the settlement had too little land for its present population, and he recommended that the land division immediately consider purchasing more land for the Meskwaki.32 McNickle sent a copy of his report to Collier, who immediately ordered the organization division to send someone to advise the

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tribe. Just sixteen days later, Assistant Solicitor Charlotte Westwood arrived in Tama for four days of meetings with Davenport’s committee. Westwood found the basic provisions of the constitution “quite complete” and advised Davenport’s committee on how to resolve its outstanding issues. The constitution restricted tribal membership to children of Meskwaki men but permitted the council to adopt into the tribe any children of Meskwaki women married to outsiders. The proposed document also confirmed the assignment of tribal lands as they then existed, but allowed the council to reassign land if the assignee did not use it or if the assignee died and the council determined the assignee’s heirs did not need it. The rewritten draft also spelled out seventeen specific powers of the new council, such as representing the tribe in negotiations with the government and resolving disputes among members.33 Other meetings with bureau personnel followed. Fine-tuning of the draft constitution continued until spring 1937. Assistant Commissioner William Zimmerman kept tabs on the progress personally. He wrote the constitution committee that he had “no serious criticisms” of the proposed constitution and congratulated the committee on the “diligence and thoughtfulness” with which it did its work. Zimmerman ordered the Meskwaki field agent, who spent most of his time working with tribes in South Dakota, to push the committee gently to present its draft to the tribal council and to be on hand when it did so. “We want to assist the group as much as possible in getting organized, as we believe that the group is one which will profit by organization,” he wrote. “We realize also that the group picks its way carefully and we do not want to give the impression of pressing it faster than it cares to go.”34 A version acceptable to Davenport and his committee as well as Zimmerman was produced, and the tribe voted 80 to 78 on November 13, 1937, to approve the constitution. This time, opponents of the ira voted rather than staying away, after seeing the futility of sticking to Meskwaki rules of governance when the other side played by the new, white rules. Problems arose immediately. As McNickle had foreseen, the issue of land assignments was at the root of the problems. Young

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Bear, chief of the old tribal council, and five others petitioned the bureau to throw out the election on the grounds that the election should have been called by the council rather than the bia and that the council members “were not even consulted.” In a companion petition to Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes, Young Bear and ninety-six other signers asked “that the management of our land remain as it now is and has been for many years.” The leader of the opposition, John Tataposh, also wrote President Roosevelt to complain that “the Howard Wheeler Act is being forced on the Mesquakie Indian tribe.” Tataposh reverted to a traditional Meskwaki understanding of consensus decision making to argue that since the Meskwaki land was owned by the entire community, “every individual Indian should be in favor of the bill in question before it can be applied on the Mesquakie Indian land.” F. H. Daiker, assistant commissioner and head of the organization division for the bia, wrote the signers to recommend that they work with the new tribal council and propose amendments to the constitution if the land provisions proved unfair.35 Despite the opposition, the new council, headed by Horace Poweshiek, went ahead with plans to write a charter of incorporation for the tribe that would permit it to obtain credit for economic development projects. At the same time, opponents of the new constitution petitioned the secretary of the interior again and claimed not to understand “the Howard-Wheeler Act. For this reason we refuse to accept the act.” This time 113 people signed.36 Nevertheless, after months of working to overcome political opposition, the Meskwaki community had the machinery of a modern Meskwaki nation. To make the Meskwaki New Deal–type government work, however, Horace Poweshiek, Ed Davenport, and other supporters of it would have to overcome the bitterness engendered by federal government meddling in their affairs. Making the New Government Work If members of the newly elected council thought the hardest part of their work was behind them once the constitution was approved, events soon proved them wrong. They had little experience in run-

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ning meetings according to parliamentary procedures, and personnel from the bureau’s organization division were available to help them only sporadically. Bureau field office supervisor John Holst visited the Meskwaki in April 1938 soon after Tataposh’s letter to the president and found opposition to the new government as strong as ever. Tataposh and the opposition had again followed the new rules and tried to elect some of their adherents to the council but had fallen just short. They had no information about what the new council was doing because it met in closed meetings, leaving the opposition in the dark and feeding their suspicions. Holst found the division between the two groups so deep that they would not meet together when he first arrived, but after three days of shuttle diplomacy he finally succeeded in organizing a mass meeting of the Meskwaki. He lamented, “The Indians are like sheep without a shepherd.” Holst said the new council needed ongoing advice on how to proceed, preferably in the form of a bureau staff member who would attend every meeting to answer questions. At present, he said, the council had come up with no common purpose or plan for the tribe to pursue, and the community was rent by “bickerings, antagonisms and cleavages.” His assessment was that, “Unless the Council gets help, and that soon, I fear for the future of organization at Sac and Fox.”37 Although opponents of the new government spoke little English and had far less education than Poweshiek, Davenport, and other supporters, they had quickly learned the basics of the new system. Already they had written to Roosevelt and submitted petitions to the bureau showing their discontent, and although they had stayed away from the 1935 election that put the tribe under the ira, they voted in the election on the constitution itself. They also came close to electing one of their group to the first council. In 1941, however, the opponents of the new government scored their first major success. They elected four members to the new council, enough to give them a majority. Under their control, the council conducted little business and met rarely because it could not get a quorum for meetings.38 Opponents of the new government soon had a tangible grievance around which they could rally. In 1944 the tribe sold timber

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from trees on the settlement, including many valuable black walnut trees, to the federal government for use in making gunstocks. The windfall of $5,000 became a center of controversy between those who wanted to keep the money for the tribal treasury and those who wanted to divide the money equally among all tribal members, reserving only a little for the tribal treasury. When bia officials told the tribe their new ira constitution did not allow per capita payments, some Meskwaki saw the provision as an affront to their sovereignty, and their mistrust of the new system deepened. The council chair was recalled the next year over the issue.39 Another festering issue was that of tribal membership. The tribe had for years welcomed people from other tribes into their communities. Although not biologically Meskwaki, they became cultural Meskwaki by adopting the life ways and beliefs of the tribe. Such outsiders, however, were expected to keep out of tribal politics. The ira constitution had created another definition of Meskwaki by defining all who were included on the 1938 census of the settlement as Meskwaki regardless of their biological heritage. That meant people who were only part Meskwaki became full Meskwaki overnight and eligible to hold office in the new government. Thus, people who formerly were tolerated as outsiders were incorporated fully into the political life of the tribe. Rather than permitting self-government, the new constitution seemed to many to have taken away the tribe’s ability to determine who belonged to the tribe.40 Taming the Wild Meskwaki One particularly long-standing issue for the Meskwaki that became unsettled by the New Deal government was that of law and order on the settlement. The right of tribes to provide law and order on Indian land was a fundamental part of the self-government promised to tribes under the Indian Reorganization Act. As historian Kenneth R. Philp pointed out, Interior Department solicitor Nathan R. Margold ruled in 1934 that the administration of justice to their own members was one of the inherent powers of Indian tribes that they had retained as sovereign nations even when they came under fed-

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eral jurisdiction. Using Margold’s analysis of tribal rights, Assistant Solicitor Felix S. Cohen in 1935 wrote law codes for Indian communities that permitted those with ira constitutions to run their own courts. Indian judicial systems, however, were unpopular with many members of Congress who opposed Collier’s other policies and wanted a more assimilationist stance toward Indians.41 Because of the Meskwaki’s unusual relationship with the state of Iowa and the federal government, law and order was an especially complicated issue for them. They had agreed to come under the jurisdiction of Iowa laws when the state authorized the Meskwaki’s purchase of the original eighty acres of land in 1856. The state of Iowa retained the ability to enforce state laws over the Meskwaki even when it transferred oversight of the financial dealings of the tribe to the federal government in 1896. Tama County officials, who handled enforcement of state laws, could arrest settlement residents for misdemeanors and lesser felonies and shared jurisdiction with the federal government for certain major crimes such as murder.42 McNickle had no doubt been aware of Margold and Cohen’s work when he pointed out problems with the administration of justice on the settlement during his 1936 visit to the Meskwaki settlement. Some aspects of the Indian New Deal, however, also brought the issue into focus. Indian communities that had adopted an ira-style government had the authority to adopt charters that made them eligible for economic development loans and other programs. When Meskwaki tribal chair Horace Poweshiek began preparations for adoption of a charter in 1938, he asked both bia commissioner John Collier and Iowa governor Nelson G. Kraschel to clarify whether Meskwaki land was under federal or state jurisdiction. bia answers to such inquiries about the status of Meskwaki land inevitably pointed out that the state of Iowa had retained the power to enforce criminal and civil laws on the settlement in 1896, but that a 1901 ruling by a Tama County district court judge had muddied the issue. The ruling said that the state had jurisdiction on settlement land only over crimes committed by Indians against whites and not over crimes committed by Indians against Indians. The uncertainty did not seem to concern local authorities much

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until the late 1930s, however, when renewed discussion of Meskwaki status regarding the charter may have made authorities more cautious about enforcing state laws. By 1940, for example, an attempt by the Iowa State Conservation Commission to prosecute a settlement resident for catching fish and selling them out of season had been stalled in court for three years while the judge delayed making a decision. In the meantime, the commission was paying $1.50 a month to keep the fish in cold storage for later use as evidence. The same year, the Tama County attorney had asked federal officials for advice on the extent of his jurisdiction on the settlement.43 The Meskwaki agent, Ben Reifel, summed up the situation when he made one of his periodic visits to the settlement in 1940. Some Meskwaki complained to him about speeding cars, drunken brawlers who disturbed religious ceremonies, and the theft of chickens or livestock. Reifel wrote to his superiors: “I got the impression that many of the Sac and Fox Indians felt themselves to be at the mercy of a sort of a gangster-like condition on the reservation.” Reifel noted the uncertainty in the minds of both federal and state authorities over who was in charge on the settlement. Although the Meskwaki constitution allowed for a tribal court, Reifel said tribal members were too closely related for that to work. Instead, he recommended that the Meskwaki be turned over to state jurisdiction as was being done with Indians in Kansas and that a non-Meskwaki be hired to police the settlement. A majority of the tribal council, including Ed Davenport, favored state jurisdiction, and Reifel suggested that they pass a resolution and work with their state and federal representatives to make that happen. Like Davenport, George Young Bear supported having the state take over enforcement of laws. “We need some law. There’s just a certain element that opposes it,” he said later.44 Nothing might have come of Reifel’s memorandum had not a settlement resident a few days later committed suicide while drunk on homebrew made by another member of the community. Previously Meskwaki had been reluctant to bring legal action against each other, but in this case relatives of the dead man swore out an affidavit describing the incident. Unable to ignore the problem any longer, the

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bia disregarded Reifel’s advice and persuaded the community in 1941 to set up its own judicial system to handle minor offenses committed on the settlement by Indians against other Indians. The bureau appointed a Meskwaki judge and two associate judges and furnished the initial code of laws, although the tribe was encouraged to write its own. Court proceedings were conducted in Meskwaki, and friends, rather than attorneys, spoke on behalf of defendants.45 While the new court system gave the Meskwaki power to enforce laws on Indians within the confines of the settlement, community residents who were accused of offenses outside its borders still were subject to arrest by local authorities. Authorities entering the settlement to make an arrest had always obtained approval from the council before doing so, but a dispute soon arose that further undermined support for the new style government. A Tama County deputy entered the settlement to arrest a Meskwaki man accused of a liquor violation without first seeking council approval. When the council protested, the bia informed the Meskwaki that the tribe’s new constitution adopted under the ira did not permit the council to interfere with officers coming onto the settlement.46 Meanwhile, the Meskwaki’s own court was proving as unpopular as the constitution that allowed for it. Although the bureau promoted the judicial system as a chance for the people to run their own affairs, many community residents complained that the federally appointed judges favored their friends and relatives over other people, as Reifel had feared. Opponents of the judicial system drew up a petition to the bia and obtained enough signatures to have the judicial system abolished. The judge, George Young Bear, who had been one of the backers of the ira constitution, said the same longstanding divisions in the tribe that threatened the new government brought about the end of the court. “They said there was favoritism. I just enforced the code,” he said.47 Congress and Law and Order Soon after the elimination of the Meskwaki court, however, the law and order issue came to the attention of Congress. A subcommittee

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of the Committee on Indian Affairs held hearings around the nation on Indian policy in 1943 and 1944, including the effects of the Indian Reorganization Act. The subcommittee solicited the opinions of all Indian tribes on a variety of issues, including how law and order should be enforced on Indian reservations. No Meskwaki attended the hearings, including one held in Sioux City, Iowa, but Tama County attorney Walter J. Willett did.48 With no Meskwaki to contradict him, Willett described conditions at the settlement as “deplorable” because of the lack of law and order after the Indian court ceased to function, and he outlined the growing uncertainty among county officials regarding their authority to enforce state laws on the settlement. “I have 500 people there and no law and order of any kind,” Willett contended. While he cited bootlegging and other crimes, Willett stressed the need to enforce white middle-class standards of morality on the Meskwaki as the reason for needing more law enforcement on the settlement. County officials sent him to testify, he said, because “everyday Indians come in in regard to illegitimate children. . . . I think the moral background of these Indians is terrible.” Willett asked Congress for action, and although he did not demand explicitly that the state be given the power to enforce criminal laws on the settlement, his testimony was in that direction. Despite Willett’s plea, however, subcommittee members went on to hearings in other states and other problems and failed to propose any legislation on law and order.49 Although forgotten by Congress, the issue remained a live one between Willett and the Meskwaki. By the end of World War II, circumstances converged to bring the matter once again to the attention of Congress. Many members of Congress had been antagonistic to Collier’s ideas of Indian justice from the beginning and had squeezed the law enforcement operation with skimpy appropriations in the years between 1936 and 1946. The bureau had enough funds for only thirty-four law enforcement officers and one assistant to cover the Indian communities in sixteen states. In the Midwest immediately after World War II, one law enforcement officer covered

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Indians in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa. The officer rapidly used up his travel allowance for 1947 visiting the scattered communities within his jurisdiction and had to spend most of the year in the Minneapolis office rather than providing law enforcement in the field.50 Unable to police the communities themselves and facing continuing pressure from Willett, bureau staff began to push settlement residents to condone Tama County involvement in law enforcement on their land. At Willett’s urging, the bureau held a series of meetings involving settlement residents, the bureau, and local law enforcement on two alternatives: appointing a white judge to hear cases using Meskwaki statutes or asking the federal government to make state criminal laws apply on the settlement. Bureau officials came to the settlement without any advance warning, however, and the Meskwaki, caught off guard, refused to consent to a change in their system of law and order. One Meskwaki protested that “we’re not ready (for state jurisdiction). . . . Too many don’t speak English.” The settlement seemed to be a no man’s land where the state could not legally provide law enforcement, the federal government could not afford to, and the Meskwaki did not want to.51 In his quest to tame the Meskwaki, Willett found an ally in another prominent white citizen of Tama, the head of the local Daughters of the American Revolution. In 1947 Mrs. W. G. MacMartin wrote the president of the Iowa dar and successfully agitated for passage of a resolution at the group’s state convention favoring state jurisdiction over the settlement without residents’ consent. After passage of the resolution MacMartin pressed for further action, contending that one settlement resident, Harry Lincoln, told her stories of “destruction, vandalism and drunkenness on the reservation, but also told me the Indians could prevent trespassing on their land if they wished.” Community members who were victimized in such crimes had no recourse, she said, since the sheriff would no longer come on the settlement and they were afraid of retaliation if they spoke out for law and order. Acting Indian Affairs commissioner William Zimmerman wrote MacMartin in April that the bureau would support a transfer to state jurisdiction if the settlement residents petitioned

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for it, as the bureau had done for other tribes in Kansas in 1940 and North Dakota in 1946. MacMartin dismissed the likelihood of that happening because too many people on the settlement distrusted the government and feared retaliation from other settlement residents if they supported outside enforcement.52 A few months after Zimmerman’s letter, in the fall of 1947, an incident on the settlement dramatically increased concern about law and order. Two drunken youth caught an elderly white man fishing on settlement property and beat him brutally. Because the actual beating had occurred on a highway that cut through the settlement rather than on Meskwaki land per se, the county attorney had jurisdiction in the matter and successfully prosecuted one of the young men, who was sent to the state penitentiary. Despite the court victory, Willett used the attack to further the cause of state jurisdiction over the settlement. He presented state and local jurisdiction as a way to prevent minor infractions that otherwise might explode into serious crimes and pressed members of Iowa’s congressional delegation to work for legislation giving the state of Iowa jurisdiction over crimes on the settlement. State newspapers gave extensive coverage to the beating. The Tama County grand jury investigated the law and order issue and passed a resolution condemning the alleged “gross lack of law and order” on the settlement. The Tama County Board of Supervisors passed its own resolution calling the settlement a “no man’s land of lawlessness.”53 The controversy over law and order on the Meskwaki settlement soon became entwined in a congressional effort to change national Indian policy. As historian Kenneth R. Philp has noted, national Indian groups in 1948 attacked the prospect of state jurisdiction as a violation of rights to self-government guaranteed to Indians under treaties and promised under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. As he also has pointed out, state jurisdiction served as the linchpin of federal government efforts in the late 1940s and early 1950s to withdraw from providing services to Indians. If the federal government alone could prosecute Indians for crimes against other Indians, it could not drop its responsibility for them without creating a gap in

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public safety. But once Indians were clearly subject to state laws in all situations, the federal government could more easily shed its commitments and responsibility for them. Philp, however, overlooked the role of the Meskwaki controversy in propelling the issue to the forefront of lawmakers’ minds. The legislation that sparked the ensuing national debate over state jurisdiction was introduced in 1947 in the U.S. Senate by Iowa’s two senators, Republicans Bourke B. Hickenlooper and George Wilson, and in the House by Rep. John Gwynne, a Republican whose district included the Meskwaki settlement. Its sole purpose was to make the Meskwaki settlement subject to Iowa law.54 At a hearing on the Meskwaki legislation in December 1947, Willett testified in vivid detail about conditions on the Meskwaki settlement. He displayed pictures of injuries to the white man beaten by Indian youth, presented the resolutions from Tama County authorities, described extensive vandalism to one man’s home on the settlement, and characterized the Meskwaki as anti–law and order. In tribal elections in October, three council members who supported a transfer to state jurisdiction, including Ed Davenport, were voted out and replaced with three who opposed it, and Willett stressed the new members’ criminal records and shady backgrounds. “You just cannot realize it until you see it what it is like to live next to something where there is no law and order,” Willett testified.55 Shocked by Willett’s testimony, subcommittee members immediately voiced concern about such alleged lawlessness existing on Indian lands elsewhere. One lawmaker noted, “If this situation exists here, I was thinking of the possibility of not only applying this to Iowa, but why not a general bill such as this?” The next month, in January 1948, the subcommittee chairman presented H.R. 4725, the measure designed to bring Indian tribes throughout the nation under the jurisdiction of the states where their lands were located if tribal courts failed to administer justice. Subcommittee chair Rep. Wesley A. D’Ewart said he had the legislation prepared because of the request made at the previous meeting in reaction to Willett’s testimony. Unlike the Meskwaki matter, this measure attracted the attention of the National Congress of American Indians and other

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Indian advocates. During debate on the measure, subcommittee members used as justification for the measure the condition of the Meskwaki settlement, which they described as one where the tribe “had completely lost control of the situation.” While opponents managed to block the comprehensive legislation when it got to the Senate, the Meskwaki measure moved ahead. Willett made sure of that by urging Hickenlooper to keep the Meskwaki measure separate from the national bill.56 At a hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Indian Affairs, a woman who was among the leaders of the opponents to the ira constitution, Bertha Waseskuk, led a delegation of the Old Bear group to testify against the proposal. Waseskuk’s comments on behalf of the group provide a glimpse of what that segment of the settlement thought about the law-and-order issue. Waseskuk said Iowa had retained police powers over the settlement when it ceded other jurisdiction to the federal government in 1896, “and we cannot understand why this additional legislation is necessary.” She predicted the state would not be willing to pay Tama County for policing the reservation and would try to make either the Meskwaki or Congress pay for it. When Senator Arthur Watkins protested that state officials no longer were certain they had jurisdiction on the settlement, Waseskuk blamed the ira constitution for the confusion: “The claim for a great need for law and order was a good excuse to slap the Reorganization Act on my people. Through some clever manipulation this Act is now tieing us up with so much red tape, causing dissension among even those Indians that favored it at first.” Rather than allowing the tribe to progress, the act “has only caused friction from quibbling over its constitution and bylaws.” Despite Watkins’s assurances that the bill was meant to protect law-abiding settlement residents from lawbreakers, Waseskuk remained suspicious that the measure would create unforeseen problems as the tribe’s ira constitution had done. “If this act should become a law it would just open a way for people to come into our land and do as they please. Now they cannot do that,” she testified.57 Despite Waseskuk’s testimony, the legislation passed in late June

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1948, and Iowa attorney general Robert Lawson, Willett, and Special Agent Herb Davis of the bia came to a meeting on the settlement to explain the law to the residents. As Willett’s and Waseskuk’s testimony showed, the law and order issue was much more complicated from the point of view of Meskwaki than just letting the local sheriff arrest a few rowdy youths for disturbing the peace. Based on Willett’s comments about illegitimate children, state jurisdiction raised the specter of enforcement of marriage laws on a people who still married “in the Indian way.” Meskwaki worried about having their communal land confiscated for settling individual debts and feared the loss of certain treaty rights, such as the right to hunt and fish without regard to state game laws. In short, the demand for law and order undermined Meskwaki sovereignty on their own land. One woman summed up the conflicted feelings of many residents. “It all sounded all right to me. But you never knew what’s behind it. You know—as an Indian I think there must be something back of it. That’s always the way they do; they make it sound good, but then something else happens,” she said.58 The community’s experience with the ira constitution had demonstrated the possibility of unforeseen consequences flowing from well-intentioned actions. The new government had curbed the Meskwaki’s powers in ways they had not anticipated. Suddenly they could not divide tribal funds the way they wished. They could not decide who was a Meskwaki and who was not. They could not protect themselves from arrest by outside authorities. Their attempt to run their own judicial system had failed, and county authorities would now enforce Iowa law within sovereign Meskwaki territory. Postwar Politics and the Meskwaki While the Meskwaki community continued its adjustment to their ira-style of government, federal bureaucrats were laying plans for more sweeping changes in Indian life. In 1943 bia commissioner John Collier ordered agency staff to begin planning for Indians’ postwar needs by drawing up a long-range program for each Indian settlement in time for inclusion in the bureau’s 1946 budget request. In keeping with this directive, bureau staff prepared a plan that called

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for spending $1,114,685 over twenty years to bring the Meskwaki to independence from the federal government, largely by making them self-sufficient farmers with incomes similar to those of their white neighbors. The plan proposed buying 3,000 acres of land and reassigning the tribe’s existing 3,253 acres so that each family had a 60acre farm. Even though the farms would have been less than half the size of the 154-acre farms owned by whites in the area, the agency thought that would be enough to bring the average Meskwaki family income of $431 to a level closer to the $2,085 average annual income of neighboring white families. Such self-sufficiency would have reduced the level of services Meskwaki needed from the bureau. The school, for example, would have been turned over to the state of Iowa to run, but the bureau would have continued subsidizing the school for another ten years until the Meskwaki could assume the cost themselves in the form of higher local property taxes.59 The Meskwaki Tribal Council was interested in the plan but never approved it. Some Meskwaki alleged later that Ed Davenport was secretly opposed to the plan although he did not say so publicly. Agency superintendent Peru Farver blamed the council’s inaction on the caution of a “reactionary group” that controlled the council, even though a majority of the council such as Davenport were far from reactionary. Farver also attributed inaction to the council being distracted by other matters, such as the disputes over law enforcement and the walnut tree profits. Perhaps council members’ inaction reflected their skepticism about bureau plans in light of the dissatisfaction within the community over the new political arrangement, especially the view that it had undermined the ability of the tribe to run its own affairs. After the affronts to their sovereignty stemming from the membership, law and order, and walnut tree issues, council members would have been understandably cautious about agreeing to another bureau plan for fear it also had provisions undermining their sovereignty embedded within it.60 Meskwaki failure to endorse the twenty-year plan mattered little in the end, since no funds ever materialized for it. Instead, by 1946 tight budgets approved by Congress forced the bureau to begin

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thinking about a reduced role for itself on a much faster timetable than the twenty-year plan laid out just two years before. John Collier and his support for preservation of Indian cultures were gone from the bia, pushed out by a hostile Congress. Members of Congress already were beginning to discuss terminating some Indian tribes, such as the Klamaths of Oregon. Bureau personnel were not yet in favor of immediate termination, but they increasingly looked for ways to withdraw services from Native Americans and turn them over to the state, local authorities, or the tribes themselves, without ending their existence as a tribe, or to set up a timetable for gradual release of some tribes from federal supervision.61 Withdrawal of government support would have been relatively simple in the case of the Meskwaki, especially once the law and order issue was settled. In the early 1940s the federal government closed the Toledo sanitarium and hospital that had served the community and contracted with a doctor in Tama for health care. The settlement had no agent at all after the residents petitioned the bia in 1947 to remove sub-agent C. W. King and institute a full-time agent. Instead, the bureau removed King but abolished the position to save money. A few community residents had taken advantage of bia programs allowing them to borrow money to go to college or buy a tractor. By 1948, however, the most visible sign of bia authority on the settlement was the Sac and Fox Day School, and the highest bia official was the school principal. With a budget of $13,000 a year, the school also was the bureau’s biggest expenditure on behalf of the community.62 Soon after World War II the bureau came to see even the Sac and Fox Day School as too much of a burden. Postwar inflation and increased enrollment due to the return of Meskwaki families after the war drove up the cost of school lunches and supplies, and the bureau requested more money from Congress to cover the cost. Unwilling to count on that being forthcoming from an increasingly tight-fisted Congress, the bureau’s associate director of education, O. R. Sande, said Indian schools would have to operate “on a starvation basis” or shut down before the school year was over. Congressional budget cutting soon threatened the very existence of the school. When

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forced to consolidate field offices to cut staff, the bureau merged the Tomah Agency in Green Bay, Wisconsin, which handled Meskwaki affairs, with the office in Minneapolis, Minnesota. As part of the staff cuts, the bureau education staff discussed making the Meskwaki settlement part of the Tama public school district and transferring the school building—and the responsibility for the children—to the district, as had been done with Indian schools in Wisconsin. Without a decision for total closing of the school, Sande suggested that the field office look into transferring Meskwaki children in the seventh and eighth grades to the public schools in Tama so that the government could avoid hiring another teacher and building an addition to the school.63 Although the Tama school superintendent was favorable to the idea and said he considered it a moral obligation to educate Indian children on the same basis as whites, the bureau’s agent for the Meskwaki, C. W. King, doubted Tama’s elected school board would consider the matter. “You see the reasoning of Tama people is to avoid any and all obligations towards the Sac and Fox people that can be avoided,” he wrote his supervisor. As King predicted, the Tama board refused to take the Meskwaki seventh-and eighth-graders because of its own overcrowding problems. To make matters worse, the bureau ran out of money to pay tuition for the high school students already attending Tama public schools. With 30 percent of the bill still unpaid by late summer 1947, Tama school superintendent Ben Jones warned that the board might not be willing to re-admit high school students, let alone new students, when school opened in September.64 After failing to persuade local officials to take over any school responsibilities, the bureau nevertheless tried to get state authorities to assume the costs of welfare for Indian children whose parents could not or would not care for them. The matter came to a head as a result of a bureau decision to close Indian boarding schools, including one at Pipestone, Minnesota, attended by seven Meskwaki children without adequate homes. Although Meskwaki school principal Edward Mays told his superiors that Iowa welfare agencies had no provisions for assisting Indian children through foster care or

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other services, bureau staff discussed simply dumping the responsibility for the children onto state agencies. One agency memo demonstrates the unilateral nature of the federal government’s plan. It read: “Since Indians are citizens, they are entitled to the same welfare service as other people. Get this understood by state and county welfare agencies and then inform those agencies that the Indian Service will no longer be responsible for any form of child welfare service to Indians and that it will be up to them to take care of it.” Records do not make clear what happened to the children nor what policy the bureau adopted to take care of them.65 The bureau tried the same pass-the-buck technique when it came to welfare services for older Meskwaki. In 1948 a Meskwaki man wandered away from his home several times. In two cases trains had to stop on a set of railroad tracks near the settlement because the man was sitting on the rails and would not get off. A third time whites living near the settlement found the man naked in their cornfield, crawling on the ground because he had lost his wooden leg. The Tama County insanity commission tried to hold a hearing on the man’s mental state, but the state attorney general ruled the matter was outside their jurisdiction and that the federal government was responsible for him. The federal government said the man’s welfare was a state matter. Desperate to stop him from wandering, the man’s relatives put him in a pen made of stakes and wire, which brought the matter to public attention in a newspaper article entitled “Caged Like an Animal.” Within a week of such publicity, the federal government changed its stance and admitted the man to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital for incompetent wards of the federal government in Washington dc. On top of that, the bureau was so short of funds in 1948 that money for medical care for the Meskwaki ran out midyear, and pregnant women delivered their babies at home with the help of midwives instead of going to the hospital. Clearly, the bureau intended to cut back its services to Indians whether or not state officials agreed to assume them.66 Internal bureau communications do not include any references to discussion of matters such as responsibility for welfare or the future of the school with the Meskwaki people. Like other Americans,

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the Meskwaki were busy getting on with their lives after the disruptions of World War II. As it had throughout the nation, World War II’s manpower requirements had snatched many young Meskwaki men from their homes to serve in the military. These veterans had returned home, proud at having served their country but newly aware of the differences between the way their families and white families lived. The more than forty Meskwaki military veterans faced several problems of readjusting to the settlement. Despite having gone into battle for their country, returning veterans sometimes had problems reclaiming their prewar jobs. They had problems as well exercising their privileges under the gi Bill, finding it hard to get loans, for example. Although they could buy liquor easily while serving in the military, the veterans returned home to live under the long-standing federal ban on the sale of alcohol to Indians. Meskwaki had been integrated into the armed services, but once home they set up their own post of the American Legion after whites at the Tama post stopped serving them liquor. “I wonder what I was fighting for?” asked one veteran whose plans to make the military a career were ruined when he was arrested for possessing alcohol as an Indian.67 Other Meskwaki who had lived off the settlement while working at war-related jobs throughout the country came home with similar experiences of life outside the settlement. They had become used to conveniences such as electricity and running water, were less intimidated around whites, and seemed more at ease interacting with people from off the settlement. One Tama businessman noted the change in the frequency with which Meskwaki who had worked in town during the war came to Tama after the war. “Hell, before the war you’d never see them coming to town dressed like white people, the way they do now; the girls with their lipstick and everything else,” he said.68 That kind of rapid assimilation of Indians into mainstream American culture became more and more popular in Washington with Collier gone and the cold war crystallizing. Support for Indian values that Collier respected, such as communalism, vanished as the nation sought conformity with dominant American values of individualism

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and competition in order to ensure unity in the battle against communism. As early as 1944 some members of Congress were pressing for the abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the termination of Indian tribes. In 1947 Congress directed acting commissioner of Indian affairs William Zimmerman to identify tribes ready for termination of their existence as legal entities and the end of federal aid. While just four years earlier the bia had been planning to spend more than $1 million on the settlement over twenty years to bring Meskwaki to self-sufficiency, the new bia program called for swifter action on Indian matters.69 Unfortunately, the Meskwaki community encountered the switch in national policy while it was still torn by disagreement over the ira constitution. A constitution that was supposed to mean selfgovernment seemed to restrict exercise of Meskwaki sovereignty as in the case of deciding tribal membership. The federal government had given the state the authority to enforce criminal laws on the settlement but had not succeeded in persuading it to accept responsibility for some aspects of Meskwaki’s health and welfare. Suddenly, the Meskwaki had new layers of government to contend with—its own ira government and the state system; less control of its own affairs; and increasing uncertainty over the source of the services they needed. At the same time, the federal government’s handling of the Meskwaki law-and-order issue helped set in motion a dynamic that would soon affect many other tribes. Ed Davenport, who had worked so long for passage of the constitution, saw how limited its powers actually were and how difficult they were to implement. After he had been voted out of office because of his support for state jurisdiction over the settlement, Davenport could only watch tribal politics from the sidelines as the freight train of federal withdrawal bore down on the divided settlement.

2. Sol Tax and the Value of Anthropology

The question that Ed Davenport posed to Sol Tax when they met in the summer of 1948 was one that Tax had begun asking himself even before he became an anthropologist. Tax’s personal struggle over whether to “work out some sort of a plan to fix things up, instead of just studying people,” coincided with efforts in anthropology and throughout the social sciences to understand what, if anything, professionals in those disciplines had to offer a world suffering first from economic collapse and then from global war. For Tax, the search for the proper balance between scholarship and activism began in his early years and took place over decades in which the Great Depression and World War II left their marks on anthropology. Tax the Young Idealist The son of Russian immigrant Jews, Sol Tax was born in Chicago in 1907 and grew up in Milwaukee. Like many foreign-born residents of early twentieth-century Milwaukee, Tax’s parents were Socialists, and he grew up with their populist views on the threat of powerful capitalist interests to common people, as well as amidst the Socialist views of the broader Milwaukee community. Socialism in Milwaukee had been growing since 1898 when Eugene V. Debs came to the city to make his first political speech for the Socialist Party immediately after the party’s formation in Chicago. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, Milwaukee Socialists elected aldermen, representatives to the Wisconsin Legislature, the first Socialist mayor of a major American city (Emil Seidel), county supervisors, judges, and a member of the U.S. House. While Socialism peaked nationally

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in 1912 when Debs captured nearly one million votes for the presidency, Milwaukee remained a stronghold of Socialism through Tax’s formative years. As late as 1960, the city still had a Socialist mayor.1 The Socialists espoused faith in the “Cooperative Commonwealth and the Brotherhood of Man.” They foresaw a better world, without capitalism, in which the benefits of “the blessings of our modern inventions” would accrue “to the people collectively” and not to big interests. The Wisconsin Social Democratic Party platforms urged hastening the arrival of that world by nationalizing “the coal trust, the meat trust, the oil trust, the sugar trust, the farming machinery trust, and others of the same kind,” as well as by achieving national ownership of utilities, railroads, and steamship lines. Growing up around such rhetoric, Tax came to believe that “the task of a good person was to improve the lot of humanity. My emotions were quickly aroused by thoughts of social injustice, violence, war.” Although Tax later described himself as “idealistic and socially minded” as a youth, he retained some capitalistic spirit. He admitted that he did not mind making money because his family needed it. “But whatever else I did had some social quality,” he later wrote.2 Tax’s early money-making ventures started when he began peddling newspapers at age twelve, and it did indeed lead to social action. The Milwaukee school board had organized an association to protect newsboys from newspaper publisher exploitation called the “Newsboys’ Republic,” which required newsboys to have permits to sell papers. Tax demonstrated his interest in community organization by leading the effort by newsboys to take over operation of the Republic themselves. He later became chief justice of the group’s Supreme Court and the editor of its magazine, the beginning of a long association with publishing. It is no wonder that, years later, Tax recalled that even before he had entered high school, he knew “that my function in the world is to improve the world.”3 Tax began college at the University of Chicago in 1926, but financial problems forced him to leave after his first semester and transfer to the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He withdrew from college again, in the spring of 1927, because of poor grades, which

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he blamed on having spent too much time on Hillel Foundation activities. Political activities also occupied much of his time. In 1927 Tax protested the imprisonment of the author of a poem entitled “America,” which had been published in the New York Daily Worker. David Gordon had been put in jail for writing, “America is a land of Censored opportunity. Lick spit; eat dirt, There’s your opportunity.” Tax urged a judge, without success, to issue a warrant of arrest for one of those attacking Gordon on the grounds that if Gordon was guilty, so were those who were disseminating the poem as a way of stirring up opposition to him. At a mass meeting for Gordon, Tax prompted a discussion of those present on why American students were not as active politically as students in other countries, which led to a meeting that organized the Wisconsin Liberal Club. One of Tax’s other causes was a campaign against recruiting first-year college students for the Reserve Officers Training Corps before they had a chance to hear arguments against it.4 Tax reentered the University of Wisconsin in 1928 and took his first anthropology course, taught by Ralph Linton. Attracted to the discipline immediately, Tax dropped his plans to study economics and politics and turned to anthropology in hopes that it would be “a master science which would eventually answer universal questions I was young enough to have in mind.” John Bennett has summarized Tax’s philosophical approach in these years as “an activist personality determined to defend the underdog and to avoid collaboration with the organizations in power—one who understood that anything worthwhile in life takes organization, determination, and intense action.”5 Initially, Tax found archeology the most attractive of the four fields of anthropology. In 1930 he spent four months in Algeria on an archeological expedition and two months in France with the American School of Prehistoric Research. His first American fieldwork came during the summer of 1931 when he joined the Laboratory of Anthropology field school in New Mexico and studied the Mescalero and Chiricahua Apache with Ruth Benedict as his supervisor. Benedict encouraged the “boys,” as she called the student field-workers,

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to work as a team in fieldwork, believing that a multitude of perspectives of a culture was better than one. Benedict also arranged for the students to live with Mescalero Apache families on the reservation. Tax was eager to do so, writing in his diary that although the temporary quarters he was living in were clean, “Personally, I’m anxious to get out in a tent and stay with the Indians; that is what I came for.” Tax never published anything from his summer’s work, but he later said the experience helped him learn how to gather data on social organization. At the end of the summer Benedict pronounced the students’ work more than acceptable, noting, “The results would be creditable to any group of ethnologists, and I’m satisfied that the boys have really learned something in the process.”6 Tax made an impression on people. Short, dark-haired, with a moustache, he was almost Chaplin-esque in appearance, down to the pigeon-toed walk affected by the comedian. Tax’s peculiar gait bailed him out of a jam when he hitchhiked back to Chicago in the fall after his fieldwork experience with Benedict. He had made his way as far as Oklahoma, where he accepted a ride from a man in a truck. After Tax climbed in with his suitcase, the stranger got his vehicle up to speed, opened the door, pushed out Tax, and kept on going. With no belongings or money, Tax started walking again, and soon a chauffeur-driven limousine passed him, stopped, and then backed up to offer him a ride. Inside was a woman who had known the Tax family in Milwaukee. Tax’s father had once sat up and prayed for her ill child all night, and the woman believed the rabbi’s prayers had saved the child’s life. She recognized Tax from the pigeon-toed walk he shared with his father.7 In graduate school at the University of Chicago after graduation from Wisconsin, it was Tax’s intellectual attributes rather than his physical appearance that attracted attention from the time he arrived in 1931. During the summer field institute, Benedict referred to him and his fellow student from Chicago, Morris Opler, as the best of her students for discussing anthropology but was disappointed that “they are crass young reformers. . . . The generous enthusiasms of this age group are endearing, but their programs and their great

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ideas are a weariness to the flesh—the spirit, rather.” A few months later when Tax asked her to read his University of Wisconsin undergraduate honors thesis concerning animal behavior, Benedict wrote back to him from Columbia University, “You’ll go far, Sol.” Fay-Cooper Cole, chairman of the anthropology department at Chicago, found Tax to be “an eager student” with the “promise of unusual ability. It is the unanimous opinion of the Department that he will develop into an outstanding research man.”8 Developing strong researchers was important to Cole, who wanted to build an anthropology department to rival that of Columbia University, over which Franz Boas had presided for thirty-two years. In contrast, anthropology at Chicago as a separate department had been in existence for just two years before Tax arrived in 1931. Its roots were in the university’s nationally influential sociology department, which concentrated on studying urban social problems. The sociology department’s focus met the goal of William Rainey Harper, the first president of the University of Chicago in 1890, that university social scientists should both produce new knowledge and serve humanity. The sociology department continued its influence on the new department even after the split into the two departments. Robert Redfield, for example, was the son-in-law of Chicago sociologist Robert E. Park and had been heavily influenced by the sociology department during his training.9 As Cole pushed for rapid academic respectability for his department, he brought together a faculty whose rivalries and diverse interests gave the department an eclectic atmosphere rather than a commitment to a common core of anthropological views. Cole specialized in archeology. Edward Sapir, who left for Yale in 1931, was a linguist with interests in the relationship between psychology and culture. Then there was Redfield with his strong ties to sociology as evidenced by his interest in studying entire villages rather than compiling lists of cultural traits. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, a British anthropologist who arrived in 1931, brought to Chicago a highly theoretical emphasis, with his belief in studying and comparing cultures in order to arrive at general principles of organization. W. Lloyd

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Warner, who brought anthropological science to bear on the cities of Newburyport, Massachusetts, and Natchez, Mississippi, came to Chicago in 1936 from Harvard and held a joint appointment in anthropology and sociology.10 The faculty’s diverse points of view toward anthropology gave the department an unfocused, experimental atmosphere not conducive to producing students with rigid ideas about anthropology. Instead, the intellectual environment, according to one commentator, was one where “doubt and question were considered the beginning of wisdom.” Students, for example, felt free to satirize the research of their professors, once producing a skit that targeted the work of each of the major professors in the department. One presenter used Cole’s theories about archeology to demonstrate the fantastic proposition that the North Pole was the center of world culture. Robert McMillan, whose dissertation compared the development of anthropology at Chicago and Columbia, said the skit, performed on campus in the department lounge, showed that Chicago students “valued scepticism above eternal truths.”11 Tax was one Chicago student who was willing to question his professors rather than automatically becoming their disciples. In a 1932 letter to Benedict, Tax wrote that he had come to see the value in some of Radcliffe-Brown’s ideas “after months of bitter arguments,” but he still considered it likely that Radcliffe-Brown would turn out to be a “false-messiah.” At the same time, Tax expressed his regrets that Redfield had been ill for two months and was not around to combat some of Radcliffe-Brown’s influence. Tax further demonstrated his independent thinking by organizing a debate in 1933 between Radcliffe-Brown and Ralph Linton, Tax’s earliest mentor, in which they argued about whether the comparative study of societies would lead to general laws explaining social structure. The debate before the department’s anthropology club was a draw.12 False messiah or not, Radcliffe-Brown supervised Tax’s dissertation and influenced the direction it took. The British anthropologist was working on a book on the social organization of North American Indians, focusing on kinship relationships as an important part

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of a society’s overall structure. To obtain material for his book, he arranged for his research assistant, Fred Eggan, to study various Indian communities, including the Five Civilized Tribes, and asked Tax to study the Meskwaki. Radcliffe-Brown did little to prepare Tax for fieldwork except to tell him: “Buy a large notebook, and open it in the middle and start a genealogy, because you never know where it’s going to lead you on either side.”13 Tax in the Field Tax did fieldwork on the Meskwaki settlement near Tama, Iowa, during the summers of 1932 and 1934, for both his master’s thesis and his dissertation, “Social Organization of the Fox Indians.” During the summer of 1933, Tax traveled among Wisconsin tribes to gather comparable information, although he was annoyed to find out that another student from Chicago had already canvassed part of the same territory. Tax regretted that during his two summers with the Meskwaki he had been unable to learn the language or to “live the life” of the people, but because of his ability to make friends, Meskwaki liked Tax well enough to admit him to their private religious ceremonies, as well as a funeral and an adoption ceremony in which “the deceased, his family, and the adopted person were all well known” to Tax. In 1934 Tax’s new wife, Gertrude, came along for the summer. She, too, made friends with Meskwaki and recorded the autobiography of one woman that Tax included in his dissertation under his wife’s name.14 While doing his fieldwork regarding Meskwaki kinship, Tax used many of the traditional fieldwork techniques of earlier anthropologists. He worked closely with a small number of mostly male informants and relied on them for information even about such topics as childbirth and menstruation. Tax’s best source on kinship matters, however, was a young woman whose husband Tax hired as an interpreter. Jessica Jones possessed a marvelous capacity for explaining the Meskwaki system of kinship abstractly, without reference to individuals—a skill that must have been valuable to Tax. Business aside, Tax, and later his wife, Gertrude, became close friends with Jessica and her husband, Jeremy.15

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Tax—“the man with the little moustache”—made quite a favorable impression buzzing up and down the hilly roads of the settlement in a shiny roadster. Elderly women who were not yet in their teens at the time remember the dashing figure he cut in a community where few people had cars and the roads were still dirt. Tax, or “Sultax” as the Meskwaki referred to him, socialized easily with people, once joining a group of men in trying to ride an unbroken horse, an event that evoked laughter for years afterward. Tax waved to everyone he passed on the settlement roads, for, as he phrased it in his master’s thesis, “in the Indian camps, we know everybody.” Settlement residents later attested that “Sultax had been such a good friend of the people here, hadn’t been nosey, etc. everyone liked him.” In the course of his research, however, Tax learned that Indians did not greet all anthropologists in such a friendly fashion. He corresponded with an amateur anthropologist working among the Meskwaki’s relatives, the Sac and Fox of Oklahoma, who told him that people there would not talk to her because they heard that “Edna Ferber had made a fortune from the Book Cimarron and therefore if I were writing anything about the Indians I was doing it for my own benefit.”16 Sol and Gertrude attended the Meskwaki powwow in 1934 on free passes “as honored and distinguished pals-o’-theirs.” The couple even agreed to be dressed up in “full war regalia” so Meskwaki could take their pictures. Tax wrote a friend who apparently was in the newspaper business that “if you need something hot for the old Sunday supplement, get Sol in beads and buckskin.” That same summer, Sol and Gertrude became involved in helping Jessica and Jeremy Jones “mend the seams, calk the leaks, bind the wounds” of their marriage, as Tax put it. Tax’s account of their attempts in this regard is virtually the only document in more than three hundred boxes of his papers that could be considered blatantly condescending toward the Meskwaki way of life, and the life of Tama whites as well. In a letter to an unknown recipient, Tax described going to Tama for the Wednesday night band concert immediately after the settlement residents had received their earnings from the powwow, a day he christened “Bloody Wednesday” without explicit explanation. More

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at home in a metropolis like Chicago than a small town, Tax described the Tama street scene cynically, with references to “the bright lights, the music, the pretty girls from all over the county—and whatta county—the odor of popcorn, the lively stir of romance.”17 The marriage of the Taxes’ friends was in trouble that night, as Jessica had left her husband and was planning to leave the settlement the next day with her mother. Tax persuaded Jessica to stay by promising to take her and Jeremy on an excursion to the nearby town of Marshalltown the next day. After Jessica agreed, the Taxes spent the evening searching the pool halls of Tama for Jeremy, before finally meeting him as a friend brought him back to the settlement. “Weren’t we the young cupids, though—bringing the errant wife back to her dear drunken sot of a husband. . . . I didn’t hear (the wife) scream for help as we drove out of the gate,” Tax wrote. Tax displayed his cynical humor again by explaining his interest in the marriage by saying that “we like them both and sort of have a sentimental interest in keeping them married at least until we leave these parts, what with my marriage records all made up and ready for my Book and all.”18 After he left Tama and went back to Chicago, Tax received a number of letters from Meskwaki whom he had come to know, expressing warm friendship and noting how both Taxes were missed. George Young Bear had worked for Tax and in one of his letters explicitly asked for work, telling Tax how tough times were on the settlement and how few jobs were available locally. “I am always glad to hear from you and I want you to feel free to write me at any time and tell me all about yourself and if you have any more ‘work’ or ‘questions’ you want information [sic] remember I am always ready to help you,” he wrote. In the same letter, Young Bear told Tax he would be asking him to help him arrange for a trip by the Meskwaki band to the Chicago World’s Fair.19 While Young Bear’s request for work demonstrates the grip of the Depression on the settlement, Tax later said he had not noticed extreme poverty or other problems when he was at the settlement. Tax came away from the settlement with an impression of the Meskwaki community as “definitely a going concern.”20

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When it came to the scholarly matter Tax was studying, however, Tax’s fieldwork was meticulous and thorough. He obtained kinship information on nearly every resident of the settlement by relying not only on a few extremely knowledgeable Meskwaki, but also on his own extensive canvassing of the entire settlement. Tax crosschecked the information he gathered against genealogies compiled by an Oklahoma Sac and Fox anthropologist, William Jones, who had come to the settlement thirty years earlier. Tax also compared his work against a 1905 tribal census. Using some twenty Meskwaki, Tax compiled a list of generic kinship terms whose validity he checked by meeting jointly with people who gave conflicting information. At community gatherings, Tax carefully noted what happened when two people met. He correlated this information with his kinship charts to determine how their relationship affected their behavior toward each other. Certain relatives, for example, were expected to joke with each other, and Tax watched carefully to see if practice followed theory.21 The major contribution of Tax’s kinship work came in the charts he worked out demonstrating the kinship system. The charts were “ego-less”; that is, they did not rely on a single person for their starting point but showed the kinship system generically, thus making them more useful for showing the relationships of many people simultaneously. This innovation broke with the tradition of kinship study started in the mid-nineteenth century by Lewis Henry Morgan, who had collected kinship terms from the point of view of a single speaker and thus needed separate charts for men and women.22 Tax’s dissertation demonstrates an ambivalent attitude toward the ideas of his professors. Although he was a student of RadcliffeBrown, Tax reached a conclusion based upon his research among the Meskwaki that contradicted his adviser’s theories. Radcliffe-Brown argued that kinship systems were related to a society’s social organization; institutions within a society were based on kinship ties and functioned to help people within a society get along with each other and to maintain the society over time. Tax found that kinship ties did not seem to be related in any causal way to social institutions within the Meskwaki community. “The important point here is that neither

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clans nor kinship systems are the cause of each other, even though they may reinforce each other and one of them in a specific case (who knows?) may go far toward determining the other,” he wrote.23 Furthermore, Tax disputed Radcliffe-Brown’s functionalism theory, that the need to keep a society going was the fundamental reason behind the existence of all social institutions. In one example, Tax dismissed Radcliffe-Brown’s contention that in all societies members of one generation tended to respect members of the generation immediately above it due to “the social necessity of passing on culture from one generation to the next.” In place of that sweeping generalization, Tax offered the common-sense explanation that children, who are smaller and younger than their parents, are dependent upon them for the necessities of life, and therefore “they obey their parents, and respect them, for about the same reasons that a dog obeys its master.” In undermining his mentor’s work, Tax stated tactfully: “Radcliffe-Brown would be the first to deny that he is responsible for the argument that will follow, and, since he comes by far the closest to being their godfather, this thesis cannot ask anyone but its author to take any responsibility. At the same time, without the theories of Radcliffe-Brown as a beginning there is little doubt that this argument would never have been born.”24 Despite his professional disagreements with Radcliffe-Brown, Tax and Eggan suggested that the department publish a book of essays in Radcliffe-Brown’s honor when he left Chicago in 1937 for Oxford University. Radcliffe-Brown thanked Tax for the original idea and offered Tax “my kindest regards and my best wishes for your future.” Tax contributed two articles to the volume, “Some Problems in Social Organization” and “The Social Organization of the Fox Indians,” both based upon his work among the Meskwaki.25 Even before he finished writing his dissertation, Tax was moving out of Radcliffe-Brown’s orbit and into Redfield’s, whose work centered on understanding how societies changed from rural, folk communities to urban ones. The folk-urban continuum that Redfield developed served as a model for this process of social change and was based on his study of the city of Merida and three rural com-

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munities of the Yucatan peninsula. In 1934 Redfield—by then a research associate with the Carnegie Institution of Washington in addition to his duties at Chicago—hired Tax to study communities in Guatemala as a comparison to the Mexican ones already examined. The Taxes spent six years between 1934 and 1941 doing fieldwork in Guatemala, which bore fruit in the publication of Tax’s book Penny Capitalism, an early entry into the field of economic anthropology. Using the field techniques of anthropology, Tax patiently compiled precise economic data about the labor and production of families in the community of Panajachel. Tax found that peasants in Guatemala engaged in economically rational behavior in a system of private land ownership and free competition, making their economy similar to modern ones despite its smaller scope and scale. For several years Tax’s fieldwork routine entailed gathering information in Guatemala for eight months each year and then returning to Chicago for four months to write.26 Although Redfield and his family joined the Taxes in Guatemala for a portion of the time, they lived in separate villages, so even then the student and his mentor kept up a lively correspondence that covered fieldwork progress, family matters, and professional gossip. The correspondence continued when the Taxes moved to Mexico in 1941, where Tax was a visiting professor at the Instituto Nacional de Anthropologia e Historia in Mexico City for one year and trained Mexican students in fieldwork for four years.27 Social Sciences and Society During Tax’s fieldwork with the Meskwaki in Iowa and his more extended stay in Guatemala, social scientists in the United States were continuing a debate over the role of their profession in the modern world that had begun in the 1920s. As the Great Depression hung on through the 1930s, some social scientists became increasingly alarmed at the state of American society and frustrated at the aloofness of social scientists from the struggles of Americans. In the terminology of historian Mark Smith, the debate that had been building within the American social sciences pitted the scientists against

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the “purposivists.” The scientistic position saw the social sciences as similar to the physical sciences in searching to uncover an existing reality, unchangeable regardless of the perspective of the person viewing it. Social scientists were to be technical experts, doing nothing more than providing bias-free data to policymakers. The purposivists saw the social sciences as a way to create information to help build a better society. In their view, knowledge gained from scientific work was to be used to help create goals and values for society.28 The debate affected the work of anthropologists along with their colleagues in the other social sciences. After John Collier became director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1933, he began experimenting with using anthropologists in the Indian Service and challenged anthropologists to “actively help the government in its efforts to give a quarter of a million Indian wards a new deal.” Collier asked anthropologists to comment on early drafts of the Indian Reorganization Act and to consider how it would affect Indian tribes with which they were familiar. When Collier met with anthropologists in 1934 to discuss how members of their profession could work with the Indian service, the University of Chicago was represented by FayCooper Cole, Robert Redfield, and A. R. Radcliffe-Brown. In 1936 Collier formed the Applied Anthropology Unit within the bureau to study the social life of tribes so that the new tribal constitutions and economic development programs that were the core of the Indian New Deal would fit the values of individual tribes.29 In recent years scholars have rendered negative assessments of the work of anthropologists in the Indian New Deal. Historians Lawrence Kelly and Dorothy Parker have noted that the work of anthropologists was superficial, descriptive rather than analytical, and likely to antagonize long-time bureaucratic employees. The work of D’Arcy McNickle, the first anthropologist hired by Collier, demonstrates many of the problems historians have since noted.30 When McNickle met with the Meskwaki, he had been with the bureau for only eleven months. Yet he freely criticized previous bia staff for its stewardship of the tribe. Although the Meskwaki had “most interesting possibilities as an organized group,” McNickle complained

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that “at present they are the victims of neglect.” Regarding the Meskwaki’s proposed constitution, McNickle wrote that a version of it had been ready for nearly a year, and “the fact that the draft has not been long ago completed and submitted to Washington is the result entirely of their not being encouraged by the local agency staff.” As McNickle’s biographer, Dorothy Parker, pointed out, the bureaucratic veterans of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, who would be responsible for carrying out any of McNickle’s recommendations, already were reluctant to have social scientists join the bureau, and such blunt criticism was likely to further alienate them. Furthermore, McNickle’s failure to alert bureau officials to the depth of some Meskwaki’s opposition to the constitution demonstrates how superficial his investigation and report were, perhaps because of the limited time he had to spend at the settlement. Other McNickle comments about problems he did uncover were too vague to be useful. He mentioned that the issue of assigning land to Meskwaki would be a difficult one and suggested it “be handled and presented with care,” without being specific as to what that meant.31 Still, whether in response to McNickle’s report or not, the bureau in following years did take steps regarding some of the matters he mentioned. Besides trying to resolve the question of legal jurisdiction over the community, the bureau also helped the Meskwaki save money on the property taxes for their land. At the request of the bureau, the Iowa State Legislature in 1939 approved legislation granting property tax exemptions to forty-acre parcels of Meskwaki land that were inhabited by individual members of the community, even though ownership remained with the tribe. By 1951 about one-third of the settlement acreage was exempt from taxes due to the establishment of thirty-three homesteads of forty acres. In addition, the 1944 bia plan for postwar development of the Meskwaki settlement recommended spending $964,685 over ten years to buy three thousand acres of land, doubling the size of the Meskwaki holdings.32 The mixed record of bureau reactions to McNickle’s work resembles bureaucrats’ responses to the work of other anthropologists on Indian matters. In 1935 when overgrazing and erosion threatened

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the quality of Navajo range land and after voluntary stock reduction efforts had failed, Collier imposed grazing limits that required the Navajo to reduce the size of their herds. Anthropologists working in a cooperative program between the Indian service and the U.S. Soil Conservation Service in the U.S. Department of Agriculture tried to fit the erosion control measures to patterns of Navajo land holding and dependency. Research by John Provinse and Solon Kimball uncovered the existence of Navajo land use communities, groups of families related by a common maternal ancestor who lived close to each other and cooperated in economic matters. Provinse used this concept to reach stock reduction and soil conservation agreements with three such communities.33 In an analysis of the Collier stock reduction program, historian Richard White concluded that the program disrupted a Navajo economic system that valued property accumulation not for producing wealth but for guaranteeing security and respect within the community. Navajos with larger flocks of sheep and herds of goats shared their surplus with the poor during hard times. According to White, the bia stock reduction plan took goats away from the poorest Navajos, leaving them without an emergency food source, and reduced the surplus that richer Navajos could have used to subsidize the poor. White argues that the grazing limits helped destroy the Navajo subsistence economy and made them economically dependent wage laborers within the broader American capitalist economy. Overall, White found that “the government made the Navajos perhaps the most studied people on earth but largely ignored the information they gathered.” Kelly, however, contends that applying Provinse’s and Kimball’s findings throughout the reservations would have mitigated the conflict over stock reduction.34 In the judgment of historians Parker and Kelly, the successful uses of anthropological knowledge were less spectacular than the failures. Collier employed anthropologists to improve bia-run education programs. Anthropologists taught summer classes on Native American cultures for teachers in bia schools and helped develop cross-cultural education programs for Indian children. Anthropolo-

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gists employed by the bureau also devised a grammar for the Navajo language and taught Navajo to bia employees.35 Despite the bureau’s uneven use of anthropologists’ work, Collier remained committed to the application of anthropological and other social science knowledge to bureau work, even after he disbanded the Applied Anthropological Unit in 1937. In 1941 Collier contracted with the University of Chicago Committee on Human Development to study the development of individual personalities within Indian communities. The study, coordinated by Collier’s future wife, anthropologist Laura Thompson, began as a pilot project examining child rearing among the Papago Indians. After the Papago project, the committee carried out additional studies among the Navajo, Sioux, Hopi, and Zunis. Collier left the bureau in 1945 before the studies were published, and the findings were never incorporated into bia policy as he had planned.36 McNickle’s association with the bia turned into a long-term arrangement, but most anthropologists were frustrated by the experience of working with government bureaucrats. Officials within the bia sometimes misunderstood the anthropologists’ stress on matching government policy to Indians’ ways of life and interpreted such emphasis as an attempt to preserve traditional customs rather than encourage assimilation. Furthermore, anthropologists realized that their concentration on vanishing cultures left them ill-equipped for dealing with modern problems in Indian communities. Their studies of isolated pieces of Indian cultures failed to give them an understanding of how an Indian community as a whole functioned. Despite these shortcomings, Collier’s experiment did expose anthropologists to the opportunities afforded by government work.37 As a student at the University of Chicago, Tax must have been aware of Collier’s attempts to involve anthropologists in policy work. In 1934 Collier’s son Donald applied for a fellowship from the University of Chicago anthropology department. Department chairman Fay-Cooper Cole had remarked on the elder Collier’s interest in making use of anthropologists and anthropological training in Indian affairs and suggested that “as a matter of diplomacy the ap-

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pointment of his son would be of major importance.” (Collier arrived with excellent recommendations as a student, so the appointment was not purely cynical. Yet, the potential existed for some sort of quid pro quo from the bia commissioner following the granting of the fellowship.) Unlike Columbia, where Franz Boas was hostile to Collier’s plans for Indians, Cole was anxious to become involved in them. Once the bia began hiring anthropologists, several of Tax’s friends, including John Provinse and Morris Opler, found jobs in the agency, as well as in other New Deal programs.38 “Living Strictly Indian-Ladino Lives” Tax did not go to Guatemala with the idea of doing applied anthropology, but the letters between Tax and Redfield show how Tax became involved with Guatemalans in a manner that violated the detached stance toward the people they studied that professional norms dictated. Tax’s intimacy with local people grew from his immersion in the community in the spirit of Bronislaw Malinowski. The Polish anthropologist set the standard for field-workers of the twentieth century during his stay among the Trobriand Islanders from 1915 to 1918, where he pitched his tent upon a beach rather than live with white missionaries or traders. In order to practice the “ethnographer’s magic” necessary to accurately describe all the facets and subtleties of another culture, Malinowski advised anthropologists to speak the local language and live in the local manner away from other whites. In that way, “one sees the customs, ceremonies and transactions over and over again, one has examples of their beliefs as they are actually lived through, and the full body and blood of actual native life fills out soon the skeleton of abstract constructions,” he said.39 Tax got even closer to the local people than Malinowski had in his tent. For a short time, Tax and his wife stayed in the same house as the family of their guide, but Tax felt guilty for displacing a dozen people from one of the rooms in their small abode and arranged to move out without appearing rude. He refused to live in a hotel, not only because it was too costly, but also because he thought it

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a “bad influence for ethnology” in the way it set him off from the local residents. Within a few months of their arrival, the Taxes had found a small place to live. Despite their inability to speak the Mayan language of the city, Tax reported to Redfield that they were “living strictly Indian-Ladino lives.” The local Indians, he wrote, “are getting to know us pretty well and are able to distinguish us from the tourists. They come to us for work, to sell us things, etc., and at the market we are, far from insulted, encouraged to do business.” Tax felt comfortable in the field, even if his assessment of the extent to which he was living like a local resident was exaggerated.40 Redfield encouraged such close contact with the Indians and gently turned down Tax’s proposal to do a wide-ranging study of Guatemala in favor of a more focused, intensive study of one community. “I regard the ‘boring in’ to a culture through increasingly rich and more intimate personal acquaintance with it as essential, primary, and inescapable in social anthropology,” he wrote to Tax. Only then, Redfield said, could an anthropologist gain insights into the nature of the culture. The advice was in keeping with that which Redfield had given Tax when he complained that he felt like a “magazine salesman” trying to get kinship information from Menominee Indians in Wisconsin. Redfield told him, “In my limited experience, one of the most difficult and one of the most important parts of ethnological work is finding a role in the Indian community which is accepted by the people and which enables one to deal naturally and humanly with them.”41 Living intimately with Indians and finding a niche to fill within their community posed a threat to the objectivity that some American social scientists preached in the 1930s. Tax tried to be generous toward the people with whom he came in contact, and they often asked him for favors. Tax had found that local people much appreciated watches as gifts, and he had stocked up on them in between field trips. When Redfield joined him in Guatemala, Tax advised him to bring along a variety of presents to hand out—cheap watches, automatic pencils, pocketknives, ties, cloth, dress trimmings, and alarm clocks. Tax had learned how to get maximum mileage out of

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such dime-store merchandise. In one Guatemalan village, Tax made a big show in front of local officials when he “pulled out a dollar watch to cement relationships and presented it formally to the town. . . . [T]here isn’t a watch in the place and it may be a curiosity until it runs out.” He thoughtfully provided presents to the school in another community in which he worked. On a third occasion, Tax told local officials of the town in which he was staying that he would like to “be of some service to the community; I have suggested our desire to do something.” The correspondence fails to make clear either what presents Tax gave the school or what service, if any, he eventually did for the community.42 Nevertheless, Tax performed numerous informal services. His references to them gave the impression that they were routine. He wrote Redfield: “Except that I had to buy $2 worth of stamps this morning to help out the post-master, and except that the Contractor to whom we advanced $3 came yesterday to say that he would come to work tomorrow, and except that that drunken fellow that we met Good Friday came again for more money, there is nothing new.” The Taxes and Redfields also provided assistance of a much more intimate character. Gertrude Tax helped deliver a baby, and Redfield once was asked to provide family counseling. The father of a young unwed mother came to Redfield and asked him to try to persuade her to marry the baby’s father. On another occasion, Redfield wrote Tax that he had loaned so much money to people in the community that he had run out of cash, and he arranged for Tax to cash a check so he could continue his lending. Far from being annoyed by such requests, Tax considered it an anthropological blessing and wrote Redfield, “We are fortunate indeed to be living in the midst of things this year.”43 As her involvement in a local baby’s birth suggests, Gertrude Tax contributed significantly to Tax’s effort to be accepted as a member of the community. When Tax had trouble finding a local woman who could speak Spanish to work with Gertrude, he reported that “the lack of a good informant has gotten her down considerably.” When Tax did find women for his wife to work with, Gertrude spent

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eight hours a day with them, ostensibly learning to weave while questioning them about the local culture. Their friends gave Gertrude her own nickname. Having taken Tax’s first name, Sol, to mean “Sun,” they took to calling Gertrude “Dona Luna,” playing on Indian stories in which the Sun and Moon were depicted as husband and wife.44 As he had among the Meskwaki in Iowa, Tax apparently formed lasting friendships within the Guatemalan villages he studied. In 1974 Tax returned to Panajachel, the community on which his book Penny Capitalism was based, for a reunion with students who had prepared a Schriftfest in his honor. A local family asked him to serve as godfather to their child at his baptism in the local Catholic church. Tax graciously did so, not allowing the fact that he was Jewish to interfere with accepting the honor that his old friends had bestowed upon him.45 Maintaining Meskwaki Ties While in Guatemala, the Taxes kept in contact with their friends at Tama, especially the Meskwaki couple, Jessica and Jeremy Jones, whose marriage he and Gertrude had saved temporarily during the escapades of “Bloody Wednesday.” Jessica wrote Gertrude that she and her husband checked the mail every day in hopes of seeing a letter from her. She wrote the Taxes that she “sure did miss you two after you left” and that every time she passed the Clifton Hotel in Tama where the Taxes had stayed she felt that “it looks so deserted without you in there. . . . I sure enjoyed being with you when you were here. I wish you’d come soon but I guess I just have to wait and wait. I’m already anxious for your coming next year.” Other friends exchanged pictures with the Taxes, kept them up to date on settlement politics, car accidents, and the weather, or just sent greetings. One woman reported that the Taxes’ efforts at marriage counseling on “Bloody Wednesday” had “succeeded admirably. . . . They [Jessica and Jeremy] were separated for a spell but I think they have buried the hatchet and are again peaceful.” She asked Gertrude to write her about the people and customs of Guatemala. With a touch of envy,

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she wrote Gertrude, “It must be thrilling and interesting to get to travel and see the strange countries and the strange people. I would give much for a similar experience.”46 The Taxes kept their promise to return to the settlement in between their sojourns in Guatemala, visiting Meskwaki friends in the summer of 1935. In 1937 a man invited the Taxes to the Meskwaki powwow as honored guests with free passes. The man indirectly revealed how much he thought of Tax when he noted that another anthropologist (Natalie Joffee) was working at the settlement, but he did not know her name. Three years after Tax had completed his work among the Meskwaki, people in the community still considered him a friend.47 In some ways, Tax’s fieldwork experience with the Meskwaki and with the Mayan Indians in Guatemala seemed to feed off each other. Soon after he arrived in Guatemala in 1934, Tax had met a local man who could read and write Spanish and was interested in anthropology. Even though A. Goubaud Carrera had no academic training, Tax was anxious to collaborate professionally with him, as Redfield had with Alfonso Villa Rojas in Mexico. He wrote Redfield, “If it works out all right, I would—in the matter of publication—consider him a co-worker (you know I’m not the jealous kind).” Tax’s dependency on local residents as interpreters may have made him more appreciative of the help he had received from Meskwaki, because in 1937 he sent copies of the two articles he wrote for the Radcliffe-Brown book to friends in Tama. George Young Bear underscored what he considered the collaborative nature of his work with Tax by writing, “Received your or our ‘Social Organization of the Fox Indians,’ also ‘Some Problems of Social Organization.’ Thanks. I am certainly enjoying them.” Tax made sure Meskwaki saw what he had written, and in response his collaborators had claimed joint ownership of the work in somewhat the same way that Tax considered working with Carrera. Perhaps Tax’s friend in Tama only meant to tease him by referring to “our” work, but Tax’s relationship with Carrera hints that Tax may have given some thought to his relationship to the indigenous people with whom he worked.48

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Knowledge for What? While the Taxes were in Guatemala receiving letters from old friends in Tama, delivering babies, and loaning money to people, anthropologists and other social scientists in the United States continued the debate over the appropriate degree of detachment from the people involved in their research. Sociologist Robert S. Lynd sharpened the debate in 1939 with the publication of his Knowledge for What? Lynd, whose studies of Middletown—carried out with his wife, Helen Merrell Lynd—had applied anthropological techniques to the study of contemporary American society, accused his colleagues of researching and teaching classes without ever asking what use the information was. Lynd assessed each field within the social sciences, and when he came to anthropology, he blamed its past emphasis on the study of exotic cultures for keeping the discipline from being useful to American society.49 In trying to enlist social scientists in addressing the social problems of the 1930s, Lynd bluntly told his colleagues that the world did not owe them a living and that they needed to justify their existence. Producing arcane knowledge and gathering more and more facts in hopes that some day they might be part of an overall picture of the world was foolish during a time of national crisis such as the Depression. For Lynd, social science was not science unless it included action. He wrote that “the essence of science is to analyze, to draw inferences, and then to implement action.” For social scientists to try to evade responsibility for guiding society in such times as the Depression would make the social sciences “an empty façade.”50 Lynd argued that social scientists who stayed aloof from contemporary troubles on the grounds of objectivity were deluding themselves. Science itself was a product of culture and as such had built-in biases that define certain situations as significant problems worthy of study and others as not, certain facts as important and others as not. And by failing to question those assumptions, social scientists turned out work that tended to buttress the existing social order, hardly a bias-free result. Furthermore, Lynd argued, the “just

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the facts” approach did a disservice to society because the interpretation of facts was rarely indisputable, and scientists who withheld their interpretations allowed special interest groups to interpret scientific results for their own narrow purposes.51 Lynd acknowledged the danger that social scientists who became involved in contemporary problems might be harnessed to the work of the state for undesirable purposes, as he said was occurring with contemporary dictators. But he seemed confident that social science involvement in American problems would preserve American democracy and make such “prostitution” less, rather than more, likely. He also suggested it would establish social scientists’ independence from government control to a greater extent than the current research, which served to support the status quo.52 Although Lynd and the Great Depression failed to jar most anthropologists or other social scientists loose from their attachment to value-neutral research, the increasing prospects for war throughout the 1930s did spur some to action. In 1939 a small number of anthropologists became interested in government work outside of the Indian Service. Responding to the deteriorating international situation, Margaret Mead and her husband Gregory Bateson began exploring the uses of power by people and nations. At a 1940 meeting of the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Bateson urged social scientists to become involved in the likely future war effort rather than “to reserve the techniques [of the social sciences] to a few planning, goal-oriented and power-hungry individuals, to whom the instrumentality of science makes a natural appeal.” Mead’s contribution to the discussion of the social scientist’s wartime role came in her study of contemporary America, And Keep Your Powder Dry. Mead argued that besides the responsibility to examine data with detachment, a social scientist also had “the obligation of the citizen to participate responsibly in his society.”53 As organizers of the Committee on National Morale in 1939, Bateson and Mead also were involved in looking for ways in which social scientists and other intellectuals could aid an anticipated war effort.

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Mead recalled that the committee brought together as volunteers many scientists, who later would be involved in psychological warfare and programs to maintain national morale, to work on plans to be used if the United States entered the war. The committee cosponsored Geoffrey Gorer’s preliminary study of Japanese character and propaganda, which was an early effort at the use of anthropological techniques in the study of a potential enemy. Gorer recommended that in any war with Japan, U.S. propaganda should never attack the emperor himself because Japanese would take that as sacrilege in the same way medieval Catholics would have interpreted attacks on the pope. Instead, he said, U.S. propaganda should focus on military leaders around the emperor and portray them as serving him poorly, treating him with contempt, and usurping his power.54 Interest in a more sustained relationship between anthropology and contemporary society than such ad hoc efforts permitted escalated after the 1940 American Anthropological Association meeting at which Eric Chapple and John Provinse presented papers urging the application of anthropology to modern administrative problems. A small committee of anthropologists organized and invited anthropologists to comment on the formation of a professional organization relating to the use of anthropology in contemporary society. The Society for Applied Anthropology was incorporated in April 1941 and the next month held its first meeting at Harvard University, where the participants voted to establish a journal, Applied Anthropology, which later became Human Organization.55 Since Tax was out of the country for much of the time between 1934 and 1944, he learned about these developments from second-hand sources. When the Society for Applied Anthropology was in the planning stages, Redfield wrote Tax in Mexico about the development without commenting on it. But Tax likely had other sources as well. Provinse had been a graduate student at Chicago with Tax, and Alfred V. Kidder, one of the founders of the society, was director of the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Division of Historical Research and had supervised Tax’s work in Latin America for the Carnegie Institution. Kidder visited Tax several times in Guatemala, so Tax knew him well.56

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Although not in the thick of the debate, Tax did some thinking on the matter. He wrote Redfield that his work at the Instituto Indigenista spurred an interest in applied anthropology, although he worried that administrators placed too much “blind faith” in the discipline. Tax wrote: “My feeling is that if we are interesting [sic] in nurturing the connection between anthropology and administration and at the same time in saving our science from prostitution, we must do something quickly. It is up to us to define the relationship that should exist, the possibilities and the limitations of anthropological research as it may be ‘applied’—and in short to define what may or may not be a new field of anthropology.” He suggested that the University of Chicago anthropology department define such a new field and offer courses, including ones in public administration, to instruct students in the new field. Redfield replied that he recognized the danger that applied anthropology posed for anthropology, but as for a recognized academic field of applied anthropology he said, “I don’t see it yet.”57 Anthropologists Go to War While a few anthropologists and other social scientists had dabbled in government service through the Indian New Deal and the Great Depression, the national emergency precipitated by the attack on Pearl Harbor forced many more of their colleagues to rethink their stances on the role of the social sciences and created a government demand for social scientists that was hard for them to resist. The Roosevelt administration recruited thousands of social scientists into the war effort, although some, such as psychologists, generally showed more enthusiasm than anthropologists. The government demand followed the trending of anthropology away from salvage anthropology to investigation of existing societies, as Redfield had done in Mexico and as Tax was doing in Guatemala. Redfield said he knew of more than one hundred anthropologists already working in Washington dc. “Every week somebody asks me to find another young anthropologist for government service, and there aren’t any more,” he wrote Tax. Demand was likely to increase as the govern-

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ment was considering making anthropology a part of all officers’ training and was considering how anthropologists would be used in training for postwar occupation forces.58 Mead estimated that 95 percent of all American anthropologists were involved in war work of some kind. Besides being active on the Committee on National Morale, Mead headed the Committee on Food Habits established by the National Research Council to study the design of food rationing systems so they would enjoy public support. She and other anthropologists were involved in national character studies or studies of cultures at a distance in order to try to understand enemy leaders’ actions as well as keep relations smooth among the allies—at all levels. In 1944, for example, she wrote a pamphlet explaining the differences in American and English ideas of dating, aimed at young American gis and their English girlfriends. Bateson spent part of his time operating a phony Japanese radio station in Burma and Thailand. As a member of the research unit of the Office of War Information, Clyde Kluckhohn was co-chief of the Joint Morale Survey, which applied the methods of social science to detect a decline in Japanese civilian morale beginning in 1944. Philleo Nash and Harold Lasswell in the Office of Facts and Figures analyzed rumors collected by information officers who posed as barflies and used the material to monitor race relations and help shape the response to the 1943 race riots in Detroit. Other social scientists trained army officers for duty in military governments for occupied areas overseas, advised navy officers on the administration of Micronesia, or taught languages to military officers.59 Besides keeping Tax up to date on the various war jobs that other anthropologists had taken, Redfield described some of his own work with the War Relocation Authority, which was responsible for confining 110,000 Japanese Americans in concentration camps in the West, including some on Indian land. Initially no effort was made to soften the deplorable policy with considerations for Japanese culture, but Bureau of Indian Affairs commissioner John Collier tried to remedy that. At the camp at Poston, Arizona, of which the bia was in charge, Collier set up a Bureau of Sociological Research, headed

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by psychiatrist Alexander Leighton, to deal with internal problems. The War Relocation Authority later hired anthropologists to advise on Japanese culture (John Embree), help set up community governments in evacuation centers (Solon T. Kimball, Marvin K. Opler, Gordon Brown), evaluate the effects of the camp policies on the evacuees (Katherine Luomala, Asael T. Hansen), and carry out other tasks.60 Without being more specific, Redfield described his own visits to detention camps in Poston, Arizona; Tule Lake, Oregon; and Manzanar, California; as well as an assembly center in San Francisco, as “one of the most interesting experiences I have ever had.” His comments were quite unemotional, except when he reflected on the generational split between the Japanese Americans at Manzanar. “One great danger is that by segregating people on racial terms without reference to loyalty or citizenship, we turn Americans into Japanese. It is really a tremendously difficult problem,” he wrote. Redfield warned Tax that when he returned to Chicago after his Mexico City assignment ended, he too would face pressure to do government work.61 Redfield also kept Tax informed on the changes occurring on the Chicago campus. The pool of graduate students had dried up, and the campus climate was less stimulating. “The University is gaining students from war contract almost as fast as it is losing them, but the new students study special subjects and most of them march to class in uniform. The University is becoming an Army training post, and general education is disappearing, except from our College,” Redfield sadly told Tax.62 Tax and War Work Although other anthropologists had become involved in war work, Tax only flirted with it. In May 1942 Tax was preparing to leave for Mexico City to spend six months teaching anthropology at the Instituto Indigenista as an employee of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, when the U.S. government approached him with a job offer. Worried about the danger of German propaganda in Latin America, the United States had embarked on a good neighbor pol-

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icy with countries in the region. Nelson Rockefeller, the grandson of Standard Oil Company founder John D. Rockefeller, had urged President Franklin Roosevelt to take an interest in the region because of the potential for Nazi penetration so close to borders of the United States. Rockefeller first became interested in Latin America because of family business interests in Venezuela and Mexico, but his concerns broadened to social matters after he became convinced that outsiders could operate there only with the support of the population at large. At his urging, Standard Oil’s Venezuelan subsidiary installed water and sewer services to the shanty towns around their facilities, provided medical care to its workers, and began teaching Spanish to its managers and encouraging them to make friends outside the small circle of Americans. Once war broke out in Europe, Rockefeller realized that many Latin American economies were on the verge of disaster as Great Britain’s blockade of Germany cut off one-third of their trade. Both Nazi and communist propaganda already were widespread, and the success of the German blitzkrieg had added to German prestige among the residents of Latin American countries. In meetings with Roosevelt’s aides Harry Hopkins and James Forrestal in the summer of 1940, Rockefeller urged the United States to do something to prevent even more serious German infiltration.63 In August 1940 Roosevelt set up the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs within the U.S. Department of Commerce, with Rockefeller as its head. Rockefeller tackled his new post with vigor. His energy, along with his status as a well-known and extremely wealthy Republican working in a Democratic administration, gave the agency a high profile. Rockefeller appeared on the cover of Life magazine, for example, and as one of Rockefeller’s biographers phrased it, “Within little more than a year, his office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs became one of the glamour agencies to work for in wartime Washington.” Along with all the attention, however, came resentment from longtime Washington insiders, especially Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles. Even though Roosevelt had directed that the two offices work together, Welles

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protested when the office was set up that an outsider was invading his area of responsibility.64 As part of his office’s activities Rockefeller set up a plan to pour millions of dollars into the economies of countries such as Ecuador, Brazil, or others where economic conditions were poor or U.S. relations were difficult. That was where Tax came in. The Commerce Department found Tax’s experience in and knowledge of the Guatemalan economy to be attractive and invited him to join a six- to tenperson planning unit for the economy program. The offer to become involved in setting Latin American policy was tempting for Tax, not least because of its $4,600-a-year salary and the security it offered. Yet, it was a wrenching decision for him. Friends framed the question in terms of a choice between job security and being a scholar. Among Tax’s academically oriented friends, taking a government job, even during a national emergency, was seen as a fork in the road, a setback to one’s academic career that would require the intervention of high-placed friends to repair. Still, Tax saw the opportunity as a patriotic duty in a time when many other Americans were being asked to do things that interfered with their personal wishes.65 In the end, other factors bore heavily on his decision. Someone in the State Department contacted R. L. Boke in the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs Office to say that the Commerce Department did not want Tax to abandon the Mexican project for fear of offending the Mexican government. Tax’s letters on the matter fail to make clear who made the call or why they thought having Tax give up a teaching job would be viewed as so crucial. Probably, Tax’s actual position was less the issue than a reluctance to upset the Mexican government in even the most minor way. Information in Rockefeller biographies indicates that by 1942 Mexico had become a vital, but weak, link in the American war effort. Its railroads carried tons of raw materials for war production from Mexican sources to American factories, but the railroads were slow, in need of upgrades, and potentially subject to labor disputes. As U.S. officials negotiated a plan to improve the railroads, they may not have wanted to be distracted by a seemingly petty blowup over a cultural matter. Furthermore,

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the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, George Messersmith, had waged stiff bureaucratic infighting in opposition to Rockefeller’s operation and may have thought keeping Tax from taking the job was another way to harass the pesky Rockefeller.66 According to Redfield’s correspondence, officials of the Rockefeller Foundation also tried to dissuade Tax from giving up his work in Mexico City and possibly offending Mexican officials. Redfield wrote: “It was later reported to Tax, apparently truthfully, that quite a clear indication was received from the State Department that they would regard Tax’s withdrawal very seriously. Tax finally concluded that to accept the Washington position would be not only to offend the Mexicans, but perhaps to make more difficult the relations the Rockefeller Foundation has with the State Department.”67 Redfield does not explain why the Rockefeller Foundation’s opinion was so important, but the University of Chicago from its founding had been dependent upon Rockefeller largesse, and its faculty, including Redfield, often turned to the foundation for support of research programs. In the face of such pressure, Tax decided to reject the government job and go to Mexico City and teach, but he offered to help set up the project before he left or work with it in any way possible once in Mexico City because he considered it important. After the soul-searching decision, Tax said, “I feel now at peace with myself, almost as if my soul were just cleansed of some evil influence.”68 Despite his decision to stay out of government service, Tax sympathized with the American war effort. He was overjoyed at the Allied invasion of North Africa, for example, and wrote Redfield that “I wish I were fighting.” But after escaping from his earlier flirtation with government service, he clearly did not want to interrupt his academic work to join the war effort in a civilian or military capacity. He was at ease with his decision to come to Mexico, having come to consider the work he was doing as sufficiently important to justify staying out of war work. Thus, he was concerned when he learned near the end of his initial Mexico City tenure early in 1943 that the U.S. government was preparing to draft married men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-eight, even if they had children, unless

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they were engaged in essential work. One reason for Tax’s concern was his family. Married with two daughters, Tax feared they would suffer financially with him in the military. Another was his age. At age thirty-five, Tax was near maximum draft age. Yet, he felt guilty about his reluctance to be drafted, as shown when his draft exemption neared its expiration. “I am not keen on getting a Washington berth just to avoid the army; but if there were something really useful that I could do better than others, I suppose it would be better for all concerned were I to do such a job rather than carry a gun,” he said. He suggested that directing a project on nutrition among peasants in Guatemala might qualify as essential work and thus earn him an exemption. At the same time, his associates at the institute in Mexico City spoke to the cultural relations officer at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City to make the point that Tax’s work was essential for cultural relations between the two nations.69 Redfield tried to reassure Tax that being drafted was not inevitable and offered to talk to Tax’s draft board about his work in Mexico City. Tax reacted favorably to Redfield’s suggestion, offering to combine both the nutrition project and the teaching post. Although he and his family would prefer to return to Chicago, Tax conceded that “living in Mexico is an easy way to avoid the war—if one really wants to avoid it!” Redfield arranged for W. M. Gilbert, executive officer of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, to write to Tax’s draft board to argue that Tax’s research on the Mayans in Central America was important to U.S. government agencies such as the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Department of Agriculture. Archeologist Alfred V. Kidder, who chaired the division of historical research of the Carnegie Institution, also wrote the draft board. He stressed creatively that the nutrition study was important to the U.S. Army in knowing what to feed “groups of native labor employed on air field construction and other Central American activities involved in the war effort.” Furthermore, Kidder suggested that Tax’s personal contacts and teaching in Mexico were crucial to “cementing closer intellectual relations between the United States and the Republics in which he works.” Tax won the exemption and went back to Mexico City.70

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Tax’s work in Mexico City came to an end in late 1944, and the University of Chicago hired him as an associate professor of anthropology to work half-time for two years writing a new syllabus for the introductory anthropology courses for graduate students. Although the appointment was temporary, the department said it would consider him for a full-time position at the end of the period. Tax remained on the payroll of the Carnegie Institution of Washington half-time, but the likelihood of his returning to the institution after the temporary appointment seemed slim. The Carnegie Institution had become less friendly to anthropological research, except in the case of archeology, and friends suggested he would be in a dead-end position if he returned.71 Tax and Value-Neutrality in Social Sciences As Sol Tax tried to decide where his future lay, he wrote an article, published in 1945, that tried to clarify his thinking about the value of anthropology in the modern world. Tax pegged the essay on an incident in Mexico when he had taken a group of students into the state of Chiapas to do fieldwork, and the students, shocked by the poverty they saw, asked Tax if they could help the people. Tax had told them not to interfere. The essay has been broadly read as an attempt to uphold the importance of objective research and denigrate applied anthropology as unscientific and mere administrative work. Tax contended that anthropology was not science when it attempted to tell society what should or should not be done. Science can only describe what will or will not happen if a certain course is followed, Tax argued. He wrote: “Science judges the usefulness of its propositions and data in terms of their usefulness to the solution of scientific problems and not social problems. Science as such can have no concern with the good or the bad—indeed, such terms have no meaning in science. . . . It cannot matter to the scientist, qua scientist, whether his discovery leads to the ‘improvement’ of the lot of mankind or to man’s total destruction. Science as such is amoral.”72 In discussing the importance of this article in Tax’s thinking, the eminent historian of anthropology George Stocking Jr. stressed the

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duality Tax constructed between anthropology as science and the application of anthropology to social problems. Stocking’s interpretation relies on references to portions of Tax’s article that discussed how society can be hurt when it asks scientists to set goals, because scientists then are not acting as scientists. According to Tax, those anthropologists who do administrative work are not doing research and are not scientific, regardless of their training. And any anthropologist who collects data that will be used for administration is not acting as a scientist, either, because for Tax “the project is not one of anthropology unless it is undertaken with a scientific purpose in terms of anthropological theory.”73 Reaching Stocking’s conclusion about the article’s message requires the reader to ignore about a quarter of its contents. An alternative reading, taking into account the final pages of the essay, is that Tax did see the need to make anthropology useful in the world, but that he considered applied anthropology too much like the “prostitution” he warned against in 1942. In somewhat the same way Mead had done, Tax drew a dichotomy between scientists acting as scientists and scientists acting as citizens and then noted that such a separation is illusory because one can never be only a scientist. Because of their knowledge of society, scientists as citizens have a “right—if not the duty” to develop a social philosophy to guide people toward the achievement of the good society. Instead of a duality between scientists and practitioners, Tax posited a three-cornered relationship. “Science studies the values and ends of a society, but itself, ideally, has no preferences. Administration applies science in the light of what it conceived to be the ends of the public that supports it. And now social philosophy may be said to have as its real [?] the analysis and revision of social ends in the light of scientific knowledge,” he wrote.74 Tax went on to say that people with scientifically trained minds were better able to think about society than others. “For this reason I believe that the influential social philosopher is the one familiar with the most advanced social science of his day—e.g. Aristotle—and therefore that social scientists have a peculiar opportunity to develop

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influential social philosophies.” Tax’s point was not that anthropologists should not be useful to society, only that their contribution was used to best advantage at the level of policy planning and development rather than at the mundane level of policy implementation. Tax’s view of the impact of an anthropologist upon society was an elitist one at this point—the anthropologist was the one who could “develop a comprehensive, valid, and influential philosophy of the ends of his society.” In many ways, Tax was echoing Lynd’s essay.75 Like Stocking, some contemporary commentators on Tax’s article concentrated on the duality they thought Tax envisioned between the science of anthropology and the use of anthropological knowledge to create a better world. They ignored Tax’s third possibility— the anthropologist as social philosopher who was better equipped than other citizens to develop goals for society. Emil Sady, editor of the journal American Indigena in which Tax’s article appeared, read the article that way and took issue with Tax in an article published four months later. Sady rejected Tax’s argument that anthropologists were in any way specially equipped to formulate a social philosophy, contending they had no experience in solving problems. Sady wrote: “Dr. Tax undoubtedly made a significant contribution to Mexican social anthropology through his teachings and field work direction. However, in my opinion, his contribution was lessened in the extent to which he was able to convince his students to separate the needs of social science from the needs of their society, and to pursue scientific hypotheses or studies divorced from the overwhelmingly obvious need of their society.”76 Others did understand Tax as urging anthropologists to seek ways to be useful to society while still carrying out scientific research. One anthropology professor who wrote Tax drew a parallel between the medical profession and a potential role of anthropologists as “doctors of society” and suggested that social scientists were being unduly cautious about accepting such a role: It does not seem to me that the practice of medicine has invalidated medical research. Likewise, it doesn’t seem to

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me that the application of Anthropological concepts of human society should invalidate any of Radcliffe-Brown’s laws. Of all the people it seems to me that the Anthropologist should be aware that he cannot function outside of his cultural context and that the ease of operation within such a context is facilitated by a clear cut definition of role. The medical profession has clearified [sic] their moral ambiguity. In the name of humanity can’t we do likewise?77 Reflecting on his article years later as he prepared his papers for the University of Chicago archives, Tax wrote that he never intended to argue that anthropologists should remain “pure scientists.” “This was hardly my purpose, though logic on these two points led me— on the first, not to see that one might learn theory from praxis; and on the second, to probe a new direction for the value problem.” Tax wrote that “although readers paid little attention to the end of the article, it anticipated the direction I eventually took.”78 The Bomb and Postwar Anthropology Several months after the appearance of his article in America Indigena, Tax may have reconsidered his comments on the amorality of science when atomic bombs developed through the work of scientists at the University of Chicago and elsewhere were used to devastate the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tax knew Enrico Fermi and others involved in the Manhattan Project, which produced the first controlled nuclear chain reaction and led to the development of the atomic bomb under the Trinity Project. Afterward, Tax engaged in a bit of name-dropping, saying he found it “remarkable” that “we who lived so close to so many participants in the research had no inkling of what they were doing.” Exactly how close he lived to them is debatable, since he was in Mexico for much of World War II.79 As it did to many intellectuals of the era, the explosion of the atomic bomb shook Tax. In the immediate aftermath of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Tax saw the development of the atomic

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bomb as the beginning of the end of humanity. Robert Redfield, in a letter to his own daughter Lisa on August 19, 1945, explained how the dropping of the bomb came just as Tax was charting the development of technology from the development of the hand axe through August 1945. Contemplating the rapid acceleration in technological development in the previous dozen years compared to all of human existence, Tax wondered what it meant. “Then they dropped the bomb, and he felt he knew. His interpretation was that this is where we get off. Another nova, another sun—the first made by man—and the cycle begins again somewhere,” Redfield wrote to Lisa.80 As a solution Tax wanted to find a way to force physicists to admit that worldwide destruction was possible and to get an agreement on banning atomic research. Redfield compared Tax’s zeal on the issue with his desire to find a doctor for Lisa when she was sick in Guatemala as a child. Lisa had fallen ill with diphtheria, and Tax came to the family’s aid by finding a doctor and then taking care of the other children in the family so Lisa’s parents could be with her. Redfield said that incident showed that Tax “always wants to do something about a difficulty, no matter how desperate.” Redfield described Tax’s proposal to persuade “Prometheus to put the fire back” as “desperate beyond all possibility of realization.” Redfield ruminated on the possibility of forming an international state to make it easier to prevent use of the bomb in war, but his academic training brought him also to consider education as a solution. “Is it beyond all possibility to shift the sense of values of our population significantly? Would a movement have any success to reduce the valuation placed on technology and material advantages?” he wondered.81 Redfield’s juxtaposition of academic despair over the impact of the atomic bomb with the question of values contrasts with Tax’s description of science just a few months earlier as “amoral.” In light of the horrors of the Holocaust and the potential for worldwide destruction through atomic weaponry, intellectuals in the postwar world began to rethink the implications of an amoral science. World War II had forced anthropologists to put aside the debate over the proper uses of science and to serve the nation for the duration of the

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world crisis. Their participation, however, was never as wholehearted as was that of the psychologists, for example, as historians of psychology have shown. The psychology profession entered World War II with the memory of a fairly successful experience in the century’s first global conflict. As early as 1915, officials of the American Psychological Association had begun to investigate ways that psychologists could be of service in the anticipated European war. By the end of the World War I, psychologists had been involved in intelligence testing, development of programs for troop morale, and selection and training of personnel for special occupations such as lookouts, radio and telegraph operators, and so on. Historian Thomas M. Camfield concluded that psychology’s wartime service brought about a “wholesale improvement in the academic standing of the discipline following the war” that was reflected in more students, jobs, and funds. Anthropologists, on the other hand, ended World War I with a bitter internal struggle precipitated by Franz Boas’s complaint that some anthropologists had spied for the U.S. government in Central America, culminating in the American Anthropological Association’s censuring of Boas. Such diverse experiences with World War I may have colored the way the two professions approached service in the next global conflict.82 During World War II psychologists and anthropologists worked together on several projects—the national character studies, maintenance of civilian war morale, and running the Japanese American internment camps, for example. Clinical psychologists also worked in the war effort, but they specialized in individual treatment, screening military recruits, and helping victims of battle fatigue. Psychology emerged from World War II with a wider field of expertise, including responsibility for helping a democratic citizenry maintain the emotional health that was deemed essential for a stable society. Military use of psychologists continued after World War II as increasingly the cold war seemed to require understanding the behavior of the nation’s nuclear opponent. Although not all psychologists were happy with this role, many in the profession liked the influence that they were able to exercise on public policy. In fact, James H. Capshew and

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Ernest R. Hilgard concluded in their study of the impact of World War II on psychology that in the immediate postwar era, the profession considered promoting human welfare equal in importance to advancing psychology as a science.83 Anthropologists, however, mostly returned to academia. Exactly why is unclear, although scholars have offered various explanations. One is that anthropologists tired of interdisciplinary work and wanted to get back to anthropology. John Bennett has suggested that anthropologists feared that the multidisciplinary work would undermine anthropologists’ stress on culture, which formed the heart of anthropology in what Bennett has called the discipline’s classical period from 1915 to 1950. As Bennett phrased it, “Some of these wartime refugees came back into anthropology with an aggressive procultural, proanthropological viewpoint which seemed to say, Now it’s time to make good on all those promises of theory made in the classic era. Whatever the source, this is exactly what happened, and in the 1950s the discipline began to reject the multi-disciplinary view of the prewar period.”84 Perhaps anthropologists, cognizant of their discipline’s lack of a central theory, were intimidated by their contact with a discipline such as psychology and feared being swallowed up by it if they could not clearly articulate the boundaries of their field. Another possibility is that academia promised greater job security at a time when military veterans who were pouring into colleges on the strength of their gi Bill benefits created a growing demand for instructors. In contrast, applied anthropology projects generally had been shortterm in nature with uncertain funding sources.85 Another argument is that some anthropologists were dissatisfied with their wartime contributions. Some, like Philleo Nash, chafed at the government’s failure to utilize more of the findings of anthropologists, especially his own work predicting domestic race riots and Kluckhohn’s information that the morale of Japanese citizenry was near collapse. “If certain civilian researchers had been listened to, we could have been spared the atomic bomb and fire bombs,” Nash said.86

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One scholar, David H. Price, has suggested a deeper ambivalence among anthropologists over their experiences than historians have realized. In particular, he claims that Gregory Bateson came to regret his advice to the Office of Strategic Services (oss) that the United States try to persuade Great Britain to improve its colonial relations with India so that the colonial system would remain in place longer. Price concluded that Bateson’s work was effective and useful to the oss, but that Bateson realized afterward that he would have no control over how his work was used. Price suggests that Bateson regretted not questioning the basic assumptions of the assignments that he was given, such as the assumption that the colonial system should be continued. If such discomfort were common, anthropologists might have wanted to put government service behind them before a brouhaha erupted like that involving Boas after World War I.87 Other anthropologists expressed no such regrets or frustrations. Carleton Coon, an anthropologist who had done extensive fieldwork in Morocco, served as a secret agent for the oss and carried out assignments as a spy in North Africa, Spain, Corsica, and Italy. Coon received the Legion of Merit presidential citation for helping pave the way for the Allied invasion of North Africa in 1942 by collecting intelligence information and smuggling guns and explosives to French resistance groups within North Africa. An account of some of Coon’s adventures that he dictated in 1943 contains no ambivalence about his role. In fact, Coon asserted that a secret agent “should be prepared to die in the performance of his duties.”88 Another factor encouraging anthropologists to retreat into academia after their war work may have been that anthropology was less suited to serving American society in the postwar era than was psychology. Psychology stressed the individual, the most important unit in American economic and political thinking. Anthropology, however, stressed a people and its culture. Any such emphasis on a group was likely to smack of socialism at a time when the cold war was building against the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. As historian Ellen Herman has noted, the McCarthy era raised concerns that the “social” sciences were soft on socialism, and the field

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began using the term behavioral sciences to erase that perception. Furthermore, anthropology’s interest in other cultures and its promotion of cultural relativism was suspect because it left open the possibility that American capitalistic society was not inherently superior to all others.89 Even as many anthropologists sought to pull back from involvement in social problems, the heightened danger of a world with nuclear arms undermined the confidence of others that they should try to remain aloof from society in value-free research. As Willow Roberts Powers has demonstrated, anthropologists joined other social scientists in working on problems related to world stability in the atomic age. Ralph Linton, who had been Tax’s mentor at the University of Wisconsin, addressed problems and potential solutions in his book The Science of Man in the World Crisis. Issues related to values and the social sciences formed the agenda of several conferences in the 1940s, including the Conference on the Scientific Spirit and Democratic Faith in 1943 and the Committee on Science, Philosophy, and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, which began in 1944 and continued for several years.90 Anthropologists such as Mead, Linton, and Kluckhohn participated in these conferences, which were followed in 1949 by seminars funded by the Social Science Research Council and another series sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation.91 Tax joined the debate when the Social Science Research Council held its Seminar on Social Sciences and Values at the University of Chicago in the spring of 1949. Presenting a paper titled “Can Social Science help to set values or offer a choice between alternative value systems?” Tax argued that while “in the abstract” the social sciences cannot decide whether one belief or custom is better than another, that was not the end of the matter. He explained: “As soon as any criterion (from whatever culture or value position it comes) is posited, the response changes; given a ‘better’ for a specified something, social science can offer a choice between alternative value systems to the degree that it can develop knowledge relevant to the application of the criterion. The problem remains one of whether there are culture-free or ‘objective’ criteria.”92

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Tax said it would be dangerous to pretend that there were objective criteria. He suggested a middle ground for social scientists to occupy. “The social scientist (not qua scientist—an animal that doesn’t exist—but as he has to operate in this world) does influence choices between values, and does so to whatever degree his knowledge becomes available and is applied to somebody’s criteria of judgment.” Social scientists can help people exercise their freedom of choice by providing knowledge about the full consequences of their choices, he said. “Hence we have the right and the obligation (in terms of this absolute value) to make and spread knowledge relevant to the consequences of the acceptance of one set of values (in terms of policy promulgation) rather than another.” The paper continued the development of some of the themes in his American Indigena article from 1945, but with a less elitist twist since it allowed for freedom of choice for individuals based on advice from social scientists.93 Besides the values conferences, another manifestation of the social sciences’ concern with values was the Harvard Study of Values, headed by anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn and sociologist Talcott Parsons from Harvard’s new Department of Social Relations. Funded for six years with $200,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation, the study tried to find whether any values were universal across cultures based on fieldwork in New Mexico in Navajo, Zuni, Hispanic, Mormon, and Texan communities.94 Over five years of fieldwork, a total of 37 graduate students and senior researchers visited the communities. They produced 2 books, 20 articles, and 14 dissertations based on their research, but none of the work contained any breakthrough on a definition of values or identification of universal ones. By the time the fieldwork ended in 1954, the issue of values seemed less pressing in society.95 Before then, though, the debate over the role of values in social science research and the role of the social sciences in the world had reached a small community in Iowa where it would move from debate to action.

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Beginnings of the Chicago Project When he had finished his dissertation in 1934, Tax anticipated that the Meskwaki would some day be of interest to scholars again. Truman Michelson had studied the community for eighteen years, and Tax himself had compiled a large amount of information about it as well. “It seems possible that the Fox Indians may some day furnish a classic study of acculturation. . . . Ten years from now conditions will have changed; and if another investigator, armed with the material now at hand—specific material dealing with names and dates—will return to the scene to see what has happened in the interim, and the apparent reasons for it, conclusions of great general value might be drawn.” In anticipation of such a return visit, Tax deposited his fieldnotes in the anthropology department files at Chicago.96 After World War II, Chicago’s anthropology department decided to establish a fieldwork training course for its students, using money from a departmental research fund that previously was spent hiring students as research assistants over the summer for individual faculty.97 Tax was the logical choice to teach it. He had earlier demonstrated his interest in training anthropologists in his first job at the university, which had been to write the syllabus for the introductory courses in anthropology. He also had expressed an interest in designing a course on fieldwork methods for graduate students in his correspondence with Redfield between 1934 and 1941. Once it was determined that Tax would be in charge of the project, the Tama settlement emerged as the logical location.98 Another factor besides Tax’s familiarity with the Meskwaki settlement may have entered into the choice of the Tama site for the project. By the 1940s fieldwork was becoming expensive even for a well-endowed university such as the University of Chicago. Anthropology was not the fund-raising magnet that archeology was, with its appeal to donors outside of academia who had the where-withall to back expeditions. More and more, fieldwork was restricted to students who had passed their master’s degree exams, confining it to an elite group of students. Tama, Iowa, however, had the advantage

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of accessibility. A four-hour train ride west of Chicago was the only safari needed to reach the field. The settlement’s status as a small enclave in the middle of the United States obviated the necessity for complicated and expensive living arrangements.99 The effort to use the Meskwaki settlement to train anthropology students in fieldwork began in late June 1948 with six students: Lloyd C. Fallers, Grace Gredys, Walter B. Miller, Lisa Redfield Peattie, Robert W. Rietz, and Davida Wolffson. Gredys recalled Fallers as being a serious young man but Miller as one who loved to joke and engage in horseplay. Wolffson was shy, with a beautiful singing voice. “She was a little bit of a loner, and she was mocked sometimes for her la-dee-da, what were considered her la-dee-da ways. Sometimes she would come through a room that the others were in, singing, and then Walter would have to mock her. She took a lot of razzing, a lot of mockery from the boys especially,” Gredys recalled. As for herself, Gredys had rarely been outside of the neighborhood in northwest Chicago where she grew up, and considered herself naive about the outside world.100 Some of the other students had had experiences that set them apart from traditional students. Rietz, for example, was a veteran who served in World War II. He came to graduate school at Chicago after the war without ever having attended high school. Gredys found him “much more grown up than the rest of us” and a little unapproachable. “Bob Rietz didn’t have a great deal of respect for authority, age, and all those great things,” she recalled. He loved to make wisecracks with Miller, and the two of them would compete for the right to knead the color into the oleomargarine, turning it into a mock-erotic activity. “Rietz was basically a serious person, but he had this persona of wise-cracking a lot,” Gredys recalled.101 Peattie was the daughter of Tax’s mentor, Robert Redfield. As a child, back home at the family estate, Windy Pines, in Glenview, Illinois, Peattie had read letters from her father in the field, telling her of the friends he had made, the Indians who had come by the house to admire her little brother, and so on. Peattie had known Tax since she was a girl living in Guatemala while he and her father did

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fieldwork together. When Peattie was hospitalized with diphtheria in Guatemala City, Tax helped arrange her medical care and took care of her siblings so that the Redfields could be with her. Although she later wrote that she felt marginal to her father’s anthropological work, Peattie did occasionally associate with other girls in Guatemala “with whom I had almost nothing in common.”102 Besides likely absorbing some of the University of Chicago’s social action creed from her father, Peattie also would have received a similar message from the Quaker climate at Swarthmore College. Thus, as an undergraduate, she became involved in a committee pressing Swarthmore to admit African Americans. She consulted her father for advice and urged him to make a statement for the record about the pending hiring of an African American for the faculty at Chicago in hopes that would put pressure on Swarthmore to change its admission policy. Redfield refused because the appointment was not final yet, but he urged her to continue the struggle, arguing that chances for success were better during wartime because of the heightened sensitivity to the ideals of democracy. He counseled her that in order to succeed “against long-standing opposition the only strategy is to keep at it, to keep at it, and to keep at it.”103 During the first year of the Chicago Project, the students were to live in the day school on the Meskwaki settlement, since school would be out for the summer. The university envisioned students coming every summer to learn fieldwork, sharing the lives of the people they studied in much the same way anthropologists traditionally did. Gredys had taken courses from Tax both as an undergraduate and during her first two years of graduate school, but none of those courses related to the Meskwaki. “We were given, as I remember, very little instruction. We really weren’t made to read in preparation for it. From my vantage point now, it seems all wrong, sinful indeed almost, to send six young people out to a strange place that way and just throw them at the project—or throw the project at them—with as little preparation as we had. . . . Some of the members of the party had more (knowledge) than I had. I was really wet behind the ears, you know. I didn’t know what I was doing,” she said. Professors from

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the university, including Tax, Redfield, and Audrey Richards, would make occasional trips to the field to check up on the students, but in general, they would be on their own.104 So this was the situation: A group of young anthropologists, under the supervision of a professor who had stepped into the professional debate over the role of anthropologists in society, came to live with and study people who were less than pleased with the works turned out by previous anthropologists. The two groups encountered each other in a postwar atmosphere that included expectations of better treatment from whites on the part of World War II veterans and distrust of any more innovations from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, as well as a heightened commitment by the federal government to force Indian assimilation.

3. “Science Has to Stop Somewhere”

When the members of the first University of Chicago field party arrived in Tama in 1948, the Meskwaki settlement appeared an exotic enclave set off from, yet penetrated by, the mundane heartland of America. The settlement’s thirty-three hundred acres straddled the Iowa River and sloped upward from the river’s muddy backwaters and flood plain to steep ridges covered with woods. About five hundred Meskwaki lived on home sites scattered along dirt roads that traced dusty lines through the otherwise verdant settlement. Guided by a map of the settlement Sol Tax had drawn when he worked on the settlement in the 1930s, the graduate students set out in twos and threes to explore the field where they hoped to cultivate friendships over the summer. They recorded when and where they saw their “first Fox.” They gawked at wickiups, or huts, on this island of Meskwaki culture bounded by the familiar midwestern landscape of green fields and white farmhouses. They smelled fry bread cooking in hot lard outdoors over a wood fire. They wondered if the gooseberries and blackberries that women picked actually grew on wild bushes rather than in cultivated gardens. They heard drums in the distance as fireflies flitted around them in the dark. Their spines tingled with the thrill of being in a strange land. And they noted girls chewing gum, men carrying copies of the Des Moines Register, and “a patch of fair corn” growing here and there. When one reads the fieldnotes from the students’ first days, it is hard to tell which caused the students more wonderment—the exotic Indianness of the settlement or the bits of blandness it shared with the surrounding landscape.1

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The graduate students sampled this stew of heartland homeyness and exotic culture with a mixture of excitement and disappointment. They anxiously awaited the “big thrill” of an invitation to a Drum Society meeting but wondered if Indian girls with permed hair would carry on Meskwaki religious traditions. As they analyzed the juxtaposition of roses on a trellis and bark-covered wickiups, the students tried to classify the Meskwaki as “professional Indians,” acculturated Indians, or, like one youth, a combination of “90 percent Midwestern high-school senior traits, the remaining 10 percent being a combination of Fox and ‘idiosyncratic.’”2 Perhaps disappointed at Meskwaki modernity, members of the field party sought the exotic in the mundane midwesternism of Main Street Tama. “Tama seems like a quiet little town. I suppose it isn’t really poor compared to others its size—this is obviously rich farming country—but to the city-used eye, the Sears Roebuck dresses and little stores make it seem so,” mused one student. Even the muchderided Iowa countryside deserved a closer look. Davida Wolffson wrote, “Though I’ve never been much of a lover of Midwestern scenery, I was really impressed” with the glossy green hills that rippled off to the horizon to meet the deep blue of an Iowa sky in July. The students had met the “other” and found them to be both exotic and Iowan.3 The field party’s early preoccupation with the extent of acculturation among Meskwaki grew out of the charge given to them by their mentor, Sol Tax. Tax had urged his students to try to understand what would happen to the Meskwaki and their settlement in the coming years. Would the community continue to exist as it had? Would young people move away and disappear into white society, taking factory jobs, joining churches, and living in bungalows with picket fences? Ultimately, the project’s leaders would conclude that that was a question for Meskwaki to decide and not one that researchers could or should try to answer. But in the meantime, members of the field party pondered it with the seriousness that only graduate students on their first field experience could muster. An equally important question for the field party was a funda-

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mental one for anthropologists: How would they get along with the Indians? Nineteenth-century American ethnologist Frank Cushing had lived among the Zuni Pueblos and claimed to have bullied the people into cooperating with him, but he was an anomaly among ethnographers of that era. Rather than living for an extended period of time with a group of people, many anthropologists until the early twentieth century had relied on second-hand information gathered by missionaries or traders or paid one or two people for long interviews. Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski undermined the popularity of that approach by pioneering the practice of immersion within a culture by his stay in the Trobriand Island community. Although Malinowski’s immersion technique was held up as the model for anthropologists to emulate, training in actual fieldwork methods remained informal. Fieldwork training was a central goal of the University of Chicago project, but students in the field party remained nervous about what they were supposed to do and how to do it.4 Possessing better manners than the rude Cushing, the students sought ways to ingratiate themselves into the Meskwaki community. Their reflections on this topic permit a close examination of the dynamics of the relationship that developed over the summer of 1948 and ensuing ones between researchers from the University of Chicago and residents of the Meskwaki settlement. This self-reflectiveness is remarkable due to the context in which it occurred. It came more than two decades before Vine Deloria Jr. took anthropologists to task for their treatment of the Native Americans they studied, before colonized peoples loudly voiced their complaints about the role of anthropologists in maintaining colonialism, and before scholars examined the power relationships inherent in the anthropologistinformant exchange. Decades after the students left the Meskwaki settlement, postcolonial scholars saw fieldwork as a dialogue and its results as a negotiated product rather than an individual fieldworker’s own interpretation of a culture. In his analysis of Marcel Griaule’s fieldwork among the Dogon of Africa, for example, James Clifford portrayed the encounter as similar to a game of wits or a prosecutor trying to wring information from a reluctant witness,

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an exchange that was “inherently agonistic, theatrical and fraught with power.” Clifford termed it unfortunate that more was not known about how members of the Dogon community understood or experienced the fieldwork encounter.5 Clifford’s 1980s perspective was rare among anthropologists in the years immediately after World War II. Yet, the notes written by the students in the Chicago project and oral history interviews make it possible to discern something of how Meskwaki experienced the presence of the anthropologists. Fieldnotes are far from an infallible source, given the selectivity of note taking and memory, the filtering effects of editing, and so on.6 Still, they convey a sense that the residents of the settlement formed a vibrant human community with many of the virtues and vices of any small town of whites. Their exchanges with members of the Chicago project covered the whole range of human emotions and reactions—friendship and rivalry, trust and suspicion, generosity and self-interest, obvious goodwill and political maneuvering. The Meskwaki status as “objects of study,” however, put their encounter with the anthropologists in a category unlike any encounter in a white community. Not only were the Meskwaki being studied, but they also were doing their own studying—of their anthropological visitors. As people with their own goals and problems in life—and considerable experience in dealing with anthropologists—many Meskwaki manipulated the anthropologists for their own purposes, whether political or personal, while struggling to understand the academic culture the outsiders brought with them. The encounter between anthropology students and Meskwaki was acted out against a backdrop of relations with the federal government that were part of everyday life for Native Americans but unfamiliar to the anthropology students. For the students who planned anthropological careers taking them to Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere, the Meskwaki represented a primitive Everyman, a generic stand-in for their “own” exotics yet to be encountered. Such expectations may have clouded the students’ view of factors that made the Meskwaki situation unique, such as the federal-Indian relationship.

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Meskwaki relations with the federal government took place in a colonial context complicated by the continuing existence of the community as a sovereign nation. The Meskwaki considered themselves a conquered people whose land was occupied—temporarily—by foreign invaders. Some Meskwaki held onto beliefs that foretold a day when the whites would lose power and the Meskwaki would regain their land. (More than fifty years later, one man still referred to white people as “pilgrims.”)7 Although a 1924 federal law had bestowed citizenship on all Native Americans, residents of the Tama settlement were acutely aware of the ironies and inconsistencies of that citizenship. Many were veterans who had fought in World War II, been wounded, and received medals for their valor, yet they returned home to find that a nineteenth-century federal law prevented them from buying a drink in their American Legion post. Meskwaki families were not eligible for many types of assistance for the poor and the sick that were available to their white neighbors, even though the community paid local property taxes on its land. While members of the community were American citizens, they also were citizens of the Meskwaki nation and were exempt from federal taxes on their income. The exemption represented recognition of the sovereign status of the Meskwaki nation within the boundaries of the settlement, sovereignty the Meskwaki guarded jealously against any infringement. Though the settlement represented a tiny fraction of the land over which the Meskwaki once had dominion, it still was a valuable buffer against white society and certain aspects of federal power. With those external power relationships lurking in the background, the fieldnote sources depict the Meskwaki and anthropologists as occupying opposite ends of a teeter-totter, with the balance of power shifting back and forth. Neither specimens under a microscope nor powerless natives bullied by white outsiders to divulge tribal secrets, the Meskwaki actually held a position of superiority vis-à-vis the outsiders in many respects. Although they were graduate students, the outsiders were mere infants when it came to understanding Meskwaki culture and needed to learn Meskwaki ways like any child. Furthermore, while the students knew little about the

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ways of Meskwaki, some of the people of the settlement were well acquainted with the ways of anthropologists and thus had an edge in dealing with the students. Still, Meskwaki were curious about exactly who these visitors were and what they really were up to. When it came to matters of relations with whites beyond the confines of the settlement, Meskwaki had trouble defining what sort of power the anthropologists had. Initially both the anthropologists and the Meskwaki conflated the outsiders with the imperial power of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. But as the anthropologists came to see the limits of bureau authority within Meskwaki society, they separated themselves from ties to the Indian service. By the same token, the Meskwaki came to recognize the potential value of the anthropologists’ greater power in dealing with the white world off the settlement. They never, however, fully relinquished certain aspects of their power and demanded that the anthropologists recognize and respect it. As the anthropology students sought to balance their research needs with their respect for the Meskwaki human community, the Meskwaki nudged them toward an understanding of proper behavior in Meskwaki culture. In the process, they helped the Chicago researchers create action anthropology. The working out of these power relationships occurred in many day-to-day exchanges between anthropology students and individual settlement residents. The process was especially visible in four aspects of the anthropology project: the community’s initial reception of the field party; the evolution of rapport between researchers and settlement residents; the development of deeper interpersonal relationships; and students’ informal efforts to assist members of the community. Creation of Action Anthropology The official version of the birth of action anthropology, as told and retold by Sol Tax in journal articles and speeches years after the event, locates the initiative for action anthropology solely with the University of Chicago graduate students. According to Tax’s version, as they began their fieldwork, the students saw the poverty in which

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the Meskwaki lived, and they asked Tax if they could help in some way. The communications most often cited are a letter and telephone call from Peattie to Tax in early August 1948. She suggested in her letter that organizing parties for the community might be a way for the field-workers to improve life on the settlement. Another student, Davida Wolffson, ruminated in her fieldnotes about the possibility of a project to help make the settlement economically self-sufficient or at least raise the standard of living of the people.8 Again, according to the official version, Tax initially discouraged the students from helping the Meskwaki. In a letter to the students a few days later, however, Tax admitted that his belief in the possibility of objective, pure research in anthropology was up in the air, and that he had recently become convinced that anthropologists could not help but bring a set of values to their research. He suggested that the students abandon the “participant observer” method and intentionally become “interferer observers,” consciously making things happen in the community and then observing the results. Thus, according to the official version, Tax and the students created action anthropology, although Tax did not coin the term until 1951.9 An alternative interpretation is that through a combination of expressed hostility and subtle hints, the Meskwaki nudged the students and Tax to an understanding of the need to give something back to the community that hosted them. The Meskwaki showed the anthropologists that the power of the distant bureaucrats of the Indian Service with whom Tax initially dealt was weaker in many respects than the power of the Meskwaki on their own settlement. Over the years of working in the community, the anthropologists came to understand that although the Bureau of Indian Affairs considered the Meskwaki dependent wards of the federal government, when it came to everyday life on the settlement, it was the residents who were in charge. Over the years of working in the community, the anthropologists came to understand that if they wanted to use action anthropology to help the Meskwaki, they would have to work directly with them rather than with the bia. Thus, the Meskwaki had a role in shaping action anthropology.10

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While organizing the project, Sol Tax had not acknowledged the Meskwaki as potential actors in the anthropological exchange. He had written, not to tribal officials, but to John Provinse, assistant commissioner of the bia, to inquire about using the Meskwaki settlement as a place to train students in fieldwork. He mentioned the possibility of “remuneration in the form of a gift to the whole community instead of paying informants.” At this point Tax was not thinking about a new form of anthropology, only that a single gift would be easier to manage than multiple small payments to many people. His real negotiations were with Provinse, whose career as a graduate student at the University of Chicago had overlapped with Tax’s from 1931 to 1934. To sweeten the deal for the Indian service, Tax promised that his students would supply Provinse with information on problems “which are of interest to you in establishing policy for the Reservation [sic]” and would file reports with Provinse as often as the bureau wished. Provinse, for example, especially wanted to know how the new law-and-order arrangement was working out. Peattie did file a report on the topic, stating that attitudes on the settlement ranged from mildly in favor of to strongly against being under the jurisdiction of the state of Iowa. (Although people lined up on the issue mostly along the divisions that lingered from the adoption of the 1937 constitution, with pro-constitution people in favor of state jurisdiction and the others opposed, some of the opposition was based on fear of discriminatory treatment by white deputies enforcing the law.) Thus, at the beginning of the project, Tax clearly saw the Indian agency and its bureaucrats, such as Provinse, as the locus of power regarding the Meskwaki settlement.11 With the go-ahead from Provinse, the students had moved into the government day school on the Meskwaki settlement in June 1948. (During the winter of 1948–49, the university bought a farmhouse and a fifty-eight-acre farm at the edge of the settlement where subsequent researchers lived.) After observing the mixture of modern and Meskwaki cultures for a few days, the students moved on to the participant part of fieldwork.12

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As the students made their first ventures into fieldwork, Fred Arrow, a settlement resident who had worked with previous anthropological visitors, gave Fallers some sophisticated advice for dealing with people. He explained to Fallers “how one must make people think you’re really not trying to press for information and thus cause them to speak more freely. ‘You must use psychology,’ he said.” From a white missionary who ran a Presbyterian church near the settlement came similar advice. He warned them not to ask many questions because “most of the Indians ‘close up’ if they feel they are being questioned, but ‘some will talk a lot.’” A white woman who ran a business establishment in Tama also warned that the Indians “shut up like clams when you ask them anything, especially if they think you’re trying to get something out of them.”13 Students soon learned this for themselves, as one field-worker demonstrated in her notes of a visit to a family about two weeks into the project. The fieldnotes show how much the people remained in control of the interviews and the techniques they used to do so. As Peattie described one interview, “I had not before encountered the famous passive resistance attitude, and I must say, found it disquieting. Grace and I stood first upon one foot and then upon the other, while we tried to make conversation. I suspect that Mrs. X has not too good English, but her son also started [sic] mostly into space.” After a few futile attempts at conversation the students left, “our ego-structure neatly shattered.” Regarding a group of teenage girls, Peattie also noted “they are extremely hard to get at. . . . They seem extremely suspicious, and yet anxious to get on the in.”14 The other students reported similar experiences. Wolffson expressed her weariness at having to desperately search for ways to keep the conversation going while interviewing some people. She lamented that one woman “volunteered not a word and answered either Yes, No, or I don’t know.” The researcher promised herself she would bypass that woman and concentrate on “more articulate informants,” which was no doubt what the woman had hoped. Wolffson also marveled at one woman’s ability both to avoid answering questions and to seem friendly at the same time. Fallers found

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that he was “received quite coldly” by one elder of the community, so feeling “that he was unwilling to discuss anything more esoteric than the weather . . . we went off to try another day.” Other times people switched to the Meskwaki language to communicate among themselves in front of a white person, leaving the researcher wondering what was being said.15 Besides expressing ignorance, Meskwaki also displayed great skill at evading questions. One researcher noted they all had discovered “a fairly consistent response of evasion” on questions having to do with clan festivals and ceremonies, factions, and local politics. A community religious leader was not at all evasive, however, when he bluntly told Fallers, “There are some things which shouldn’t be told.”16 The students found conversation especially slow going when trying to interview the secretary of the anti-constitution group, Bertha Waseskuk. She avoided interviews for nearly two months, leading the students to describe her as “almost legendary because of her initial refusal to see us, [and] the continual references to Bertha we kept hearing.”17 Meskwaki who were familiar with how previous anthropological visitors to the settlement worked posed a different sort of problem for the students. The visits of William Jones, Truman Michelson, Natalie Joffee, and Tax had prepared members of the community such as Harry Lincoln to expect a certain type of anthropologist—one who wanted to hear about how to build a wickiup or what a Meskwaki called a mother’s brother’s sister, and who was willing to pay by the hour for such knowledge. Fallers interpreted one man’s attempts to steer the conversation in that direction as “a defense mechanism designed to avoid discussion, especially as [he] is obviously contemptuous of Michelson’s work.”18 Expecting his relationship with the students to follow the pattern established by other anthropologists, Harry Lincoln tried to impress the students by listing all the people with whom he had worked. The students sensed resentment, however, when they failed at the outset to hire Lincoln as an interpreter and wondered what he thought

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about the people with whom they were working instead. Lincoln’s brother, Oliver, also displayed a willingness to talk about “early times” and “the old timers,” predicted the students would fail if they talked to the wrong people, and upbraided them for not learning more Meskwaki.19 Over time, Lincoln and other Meskwaki with such experience learned that these students wanted to know about current Meskwaki life, just as Tax had studied contemporary communities in Guatemala. They also learned that the students were not interested in professional informants, but in community-wide involvement. One woman, for example, asked the students who visited her, “Who you got working for you?” and was surprised when they said no one. She and others may have wondered what kind of anthropologists these were who avoided the “experts” on the old ways and sought other people for interviews.20 Such confusion may have shown up in the questions Meskwaki asked the students who came to talk about current community controversies or plans for the future. For example, when Fallers and Peattie visited a man to ask about politics on the tribal council, the man asked, “Why do you want to know about this?” Fallers’s reply that the students hoped to understand how Indians and whites could live together seemed to satisfy the man’s concerns. The students, however, never satisfied the experienced informants’ desire to be paid. Even after the first summer, students reported that Harry Lincoln still said “that we should pay for information—he repeated many times that we ask questions and don’t give anybody anything. He said that [other anthropologists] said that he couldn’t learn anything by just observing, that he had to ask questions (and pay for answers of course).”21 Meskwaki who were wary about these anthropologists for all kinds of reasons, however, did not just clam up. Some talked back. Young people, in particular, were blunt about their feelings. One youth, Lawrence Phillips, greeted Miller with the sarcastic remark, “Haa! Here’s the fellow that’s out here to study the Indians!” Miller’s fieldnotes referred to Phillips as an “almost typical resentful ethnic,” in-

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dicating how he had rebuffed the Chicago students. Another youth asked contemptuously, “Oh—come to study the Indians?” when he met Miller for the first time. Sometimes, but not always, such remarks seemed to allow the individual to get the hostility off his or her chest and clear the way for a more pleasant conversation.22 Although Phillips became friends with the researchers, he also had a finely honed knack that he displayed over several years of the project for needling researchers about studying the Meskwaki. In 1949 Phillips accused Irving Gerick of expecting “to get something for nothing” from the people and boasted that “you haven’t got anything from me” and never would because he was too smart for them. Phillips occasionally taunted the researchers to “study me,” especially if he had been drinking. On Gerick’s last day on the settlement, Phillips asked him in a hostile tone, “Well, what did you learn this summer, studying the Indians?” In his fieldnotes, Gerick wearily wrote, “This is where I came in.”23 When Phillips used phrases such as “study me” or “study the Indians,” he was doing more than just repeating the phrases used by the students. The inflection and tone of voice Phillips employed, as reported in the fieldnotes, suggest he may have been engaging in a Meskwaki version of what Mustapha Marrouchi termed “signifying.” By that, Marrouchi meant that an oppressed people take the language of their oppressors and repeat it, but give the words a new meaning. Phillips merely repeated the same words as the students, but the meaning he gave those words constituted a confrontation with those doing the studying and a challenge to their right to do it.24 Even Ed Davenport, who had worked with other anthropologists, may have engaged in some “signifying” of his own. Each year, he needled new students by telling them, “I don’t know anything. I can’t help you study the Indians. I think it’s good that you boys study us Indians, but you should remember that we are like animals.”25 The conversation in which Davenport asked Tax why he just studied people rather than coming up with a plan to remedy society’s ills was a more respectful type of challenge, perhaps because Davenport held the professor in higher esteem than he did the young students.26

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Decades later one woman recalled directly confronting researchers over the issue of being studied. Without bothering to “signify,” Sally Deer said she asked Fred Gearing several years into the project, “What good is anthropology anyway?” and that he had said nothing in reply. “What could he say?” she said. The woman said she and others felt that people on the settlement over the years had helped students get their degrees and then they went away, leaving nothing behind for the people. She wondered why only anthropologists and missionaries came to her community and not professionals with skills that would be useful, such as lawyers. Deer remembered the conversation with some bitterness and indicated that she had made the same remark several times and always got the same reply—silence. While memories can fade over time or be colored by later events, Sally Deer’s recollections are remarkably similar to a discussion with Deer and her mother that one of the students summarized in her fieldnotes. As a student struggled to explain the anthropologists’ presence on the settlement as a way to help people understand each other, Deer’s mother asked, “I was wondering if you were going to write a book and make a lot of money off of it. My husband says we shouldn’t tell white people our songs and stories because they make a lot of money off them and we don’t get anything.”27 Gearing described such exchanges between anthropologists and the people about whom they write as almost ritualistic, rather than an expression of an actual belief that they were being taken advantage of. The comments, however, might also represent an attempt by the Meskwaki to learn more about the academic culture these strangers brought with them. Even Ed Davenport, who had gone to Washington dc to work with Truman Michelson, had a hard time believing that Sol Tax was not wealthy. Davenport queried Tax about the kind of car he drove and added, “You’re doing pretty well now. Must be making a lot of money.” When Tax replied he had a six-yearold car that he still owed money on, Davenport asked, “Why do you keep that job then? You’re smart—you could go out and become a lawyer or a factory owner and make lots of money—get rich.” Tax’s answer—that he was more interested in finding out about people

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than making a lot of money—may have seemed illogical to someone outside academia.28 In Meskwaki experience, white people rarely did anything out of altruism. Cathy Arrow, Fred’s daughter, described Meskwaki understanding of white ways in an interview in which she recalled reaction to the researchers, especially by settlement residents who had had some exposure to mainstream American society during World War II. “The white man’s way is to take and take and take. The Indian way is to take and give back,” she said. If these academic people did not just “take and take” for themselves, they were unlike most whites with whom Meskwaki had dealt.29 The Chicago students were attentive to such feedback. In reflecting on the beginnings of the project seven years later, one field-worker acknowledged the pressure the students had felt from their hesitant hosts. Peattie pointed out that people’s hostility in these early encounters prompted the students to ask themselves, “By what right do we use these people as scientific subjects?” Conversely, the deep respect and friendship they felt for other members of the community also made the students uneasy about conducting fieldwork. In the privacy of their field diaries, they asked themselves how they could justify befriending Meskwaki by making it appear they were not prying into private matters, so that they could pry all the more effectively.30 Students resolved to exercise care in concealing the identity of any people they interviewed and even to leave out of their reports information on rituals that people closely guarded. Peattie justified one such omission by telling herself that “science has to stop somewhere.” Besides being sensitive to the feelings of their new friends, Peattie noted that the students’ conclusion that “perhaps the scientists ought to ‘compensate’ the members of the [Meskwaki] community by deliberately helping them” had been “brought into focus and intensified by the complaints of the [people] about being repeatedly studied by visiting anthropologists over the years.” Although the complaints were frequent enough to have an impact on the researchers’ thinking, Peattie pointed out that “there was no clear cry of ‘help help’ from the community as a whole.”31

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After the students had been on the settlement more than a month, the man who had advised Fallers to use psychology when interviewing people told the students how to break the ice with the community. Fred Arrow suggested that the students hold a party in the school gym, furnishing refreshments and arranging for a moccasin game, a popular Meskwaki form of gambling. The students readily agreed and used the planning and holding of the party to test a hypothesis on Meskwaki leadership. None of them expressed any curiosity as to why Arrow made the suggestion in the first place, although they noted his procrastination in rounding up the equipment for the moccasin game. Most of the members of the community came for at least a portion of the party, which was held on two consecutive nights. A large number of men, however, milled around outside the gym throughout the evenings without entering.32 Immediately after the party the students commented on the new spirit they felt with settlement residents and on how the party had built gemeinschaft with the community. In summarizing the effects of the affair, Wolffson gave the impression that the students had originated the idea. She wrote: “But above all, to be quite frank, these two nights of fun and toil served the purpose of putting us ‘in’ in the community, at a point when we were rather unsure of our position. It was probably good not to have done it earlier—that is, to have waited, as we did, until we knew a lot of people. However, it was none too soon from the standpoint of winning us fairly general acceptance.”33 Fallers noted the students’ expectations after the party with the comment, “We think and hope that the affair did us some good with these people.” About two weeks after the party, Fallers reported that relations with the community had improved to the point that the field party had been accepted by the pro-constitution people and had taken some steps toward acceptance by the anti-constitution group who had been especially reluctant to work with them. In fact, Bertha Waseskuk finally agreed to talk to the students only after the party. At the meeting with her and others in the anti-constitution group, Miller explained that the students were “interested in the

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possibility of community action of some sort. We are interested in finding out what the people in this community want, and how best to attain it.” Waseskuk said those in her group were interested in maintaining their tribal identity rather than being “mixed with the white population.” Miller assured her that “we’re for the same thing.” Waseskuk seemed satisfied with the meeting, but she made the point that the anti-constitution group would be watching to see if they were like other people who came to the settlement “who said that they were interested in us, stayed awhile, and went away, and nothing at all happened. We just want to know if your intentions are good.” Miller promised that the students “want to do what we can, but our resources are small. We don’t have much influence, and very little money.” The meeting was an informal compact on how action anthropology would function on the settlement. Afterward Fallers lamented in his diary, “We are really approaching the point where serious field work around our problem can begin when lo the summer is closing. Woe!”34 The party that won general acceptance for the anthropology students performed more than a superficial “getting to know you” function. Fred Arrow may have seen the party as a gift to the community that met its cultural expectations, a way to counteract what his daughter described years later as the white propensity to “take and take.” As is the case with some other Indian cultures, Meskwaki culture places a high value on the exchange of gifts. The obligation to exchange favors is rooted in the sacred stories of the Meskwaki religion. One such story about the origins of the Meskwaki religion depicts the relationship between human beings and their creator as an explicitly reciprocal one based on the exchange of blessings for gifts of food and tobacco. When the Great Manitou gave life to human beings, he also gave them tobacco, game animals, and harvest crops, holding back none for the manitou. Any manitou who wished food or tobacco could receive it only through a sacrifice from a Meskwaki. In return, the manitou would bless the Meskwaki in hopes that the human beings would continue to offer them tobacco and food. In the sacred story the Great Manitou instructed the other manitou on

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the nature of the relationship, saying, “Only whenever they extend them [tobacco and food] to us shall we thereby continue to be satisfied. Do not, verily, be merely satisfied there. In accordance with whatever they ask of us, in return we shall so bless them.”35 While conducting research on the settlement for his dissertation from 1932 to 1934, Sol Tax had collected other evidence of Meskwaki traditions involving gift giving. One man described for Tax the types of gifts that were appropriate for giving to different relatives. To one’s mother-and father-in-law, he said he gave gifts of food or a portion of a successful hunt. To a brother-in-law, he would give money or tools such as knives or guns for hunting. Such giving was “always reciprocal,” the man said, and a return gift was expected when one was financially able. Giving to an in-law was especially important, he said, because “they in return have more respect for me and look upon me with favor.” Tax concluded that the constant gift giving showed that “generosity in this small community whose good will every person needs, is a prime virtue.”36 In 1948 the Meskwaki still carried over into their relations with other human beings this expectation of reciprocity that existed in regard to the manitou. Henry Carter, who became friendly with the students, explained to one of the Chicago researchers how the system worked during a discussion of the difficulties of getting kinship information from his fellow Meskwaki: You couldn’t just ask somebody who his grandfather was. You had to take a present to him. That’s how these old people operate. For example his wife got her ears pierced and he will take a present to the person who did it. Not as a monetary payment, but just to show that he appreciated it. I asked what would happen if he wouldn’t pay, he said the person would think he wasn’t satisfied or was mad at him or something. Said that these presents were very highly valued though, you could offer somebody a hundred dollars for a sac of flour he got in this way, and he wouldn’t sell.37

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More than fifty years later, settlement residents who were interviewed recognized the practice as an old one, although not one still widely followed.38 In suggesting that the students throw a party, Fred Arrow may have been signaling to the students the importance within Meskwaki culture of giving something in exchange for getting something. In so doing, Arrow assumed the authority of a father teaching a child how to be a good Meskwaki by example rather than explicitly laying out the rules. A belief that the students were out to get something for nothing may have accounted for many of the brusque remarks directed at them in the early days of the project. Faced with the cool reception, students had begun telling settlement residents as early as July 9 that they were there to “help” them and to imply that they had a “semi-official investigatory capacity” with the power to take care of problems on the settlement. But significantly, the vague notion of helping the people did not take shape until immediately after the party, when students saw for themselves the effect their gift had on their relations with the people. It was immediately after this party that Peattie and Tax had the exchanges about going beyond being “participant observers” and becoming “interferer observers.” The field party saw the party as so essential to their success that they repeated the affairs in following summers.39 The location of the party may have sent another message to the community that counteracted a first impression of the students. Since the settlement had no resident Indian agent, the school and its principal, Ed Mays, were the most obvious local manifestation of the power of the distant imperial bureaucracy. Early in the summer, members of the field party praised Mays and his wife as knowledgeable and concerned about the Meskwaki, a conception that began to change when they began hearing people’s complaints about him. By living in the school, the students may have sent a message that they were aligned with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Bertha Waseskuk, in fact, asked the students if they were “connected with the government” and said she had heard rumors to that effect. Fallers and Miller denied any connection, despite the fact that at least one report already had been filed with the bureau.40

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Mays had barred the community from using the gymnasium for non-school events, and settlement residents deeply resented that prohibition. That was why many of the people had milled around outside the gymnasium rather than enter where they had not been welcome. Seeing the anthropologists living in a building from which the Meskwaki were barred led some people to complain that tribal funds were being used to provide the students with electricity and housing. After the party, however, some people may have interpreted the students’ brazen disregard of Mays’s prohibition on use of the gym as a willingness and ability to challenge federal power, a meaning that, although beneficial to the students, was unintended.41 Evolution of Action Anthropology After the party that broke the ice with many members of the community, the students began explicitly promising assistance to settlement residents. Over the next few years, action anthropology would come to mean, for the students, helping a group of people achieve the goals that they themselves set and simultaneously studying what occurred in order to draw general lessons from the process. Tax gave the concept the name “action anthropology” in 1951, a name that he said “popped from my pen” when he was writing a paper for a conference.42 To people who lived in the community the concept appeared at certain times fuzzy, meddlesome, and dangerous. The shaping and defining of action anthropology continued throughout the project. Tax, his students, and Meskwaki had to decide such things as what kind of help, for which people, and with what resources. Meskwaki had a role in defining those elements. While the professional informants were more than willing to talk to the students, others in the community often displayed reluctance. Far from being at the mercy of the anthropology students, the people exercised a considerable amount of control over the situations in which they encountered the anthropologists. These encounters were political in the sense that they involved the use of strategy or cunning in order to influence the other’s actions in line with one’s own wishes. Settlement residents alternately ignored the students until

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they went away, gave vague answers, quickly changed the subject, or pretended not to speak much English when researchers asked questions they did not want to answer. People sometimes flatly told researchers that certain subjects, such as religion, were off limits for discussion, while others, such as employment, were neutral and could be discussed and studied without fear of offending anyone.43 Each summer a new crop of students worked their way through these techniques and tried to design ways around or through them. One researcher carefully analyzed different types of questioning techniques and listed likely responses. For example, “Questions with either/or will be answered in terms of a statement, relevant or not, but which will not always indicate a clear preference.” Another technique to avoid answering a question was to claim ignorance as in, “I don’t know, I really couldn’t tell you, I just don’t know.” After a while, researchers felt they knew when a particular person was “putting on the dumb Indian act.”44 Sometimes the students turned to other Meskwaki for help in interpreting the behavior of tribal members. A reason often cited for hostile behavior was fear that the researchers were trying to pry religious secrets from them. Other times it was a vague “he gets like that sometimes,” which may nevertheless have been accurate. Always in the back of researchers’ minds was the question whether they had unintentionally stepped into a community dispute that was brewing beneath the surface.45 People also liked to steer the researchers toward or away from interviewing certain individuals, sometimes based on whether they were political allies or had a low or high personal opinion of each other, or to avoid talking to these individuals themselves. A person also could be insulted if students failed to consult him or her on a certain topic. Some young people sought out the researchers’ friendship if the researchers failed to approach them. They were often indirect in their approach, hinting they would like to take in a movie or ballgame together without directly asking. “It is very hard to turn these people down who want your friendship, even though we realize that to be too friendly with certain of the ‘young rough-necks’ is bad

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for us and the program. They seem to approach us one at a time, and very meekly, however,” wrote one researcher.46 Even those people who generally cooperated with the researchers at times toyed with them. Once researchers were collecting information about the educational levels of settlement residents, and Henry Carter decided to be coy. Carter had told one researcher he had no college education but another one that he had attended Drake University in Des Moines for a year studying pre-law. When a third researcher tried to straighten the matter out, Carter insisted he had never been to college. “I could not get (him) to admit that he had gone to college for a day or for any time at all. I told him that I had heard from others that he had been, but he denied it.” Carter seemed to think that his accomplishments in life would seem greater if he were thought to have achieved them with only minimal education. (The superintendent of public schools in Tama told researchers Carter had attended college for one year.)47 Aware of allegations that people had lied to anthropologists, researchers sometimes would check one person’s statements against another’s, or indicate in their fieldnotes that they were not taking a person’s statement at face value. As they came to understand the inner workings of the settlement better and to be closer friends with individuals, researchers occasionally told one person that they did not believe what another had told them. The researchers decided some people could have “some tricks up [their] sleeve” when it came to certain political issues on the settlement. People who were in different political camps sometimes warned the researchers against trusting another person’s statement and suggested that they check with other people before believing a political rival’s comments. “You’re smart enough to know when a guy’s telling the truth aren’t you?” a man once asked Steve Polgar. Other times, researchers just had a hard time believing what they were being told, such as when a man said that he had enjoyed being in prison. “Was he trying to put something over on us?” wondered Polgar when he wrote about the incident in his journal.48 The students, of course, had their own theatrical techniques for

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putting things over on the Meskwaki. A ploy used more than once was for single women to pretend they were married, although there always was a danger that someone else in the party would forget the ruse.49 In 1948 Wolffson and Gredys went to considerable lengths to carry out their deception, even buying wedding rings to wear on the settlement. Why they did so is unclear, although Gredys suggested recently it may have been that they wanted to appear older and more mature to Meskwaki. It also may have been an effort to discourage unwanted attention from settlement men or to squelch gossip about relationships among men and women in the field party. In any event, the two women ran into trouble when they tried to run the cost of the rings through the university expense account. Tax agreed the rings were a justifiable ethnological expense, but pointed out that if the university paid for them, then they “would remain the property of the University and part of our equipment, like the beds. This sounds like a considerable nuisance.” Unable to see any future use for the rings, Tax suggested they try to sell the rings back to the jeweler at the end of the summer and charge the difference to the university. As Clifford has argued, fieldwork can indeed be theatrical, to the point of requiring props.50 Each summer new students learned that trying to speak a few Meskwaki words invariably made settlement residents laugh and opened the door to conversation. Carolyn Wiesender, for example, found a woman “much amused” at her attempt to say “thank you” in Meskwaki. While willing to look foolish themselves, students avoided embarrassing Meskwaki. Miller could have beaten one settlement youth in ping-pong every time they played, but he intentionally lost half the games for fear of embarrassing his opponent and losing the friendship. “If I lost too consistently, he might have felt that I wasn’t good competition, and not have wanted me to come back,” Miller reasoned.51 One technique for ingratiating themselves with the community that proved particularly successful for Peattie and Polgar was to dress up like Meskwaki and dance in the community’s annual powwow. Polgar became a particularly good dancer and was so anxious to look

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like a Meskwaki that he shaved all the hair from his body so that he would not stand out when he danced. The lengths Polgar took may have signaled to the Meskwaki that he admired and respected their way of life. People showed their appreciation by applauding his powwow appearances, as well as cooperating in his work.52 While the anthropologists played Indian, the Indians sometimes played anthropologist. Occasionally, settlement residents were so interested in the students that they asked as many questions as they answered. As Wiesender put it after talking to one woman, “I liked [her], think she is an intelligent and sensitive person and was doing rather better with her ‘field work’ on me than the other way around.” Charles Leslie recalled that although he was supposed to be studying the Meskwaki, he “often had the feeling that I was being studied, acutely and cleverly, but as an individual, not as a white man, or an anthropologist, or a student.” He decided that perhaps settlement residents were trying to determine what his motives were in talking to them. Leslie also thought he detected people asking students questions that they already knew the answer to or asking different students the same questions in order to see how much the students already knew or to compare their answers.53 Simple curiosity about the visiting students prompted many of these questions. Students who did not look or sound like typical white Americans, for example, often were quizzed about their nationality. One woman asked Peattie if she were “some different nationality.” Because of Peattie’s long hair, the woman thought she might be Indian. In 1949 Charles Leslie recorded how, during a discussion of a Wolf clan dance, a man “asked me what nationality I was and I told him that my people had come to America from England and Scotland and that we are Presbyterian.”54 A curiosity about racial differences may have been behind some questions about nationality and ethnicity. Settlement residents could both be essentialist in their racial attitudes, yet aware of their own ambiguous status in a broader American society fixated on a black-white racial hierarchy. One man ascribed cultural differences to race and considered them immutable, even as he tried to con-

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vert other settlement residents to Christianity. “We’re different from your race,” he told students who came to see him. “If you put an Indian and a white man together and the[n] try to talk about profound things—neither can bring the other to see his way. They can’t change each other. The Indian is brought up differently. The Indian is attached to customs and traditions that hold him back like you tie down a drunken man.”55 Although they lived in largely white rural Iowa, settlement residents did come in contact with other people of color. A World War II veteran, for example, recalled how he “passed” as a Filipino in California bars. Meskwaki had more frequent contact with African Americans who worked for the railroad in Tama or in factories in larger cities. Settlement residents were conscious of their differences from African Americans and anxious to prove their own superiority to them. Harry Lincoln, for example, told students he was anxious to see a baseball game “between the colored boys and the Indians” and that the “coloreds cheat.”56 The settlement school had an African American teacher for a while, and Miller was surprised at how well liked he was, “considering the prevalence of anti-Negro feeling here. Everyone I have talked to about [the teacher] has been noncommittal or approving; no one has been antagonistic.” In fact, when the man was fired in 1952, Carter wrote to Rep. H. R. Gross to find out why. “I am purely interested in him, because, the length of time he has been here, the people or the Indians have noticed the change in our children, the way our children feel, and are very much more so interested in there [sic] school work, as before, the reason why they went to school was that they had to. . . . And now I am afraid that the children will have to fall back into the rut again. . . . I don’t know where the pressure is for his release but it must be there somewhere. . . . Maybe just because he is a colored man, could that be the cause, or is he doing something better than the present staff which I know to be true.” Gross inquired about the teacher with the U.S. Civil Service Commission and learned that the teacher was removed after a check of his record carried out under President Truman’s loyalty program

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discovered that he had been arrested twice ten years earlier for “sex offenses of a homosexual nature.” In his letter back to Carter, Gross would not give the reason for the dismissal, but said that “on the basis of the information submitted to me, I am of the opinion that [the teacher] was properly removed, and that the action taken is in the best interests of the Sac and Fox people.”57 Miller attributed the Meskwaki acceptance of the teacher to “what seems a tendency for the Fox to take over standard racial stereotypes, and use them in their references to Negroes and Jews—but in actual contact with such people they generally respond to them as individuals, and not in terms of the stereotypes.” One man, for instance, claimed to have quit a job at a tractor factory in Waterloo because “there were too many colored guys working there.” Yet he became friends with one African American co-worker and his wife. “He’d get whiskey for me, and his wife, she really could cook,” he said. Although settlement residents said they sometimes encountered discrimination in housing in Waterloo as did African Americans, the Indians faced the extra indignity of being unable to buy their own whiskey.58 The same man was proud of his many friendships with whites, too, including during his years at Tama high school. “When I started to Tama (I was one of the first to go there), they came up to us and wanted to be friends. You just have to . . . show them that you want to be friends, talk to them like I did,” he said. Sally Deer told a different story about how settlement youth were treated by white students at Tama high school. “Some of them are so high-and-mighty. Because we’re Indians they think we’re in the lower class. Every shade darker skin is a lower person. But the skin doesn’t make any difference. It’s a person’s qualities that count. I told them that’s why I want to get an education—to help the people. And when I do, they better watch out. You know some of the Indian boys are pretty good looking. Some of the white girls would like to go around with them but their families won’t let them. . . . Quite a few of the white boys like to go out with the Indian girls—just pick-ups. They don’t intermarry. I always say to the girls don’t ever go out with any white boys,” she

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said. When she refused a white boy’s request for a date, he asked for a reason, “so I just held my wrist up to his (gesture) and said, ‘Do you see this skin? It’s white.’ He just blushed!”59 Others saw essential differences between whites and Indians based on religion (“God gave the Indians the drums and the white man the Bible”) that translated into an acceptance of cultural relativism. “Whites should worship their way and Indians theirs. This is proper and will result in the best relations between the two,” was the view students heard from one settlement couple. The woman recounted a story, which she took as true, about an Indian who became a good Christian. Despite following all the commands of his new religion, when he died and went to heaven, she said, “they wouldn’t receive him there, because he was an Indian. So then he went down to hell, but they wouldn’t receive him there either, because he was so good. So he came alive again, and he went to the Buffalo Dance and the other dances, and taught his children to do the same. This is a true story.”60 Whether treated as a separate race or considered part of all those nonwhite, people resented their treatment by some whites. “The hardest thing for and [sic] Indian to do when he becomes a Christian is to get rid of his prejudice toward white men. This was hardest for me. You can’t blame the Indians for feeling this way. All this history of exploitations of the Indians,” one man said. The students found another man who believed “the Indian has the cards stacked against him. It’s hard for him to get accepted by the whites. Like anti-semitism in Chicago.” A World War II army veteran, he had scored high on iq tests but never advanced beyond private and was never admitted to his unit’s band, despite experience playing in the settlement band. He recalled how his officers “would take me into company headquarters and show me to the secretaries working there and say—‘Look at this guy. He’s a real Indian. Can’t speak English.’ He told this without much apparent bitterness, but he probably resented this treatment strongly.”61 Such feelings may well have flavored relations with the white students, but racial remarks aimed directly at the students were rare.

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Phillips once compared his arm to a student’s and said, “You’ve got hair all over your hand and arm . . . ; there’s no hair on my arm. I’m not like an ape. I’m red, see, just a dumb redskin. Look, I’m red. What color are you?” The student gave an anthropologist’s answer: “You’re not so much darker than me. Skin color doesn’t make any difference. That’s not the way you tell a man.”62 One reason for the scarcity of such comments may be that while people might complain in general about how white people treated them, they could discern differences in white responses to Indians. One man, for example, complained about problems Indians have had dealing with southern whites employed by the bia. He also mentioned that although the settlement’s white school principal did not want Meskwaki to run the bureau’s road equipment, the foreman was “a local guy from Toledo, who persisted in hiring Indians, saying ‘they can fire me if they want.’” Another person said that “lots of the people in Tama stick up for us. So do some of the white farmers around here. I haven’t got anything against white people. Some of them are all right, I guess.” She added that her friends at Flandreau boarding school included a white girl and an African American girl, and that she would beat up anyone who taunted her African American friend. “Maybe some people can stand being made fun of, but I just can’t,” she said. The student who recorded a similar conversation about whites’ attitudes noted parenthetically, “None of these remarks were directed at me. I feel as though the [family] likes me personally and do not identify me with the whites whom they dislike so much.”63 While anthropologists tried to stress a non-essentialist racial attitude in their talks with settlement residents, it is unclear whether people found it persuasive. Other anthropologists, however, have recorded instances in which people internalize and parrot-back the characterizations other anthropologists have made regarding their cultures. Meskwaki were just as likely to take issue with past statements as to repeat them. A man told one researcher that the things written by Rietz a few years earlier had hurt the tribe’s image. They also offered observations of their own on subjects the anthropolo-

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gists did not bring up, such as differences between white and Indian youngsters. Members of the community also were curious about how they compared with other tribes, asking for information about whether other Indians were as shy as Meskwaki. Polgar called such a case “a rather amusing reversal of positions.”64 The tape recorder that the students used to record songs fascinated Meskwaki, which in turn fascinated the researchers. Students often coaxed children from the settlement to try speaking into the machine, not necessarily because the researchers wanted a record of what they said but perhaps because they wanted to see the youngsters’ reactions to hearing their own voices. When a man from the Gros Ventre tribe visited the Meskwaki settlement, Phillips borrowed a tape recorder, recorded the man’s singing and drumming, and played it back to him. Walter Sangree found the incident “really a sight to play parady [sic] on anthropologists. . . . The Gros Ventre was very impressed with the machine, and was making inquiries about where he could purchase one.” Lucinda Sangree recalled that one time after she had chatted with a Meskwaki man, he had told her, “You can tell Sol that your rapport is pretty good.” Polgar once tried to initiate a turning of the tables with one boy. After finishing a life history interview with him, Polgar gave him paper and pencil and said, “Now you start asking me questions,” but the youngster refused to do it.65 Although the students generally found such instances of role reversal to be amusing, Rietz found one case disconcerting at first. One Meskwaki, Bill Cloud, highly respected Rietz’s opinions and, in watching him closely, realized that the researcher spent much time just listening to other people talk. “Since this was so,” Rietz wrote, “it followed to him that he should be that way too, and so one day he showed up at the house with . . . his wife, and the two of them sat at our kitchen table and proceeded to ‘just listen.’ Minutes would go by without either of them saying a word.” Eventually, Phillips explained Cloud’s strategy to Rietz.66 The incident was enough out of the ordinary for Rietz that, first of all, he remembered it long enough to include it in his fieldnotes,

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and secondly, he made it a point to ask other settlement residents about the man’s behavior. To Rietz, Cloud’s behavior was odd, probably just as odd as Rietz’s behavior was to the man. Perhaps seeing himself reflected in the man’s behavior put Rietz in the position of feeling like the “other” rather than like the “self.” As Michael Taussig has pointed out, Westerners encountering people from other civilizations sometimes become aware of the way the people they are studying are seeing and copying them. Taussig called such awareness a time of “second contact” that followed an initial encounter. In the second contact period, Taussig theorized, the boundaries between “us” and “them” become fuzzy. The noticing of one’s self being copied is more than merely having the tables turned, Taussig said, because the copying back and forth can be endless, swift, and dizzying. He wrote that “the border has dissolved and expanded to cover the lands it once separated such that all land is borderland.”67 No record exists of what Cloud thought he was accomplishing by his mimicry, because Rietz did not ask him and the man is now dead. Almost certainly he was not parodying Rietz because he did not laugh or clown around during his visit, and he had no friends along to appreciate it. Was Cloud “practicing” his listening technique the way one practices a golf swing? Or was he merely trying it out once to see if he could learn something from Rietz? One settlement resident offered this explanation: Perhaps Cloud wanted to see if Rietz had anything he wanted to say to him. Sometimes, she said, scholars who come to the settlement seem to be searching for something in their own lives while investigating the Meskwaki culture. She thought that Rietz’s visitor might have suspected that was the case and wanted to show Rietz that he was willing to listen.68 An equally interesting aspect of the Cloud-Rietz encounter is Rietz’s behavior during the moments of silence. Why did he choose to sit in silence rather than making conversation? By the time of the incident, Rietz had learned that many settlement residents were comfortable with lapses in conversation, but this silent interval lasted longer than usual. As the seconds passed, Rietz made no move to engage Cloud and his wife in conversation. Rietz’s actions raise

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the question of whether he had anything to say to Cloud at all. Was his interest in the settlement residents—and the interest of all the other anthropologists—strictly professional rather than human? Were their gestures at friendship all pretense? Forming Friendships The commitment of action anthropologists to do more than study people was, on the one hand, an attempt to carry out a more ethical form of anthropology than traditional anthropology. At the same time, action anthropology carried with it new ethical complications not faced by traditional anthropologists. The long-term nature of the project meant the anthropologists would come to know settlement residents more intimately than did anthropologists who stayed several months and then returned to academia. The action anthropologists also interacted with more people in the community than did traditional anthropologists who might be able to depend on a handful of professional informants such as Harry Lincoln. Traditional anthropologists had to learn to get along with only a handful of personalities, but the action anthropologists found themselves dealing with many people in the community. The diverse and longterm relationships carried the potential for deep friendships and serious personality clashes. The Chicago project had some of each. After several weeks on the settlement the anthropology students had a core group of five families with whom they associated freely and who remained supporters of the project throughout its presence on the settlement. Some stopped by nearly every day for coffee and conversation. One woman, the daughter of Henry and Alice Carter, was a teenager when the researchers first came to the settlement and remembered that her family went to visit the Chicago students almost every night after supper. The adults talked until bedtime about the community’s future and other topics while the children amused themselves with the anthropologists’ wire recorder. The Carters befriended a succession of anthropologists over the life of the project and became important sounding boards for anthropologists’ ideas, as well as contributing suggestions of their own.69

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Even community members who sometimes expressed resentment at the presence of the anthropologists considered some of them close friends. Deer, who had argued with Gearing about the value of anthropology, gave a baby shower for the wife of one of the researchers. She also exchanged Christmas cards and letters with wives of the researchers for years and was always glad to see them when they stopped by. Asked why she should be so friendly while disliking the project in which they were involved, she said that in those days women on the settlement had few diversions and little money. At home caring for their children, they had few chances to socialize, and the researchers’ presence was a nice break in the routine. On the other side the connections ran deep as well. In 1948 Deer gave Gredys a handmade appliquéd apron. Fifty years later, Gredys still had it in a small basket in her kitchen. She never used it but kept it as a reminder of how touched she was that Deer had made it for her.70 An individual’s gender, experiences, and personality often influenced the making of close friendships. As a veteran, Rietz came across as one of the guys to many young men on the settlement. He enjoyed playing poker in the weekly games at the settlement’s legion post with other veterans. Students who came to the settlement even after Rietz had been gone for two years or more often fielded questions about him from people who knew him. One man who was in his late teens at the time visited the university house often and said he could talk all night to Rietz “about everything and about nothing.” Polgar also seemed to have a knack for getting along with people. Barely twenty-years old when he first came to the settlement in 1952, Polgar was not much older than the boys, ages twelve to eighteen, whom he intended to study. Boys from the settlement roughhoused with him and teased him about being interested in girls much as they did with each other.71 One of the warmest friendships between the action anthropologists and settlement residents involved Phil Smith, the man who led the Drum Society organization on the settlement, a form of worship imported from other Indian communities. While students generally

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had a hard time getting into the traditional clan ceremonies, Smith was happy to admit them to Drum Society worship and to explain the meaning of the dances and items used in the rituals. Peattie found Smith and his wife, Julie, to be fascinating. She thought their small house and outdoor kitchen were in a picture-book location, set back from the road at the end of a winding path through the woods with trees on three sides and a view across farm fields on the fourth. After her first visit with Julie Smith at their isolated homestead, Peattie said she “was as completely charmed by [Julie] as I had been by [Phil] before. She has a lucid charm, a sensitivity of response, which I am sure would make her an exceptional person in any society. I came away almost in a state of trance, feeling as if I had been in another world.” Peattie stopped by for “female chit-chat,” which she did not report in her diary, as well as anthropology-related talks about religion and politics, which she did include in her diary. Writing up her conversations with Julie made Peattie “feel like a heel,” and she promised in her diary that she would not record anything Julie asked her to keep secret because “even if this whole enterprise amounts to a systematic abuse of confidence, I will not abuse her confidence so directly.”72 Besides being deeply spiritual, Phil Smith was a talented musician and one of the few people on the settlement who still knew how to play a handmade wooden Indian flute. The students, especially Fallers and Peattie, enjoyed having Smith and his wife come to the school in the evening and play Meskwaki songs into their recorder, which he was eager to do. After one night of sitting on the grass among blinking fireflies listening to Smith play, Peattie wrote: All at once it seems clear to me what Bronislaw M. [Malinowski] is trying to get at in his poetic descriptions of conversations at midnight sitting on a sandbank, etc. It seems to me that his justification of these descriptions in terms of the scientific value of getting the imponderabilia [sic] of the situation are so much rationalization; it is simply that these moments are so exciting for their

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own sake, so esthetically complete, so emotionally moving, that one simply has a tremendous drive to get them down, to express them, to keep them from drifting away. I have never been so charmed by anyone at first meeting as by [Smith]. He is a tall thin man with a long face and long hair, and a smile which I can only describe as radiant and poetic. This all must sound as if I were completely off the deep end about it all; so I am.73 Fallers also fell under Smith’s spell, finding his face and personality to be “sensitive.” “I really felt in the presence of another culture as I sat listening to [Smith] play the old songs, sitting cross-legged in the clearing with sunlight filtering through the trees,” wrote Fallers. While professing admiration for the way Smith continued to hold many traditional Meskwaki values after attempting to convert to Christianity, Fallers also looked forward to using him as “an interesting case history for our religion problem.” Fallers pondered how his fondness for Smith might bias any attempt to “interpret” him, but he viewed Smith as more than a mere specimen. Smith, wrote Fallers, had “impressed us very deeply as a person—a person with a soul.” As it turned out, Fallers did not have to worry about “interpreting” Smith because the field party never got around to doing the type of acculturation study they anticipated, due to the change in direction the project took. Peattie, on the other hand, did not mention wanting to “study” Smith. She did, though, make sure the Smiths met her parents when they came to visit the settlement. Not all the students were as entranced as Fallers and Peattie. Grace Gredys considered Peattie to be “over-sympathetic” with people like Smith.74 The students’ ties extended beyond the bounds of the settlement and past the end of their stay there. When the Smiths made plans to visit Chicago in the fall, the students promised to help them find a place to stay and show them the city. The Smiths apparently did visit Peattie and her family in Chicago because Smith liked to tell the story of how her little boy and his little boy played together, and Peattie’s child fed a piece of cake to the family’s gold fish. Peattie

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kept in touch with the Smiths by mail for several years, sending him a book as a gift in 1952. When members of field parties in later years interviewed Smith, he mentioned how well Peattie had danced at one of the Drum Society ceremonies, leading one student to conclude that he “is extremely fond of Lisa.” In 1952 Polgar commented about Smith that the “subjects that seemed to warm him up were Lisa, music, and languages.”75 Peattie’s friendship with Smith was unusual because it differed so much from other cross-gender relationships between students and settlement residents. Field parties each year generally found it easier for women students to talk to women and men students to talk to men on the settlement. Fallers had noticed Smith’s willingness to teach the women in the field party his songs, unlike “every other man we have met [who] either avoids women or clams up in their presence.” Settlement norms for gender relations at that time discouraged many types of male-female interactions. When Leslie paid a call on one couple in 1949, for example, he noticed how the man’s wife kept her back turned to him while Leslie and her husband talked. He observed that “this is a fairly regular pattern. Often when I approach a house the women will turn their backs and wait for me to speak to them. I don’t know if it is shyness or politeness but will have Carol (Wiesender) ask some of her female informants.” After realizing that Meskwaki men were unreceptive to women, Gredys limited her work to married women and their role in the adoption of aspects of white culture on the settlement. Furthermore, Polgar planned a study of adolescents but decided to confine it to boys only because he considered it unlikely that he could get to know any girls. He wrote: “The other field parties have already observed a strong tendency of limiting cross sexual interaction with anthropologists and amongst themselves. Whether it is brother-sister avoidance, mother-in-law avoidance or what not, it seems that boys and girls especially seem to stick together.”76 Bertha Waseskuk was another exception to the gender rules. Although she served as a spokeswoman for the anti-constitution group, Waseskuk did not follow all of the old ways. She had attended college for a year, lived and worked off the settlement, returning only on

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weekends, and generally was described as having “white ways.” Her leadership role in the Old Bear group contrasted with the usual pattern of only men serving in such capacities. In that role, Waseskuk dealt regularly with men in the Chicago field parties. When Peattie told one woman about the trouble she was having getting an interview with Waseskuk, the woman advised her to have the men go talk to Waseskuk instead because “she likes men.”77 When friendships between students and settlement residents were especially close, they could get in the way of fieldwork. Peattie spent a lot of time talking to Tax’s old friend, Jessica Jones, yet never formally interviewed her because “we get on too well . . . and besides, I enjoy too much the kind of relaxed conversation that goes on here, where pauses are not dreaded, and the making of conversation is the not frantic process that it usually is in our urban centers.”78 The Politics of Helping While negotiating the elements of traditional anthropology, students and settlement residents tried to put their own definition on the “helping” part of action anthropology. It took until 1954 for the University of Chicago to find funding to organize some formal programs to aid the community. Before the formal action programs, however, the anthropologists tried to help the Indians informally to deal with everyday problems of life that easily turn into crises for people with few financial resources or little experience dealing with bureaucratic requirements. Individual researchers helped people study for their driver’s license test, fill out applications for college, or bail a husband out of jail. One researcher indicated such favors were routine and told Tax that “I have ended up doing action anthropology and little else. . . . There is always a crisis of some sort here—three at least today. I could not begin to keep you posted on them all.” The ease with which community residents sought and accepted such assistance signaled that in many ways they had indeed incorporated the researchers into settlement life. Seeking a favor from one of the researchers had become as routine as doing and seeking favors from any neighbor.79

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Some people thought the students should “help” by buying things, such as Indian trinkets they had made. After a while, the researchers were comfortable enough in Meskwaki culture to adopt some of its avoidance techniques. Once, Polgar took a boy into town who went into a store, picked out an expensive toy car, and asked the researcher to buy it for him. “I used the Mesquakie technique of staring into the blue yonder,” wrote Polgar.80 After seven years of the project, one student vented his frustration at his failure to find more than a couple people willing to communicate freely with him. He had had “little or no success thus far” in talking to young men regarding employment opportunities. They either said nothing when he approached them in town or at the baseball park or talked and joked about him among themselves in Meskwaki (or so he surmised). Older people were either indifferent or annoyed at being questioned about their work. “All of this is to be expected according to the past experience of others,” he said, summing up years of such relationships. When he tried to arrange events with the youth, they participated on their terms. Once he lined up three boys for a trip to Des Moines, but none showed up when it was time to go. A few days later, a group of teenage boys asked him for a ride home from one end of the settlement. While the researcher tried to engage them in conversation about baseball or school, they ignored his attempts and laughed at their ability to make him run all over the settlement to take them home. “They treated me as a ‘white sucker’ for their requests,” he wrote with bitterness. He finally was able to buy one youth a soft drink in town, and the boy told him that “people don’t like the students” and that adults were tired of questions from a new crop of anthropology students each summer. The boy also confided that he was afraid of some of the students and just did not like some of them, although he was not specific.81 While not necessarily communicative, people frequently stopped by the students’ house from time to time. The two-story structure, with an outhouse in the back, was a dilapidated affair by white middle-class standards and required considerable improvements, including installation of a shower in the former root cellar, before

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it was ready for occupancy. For settlement residents living in tworoom houses without electricity in a community with few organized recreational opportunities, the house became a popular place. Some Meskwaki came around mealtime and stayed to eat lunch or dinner, possibly having timed their visits to coincide with mealtime. Phillips and Jessica Jones were nearly daily visitors. Others came for informal music sessions, bringing a guitar or recorder to accompany the researchers on trumpet or piano. Researchers often provided snacks or other refreshments, such as coffee, Kool-Aid, or candy. And the fact that the house had electricity was a bonus for people who had only kerosene or other lighting in the evening. “We had our own reasons for befriending them,” recalled one man. He said friends asked him when he was a boy why he went to the home of a minister at a Christian church, since settlement residents shunned Christianity. His reply: the minister’s wife made great sloppy joes. “If I sang a couple of hymns, it was just for the milk and cookies,” he said, adding that his relationship with the students was similar.82 One person remembered people going to the students’ house for another reason—to take showers in the basement. Many homes of the settlement lacked running water in those days, so sometimes people took advantage of the facilities where the Chicago students lived. They also came to the house to use the telephone since the University of Chicago house had the only telephone at that end of the settlement. Some were so shy, however, they asked the researchers to make the call for them and would not come into the house to do it themselves.83 Settlement residents often sought the use of the station wagon that the University of Chicago had available for the researchers’ travel. Not all settlement residents had cars in those days, and many of those who did had unreliable ones. Fred Gearing recalled driving the university’s station wagon to Minnesota to bring back the body of a settlement resident who had died while on a visit there. On the way back Gearing stopped for gas, and the gas station attendant looked into the back of the station wagon and saw a form on a stretcher covered with a blanket. Gearing recalled how the attendant took a

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look and said, “For a minute, I thought there was a body in there.” Others sought favors such as riding around the settlement in the university car, which Polgar called “a very blatant attempt of gaining prestige, I must say.” On one occasion, Henry and Alice Carter asked for a ride to Oakdale, Iowa, to visit their daughters in a tuberculosis sanitarium. The university furnished the car, the Carters bought the gas, and Gearing had a four-hour conversation with the family.84 In 1952 Polgar organized a group of boys to clean out a barn on the University of Chicago property to be used for a recreation center. While doing the work, Polgar took note of the boys’ interaction for a study on the cross-cultural socialization of Meskwaki boys. Youth who showed up to help Polgar clean the barn sometimes informed him they did not want to work and wanted to go swimming that day instead. Polgar would load up the station wagon and take them, following their lead in exchange for the opportunity to carry out his observations of them. Other times, youth suggested holding dances in the barn, events that are widely remembered among those who participated. In interviews, several women giggled and teased each other about what went on outside the barn when asked about the parties. Many people who were teenagers when Polgar was on the settlement remember the swimming and roller-skating party as highlights of their summer. “It was more a social club,” recalled one man about how the University of Chicago project functioned. The square dances at the barn, box socials, and roller-skating parties provided many evenings of enjoyment for young people living in a cash-poor community.85 Researchers often took carloads of youngsters to Tama for the summer carnival or other activities. Frequently they stopped at an ice cream store and treated everyone to root beer. Meskwaki sometimes treated back, telling the researchers to “Put your money away” when they stopped for coffee or ice cream. Reflecting on the gesture of a youth who bought him an ice cream cone, Polgar generalized: Most of the people around here are very generous, both with affection and with other things. . . . Little girls at

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the ball game beg me to accept some of their popcorn, Marj noticed that (a girl) asked her mother whether she wanted something, even though she could not have bought something for herself if she bought something for her mother. Little things like this, and the natural way they do it are the grounds upon which I make this generalization.86 Coupled with community generosity was a strong resentment kindled in anyone upon being denied something by a researcher, such as a ride into town. Such resentment showed up when Davenport suggested Polgar take him and his family to nearby Sportsman’s Lake for a picnic. Youngsters who were helping Polgar on his barn project had asked recently for a roller-skating party, so Polgar decided to combine the two. He invited a number of families to the event, and Davenport “went sour when he found out that I wanted to get everybody, his idea was just one carload.” Perhaps the tribal chair thought going along with the researcher would have further enhanced his status in the community.87 Even such popular activities as dances and skating parties had a way of coming back to bite the students. While Polgar and another researcher were recruiting people to help drive youth to a rollerskating party, one man told them they “have no business interfereing [sic] with the affairs of the tribe.” When the researchers tried to say they were only organizing a roller-skating party, the man “interrupted again and said we better get into our car, turn around and get out, which we did. I was flabbergasted,” Polgar wrote.88 Another time a couple who had been drinking bitterly attacked Polgar “for having refused to drive them to town, for having used their kids to clean the barn, and neglect them since, and most outrageous of all, of sleeping with” a woman from the community, a charge that seems unlikely to be true given the identity of the woman. Other members of the community expressed their disapproval at the attack, and the woman who was the target of the accusation of sexual relations said the couple was trying to drive her away. “This episode

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was a very bitter pill, and it should serve to point out the possibilities of what people really think of us, and say of us, behind our backs,” Polgar wrote. Even one of the youth who had helped clean the barn seemed to agree with his parents that the youth had been exploited. Yet, when Polgar went onto the powwow grounds to dance at the end of the summer, some Meskwaki gave him a round of applause. And another parent, who needed an interpreter to speak to the researchers, made it a point to tell Polgar how much she appreciated the time he was spending with her son. “I later found out that she was feared as a witch, which added to my amazement, and pleasant surprise at this incident,” Polgar noted.89 Part of the reason that meeting simple requests was fraught with unforeseen problems was the crosscutting relationships among settlement residents that were based on kinship, religion, and politics. When researchers and community members interacted in any way, they never did so in a vacuum, but always within the context of their simultaneous relationships with other individuals on the settlement. Those relationships formed a complex web (Bakhtin would say a heteroglossia) that was constantly being rewoven by developing events. Researchers tried to follow the threads of the web that enveloped them and their neighbors, but they always lost the trail before they found the ends. They thought they had figured out who belonged on which side of some of the main political divisions on the settlement, but the political divisions within the community were never static. Some people, such as Harry Lincoln, switched sides unexpectedly depending on the issue or some other factor the researchers could not discern. Davenport and his supporters belonged to neither political grouping and were criticized as being only out for themselves. For example, an Old Bear woman, Carter’s wife Alice, had been the head of a women’s club on the settlement, but Davenport, who would seem to have favored such a step as progress, was blamed for breaking it up because he saw it as a potential site of power that could challenge his leadership.90 The political divisions did not approximate the extremes or the clarity of Shakespeare’s Montague and Capulet feud. People gener-

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ally followed the political lead of their families, but men and women freely married across political divisions, with the woman generally changing to the division her husband supported. Members of the settlement also did business together across political lines. For example, Davenport and some Old Bears had owned a tractor together despite their political differences. Nor were there rigid lines over what being conservative and progressive meant. Both Old Bears and Young Bears sent their children to school and valued the Meskwaki language. A progressive once complained that too many of the young people on the settlement were growing up without knowing how to speak their language, for example. Progressives tended to be Christians, but not exclusively so, and even some who were Christians still attended various religious events on the settlement such as adoption feasts. Old Bears did not necessarily want to gain control of the council because, as Bertha Waseskuk put it, they believed the council was a powerless tool of the federal government. Their goal continued to be getting rid of the ira government and returning to the hereditary chief who existed before Pushetonequa.91 When Davenport was the potential recipient of favors, students had to take special care to consider the politics involved. Once, Davenport hinted to a researcher that he would like rides to Chicago for some council members to see the lawyers handling their suit against the federal government for land claims. Gearing, who was driving to Chicago anyway, dropped by and offered a ride to Davenport, telling him, “We have the station wagon and it’s always available when our schedules cross like this; no sense in driving an empty car all the way to Chicago.” Reflecting upon that conversation later, Gearing mused about the possibility he was being drawn into Davenport’s web of influence and reduced to one of Ed’s “errand boys” gathering information or furnishing rides as Ed demanded. The nature of the Chicago project as action anthropology and not merely gathering data complicated matters for Gearing since he sometimes needed the tribal chairman’s cooperation to carry out projects on the settlement, yet he feared alienating community residents who disliked Davenport. “I cannot enter into any of Ed’s reputed manipulations of the people

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generally. But it appears that the alternatives may be: ‘be a tool’ or ‘begone.’ And ‘tool’ cannot mean ‘dumb tool’ but, for Ed, means necessarily ‘co-conspirator,’” Gearing fretted. He worried that by merely being on the settlement he has “created added anxieties for Ed the mastermind, the guardian, and the egoist.”92 Two days later, Gearing and other researchers conferred about how to “handle” Davenport, and their conclusions show the respect they accorded his ability to outwit the anthropologists: “One might as well adopt Ed’s method of never saying exactly what you’re trying to communicate. He presumes you are doing so anyway and therefore never takes statements at face value.”93 External political realities prompted the researchers simply to ignore some requests—especially when settlement residents hinted or asked directly about purchasing alcohol. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, both federal and Iowa law forbade the sale of alcohol to Indians, although settlement residents had no trouble buying beer and liquor under the counter in Tama. Possibly fearful of a public scandal, the students decided early on that they would not drink alcohol on the settlement. When one Indian told a researcher, “I wish I had a drink,” the researcher thought to himself, “Hm. Here’s where the trouble starts. He didn’t say any more, however.” Another researcher told a man who asked him to buy a six-pack of beer that “for any student to do so would be a one way ticket out of Tama.” The issue was a potential political problem within the settlement as well because it underscored the difference in status between the white students, who could buy liquor, and the settlement residents, who could not. When a group of students walked into a tavern in a neighboring town to have a drink and saw one of their friends from the settlement, Wayne Henderson, seated at the bar, they turned and fled before he could see them in order to avoid potential embarrassment. Recovering their wits after the initial shock, they went back into the bar and sat down with him rather than pretend they never took a drink.94 The liquor prohibition especially grated on members of the community who were veterans of World War II. The veterans had joined the American Legion Post in Tama and got along well with the white

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members until the legion members decided to enforce the liquor ban for fear of being prosecuted. Although the researchers avoided buying liquor for individual people, they did acknowledge the veterans’ complaints that the law infantilized them. Rietz acknowledged the unfairness of the law by lobbying the Iowa branch of the American Legion to adopt a resolution condemning the restriction and demand that the Meskwaki be under the same law as everyone else. Peattie also wrote Provinse that the new law and order measure seemed to have exacerbated tensions over the liquor issue.95 Challenging the liquor prohibition constituted a challenge to the authority of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which was concerned about law and order on the settlement. At least during the first year, the students may have been reluctant to antagonize the bia further since they were living in the settlement’s school with the permission of the bureau, but that began to change. Conclusion The Meskwaki clearly have to be considered among the “actors” in action anthropology. Meskwaki culture and responses to the field party made some sort of reciprocal action on the part of the researchers necessary in order for the project to gain acceptance by and access to the people. Settlement residents pressured members of the field party indirectly to participate in the give-and-take that was an important part of community life. They also did so directly, explicitly suggesting that the researchers sponsor a party for the community, for example. It was immediately after that party that the field party expressed a desire to “help” the people of the community. Pressure from both individuals and the community to contribute something to the settlement continued throughout the project. Individuals sought small favors and help with important matters, such as legal difficulties, from the researchers. They did so without embarrassment, in the same way that they sought and gave favors to each other. In return, the Meskwaki participated in the field party’s projects, such as turning a barn into a youth recreation center. They allowed themselves to be interviewed repeatedly over the ten years of

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the project. Although some scholars have stressed the power imbalance between researchers and the people they interview, Meskwaki who appeared in the fieldnotes rarely seemed to be at a disadvantage in their exchanges with the University of Chicago students. They deftly dodged questions they did not want to answer and were adept at ignoring the students until they went away. Settlement residents manipulated (or tried to manipulate) the researchers for their own purposes on a broader scale. In doing so, the people showed they recognized that the educated outsiders had the potential power for influencing public opinion within the settlement. Those hostile to the tribal council recruited members of the field party to try to persuade the Meskwaki community to back a hereditary chief rather than the elected council. Even though the project had come into being without any sort of endorsement by the tribal council, the tribal chairman tried to use them to bolster his authority, ordering them around like errand boys. Time and again Meskwaki demonstrated that they had a repertoire of cultural techniques for dealing with those who might be considered more powerful. The Meskwaki likely were not unique among Native Americans who dealt with anthropologists. If that is so, then why did this particular encounter result in efforts to try to change the way anthropology was done? What is different is that the researchers in this case responded in a formal way to what the Indians were telling them. Postcolonial politics may have been a factor. Some people may have been more vocal about the presence of the anthropologists because their World War II experiences had made them more knowledgeable about conditions in the white world outside Tama. Several factors encouraged the students to figure out a way of getting along with settlement residents. The lack of precise rules for doing anthropological fieldwork and the open-ended nature of the University of Chicago project encouraged experimentation. With as many as six people in the field party at any one time, researchers could discuss the ethical issues raised by fieldwork without the presence of a more experienced faculty member who might have persuaded them to ignore their uneasiness. Since they were enrolled

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in a graduate course, the students could not just pack up and leave in search of a more cooperative community. In order to get their grades, the students had to figure out a way of working with the settlement residents so that they could produce papers by the end of the summer. And it would not do to tell Tax that they could not relate to the community residents since he had done fieldwork there himself and had been able to make friends. The influence of two people related to the project may have been crucial—Peattie and Tax. Peattie had grown up with an anthropologist father—Robert Redfield—who had written her letters about his experiences and his friends in the field from the time she was a little girl. While a teenager living in Guatemala during her father’s fieldwork, she may well have missed the complications that come with studying other people. When she had her own fieldwork experience, her complicated feelings toward the people she met may have surprised and disappointed her, prompting her to question the entire enterprise. The fact that she had known Sol Tax since she was a child made it easier for her to challenge the rules he had laid down for the students.96 While the students were reacting to settlement residents primarily as human beings, Tax’s reaction was a blend of personal and professional attitudes. On a professional level, Tax was aware of Kurt Lewin’s work on action research and had entered the debate earlier in the 1940s on the role of anthropologists in the modern world. Like the students, however, Tax had established a human relationship with the Meskwaki that was long-standing and had made several efforts on his own to try to help individuals from the settlement. Tax also was receptive to Peattie’s worries in part because his personality was different from many other anthropologists and other academics. Although too much causality should not be assigned to one person, Tax was a doer, a big thinker, a man who always had a plan to make things better, and who had tremendous energy and enthusiasm. So it was that a Meskwaki demand for reciprocity, filtered through the experiences of the field party, meshed with Peattie’s background and Tax’s character to create action anthropology.

4. Action Anthropology and the Values Question

The creation of action anthropology may have occurred in the summer of 1948, but all its implications were not completely obvious at the end of that first summer, either to many settlement residents or to the action anthropologists. Students were well aware that they were taking on extra obligations that traditional anthropologists did not have, and they debated among themselves the propriety of doing so. Members of the community, on the other hand, wondered what the commitment to help would actually turn out to mean, beyond rides in the university car and occasional sandwiches. Having committed themselves to helping the Meskwaki, Tax and his students had to square that promise with their obligations as social scientists to carry out “objective, detached” research. They recognized that helping a community involved choices between possible goals, choices that could not be based on rationality but on values. As scientists, they found making value judgments to be uncomfortable and wondered whether they had the right to “tell people what to do.” Following the logic of social scientists such as Robert Lynd, the action anthropologists rejected the possibility of value-free research and concluded that social scientists always bring their own values to their work, whether they admit it or not. The difference in the approach taken by the Chicago group was that they would explicitly acknowledge that values were involved in their research and try to use them.1 Tax and the students assumed from the beginning that they did “not want to ‘impose’ our values on the community, but rather to act as therapists clarifying people’s own objectives and showing

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them how they can attain them.” Having noticed the poverty of the settlement and the difficulty of making a living there, the Chicagoans in late 1948 and early 1949 arrived at a general aim of helping the community continue to exist. That, in turn, entailed making the community more economically self-sufficient so that an individual’s decision to stay or leave was freely made, rather than forced by circumstances. Underlying the students’ desire to help the community exist was their appreciation for many aspects of Meskwaki life, as exemplified by their enchantment with people such as Phil and Julie Smith.2 By deciding that they wanted to help the community continue to exist, the action anthropologists implicitly threw their weight onto the side of the Old Bears, the anti-constitution group who preferred the “old ways” such as a hereditary chief, and against Davenport and the Young Bears, who supported the constitutional council and a wider range of innovations from whites.3 Researchers decided that the council was too weak as an institution to be of much value in planning for the community’s future and decided to work around it whenever possible. A commitment to helping the community continue to exist, so that individual Meskwaki had a truly free choice to leave or stay, also was diametrically opposed to federal Indian policy at the time, which favored assimilation into white society. Thus, the commitment of the students to help the Meskwaki carried with it the likelihood of clashes with both the council and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.4 Settling on a project that would benefit a community would be difficult in any setting, but it was especially so in a place as politically fractured as the Meskwaki settlement. Over and over again, students heard Meskwaki complain that people just could not cooperate to accomplish anything for the community. Young Bears blamed the Old Bears. Old Bears blamed the Young Bears. And everybody blamed Ed Davenport. Lawrence Phillips once explained it this way to Bob Rietz and Tom Fallers: “Well, there’s two parts here. If one side wants to do something, the other side won’t go along. Always two parts.” A woman told Lisa Peattie, “People just can’t seem to get together.” Convinced

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that what many people told them was true, the students hoped that carrying out a project with the community would help heal some of those divisions so that the settlement residents could accomplish more things on their own. In the process of trying to make things happen on the settlement, Tax and the students envisioned that they would learn more about how the community functioned than if they sat by and waited for something to happen.5 Exactly how to carry out their goal of helping the community continue to exist, however, was a vague promise and remained so as long as the university had little money to set up any kind of economic development project. While searching for an appropriate project, and the funds to carry it out, the students ran into trouble explaining their continuing presence on the settlement. Charles Leslie articulated the guilt feelings he had from the situation when he recalled trying to explain to a settlement resident why he was there. He wrote, “When I came to the last part about making things better I had some feelings of guilt. Walking back home I decided that I feel guilty about this because . . . we don’t have an official anthropological program. . . . [W]hile I think that helping people get material wealth is certainly a worthy project, the phrase ‘help people and make things better’ means much more than getting electricity, or a cooperative store, or a larger income.”6 Settlement residents no doubt appreciated the favors—big and small—that they received from the students, but some people still remained suspicious of the students’ motives. For Meskwaki, anthropology seemed to have no practical application in the world, and they could not bring themselves to believe that the anthropologists were acting out of altruism. Centuries of dealing with white people and living with their worthless promises had imbued the Meskwaki with an understandably deep mistrust of all whites. Those Meskwaki who had dealt with previous anthropologists continued to be confused about this group’s motives and goals. Fred Arrow, who had suggested the moccasin game party to the researchers during their first summer, was puzzled by the university decision to buy a farm to house field-workers who would be coming to the settlement in the

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future. Despite the students’ repeated assurances that they were not planning to make lots of money by writing books about the settlement, Arrow was not convinced. The university would not “‘spend all that money for nothing,’” he reasoned, “and wanted to know what they expect to get out of it.”7 Having helped create action anthropology, people of the community did not relinquish their role as co-actors in action anthropology. The recognition of Tax and the students that they should avoid imposing their own values on others seemed to guarantee some sort of role for members of the community, but what that would be remained unclear in the early years of the project. In coming years Meskwaki and the action anthropologists struggled over whose values would guide the course of action anthropology. Action anthropology seemed to fulfill its promise best when members of the Meskwaki community, regardless of political affiliation, shared a goal, as in fighting a federal decision to give up its responsibility for the settlement’s school. When no consensus existed, the action anthropologists felt freer to offer alternatives of their own and to try to shape a consensus. A consensus alone, however, did not guarantee action, as shown by the widespread community concern over health care. Priorities of the action anthropologists shifted, depending upon whom they talked to on the settlement. Postwar Federal Indian Policy and the Meskwaki The federal government’s policy toward Native Americans immediately after World War II afforded the anthropologists numerous opportunities to prove their willingness to help the settlement residents. When the first students arrived in 1948, the federal government had begun loosening its ties with the Meskwaki by placing the settlement under the jurisdiction of the state of Iowa for criminal matters. That successful maneuver smoothed the way toward making the Meskwaki an early demonstration of the government’s broader attempt to end all federal services to Indians and push them into the mainstream of American society.8

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From the point of view of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, getting rid of responsibility for the Meskwaki must have seemed a simple matter. After the heyday of the New Deal, federal services to the settlement had steadily eroded. By the early 1950s the only bia presence in the community was the settlement’s day school. The bureau had been seeking ways since 1946 to reduce federal responsibility in that area, but federal resolve to wash its hands of the settlement’s day school escalated in the 1950s along with the fervor for termination of federal recognition of Indian tribes or at least withdrawal of federal services to tribes. Bureau attempts to close the school provided the flash point for University of Chicago intervention in Meskwaki affairs and in American Indian policy on a broader scale.9 The possibility of withdrawal of federal services to the Meskwaki tribe became concrete soon after President Truman named Dillon S. Myer as commissioner of Indian Affairs in May 1950. With Congress in the mood to move quickly on Indian assimilation, Myer laid out his position at an area bia conference in August, less than four months after he became commissioner. He told bia administrators that he wanted to “gradually work ourselves out of the school business through establishing relationships with state school people so that we can have our children use public school facilities.” The same month, he told the National Congress of American Indians convention that he wanted to end segregated Indian schools “to give the Indian kids the same chance as other American kids.” By the “same chance,” Myer apparently meant total Indian assimilation because he also said, “I don’t believe there is any one step that can be taken that will move us faster in the direction of full integration, independence, and acceptance than having a couple of generations in the public schools coming along like everyone else.” Thus, before even talking to Meskwaki, Myer already had made up his mind about how to begin disengaging the federal government from its obligations to them.10 Pressure for change also was coming from Congress, in the form of House passage of a resolution sponsored by Rep. Reva Beck Bosone (R-Utah) directing the bia to study each tribe to determine its readiness to manage its own affairs without federal supervision.

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In response, the bureau conducted a study of the Meskwaki settlement during the summer of 1951. Although the study did not call for withdrawal, its presentation made clear that few legal obstacles lay in the way of federal withdrawal. The primary hurdle, the report said, was “the doubtful capacity” of the Meskwaki to pay for their own school, which was then costing the federal government $43,262 a year. The report said it was “hardly likely that they would be able to meet the costs necessary, even at present levels, and not considering the important factor of an increasing population.” Given Myer’s expressed views on Indian schools, however, lack of finances would not be enough to prevent changes.11 Many people on the settlement viewed withdrawal of federal services and Myer’s promise of giving them “the same chance” as everyone else as more of a threat than an opportunity. Rather than seeing themselves as segregated, some Meskwaki saw their separation as a protection of their independence. Henry Carter, for example, told Bill McCormack he feared that “they are going to take our land away from us because our old people [have been] on state aid and they will sell our land like they do white people when they die if they have been on the state.” Bertha Waseskuk described termination as the federal government “getting out of its responsibilities to us.”12 Even steps short of total termination of the tribe, such as turning responsibility for services to the Meskwaki over to the state, carried threatening implications. After all, the Meskwaki had entered into treaties with the federal government, not the state of Iowa, which had never promised to do anything for the tribe beyond permitting its members to live in the state. In dealing with the state, tribal leaders would lose their ability to argue for continued services based on their interpretation of nineteenth-century treaties between the federal government and tribal leaders. Contested though those treaties were, the federal government and the Meskwaki at least shared the common understanding that the documents contained promises of assistance to the tribe. The promises of the treaty established a rock bottom level of government services to the tribe. Meskwaki could try to persuade the federal government to adopt their interpretation of

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treaty requirements when they needed more help, or they could try to hold the federal government to past interpretations of the treaties when the government tried to cut services. The Meskwaki shared no such history or common understanding with the state of Iowa. Requests for services would have to be based on a new relationship. Unable to foresee exactly what that relationship would be, Meskwaki feared they would have no basis for making claims for aid. As one Old Bear member said, losing the relationship with the federal government meant that “we will lose all our rights, they [the state] can just come in and do what they want to, and all our treaties won’t be any good. . . . [W]e won’t have any claims because we will be just like everybody.”13 Furthermore, being “just like everybody” would mean Meskwaki would no longer be recognized as members of a sovereign nation. Limited though Meskwaki sovereignty was, it remained a matter of pride to tribal members and a means of protecting the physical, cultural, and religious separateness that had been the goal driving the original Meskwaki land purchase. As Chief Jack Old Bear explained: “My forefathers purchased land here in Iowa so that their descendants, and no one else, might live in peace; worship in peace and live in security without outside interference. They collected money among themselves and bought land that already belonged to them by right of prior occupation and later by right of treaty agreement. Surely no one has the right to dictate to us against our wishes. Yet we are being constantly encroached upon.”14 Withdrawal of federal services—and the consequent potential loss of recognition of Meskwaki sovereignty—became a serious issue during the winter of 1951–52 (just a few months after release of the August 1951 report on withdrawal) when the bureau announced that the school principal, Edward Mays, had received a promotion and would be leaving the Meskwaki school. Seizing on this opportunity and recognizing that the Meskwaki could not finance the school themselves, bureau officials decided to try to transfer responsibility for the day school from the federal government to the state of Iowa. Before approaching the tribe, the bia sought to enlist Tax and the

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University of Chicago anthropologists in smoothing the way for the transfer of responsibility. Tax met with bia officials from Minneapolis to discuss how the anthropologists might work together with the bureau. He wanted assurances that the federal government would continue to fund the school as it had in the past and that the people would have more authority in running it.15 At the same time, the bureau offered to help finance the Tama project, no doubt a tempting offer for Tax since he had found no other funding source despite three years of searching. In the spring of 1952 Fred Gearing prepared a memo for the Bureau of Indian Affairs outlining the philosophy of the University of Chicago anthropologists and stressing the ways that it ran parallel to federal policy, such as helping the Meskwaki become self-sufficient. Gearing also pointed out differences with federal policy, in particular the anthropologists’ opposition to the withdrawal of federal funds, and urged the Indian office to do a better job of communicating its aims in ways that Meskwaki could understand and would support. In contrast to the bia, Gearing said that the anthropologists did not believe in telling the Meskwaki what to do but only in pointing out alternatives to them and working on goals that the community identified. This was reflected in the finance proposal laid out in the memo: one person staying full-time at the settlement who, while paid by the Indian agency, would have had the freedom to act according to Meskwaki wishes rather than according to a “program” laid out in advance.16 Tax was already familiar with Meskwaki sensitivity to changes in the school, having intervened on the tribe’s behalf in a 1934 controversy over sending the children to public schools. Just as it had in 1934, the Indian service tried to foist a unilateral decision onto the Meskwaki. At a March 1952 meeting with the tribe, two bia officials from Minneapolis, Area Director Don Foster and Area Education Director Russell Kelley, asked the Meskwaki to consider turning the day school into a public school, run by the Iowa Department of Public Instruction under a contract with the bia. Foster told the Meskwaki that he wanted them to decide the matter and, in a misguided attempt to make it more appealing, cloaked the offer in the

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guise of freedom for the tribe: “We’ve done this all over; the Indian office wants to turnover [sic] its services to other bodies. You want to get rid of us, don’t you?”17 At a well-attended tribal council meeting before Foster and Kelley came to present the plan, Tax talked to the people about the proposed transfer of the school to the state and asked the Meskwaki for their opinions on the transfer. Some people were unsure whether their opinions mattered and if the transfer could be done without their consent. Although Tax told the Meskwaki he favored it, Tax did not pressure the tribe to do what he thought was best, and he pledged university help in carrying out whatever decision they made. In other words the Meskwaki would shape the way action anthropology functioned. Tax told people at the meeting: We don’t know what you will decide, but if you want any help we are able to give—advice in getting the new setup going—we’ll send someone out here. You should make sure the Indian Office gives you as much money to run the school as they’ve been spending. If they give you the money, it would be, it seems to me, a good deal, as then you’d be boss—could hire your own teachers and make you [sic] own decisions as to, say, whether to build that other school building they’ve talked about. The Indian Office hasn’t let you make any decisions. Of course you will make some mistakes—anyone would—it takes a while to learn. But the only way to learn is to try. If you want us, we’ll help you get started, until you’ve learned how to run things yourselves.18 Tax and the Indian bureau soon came into open conflict over the matter. When Kelley met with community residents the next day, he stressed that responsibility for the school would be shifted to the state, not to the Meskwaki as Tax had thought. Tax told the people that “I am not at all in favor of the kinds of things Mr. Foster has told you about” because it seemed aimed at “turning you into white men” regardless of Meskwaki wishes. Tax’s assertion that Meskwaki

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had a right to remain Meskwaki was his first public rejection of the widespread assumption among American policymakers that Indians someday would disappear into mainstream culture.19 Settlement residents at the meeting applauded when Tax said an arrangement where the Meskwaki ran the school and the federal government paid for it would be advantageous for them. Otherwise people pressed for more time to consider the matter, complaining that Foster had promised to send them information on it earlier and had not done so, and they expressed skepticism about the government’s commitment in the long run. “The government has broken his [sic] promises many times. Now, instead of increasing its services, it is trying to diminish them,” complained one man.20 After the inconclusive March meeting the Bureau of Indian Affairs officials did nothing until early July, when Kelley met privately with officials of the Iowa Department of Public Instruction at the settlement and got them to sign a contract agreeing to run the school. When the bureaucrats presented the matter to the Meskwaki as signed, sealed, and delivered, council members angrily protested being excluded from the negotiations. “It is undemocratic and unAmerican,” complained Davenport. The council’s reaction surprised the state officials, who were under the impression that community residents had consented to the transfer. The state officials demanded the return of the signed contracts and refused to go further without consulting with Superintendent of Public Instruction Jesse Parker. An embarrassed Kelley suggested that Meskwaki leaders meet with bia commissioner Dillon S. Myer, who happened to be in Minneapolis at the time, in a last-ditch effort to get an agreement.21 Accompanied by Gearing and riding in the University of Chicago station wagon, Ed Davenport and two other Meskwaki leaders met with Myer, who listened politely to complaints about the bureau’s coercive methods. The council members did not close the door on the school transfer but gave Myer a proposal offering to continue negotiations on the matter if the bureau would commit to keeping the school open in the meantime, a proposal that Gearing had helped them write. Myer would not budge from the bia position of

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transferring the school, however. Contrary to his underlings’ suggestion that the Meskwaki point of view mattered, Myer asserted that since the federal government paid the bills and was responsible for educating Indians, it had a right to do what it thought was best. Best in the bia view was to transfer the school whether the Meskwaki liked it or not. In an ominous comment that hinted at other bia plans for the Meskwaki, Myer said, “Of course, in the future when it comes to making a similar settlement as to the landholding, it would be a different matter. The land belongs to the people and we would have to have their assent before we could do anything.”22 After the meeting the bia moved swiftly to try to close the school deal, again behind the backs of the people. Kelley called the state education office and told Parker’s assistant that “things were patched up between the Indian Office and the council.” Parker’s staff did not believe him and invited Davenport and other council members to Des Moines for what turned out to be the decisive meeting on the matter of the school. Parker said that she had been misled by the bia into believing that only a few Meskwaki opposed the transfer and that “the people were essentially happy to have us come out.” Having learned that this was untrue, Parker said, “I want you to know that we have no intention of going out there unless you invite us to come.” Parker said she had several ideas for changes at the school, such as starting a handicrafts program and publishing a brochure about the Meskwaki aimed at the white population, but she admitted she was worried about publicity over the controversy that would arise if the state agency tried to carry out a program that was unpopular with the people. She promised that the state would help out anytime in the future if the people changed their minds and wanted state assistance. Davenport and Gearing left the meeting satisfied that the people had successfully blocked the bia from unilaterally turning the school over to the state.23 Long-Term Goals In the short term the action anthropologists had helped the tribe achieve the goal that most of the people in the community wanted—

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stopping the Bureau of Indian Affairs from unilaterally transferring their school to the state. Looking at the long-term implications of federal policy, however, Gearing and Tax thought the Meskwaki should seize the initiative and move ahead. Privately, Gearing and Tax hoped that the tribe would begin planning to take over the school themselves with federal funding and that they could be persuaded to do so if they saw the matter in terms of gaining greater autonomy. They saw their role as laying out the alternatives available to the community, “leaving the goodness or badness of the alternatives to be decided by the Mesquakies.” Gearing and Tax were aware, however, that laying out the alternatives allowed them to influence the decision in the direction of what they considered the “good” alternative.24 The council already had passed a resolution offering to continue negotiations with the bia on the school transfer, and Davenport cosigned a letter with Gearing to Tax that said the council would “get together and make an approach anew to the State people, working out with them the transfer and the running of the school after the transfer.” They projected that explaining the proposal to the people would take about a year. Davenport and Harry Lincoln said they understood that Tax and Gearing were neutral on the matter of the transfer, and Gearing had stressed that point to Myer as well. And once, when Bertha Waseskuk asked Gearing what he thought of the state taking over the school, Gearing refused to answer, saying, “I’m an outsider and have no right to an opinion as to whether it is good or bad.”25 Despite the collision with the bia, Gearing wrote Kelley to offer his own analysis of Meskwaki opposition to the transfer. He suggested that the Meskwaki would agree to it if the matter were presented as a choice that was really theirs to make and if they had time to involve all political parties within the settlement in the decision. He offered to meet with Kelley to talk about the matter. When Gearing told Kelley that the bia tactics were misguided and would only result in more Meskwaki opposition, Kelley hung up. Or as Gearing put it in a summary of the conversation, “The circuit was cut at this point.”26

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Despite Tax’s participation in the meetings on the settlement regarding the school transfer, Gearing really was more directly involved at the local level in the matter. While Gearing was trying to get through to bia staff in Minneapolis, Tax simultaneously tried to lobby the higher echelons of the bureau office for a gentler approach to Indian affairs. In August he met with Myer in Washington dc for three hours to talk about federal Indian policy and to press the Meskwaki point of view on the school matter. Tax, however, shied away from confronting Myer about the bia’s unilateral actions toward Indians, writing to colleague Robert Redfield: “We parted friends, and I may have had influence with regard to the rhetoric he uses, but his basic policy of relying on force rather than persuasion—even though it’s self-defeating—I did not seriously try to handle.” Instead, Tax hoped that the analysis that Gearing was writing would demonstrate how counterproductive the bia policy was. Action anthropology was evolving into a multilevel endeavor—one on the ground in Tama where junior action anthropologists chauffeured Meskwaki to meetings and got hung up on by bia staff, and another in Chicago and Washington where their mentor engaged in policy debates with the commissioner. The consequences for the project of this division of labor would become increasingly apparent in coming years.27 Redfield reacted with surprise at Myer’s attitude toward the Meskwaki school and wrote that he thought it was “a curious turnabout that the School Superintendent should be more attentive to the Indians’ wishes than a ‘liberal’ Indian Commissioner.” Redfield failed to grasp that Myer, as a bureaucrat, was insulated from the direct political consequences of his decisions. Parker, on the other hand, held an elected office and could be turned out of office by the voters. Since 1952 was an election year, Parker’s comments about wanting to avoid bad publicity that could result from an unpopular school takeover may have been motivated as much by self-interest as by concern for the community’s wishes. Furthermore, Parker may have resented having been misled by federal officials who had tried to get her to agree to a plan that contained far more complications than they revealed.28

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Meskwaki Lobbying Simultaneously, other lobbying on behalf of the Meskwaki was underway independent of the anthropologists. A television station owned by Iowa State University, WOI-TV, with a grant from the Ford Foundation for encouraging public discussion of community problems, ran a continuing series on Iowa towns called The Whole Town Is Talking. The broadcasts featured residents of a community discussing their town’s problems in a town-meeting-like setting. Producers of the show wanted to feature Tama and met with Tax, who tried to steer them toward a discussion of a project to improve the Meskwaki powwow grounds. It is not clear how Tax chose that as a topic, but members of the Chicago field party had been impressed with the annual powwow as the one project that members of the community carried out each year despite political bickering on other issues. The producer arrived in the midst of the school controversy, however, and leaders in the community seized on the opportunity to use the program for their own priorities—publicizing their opposition to the impending school transfer. In a town-meeting type of discussion, a small group of Meskwaki discussed government treaties that promised them educational services. “Will they keep their promises to us?” asked Ed Davenport. “I doubt it very much.”29 The anthropologists were somewhat disappointed that the show did not deal with broader issues such as relations between Meskwaki and whites, but they had no control over the situation. The Meskwaki were the ones in front of the camera and were free to use the show for what was important to them. They got their point across effectively, as four viewers were moved enough to write Senator Bourke B. Hickenlooper (R-Iowa) to complain about the government’s policy toward Indians and toward the Meskwaki in particular. “Tama Indians will lose the school teachers after this semester—why?” one woman demanded to know. “Why has the government broken these promises?” Another man demanded government attention to the Meskwaki problems and suggested, “Perhaps conferring with the Indians before making decisions would be an intelligent approach to

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the situation.” Hickenlooper’s replies were of the generic “I’ll look into it” variety.30 Members of the tribe also did some lobbying on their own. Jonas Poweshiek, a Meskwaki man who worked for the State Historical Society of Iowa in Des Moines, wrote Hickenlooper about the school closing. Alerted to the issue by the earlier correspondence with white constituents, Hickenlooper promptly wrote Myer asking if the school could be kept open. In response, assistant bia commissioner Rex Lee promised Hickenlooper that negotiations for the transfer would go ahead “if the Tribal Council approves.” At virtually the same time, Myer told Davenport and other Meskwaki representatives at the Minneapolis meeting that he would not allow any group to veto his decision on the school. Hickenlooper’s attention was piqued, however, and in wording that went beyond the usual form letters from his office, he told his Meskwaki correspondent, “Please be assured of my continuing interest in this matter.”31 Poweshiek also complained to the Meskwaki’s congressional representative, Republican H. R. Gross of Waterloo, a former radio broadcaster and one of the few white people “adopted” into the Meskwaki tribe. Gross, or “White Buffalo,” the name his Meskwaki friends gave him, was a tight-fisted, anti-communist conservative who, fortunately for the Meskwaki, served on the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, which oversaw the bia. An assistant to Gross wrote Poweshiek that Myer had promised to keep the school open for the 1952–53 school year and to continue negotiations. In a handwritten note on the file copy of the letter, the aide alerted Gross to the fact that Myer was “‘exploring possibility, off record,’ of Fed Govt. getting out of reservation entirely unless Indians ‘approve this progressive program.’ Big fight apparently shaping up. Lawyers looking up background re land title, taxes, treaties, etc. No principal at school this year; hope to appoint Tama school board officials as U.S. supervisory agent as foot in door.” In other words, Myer was planning to threaten the Meskwaki with total withdrawal to get them to accept his school proposal.32 In line with the council’s position of a willingness to negotiate on

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a later transfer of the school, Davenport paid a visit to a western state that ran the Indian schools and was pleased to learn that the state set up a special office of Indian education. “I like to know just where we stand,” he told Gearing. At the suggestion of the new school principal, Paschal N. Maggart, Davenport began exploring how to create a tribal school board. Davenport also was willing to have Meskwaki children attend Tama schools beginning in the sixth grade so they would be better prepared for high school and to encourage especially good students to transfer even earlier than that. He also requested help from the University of Chicago education department and was worried that the university would “leave them in the lurch at some future date.” In apparent preparation for withdrawal of further federal services, Davenport also wanted to set up committees dealing with health, welfare, and agriculture on the settlement.33 While the community was against the immediate transfer of the school to state authorities because of the high-handed way the bureau went about it, the longer-range picture was more mixed. George Young Bear, for example, supported taking responsibility for the school because it “would make people stand on their own two feet.” Henry Carter, an Old Bear, agreed. Even Bertha Waseskuk said the Old Bears overall were “not strongly against these things being turned over” to the state. Although settlement residents wanted federal funding to continue for the school, some, including Bertha Waseskuk, expected the “federal government will pull out in two years. They will just say: you’re taxed and the state is running the school and just dump it.”34 While Davenport also appeared to have more confidence than other community residents in the Meskwaki’s readiness to take over the school, he carefully avoided saying that openly early in the controversy, lest settlement residents interpret his interest either as a personal power grab or as caving in to the whites. That may be why Davenport told one anthropology student that he was unhappy with Gearing’s participation in the school matter, saying, “Fred goes too fast; he is trying to pin me down.” Since the school matter was so volatile politically for Davenport, he was hypersensitive to the possibil-

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ity that Gearing was maneuvering behind his back, and Gearing had to watch his words carefully. For example, after he told Davenport that the bia already had signed a contract with the state to run the school, Gearing realized later that it might have “evoked pictures of all sorts of secret muddling in his affairs, mysterious informants, etc. and the question, how much do they know.” Gearing believed Davenport’s suspicions about the anthropologists’ secret dealings were heightened by the fact that Davenport himself might have been doing “some behind-the-scene dealing” that he did not want revealed to the tribe. Nevertheless, Davenport’s suspicions put Gearing on his guard and circumscribed his freedom of movement.35 The belief in secret dealings seemed to be a core part of Meskwaki political culture at the time. Davenport’s anti-council political rivals already suspected that he was secretly in favor of the transfer and that he only came out against it because “the people raised a fuss and some of the council members got leery and decided to buck the transfer.” They also claimed to have been doing some clandestine maneuvering themselves, saying they had written to the Department of Interior and “found out two weeks before the Minneapolis meeting that the school would not be transferred.” The anti-council group clung to this claim of having secret, superior knowledge even after Gearing pointed out that the state already had signed a contract with the bia before the Minneapolis meeting.36 Both before and after the 1950s, Meskwaki notions of political skill seemed to include the ability to detect and expose the opposition’s hidden moves while successfully carrying out one’s own secret dealing. More than fifty years after the action anthropology project, Sean Carter, the son of Henry and Alice Carter, described how he had dealt with the Bureau of Indian Affairs during a 1968 controversy over the settlement school. He let bureau officials think he was in favor of their plans to close the school, keeping his position secret even from people on the settlement. In this way, he said, he was able to induce bureau officials to reveal their strategy to him, and he was able to successfully fight their attempted closing. He referred to this technique as “sleeping with the enemy.”37

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Similarly, Phil Smith told the anthropology students in 1949 about a great battle in the Meskwaki past that involved stealth and misdirection. A group of Meskwaki on a buffalo hunt camped at the base of a great rock that could be climbed on only one side. An enemy planned an attack and climbed up onto the rock to watch the camp so that they could attack when the men left to hunt. A Meskwaki man, however, saw them through the smoke hole of his dwelling and foiled their plan. He sent his wife to the next wigwam to alert the neighbors, who did the same, until all the camp knew of the attackers above. Then the Meskwaki men emerged from their wigwams and announced, so that the enemy could hear, that they were going out to hunt, half going one direction and half the other. Instead, all the hunters circled around behind the rock and surprised the enemy, winning a great victory.38 In somewhat similar fashion, Bertha Waseskuk and the Old Bears shielded their maneuverings from the tribal council’s view. When she went to Washington to talk to bia officials during the school controversy, for example, Bertha Waseskuk did not let Davenport know about it. She also met secretly with Parker, from the state education office. Furthermore, secrecy was at the heart of the anticouncil group’s argument for why they should lead the tribe. They claimed to possess secret information that federal authorities had imparted to tribal leaders long ago in gratitude for some service the Meskwaki had performed. Only by revealing this information directly to officials in Washington could the tribe receive the benefits promised by the federal government. Bertha Waseskuk and the group for whom she spoke kept secret the exact nature of the information. Some supporters thought it was genealogical information proving Jack Old Bear was the hereditary chief. Others thought it was copies of treaties with the federal government that Davenport and the pro-council group did not know existed. Wayne Henderson thought the secret knowledge was not necessarily documents, but secret words or a code that Meskwaki leaders needed only to speak to the right government officials. The stress on secrecy was one way to increase the group’s solidarity, undermine community confidence

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in the tribal council, and keep elected officials from becoming too powerful.39 Gearing and Tax were not always perfectly straightforward with the Meskwaki. On the copy of the letter to Tax that Gearing and Davenport cosigned, Gearing handwrote an additional note telling Tax how the letter came about: “Actually, I wrote this (and probably planted some ideas in the process) but Ed thought it good.” Gearing also probably never told Davenport about his telephone conversation with Kelley and his offer to meet with him, although the record is silent on the matter.40 The bia soon proved itself to be a practitioner of secret dealing par excellence. While Gearing and Tax were confident the bia had been stymied in its attempts to divest itself of responsibility for Meskwaki education, bureau officials did not give up. In keeping with Myer’s threat, the bureau began secretly moving in another direction. Instead of turning the school over to the state Department of Public Instruction, the bia this time planned to transfer the students to the Tama public schools. In 1953 the bureau persuaded the Tama school district to accept the eighth-grade Meskwaki students, as they already did the high school students. Simultaneously, the bureau cancelled the Meskwaki kindergarten for alleged budget problems. Again the anthropologists tried to help. They arranged for both the anti-council group and the Davenport-led council to send a telegram to the president protesting the move. Davenport, however, sent the telegram with only his signature. Despite that snub to them, Sol Tax persuaded the anti-council group to send one of their own. Meskwaki also devised their response. In retaliation for the closing of the kindergarten, settlement residents refused to send the eighth graders to school. When no eighth graders appeared in Tama public schools on the first day of class, the bia immediately found the funds to open the kindergarten for that year.41 Nationally Congress stayed on its course to speed up federal withdrawal from services to Indians throughout the country and in 1953 passed House Concurrent Resolution 108, which expressed its desire that Indians’ status as wards of the federal government be ended “as

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rapidly as possible.” Although historians have concentrated on the effects of this resolution and subsequent legislation on tribes such as the Menominee of Wisconsin and the Klamath of Oregon, little notice has been paid to the fact that the Meskwaki were covered by it as well. The first draft of the resolution considered by the House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs included all Indian tribes in the state of Iowa among those that were to be “freed from Federal supervision and control.” The resolution also decreed that all offices of the bia in Iowa were to be abolished. While the resolution did not name the Meskwaki, the inclusion of all Indians in Iowa surely covered them.42 Why Meskwaki were included is a question that as yet has no obvious answer in the historical record. Unlike the Klamaths and Menominees, no group of Meskwaki was calling for termination. The community had no wealth from annuities or natural resources that members were anxious to see divided among themselves, or that local merchants might have seen as a business opportunity. Given the community’s ownership of its land, it is unclear what termination might have meant in the case of the Meskwaki. Could the bureau have contemplated forcing them to sell their land, as opposed to dissolving federal title to the reservations on which other tribes lived? Countervailing factors in favor of termination, however, did exist. One was the fact that the federal government already had transferred criminal jurisdiction for the settlement to the state of Iowa. The federal government could withdraw from the settlement without leaving a legal vacuum or “no man’s land.” The other, more ominous factor was Myer’s threat from the previous summer that if the Meskwaki did not go along with his “progressive program” for the school, he would move to wash his hands of the settlement entirely. The sponsor of the resolution, Representative William Henry Harrison (R-Wyoming), drew up the list of tribes and states based on “reports and studies of the conditions of the different tribes which showed that they had reached the point where federal supervision was not necessary or desirable” and where the bureau “can get out . . . very easily.” Harrison also told the committee that the Bureau

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of Indian Affairs “is very pleased with this bill. They are heartily in favor of it.”43 The Meskwaki response to inclusion in H.C.R. 108 represents one of the more successful Native American efforts against termination. The tribe had a relationship with Gross that predated the termination controversy, having “adopted” him into the tribe. At least one settlement resident helped circulate Gross’s election papers. In addition, both individuals and leaders within the community kept an eye on legislation that might affect its status, relying on local newspapers, various pan-Indian organizations, and the gossip mill for bits of information. Bertha Waseskuk, for example, wired Gross in October 1951 asking for information after hearing from an unspecified source “that Mesquakie Indian tribe of Tama, Iowa, has been released and are no longer wards of U.S. government.” Gross immediately called Commissioner Myer and wrote to reassure Waseskuk that “the Mesquakies certainly are still wards of the government and that no definite steps to release them have been taken.” Davenport also was in regular contact with Gross. He not only complained to Gross about the bia’s failure to make annuity interest payments on time and on legislation such as the Bosone resolution, but he also sent Gross a note of congratulations after the congressman won his first re-election campaign.44 The documentary record is less clear on H.C.R. 108. Gross was not on the subcommittee of the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee that handled the resolution. Indians in the state of Iowa were covered by the resolution when it was introduced on June 9, 1953, and discussed in the subcommittee and full committee during five meetings in July 1953. The inclusion of Iowa was never discussed in subcommittee, but when the resolution passed Congress on August 1, 1953, Indians in Iowa were not mentioned. At the same time, the House committee was proposing a bill to release individual Indians from federal supervision if they met certain standards of “competency.” The tribe wired Gross and asked him to oppose that bill because it “apparently abolishes all Indian rights guaranteed in certain treaties.” Gross wrote Davenport that he objected to the bill

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when it reached the House consent calendar once, thus delaying it, but when it came up again, the most he could do was have it amended “to take Iowa Indians out of it.” Since the bill and resolution were considered at some of the same committee meetings, Gross may have asked to have Meskwaki removed from H.C.R. 108 at the same time. Tribal leaders wrote all Iowa members of Congress in December 1953 about H.C.R. 108, asking them to oppose any inclusion of Iowa tribes because “the Sac and Fox people themselves are not ready for this type of legislation. If the proposed law is passed, it would become another infamous legislative act wherein a total disregard of the wishes of the effected [sic] was made.” Gross wrote back that he had “no intention of voting for such a proposal at this time.” Bertha Waseskuk also wrote Gross on behalf of the Old Bears, and Gross wrote back that he gotten the committee to eliminate Iowa from the resolution but was not specific as to how it occurred.45 The Meskwaki seem to have succeeded in fending off termination through a combination of their own effective lobbying and the timely action of their representative in Congress, with whom the Meskwaki had developed a relationship through tribal adoption, political support by at least some members of the tribe, and regular communication. Action Anthropology’s Financial Independence The school controversy and the anthropologists’ involvement in it helped shape a fundamental feature of action anthropology—its financial independence from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. At the beginning of the project, the students had lived in the government school and filed at least one report with bureau officials. Students also had relied on the school principal for information. Ties with the bia had been even closer in another action anthropology project in which Tax was involved at Fort Berthold, North Dakota. Rietz had gone there in 1950 to help relocate members of the Three Affiliated Tribes whose land was being flooded by the construction of Garrison Dam. The relationship was not an altogether happy one. As a community analyst for the bia, Rietz expected to spend a lot of time

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learning about the social organization of the community and using that to encourage members of the tribes to take over running more reservation activities themselves. Instead, he found himself saddled with administrative responsibilities.46 In 1951 Tax had asked his friend John Provinse, assistant commissioner of the bureau, to arrange for Rietz to be transferred from Fort Berthold to Tama to work with the Meskwaki at least temporarily. Provinse said it was impossible to move Rietz out of Fort Berthold because the relocation project was reaching a critical stage. He encouraged Tax to carry out some type of project at Tama without Rietz and hoped that the bureau could help in some other way.47 In 1952 the bureau planned to transfer Rietz from Fort Berthold to the Cheyenne River reservation for another relocation project. Rietz refused to go and told bia officials “that it is no part of my function or my interest to study situations or to influence Indian people with the goal of helping to implement policy of the Indian Office where this policy is in disagreement with my own beliefs, or is neglectful towards the types of action which I believe are called for in these situations.” He urged Tax to pressure the bureau to redesign the role of Indian Service anthropologist to allow such leeway.48 Gearing had been preparing a proposal for the bureau to fund a position in Tama when the school controversy arose in March 1952. After speaking at the tribal council meeting concerning the school transfer in March 1952, Tax believed that the Meskwaki saw the anthropologists as being firmly on their side. “I doubt now whether it would make a serious difference when we begin to work there this spring if we were to receive money from the Indian Bureau or not,” he wrote, a few weeks before receiving Rietz’s letter of complaints against the bureau.49 The discussion over accepting federal money was another example of how action anthropology operated on different levels. While Tax was the philosophical leader of action anthropology in general, Gearing was closer to the Meskwaki situation than was Tax. On the one hand, Gearing could feel Davenport’s suspicious gaze following his every move. In addition, he realized that the differences of

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opinion between the anthropologists and bia commissioner Dillon Myer were unbridgeable. Myer, Gearing thought, would never see the value of the anthropologists’ nondirective approach to relations with Indians and would continue to insist on his duty to act unilaterally. Gearing counseled Tax against accepting any bia money for the Chicago Project because such money “would only make our job more difficult if not impossible.” Settlement residents occasionally asked about Rietz’s employment with the bia in North Dakota, and Gearing said he was embarrassed to discuss it. “It is regarded as a sort of betrayal, I am afraid,” Gearing wrote Tax. Meskwaki suspicion that the anthropologists were mere tools carrying out unpopular bia policies would undercut the anthropologists’ efforts both to do research and act as a catalyst in meeting the objectives of people on the settlement.50 After the increasing strain that the school controversy put on relations between Tax and his students and the bureau, Tax never again sought bureau funding for his programs. Instead he concluded that in order to do action anthropology in the community, the project “must be unattached to the administrative locus of power. Clearly, one is in a better position to help a group clarify their wishes if one is unattached to any actual or potential exercise of coercion over the group.” In discussing action anthropology, anthropologist John Bennett has said that Tax led the revolt against the “employment” approach of applied anthropology because he thought it catered too much to institutions. Independence from the sources of power became one of the core aspects of action anthropology that distinguished it from applied anthropology as practiced in the 1930s through 1950s. Although Meskwaki sentiments were not the only factors involved, they certainly had a role in steering Tax in a direction away from the employment of anthropologists by government agencies.51 Health Care Politics As Tax and his anthropology students looked for ways to make themselves useful to the community, they developed a blind spot with regard to one possible avenue of assistance—improving health care

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for the settlement. Exactly why is unclear, but the failure of the anthropologists to tackle the issue demonstrates many of the problems of action anthropology, including who should set the goals toward which the action anthropologists worked. A local doctor under contract with the bia was supposed to provide medical care for the settlement, but researchers heard many complaints about him beginning early in the project. Rietz visited the doctor soon after arriving at the settlement in June 1948 to be treated for a sinus infection. After the doctor told Rietz that his sickness was not surprising because “you’re apt to feel almost anyway down among those Indians,” Rietz engaged the doctor in conversation about the settlement by noting that no Indian patients were in the waiting room. Rietz reported that the doctor tried to discourage settlement residents from coming to his Tama office and set up a one-hour clinic at the settlement each week to treat them. The doctor also said he had cut out house calls to the settlement as well because “we got called out there for everything from a headache to a sore finger.” Although settlement residents had raised “quite a furor down there about that,” he had refused to reverse his policy.52 Davida Wolffson also heard the doctor make disparaging comments about settlement residents when she went to him for an allergy injection. He told Wolffson that he had gotten into the habit of never asking the name of a baby’s father because “morals out here are very low.” Wolffson was even more alarmed when the doctor said he had used a new needle to give her a shot and would re-use it the next time he gave inoculations to children at the settlement. She wrote: “The man is a shade sadistic I think—imagine using dull needles for children’s injections; the poor kids are scared enough as it is.” Although Gredys suggested reporting the doctor, Wolffson declined to do so while she was his patient because “the medical profession is a tightly-knit gossipy old ladies’ tea circle” that always stuck together when complaints were lodged against one of their members. “If someone else wishes to do anything, however, they have my blessing,” Wolffson concluded. One man who read about that incident in the fieldnotes years later said now he understood why he hated to get shots.53

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The experiences of Rietz and Wolffson alerted the other students to the doctor’s cool attitude toward treating patients from the settlement, and they began picking up comments about health care. Fred Arrow told Lloyd Fallers that the doctor “was an old Army doctor [who] doesn’t care about the patients. When you get sick he just gives you a pill and sends you away.” In fact, the doctor was an army veteran who had been given the government contract, over the objections of the school principal on the settlement, because of the bureau’s preference for hiring veterans.54 Settlement residents were so unhappy with the care they received that Wayne Henderson wrote the bia office in Green Bay, Wisconsin, during the summer of 1947 to see about having the doctor replaced. Tama whites had urged Henderson to write the letter after an incident in which a settlement resident had a stroke while attending a baseball game in town. As Miller recorded the incident, “They contacted [the doctor], and he said that it wasn’t important, and to take the fellow home and put him to bed. He refused to attend the man.” Another doctor was called, who said the man was in bad shape and needed to be hospitalized. The man was taken to a clinic in a nearby town and died a week later. Miller said the bureau’s response was that the doctor had to answer calls only in cases of emergency. In his diary, Miller pointed out the futility of the bureau’s advice by noting: “We have [the doctor’s] own statement to the effect that ‘There are no emergencies.’”55 Matters dealing with health care continued to crop up over the ten-year course of the research project. During the summer of 1952, a baby died after a sudden attack of polio. The family called the doctor in the morning, but he delayed coming out until early afternoon. By then the baby was dead. In 1953 a woman died after contracting gangrene due to an ingrown toenail. The doctor had told her to go to the hospital, but she either did not understand his advice or was afraid to go until her condition worsened. Polgar later said the students had tried to get the doctor to take the woman to a hospital, but the doctor refused because it was the end of the fiscal year, and he would have needed approval from higher-ups in the Bureau of In-

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dian Affairs. Although the students promised to see that the hospital bill was paid, the doctor said bureau approval was still needed, and he declined to seek it.56 That same summer researchers organized groups of prominent whites and settlement residents to talk about the Meskwaki’s future and their needs, and the topic of medical care came up in discussions among the whites. Members of the tribe also put it at the top of a list of desired improvements drawn up for meetings with Iowa political and financial leaders during the summer of 1953. Based on these meetings, Gearing came up with a two-year plan that included establishing a clinic for the settlement. In 1952 Gearing had mentioned community dissatisfaction with health care to a bia officer at the Minneapolis meeting on the school and learned that the doctor could be replaced if another could be found to take the contract. Bertha Waseskuk also asked bureau officials about health care when she traveled to Washington dc to discuss Meskwaki affairs with the bia during the school controversy.57 Health care seemed to come up most often in the conversations women researchers had with wives and mothers on the settlement, who bore much of the burden of inadequate health care because of their role in bearing and raising children. In the 1930s settlement women had begun going to the federal government’s sanatorium in nearby Toledo to deliver their babies. After that closed, the bia paid for them to go to a hospital in Marshalltown, about twenty miles from Tama. In 1948 congressional cuts in bureau funds for medical care forced the end of that service. Ed Mays, principal of the settlement school, tried to arrange for pregnant women to go to University Hospitals in Iowa City, which had a program for indigent women, but he found Tama County authorities too indifferent to the problem to request the assistance from the university. Thus, when the students arrived, women were having their babies at home with the help of a settlement resident who was a self-taught midwife. Sometimes the midwife did not arrive in time. One woman said she delivered her baby alone when the girl she sent to get the midwife was sidetracked and failed to deliver the message. Some of the women made it clear

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that they would have preferred to have their babies in a hospital, with at least one of them citing the sterile conditions in hospitals as the reason.58 Just as worrying for some settlement women as where they would give birth was whether they would give birth again. Several women confided to researchers that they wanted no more children themselves, but neither they nor their husbands knew how to prevent more pregnancies. The women passed on rumors to the researchers that one woman, the mother of eight children, was relieved when her husband died “because that meant that she would have no more children. . . . [She] obviously didn’t use any particular technique. She just kept having children.” Women could not ask the doctor about birth control because when he came to the settlement for his weekly onehour visit they had no chance to talk to him privately. Peattie took Julie Smith to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Des Moines, about seventy-five miles from the settlement, for birth control services. When another woman expressed interest in going along, Peattie thought such trips might become popular and that worried her “because of some strong anti-contraceptive attitudes which Grace has picked up.” There is no evidence that Peattie took anyone besides Julie Smith to Des Moines, but Smith did bring back stacks of literature to distribute to other women on the settlement. Walter Miller also mentioned the need for birth control information, but, like Peattie, he recognized the need for caution, saying, “This could be done privately, in order to avoid opposition from the churches.”59 Peattie did ask residents about circulating a petition to get rid of the doctor, but at least one man doubted it would work because local and bureau officials would find out and squelch it. At the end of the summer, students wrote recommendations for the future of the project, and Miller proposed provision of birth control information as a possible program. Beyond Peattie’s initiative, the students seem to have taken few concrete steps to improve health care, even though some whites had mentioned the issue and the researchers had independent verification of the difficulty with the doctor. The reasons for their inaction are unclear, but several possibilities exist.60

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In the first place, the case for the doctor’s inattention was not an open-and-shut one. In an interview Gearing recalled that much of the dissatisfaction with the doctor was in the form of generic, rather than specific, complaints and that not all members of the community disliked him. For example, one settlement resident who thought the doctor dispensed good care recalled how he sat at her bedside all night once when she was seriously ill. Although the doctor joked with her, she said that he tended to be abrupt with others and that she could understand why some community residents would be put off by him. The fieldnotes also refer to a case in which the doctor expressed concern to students about a community resident who had not followed up on the prescribed treatment. The doctor had paid for some of the treatment himself so he was doubly annoyed at the man’s failure to continue it, to the point that he had threatened to cut off the man’s pension if he did not cooperate. Walter Sangree concluded from the exchange that the doctor was “a very competent person who is interested in curing people, but has no time or patience for people who won’t cooperate. . . . [I]t seems a little too much to demand that a doctor in his position be an anthropologist as well as an MD.” Sometimes people who failed to “cooperate” with the government doctor’s treatment were using traditional remedies in lieu of or in addition to his recommendations or sought his help only after the traditional remedies failed, further complicating their recovery.61 In addition, special factors made replacing the doctor impractical. The settlement’s location in a rural area meant few doctors were available nearby. If the Bureau of Indian Affairs did fire the doctor, his replacement might have been located in a town farther away from Tama and more difficult for residents to reach. Further, a new doctor may not have been any more popular than the old one, as evidenced by the comments of at least one member of the community who said another doctor to whom she went was as bad as the government doctor. Another factor was the bureau’s budget for health care, which severely limited the amount of care available. For example, having settlement residents deliver their babies at home was not the doctor’s idea but a result of cuts in the bureau’s funding. Changing

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doctors would not have changed the amount of money available to take care of settlement residents.62 Several types of power relationships also were at work to hinder attempts to improve health care on the settlement, not the least of which was the complicated legal position of the Meskwaki community. On the one hand, the Bureau of Indian Affairs was responsible for providing medical care. University personnel, however, may have been wary of angering bia officials by exposing their poor supervision of Indian health care. Tax placed a high value on what his colleagues thought of him, and that may have made him reluctant to tackle the health care issue for fear of crossing his friend Provinse within the bia, especially during the first year when students were living in the bureau school.63 On the other hand, settlement residents also were taxpaying citizens of the state of Iowa and Tama County and should have been eligible for the same services for the indigent that were available to others. Medical care for settlement residents, however, did not command the same attention from local authorities as had the issue of law enforcement. As Mays found out, local authorities expected federal authorities to take care of the problem and did not want the cost dumped onto local taxpayers.64 Gender politics, among both settlement residents and the students, may have played a role. The issue of health care, especially as it pertained to birth control and childbirth, simply may not have been as salient an issue for men as it was for women. Rietz, for example, was more interested in getting a cooperative farming arrangement organized in 1949 than in investigating health care problems, writing in his notes, “I don’t think that this is a good time for me to spend a great deal of time on this particular problem.” In later years Gearing spent most of his time with settlement men rather than women, and because of gender divisions on the settlement, he may not have heard women’s concerns about birth control and child birth. Furthermore, the researchers may have been afraid of upsetting the balance of power between men and women on the settlement, which clearly favored the men. Settlement women told

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researchers they had to cook their food and eat separately while menstruating even if they thought the old custom was silly because “when the man of the house says it has to be that way, then the women don’t question it.” Men, who held all the elected positions of power on the settlement, may have thought the researchers were meddling where they did not belong if they pushed for a clinic that offered birth control along with other services.65 The researchers’ evolving attitude toward problems with the doctor, however, likely played a key role in the failure to address the issue of health care. By the time of the 1953 discussions with groups of whites and Meskwaki, some researchers came to believe that the fundamental problem was one of cultural misunderstanding rather than of poor care per se. As Reynold Ruppe phrased it, “He (the doctor) is brusque, and that makes Indians feel he does not do right and does not like them. He is just a man who knows what he is doing and who goes ahead and does it.” According to Polgar, settlement residents did not always understand the doctor’s instructions or failed to follow them completely, leading the doctor to suspect that “they want to get away with something, to make fraudulent use of government funds.” In the case of the woman with the infected toenail, Polgar said the doctor “told this woman she should go to the hospital, but she did not understand why she should go” until it was too late. The doctor did not feel responsible for her death, Polgar said, “because he had told her to go to the hospital and she would not go.” Ruppe said clearing up such cultural misunderstandings meant educating the doctor (and by extension, other whites) on why Meskwaki react the way they do, and simultaneously educating the settlement residents on why doctors did what they did. Under this logic, merely changing doctors would not have resulted in better care.66 In 1954 Gearing mentioned Meskwaki health care concerns and the desirability of a settlement clinic in a pamphlet published with the Federated Women’s Club of Iowa about the first five years of the action anthropology project at the settlement and later rewritten as a journal article. Besides the infant deaths and the problems of inadequate emergency care that they represented, Gearing also

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mentioned a Meskwaki desire for more home nursing education and nursing home care for the elderly. He stressed, however, that for the clinic to be effective, Meskwaki would need to feel it belonged to them. “The common factor running through the shortcomings of the present system is that modern medicine remains, in the eyes of the Mesquakies, fundamentally the ‘white man’s’ and therefore is a part of the whole white world which so often creates trouble for Mesquakies,” he wrote. “Until the medical care offered Mesquakies comes to be seen as their own, no service offered by outside agencies will solve this health problem in that basic dimension.”67 This attitude regarding cultural differences over medical care likely accounts for the researchers’ failure to pursue aggressively changes in medical care for the settlement and why the idea of the clinic suggested in Gearing’s 1954 plan was dropped in favor of another project. Leaving the health care needs of the community unaddressed amounts to one of the biggest failures of action anthropology, even considering the limited resources of the project. At least one settlement resident had training as a practical nurse, and the Presbyterian church on the settlement had started a Red Cross home nursing program to train women in basic first aid, which might have been the foundation for further action. In the past the bia had shown itself to be sensitive to bad publicity, as when it took swift action after newspaper articles regarding the Meskwaki elder being kept in a pen on the settlement. Similar stories might have gotten the bureau’s attention on other health care matters. Even if the bureau could not afford to pay for them, other health care resources did exist in Iowa, especially through the medical school at the University of Iowa seventy-five miles away. After the university joined the project in 1953, something might have been worked out had medical care remained a priority for the researchers.68 Conclusion Although action anthropology on the Meskwaki settlement remained an underfinanced operation during the early 1950s, the anthropolo-

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gists did perform important services for the community during the ongoing disputes over federal responsibility for the tribe. The people, however, continued to set boundaries for the researchers’ behaviors. Their actions prevented the researchers from going into partnership with the bia, for example. The council effectively took advantage of action anthropologists’ help in achieving the shortterm goal of stopping the school transfer when they were able to respond to a clear message of concern from the community. In assisting the council, Gearing and Tax interpreted their offer to help as meaning more than merely carrying out the council’s bidding. They interpreted it to mean making suggestions to the council, drafting letters for them to sign, planting suggestions, and making undisclosed telephone calls. When it came to health care, the researchers heard some community voices better than others. The researchers heard complaints about the doctor, but this issue never truly became a priority for them, possibly because many of the complaints came from women or involved issues of concern to women such as birth control and childbirth. Perhaps that is why researchers pursued a solution to the problem only sporadically. The action anthropologists responded to Meskwaki leadership when it could deliver a clear message, such as stopping the school transfer. When messages from the Meskwaki were muddled due to political differences, however, the action anthropologists felt freer to suggest alternatives in line with their own priorities, and even push them, as with the idea to take over the school themselves. Helping the Meskwaki take responsibility for programs on the settlement still fit with the action anthropologists’ broader goal of helping the community continue to exist. In view of the threat of federal termination or withdrawal, in fact, learning how to run their own programs seemed to be a necessity. Gearing could have adopted the technique Bob Rietz used in listening to Bill Cloud, which was to listen even when no one was talking. Rather than sit in silence, however, Gearing and Tax chose to speak up. “Either you keep your mouth shut altogether or you step out in front and see what happens,” Gearing said.69

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Other anthropologists did in fact remain silent in response to federal threats of termination and withdrawal. Vine Deloria Jr.’s polemic against anthropologists accused them of having done so. He wrote: “During the crucial days of 1954, when the Senate was pushing for termination of all Indian rights, not one single scholar, anthropologist, sociologist, historian, or economist came forward to support the tribes against the detrimental policy. How much had scholars learned about Indians from 1492 to 1954 that would have placed termination in a more rational light? Why didn’t the academic community march to the side of the tribes?”70 Despite Deloria’s statement, Tax and the Chicago students were among the few academics who did respond to the termination crisis. In 1951 Tax introduced a resolution at the American Anthropological Association meeting that said the new direction in policy toward Indian tribes could result in “great and irremediable harm and injustice” to the people. The resolution adopted by the aaa on November 15, 1951, called for the president and secretary of interior to create an independent commission of people outside of government to examine Bureau of Indian Affairs policy, set policy goals “in the light of humanitarian and scientific principles,” and to make recommendations for legislation to reach those goals. Tax’s wording suggested he remained comfortable with the statements in his 1945 article in American Indigena urging social scientists to be active in setting goals for society.71 Tax also began making speeches and publicly promoting his idea that Native Americans were not temporary people who could be assimilated out of existence. He noted that Indian tribes had not disappeared in four hundred fifty years of contact with Europeans and were unlikely to do so soon. To talk about Indians in terms of how much they had assimilated, Tax argued, was to make a value judgment that assimilation was the goal and to measure Indians in relation to that goal. Whites found such a goal useful because it convinced them that the need to subsidize Indian communities also was temporary and that the problem of Indian policy was only “to get them over a temporary hump until they get lost in the population.”72

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While Tax practiced action anthropology on the national level, he and his students remained involved at the grass roots. When a community they knew was threatened with termination or withdrawal, Tax and his students offered a long-range program to insulate their friends from the worst effects of the policy. The trust fund proposal did not originate with the Meskwaki, but the action anthropologists felt justified in putting forth an alternative, even as the Meskwaki used their own political capital to head off termination.

5. 1954—Project Nadir and Rebound

Every summer as powwow time approached, members of the University of Chicago summer field party became drawn into community preparations for the event in one way or another. The students pitched in to help put up bleachers, clear brush, or put up advertising posters. Sometimes they went to the nightly practices on the powwow grounds merely to watch and chat with community residents. Other times, they joined in the practices or even arranged to borrow costumes so that they could dance during an actual performance. Each summer the students erected a tent on the tree-shaded grounds on the banks of the Iowa River to join the many Meskwaki families who camped out for the week. One year a group of students good-naturedly made fools of themselves trying to build a wickiup while an elderly woman gave them directions in Meskwaki. In August 1954, however, the buzz accompanying powwow preparations had a pitch that was ominous for the researchers. The powwow committee that year included the man whose wife earlier complained to the anthropologists about whites who came to the settlement to gather information and then went away to write books without doing anything for the community. In the days leading up to the powwow, he and others on the committee let it be known that the researchers for the first time would be expected to pay to get into the event because “the University has more money than they do so they might as well get some of it.” The researchers balked, although one admitted, “I can’t say that I blame them for feeling the way they do in some ways.”1 Initially Sol Tax thought the remarks about charging the research-

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ers to go to the powwow were intended as a joke. When he realized the powwow organizers were serious, Tax advised the researchers to refuse to pay, pointing out that they were not tourists and should not let themselves be treated as such. Researchers came up with the idea that they could help sell tickets or perform some other tasks, and their friends on the settlement adopted the idea and went around to people individually to present the case. In the end, after a huddle in the center of the powwow grounds before practice one night, the committee agreed that the researchers could come in without paying. Although some members of the community chalked up the dispute as an effort by the committee to make more money, the researchers were not so sure. “Apparently, then, the discussion was more about money than about us, but how did it all start and why did it come up this year?” mused one student in his notes. Just two years earlier, Steve Polgar had been applauded when he danced in the powwow.2 The blow-up over charging the students to attend the powwow in the summer of 1954 captured the tenor of relations between some political groups on the settlement and members of the Chicago field party. The summer could be termed the nadir of the project due to the number and seriousness of the conflicts that arose. Before the powwow dispute, the council disputed the contents of a pamphlet published by the field party and threatened to throw the project off the settlement. Students also displeased many settlement residents by housing a marine who was absent without leave from the military. And the close association of a student with a settlement woman raised eyebrows. The summer culminated with the powwow dispute. At the bottom of the problems were ethical dimensions of action anthropology stemming from the promise to help settlement residents and the close relationships that developed with people because of that promise. That promise carried within it the potential for conflict over whose values should guide the action anthropologists’ efforts—those of the academics, the elected leaders of the community, or someone else. In all of these disputes various Meskwaki tried to steer the action anthropologists in one direction or another, and

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the action anthropologists had to pick their way through the politically fractured community. While action anthropology struggled on the ground in Tama, it began to attract attention nationally, as Tax began to emerge as an opponent of federal Indian policy. Tax’s national activism cut into the attention he could give Tama, however, and contributed to the rift in relations with the community. Taking a lead from individual Meskwaki, Tax devised an action program to address a common need among the community’s young people that began to bring the anthropologists back into its esteem. Alternatives to Withdrawal Sol Tax’s idea that the Meskwaki should run the schools themselves with money from the federal government gradually developed into a bigger proposal the anthropologists developed for revamping federal Indian policy. Their alternative to withdrawal of federal services or termination of the tribes as legal entities was to have the federal government set up a trust fund large enough so that the interest would pay for services administered by Indians. As outlined by researcher Fred Gearing, the trust fund would take the place of annual appropriations from Congress, which he said were too uncertain due to their dependence on the political climate and the economy. In the case of the Meskwaki, the trust fund would cover education and health care. People such as Bertha Waseskuk initially were suspicious of the plan, fearing that it smacked too much of a settlement with the federal government for treaty promises and would permit the federal government to walk away from the Indians.3 Selling this plan to the tribe and to the public in general became one of the action anthropologists’ goals between 1952 and 1954, when the program still was without outside funding for larger projects. Tax and the graduate students decided on a series of tools designed to promote the trust fund idea and improve communication between settlement residents and Tama whites. These included a discussion group with whites and Meskwaki for planning a television show about the settlement, a meeting of prominent Iowa business

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leaders to educate them about the problems and possibilities of the settlement, a series of newspaper articles, and later a pamphlet that Gearing wrote.4 The publicity campaign grew partly out of the Whole Town Is Talking television show in 1952 that the Meskwaki had used to publicize the federal government’s attempt to shift responsibility for the school to the state. A public relations officer for the Des Moines Register, Bert Stolpe, saw the show and contacted Ed Davenport regarding his desire to do something for the tribe. Most of Stolpe’s grandiose plans to line up support for agricultural and other programs on the settlement never materialized. In 1953, however, the energetic Stolpe teamed up with the Chicago researchers to convene two meetings, one in June and one in September, that brought together government officials, Iowa business leaders, and Meskwaki from all political groupings. While Stolpe invited the out-of-town whites, Tax invited the settlement residents and local whites, including some recommended by Davenport. Having Tax invite the Meskwaki and local whites may have been a usurpation of Davenport’s role, but it also may have been a recognition that the anti-council group might have refused to attend if Davenport were in charge or that Davenport might have refused to invite them.5 In the main address at the first meeting, Tax stressed his theme that the Meskwaki were not going to assimilate away and that there was no simple formula for meeting the needs of the community. Indians at the meeting outlined for the group the needs of their community, including a health clinic, electricity, sanitation, recreation, vocational education, and industrial development. (Tax had suggested industrial development as a way of reducing what he saw as an over-emphasis on agricultural development.) The visiting whites also were taken on a bus tour of the settlement. Afterward the head of a large Des Moines insurance company told Tax that “you have complete [sic] reoriented my thinking about this matter.” Unfortunately, the fieldnotes have only a few references to the meeting, so it is hard to gauge reaction on the settlement.6 The September meeting, which Davenport and Wayne Hender-

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son helped plan, revolved around the government’s plan for the Meskwaki settlement and other Indian communities. G. Warren Spaulding, from the U.S. Department of the Interior, told the approximately seventy-five Indians and whites present that the government intended to terminate services to Native Americans in line with H.C.R. 108. He counted the Meskwaki as among those who were ready to be “cut loose from the apron strings” of the government. Tax criticized the government’s plan to impose termination on tribes whether they wanted it or not and promoted the trust fund proposal to ensure settlement residents could run their school and health services without fear of the government dropping them. He stressed that federal withdrawal might mean a bigger tax burden for Tama County residents, an argument he no doubt hoped would help get Iowa politicians on the side of the Meskwaki against an end to federal responsibility for Indians. The meeting did attract the interest of the top politicians in the state, as shown by the appearance of Governor William Beardsley to give the opening speech.7 Again the fieldnotes mostly are silent as to Meskwaki reaction to the meeting, but the entire council, as well as other people, made the trip to Des Moines to attend it. They probably would not have done so had they considered the first meeting a waste of time. Polgar did record Davenport’s belief while planning the meeting that it “was the greatest thing that ever happened to the Mesquakie Indians,” but Henderson thought people did not know enough about it to have an opinion. People may well have been pleased for other reasons afterward, however, because some Meskwaki leaders took advantage of the meeting to complain about the bureau’s unilateral decision to move the eighth graders to Tama public schools and end the kindergarten at the settlement school. After the meeting the tribal council, with Stolpe’s help, button-holed bia officials at the meeting and hammered out a compromise. The two-year agreement sent the eighth graders to Tama but promised that the settlement school would have a kindergarten, with a new agreement to be drawn up after two years. Although Meskwaki were not the prime movers behind the meetings, they did take advantage of the meet-

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ings to achieve a concession from the bureau on an issue that was important to them.8 Anthropology in Action Nationally While Meskwaki of all political persuasions were struggling to make sense of the trust fund proposal as an alternative to termination and withdrawal, Tax took a leadership role off the settlement in promoting a move away from the coercive policies of Indian Affairs commissioner Dillon Myer and Congress, as represented by H.C.R. 108. As editor of American Anthropologist, Tax organized a conference on Indian policy in February 1954 under the sponsorship of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. At Tax’s request, former bia assistant commissioner John Provinse prepared a paper discussing the assumptions underpinning American Indian policy, which was sent to twenty-eight anthropologists and government officials invited to the conference. The discussion resulted in a statement condemning forced assimilation as a government policy and predicting that Indian communities would endure indefinitely. It criticized the bia for acting without Indian consent on matters regarding government services. The statement seemed to endorse most aspects of the action anthropologists’ trust fund idea, noting that many tribes eventually would be able to administer their own services but that the federal government would need to provide financial support. While the conference did not deal directly with the Meskwaki situation, Tax’s experience in working with that community shaped the philosophy that he began promoting in arenas where national policies were discussed.9 Tax’s reputation as an anthropologist involved in Native American affairs grew rapidly in the early 1950s. While his students were carrying out action anthropology on the Meskwaki settlement, Tax did so within the profession of anthropology. Besides his sponsorship of the aaa resolution and the organization of the supper conference, Tax also appeared at two meetings of the Central States Anthropological Society. One, in 1955, showcased action anthropology. The other, in 1957, featured a talk by Tax on termination. He called the

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government’s “sink or swim policy” of termination undemocratic because its forced assimilation violated the American tradition of allowing a community to live as it wished. In place of termination, Tax proposed a policy of self-determination under which tribes would run their own programs and services, with funds provided by the federal government. The speech, which essentially reiterated the idea Tax had been trying to sell to the Meskwaki, was reprinted in the Congressional Record at the request of Rep. Barratt O’Hara of Illinois. In a speech to the National Congress of American Indians the same year, Tax attacked the termination policy as destructive and supported the ncai alternative, which called for economic development of Indian land. He reiterated his belief in the right of Indians to be consulted on Indian policy. The ncai reprinted and distributed Tax’s speech.10 Tax, of course, had an anthropological career that was broader than his activities on behalf of Native Americans. By the mid-1950s, that was beginning to blossom as well. Besides publishing his own work on Guatemala in Penny Capitalism, Tax also had edited five books and helped edited a sixth. Since 1949 Tax had served on the University of Chicago’s publications board, and he was becoming well known in the publishing and foundation circles of anthropology. From 1953 to 1955 Tax served as editor of American Anthropologist, the journal of the American Anthropological Association (where one of his innovations was to place the name of the editor on the journal’s cover). Even in publishing, Tax managed to work in his association with the Meskwaki. Tax saw to it that the journal published work by his students, including Walter Miller, Lloyd Fallers, and Fred Gearing.11 Despite his busy academic career in other areas, Tax’s status as someone knowledgeable about Indian affairs grew directly out of his experiences with the settlement residents, who had guided the anthropologists toward a commitment to action on behalf of the community. Throughout the 1950s, Tax increasingly saw his commitment to action as extending beyond the Meskwaki settlement. Tax’s expanding vision of his field of action eventually had implications for his understanding of what was happening in Tama.

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Propaganda Backlash Simultaneously with Tax’s activities at the national level, Tax and the students were carrying out another prong of their public relations strategy on behalf of the Meskwaki—release of a series of newspaper articles written by Gearing. The articles, which were revised slightly for each newspaper to which they were submitted, seemed on the surface to be aimed at white Iowans, but they also were intended to help the Meskwaki understand themselves and their differences with whites in a positive way. The articles were an attempt to demonstrate that the settlement was a vibrant community that would last indefinitely rather than eventually being diluted into the white ethnic mixture around them, conveying the message that whites should stop trying to make Meskwaki into white people. The articles tended to present an idealized version of settlement life, describing the settlement as a “happy community” without referring to the bitter political disputes that divided people. One version of the articles was written in the first person as if by a Meskwaki, although Gearing was the author and acknowledged “the kind assistance of the Mesquakie People.”12 An article titled “Why There Will Always Be a Mesquakie Community,” stressed the equalitarian nature of Meskwaki government and society. “No one of us or no group of us, no matter how large would even think of telling any other man that he must do a thing,” the article said, contrasting that with the readiness that other Americans have to accept the category of “boss” and “the bossed.” It noted that while many Meskwaki had found some aspects of white society unappealing, they had been able to make other aspects fit their community. The article ended with sentiments that were meant to reassure both whites and Meskwaki: “Keeping those [parts of Meskwaki culture] that seem good does not make it impossible for us to learn the skills that are necessary to earn our livings. So we don’t think we are going to disappear and what’s more we don’t think we should.”13 In a piece titled “Why We’d Just as Soon Not Farm Much,” Gearing made the point that white farmers and Meskwaki hold different

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attitudes toward land. The white farmer buys and sells land, cuts down trees, builds dams, and takes other steps in order to raise more crops. He wrote: “The land, to us, is not something to be used, not something from which to earn a living. The land is a place of safety, a refuge, a permanent home.”14 Another essay, written by Gearing and Reynold Ruppe for the Cedar Rapids Gazette, also tried to explain cultural differences between Indians and whites, including the lack of emphasis in the community on what whites called “success.” The anthropologists said whites mistakenly believe Indians are lazy because the settlement has few moneymaking operations, but the real reason for the lack of entrepreneurial activity is that Meskwaki cultural dislike of “bosses” makes such operations difficult. Whites have made misguided attempts to help Meskwaki by starting businesses on the settlement, which then failed and damaged the people’s confidence, the article said. These experiences of help followed by failure contributed to a “vicious circle” of disrespect between whites and Meskwaki, the article concluded.15 In an article promoting the trust fund plan, the anthropologists tried to sell the proposal as an alternative to the federal government withdrawing services to the Indians and leaving them to become a burden to local taxpayers. The article suggested shifting responsibility for programs to the Meskwaki community so settlement residents could run their own affairs and setting up a trust fund to finance the health and education services currently run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.16 Before sending the articles to Iowa newspapers, Gearing gave copies to select settlement residents and asked for their comments. Their responses puzzled Gearing more than they helped him. George Young Bear laughed and drew an analogy with what people told Gearing and the way people had fooled Truman Michelson with the phony sacred pack, suggesting people had fed Gearing a line. He also suggested the articles had an “anti-progress” slant, apparently in reference to statements in the article about people desiring to keep parts of Meskwaki culture. Yet the next time Gearing talked

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to him, Young Bear said the articles were just fine. Bertha Waseskuk was noncommittal, while others in the Old Bear group voiced skepticism about Gearing’s motives.17 Davenport disliked Gearing’s use of a myth to make a point about discrimination against Meskwaki in one article but said he otherwise liked the series. Later, though, other settlement residents circulated rumors that Davenport sent a prominent Meskwaki to the Tama News-Herald to stop its publication of the articles. Gearing made several changes in response to the feedback but left intact the basic thrust of the articles.18 The articles ran during the winter of 1952–53, and the following summer the field party began receiving feedback about them from settlement residents. Wayne Henderson, one of the Old Bear supporters, told students he had been impressed with the articles and that they had helped him think about how he and other Meskwaki viewed work habits and careers. Another member of the anti-constitution group liked the articles’ emphasis on those settlement residents who wanted to keep many of the old ways. Bertha Waseskuk, however, voiced her skepticism about the trust fund idea that the articles promoted. She said that “it looks to us too much like a settlement with the government. We had always thought that the government made certain promises to the Indians in the past and that we had best tried to get them to live up to these promises rather than make some such settlement with them.” Other than that, she voiced no specific objections.19 A man from the Davenport political camp, however, was more hostile, again without being specific. Horace Poweshiek, who was somewhat miffed that more Chicago students did not come to see him, said that while parts of the articles “were all right,” he could not “see how anyone could have stayed around here as long as that fellow [Gearing] and not gotten a straighter picture of how things really are around here.” He refused to tell the students exactly what he was referring to, because “I don’t know anything about you. . . . You may be a Communist for all I know.” Harry Lincoln, the professional informant scorned by the students, also criticized one article,

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saying Gearing had “massacred a story” by using the wrong names for animals and birds mentioned in it. Lincoln blamed the mistakes on Gearing having consulted with “ignorant people.”20 While Gearing interpreted the responses to drafts of his articles as either favorable or truly neutral, he was the victim of cross-cultural communication difficulties. Within Meskwaki society, people generally refrain from correcting the mistakes of another person for fear of causing embarrassment. That may have restrained the reactions of those who read the articles. In fact, one man told a student that in the article he read, “there was [sic] a few corrections he wanted to make, but that he did not want to offend Fred by criticizing his article.” Recalling the incident more than fifty years later, Gearing attributed some of the complaints to a general habit people have of telling anthropologists that what they wrote was wrong, as well as to the elusive nature of written truth. “The standard thing is, ‘It’s all lies.’ It’s almost ritual. . . . One of the things is always, always, anything you put down is an oversimplification, in the nature of the case, so it isn’t true. . . . It might be 90 percent true, and that’s good. So in one sense it’s like truth that we didn’t get it right. But in another sense, it’s much more ritualistic,” Gearing said. Tax’s reaction to Meskwaki comments about the articles was to say, “Fred, you think these people are much more literate than they are. These are not educated people. Get down. You’re from the University of Chicago. Forget it [your university status]. This is where the people are.”21 Tax may have been right that few people on the settlement had grasped the larger point of the articles. Gearing intended the articles to help Meskwaki understand their values and how they differed from those of surrounding whites, with the expectation that this knowledge would give Meskwaki more self-confidence and security in their values. It is not clear how much of that got across to people. Although Henderson was interested in the differences in the ways some whites and some Meskwaki approached work, he appeared confused when Gearing suggested that the students might talk about these differences to people who had trouble holding jobs.

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Gearing thought Henderson “seemed interested but quite puzzled and could make no response.”22 Despite such rumblings, Tax continued to believe that a crosscultural communication campaign could effectively educate whites about the Meskwaki and vice versa. Still without a major funding source for the project during the winter of 1953–54, Tax hit upon the idea of writing and selling a pamphlet in order to raise funds for college scholarships. The partner in the enterprise was the Federated Women’s Club of Iowa, affiliated with a national organization that had long been interested in Native American affairs.23 Although Gearing had shown the newspaper articles to settlement residents, no Meskwaki saw the final version of the pamphlet. It made many of the same points as the newspaper articles, however, including the fact that the Meskwaki were not going to vanish into mainstream American society, that many aspects of Meskwaki culture differed from mainstream American culture, and that whites should refrain from trying to push Meskwaki into becoming like whites. It also listed areas of discontent among settlement residents, including health care, lack of control in running the school, and low incomes. The pamphlet proposed that instead of the federal government dropping all services to the settlement, it set up a $1.5 million trust fund that would finance the annual expenses for health care (including a clinic), education, and welfare. Under the plan the Meskwaki would run the programs. Before printing the pamphlet, Tax had met with Bertha Waseskuk and other Old Bears to lobby them about the trust fund idea. He succeeded in getting their support for the idea, so long as the trust fund was not presented as a settlement with the government for all tribal claims against the government.24 Once the pamphlets were printed and in circulation, a few people commented favorably on the articles, including Carter and Henderson, who also had liked the newspaper articles. Reaction from other Meskwaki quarters, however, was swift and negative, compounded by increasingly rocky relations with the tribal council. One man from the Old Bear group complained that photographs in the pamphlet featured settlement residents who were not truly Meskwaki

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but rather Potawatomie, although the ira constitution had made them legal members of the tribe. “This is supposed to be a book about the Mesquakies. . . . These are not Mesquakies. They are Pottawatomies. They should not be in here,” he told students.25 Others complained about the use of the word “rich” to describe the community. Although it was intended to refer to the richness of the culture and life of the people, settlement residents feared it would give the impression that the Meskwaki did not need government help and would make it easier for the federal government to justify withdrawing its services. Davenport told a student that there were “objections to some statements in the booklet, but did not specify which ones.” Even a teenage boy could spot problems with the book. Pointing to a picture of a Meskwaki home with the caption referring to a home as a “refuge,” the boy said, “This home is not a refuge. . . . It gets flooded.” In general, people kept up a fairly constant stream of complaints about the pamphlet. Few had actually been distributed on the settlement, but it appeared to Charles Callender that “rumors of its contents seem to be outdistancing actual circulation.”26 Their complaints spilled over into personal attacks on the honesty and credibility of Tax and the integrity of the program in keeping its promises to help the people. A student recorded that one man “was talking about anthropologists here being supported by the Reds, and by all the lies that they told about the Mesquakies.” A member of the Young Bear political group launched into a lengthy attack on Tax. Callender recorded that the man said that “he had always thought that Soltax [sic] was honest and was straight, but now he knew his way was crooked; he thought he [Tax] was one of these ‘Communists.’ Soltax said one thing here and other things there.”27 Fundamental to the soured relationship was a perception among tribal council members that the research project was undermining the council’s own authority. The researchers’ mere presence on the settlement was an affront to the council, headed by Davenport and Young Bear political adherents. Since coming to the settlement in 1948, no one connected with the project had formally asked the council’s permission to be there but had instead asked the Bureau of

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Indian Affairs for approval. Researchers knew that this rankled with members of the tribal council, especially since the settlement was land the community itself owned and not a federal reservation.28 The project members had further insulted the council and threatened its grip on power by maintaining contacts with the anti-council group, including Bertha Waseskuk and Wayne Henderson. Although the students had trouble in the early years getting close to Waseskuk, relations warmed up over the years. In the 1952 school controversy, for example, Tax had arranged for the Old Bears to send their own telegram of protest to the federal government after Davenport had sent one under his own name only. While preparing the pamphlet in 1953, Gearing and Ruppe had even discussed alternative tribal constitutions that would incorporate some of the anticouncil group’s desires to return to traditional Meskwaki government traditions. They voiced their belief that “the present elected council is not working, and perhaps the traditional council could be reestablished to work better.” Such activity occurred shortly after a member of the Old Bear council had filed a federal court suit seeking to have himself recognized as the hereditary chief. Such activity could only be seen as anti-council. The articles and pamphlet, which stressed the persistence of long-standing aspects of Meskwaki culture, also seemed to support the anti-council group’s conservative approach.29 Further complicating the relationship was the fact that the researchers did not generally work through the council in carrying out their pledge to help the settlement residents. Researchers claimed that people who were interested in such things as activating an American Legion Post or a Boy Scout troop for the settlement saw the tribal council as intruders and ignored them rather than seek council sponsorship for the project. The researchers maintained that the desire to bypass the council in these projects came from the people themselves, but even so, the council might reasonably have seen the research project as usurping the council role.30 An important element of the poor relations with the council was a personality conflict between most of the researchers and Davenport.

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Early on, the researchers had decided that Davenport wanted to use them to further his own political agenda. They rebelled against running errands or carrying out “office-boy jobs” for Davenport. And they seemed to undermine Davenport’s desire for “progress” on the settlement by endorsing non-assimilation in the newspaper articles and pamphlet as an acceptable goal for the community.31 Furthermore, an important part of the council’s role was handling relations with the white community, often expressed as “standing up” to whites. Davenport and his supporters on the council could not claim a monopoly on being able to deal with outsiders when whites from Chicago were able to deal with them on an equal basis. “People come to us for guidance rather than to (the tribal chairman),” one researcher wrote. Davenport also may have thought Gearing exceeded his bounds in representing the Meskwaki to the white community, as when he had accused Gearing of “going too fast” in the 1952 dispute with the Bureau of Indian Affairs over the transfer of the school. Prominent whites in Tama generally had a high opinion of Davenport, whom they relied upon for information, and having students around to supply information about the settlement could have undermined Davenport’s status in Tama.32 With these tensions under the surface, Tax in early spring 1954 asked the tribal council to contribute money toward having the pamphlets printed. Busy on the national Indian policy scene and within the profession of anthropology, Tax appears to have lost touch with the nuances of settlement life. Energized by his own boundless enthusiasm, Tax failed to include Meskwaki in the project from the beginning. Davenport and the council responded to Tax’s request for funds with a strongly worded letter to him complaining about the University of Chicago project in general and suggesting that formal council permission should be sought for it to continue. Tax met with the council to allow them to voice their complaints directly to him. He apologized for being busy and admitted that he had failed to maintain close contact with the council. For their part, council members made clear that they thought the anthropologists had treated them just like the Bureau of Indian Affairs had in the school

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controversy. The anthropologists had presented them with two thousand pamphlets already printed, over which the council had no veto. Council members also flexed their muscles a bit, asking Tax pointedly if they had ever asked the government for permission to come to the settlement (they did so only in 1948 when they lived in the school) and debated whether they could bar the students from the settlement.33 Council members also went over the pamphlet paragraph by paragraph, although Tax did not give their complaints much credence. “They had apparently never read (the pamphlet) before. They postponed a decision [on whether to retaliate against the anthropologists] and appointed a committee of two to investigate and tell us what the mistakes were. The committee as far as I know never reported on it and never will,” recalled Tax. He seemed to dismiss the complaints as part of what Gearing called the ritualistic accusations of people being studied that anthropologists had written lies about them.34 Tax may also have believed that the Davenport council was not representative of the broader opinion on the settlement regarding what was in the pamphlets, since many of the complaints had come from council supporters. On the other hand, anti-council people such as Bertha Waseskuk and Wayne Henderson had not complained about the pamphlet, and Bertha Waseskuk had even signed on to the trust fund idea after Tax discussed it with her. The split opinion demonstrated again one of the inherent problems of action anthropology—how to decide whom to help in a community. Was the obligation of an action anthropologist to the elected body of a community, even if many members disputed its legitimacy? In this case Tax and the students threw their weight onto the side of the Old Bears. Ignoring the council brought repercussions. The council’s threat to throw the University of Chicago students off the settlement represented the council’s ultimate power over the researchers. Researchers feared that asking for a council vote on whether they could remain most likely would mean an end to the project. Yet the politi-

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cal split on the settlement checked the council’s power over the researchers, since the researchers had supporters outside of the council. The informal power of public opinion made throwing out the anthropologists politically risky for the council. The Chicago people considered asking for a referendum of the people to legitimate their presence but decided instead to try to hew to a more neutral path between the settlement’s factions. They resolved to consult with the council and demonstrate that they recognized it as the legitimate government body, but not to get formal council clearance for their work. The researchers hoped that the council had seen them as useful and would be afraid of the political consequences if they tried to evict them from the settlement. They promised to work harder at cultivating close friendships with council members and to try to sponsor some projects jointly.35 As sensitive as Tax had been to relations with Meskwaki in the past, in the case of the pamphlet dispute he failed to grasp the contest for power that lay beneath the dispute: a contest both for power on the settlement and power to represent Meskwaki to the white world. Although the anthropologists had said for six years that they did not want to tell the Meskwaki what to do, the anthropologists had acted in this case without consulting the elected leadership of the community. No wonder some settlement residents compared them to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The threat to throw the students off the settlement represented the ultimate exercise of sovereignty by the council—defending the boundaries of Meskwaki territory against intruders. Gearing’s articles and the pamphlet may have been literally correct in every respect, but nevertheless a white person, not a Meskwaki, had written them. Serving as the interface with the white world had evolved into the council’s job. The community still had religious leaders who conducted clan ceremonies or peyote meetings. The opinions of elders were sought out when it came to dealing with personal problems. Informal systems of generosity still functioned to take care of widows and other needy. But when it came to dealing with the white world on issues that affected the tribe as a whole, the

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tribal council was beginning to emerge as a legitimate mouthpiece. By trial and error, the community was creating its own version of the separation of church and state. When the white anthropologists purported to speak to the white world for the settlement as a whole, they had threatened to crack the fragile consensus building up in support of the new Meskwaki institutional state. Furthermore, the anthropologists had been at least careless and possibly insensitive in the selection of pictures and failed to foresee how pictures could rekindle animosities related to sovereignty and governance issues. The pamphlets with the photos of people who were biologically Pottawatomie but legally Meskwaki since the 1937 Constitution appeared as the tribe was discussing amending the constitution in order to force non-Meskwaki residents from the settlement. The pamphlet pictures reminded people who were just beginning to accept the constitution how it had undermined some of the informal powers of the people, including the right to decide who could live on the settlement as full-fledged members of the community.36 In addition, by making such “mistakes” in the pamphlet, the Chicago anthropologists had shown themselves to many to be no different from previous anthropologists who had written about the community. Like Truman Michelson, they had talked to the wrong people about the situation on the settlement. Although they had not paid for information in cash as Michelson had done (and the lack of pay may indeed have added to the disgruntlement of some people), they nevertheless had been hoodwinked by their informants. While not falling for the “White Owl Sacred Pack” trick, the Chicago anthropologists seemed to have accepted the anti-council line uncritically. Instead of being different from all the anthropologists, to many supporters of Davenport and the council the Chicago researchers had done nothing but hand out candy to the children and then write lies about the community. Despite the seriousness of the breach with the council over the pamphlets, Tax thought his meeting with them had smoothed things over, and he planned to sell the pamphlets at the annual Meskwaki

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powwow in August. Graduate students repeatedly pressed members of the powwow committee and their friends in the community for the go-ahead to sell the booklets. In the end, no pamphlets were sold at the powwow, but students bruised many feelings by their persistence. Again, Tax’s absence from the settlement led him to underestimate the depth of feelings about the pamphlets. Furthermore, he may not have chosen the best partner for the project. Despite the Federated Women’s Club’s national reputation as advocates for Indians, on the local level relations were strained. A member of the local women’s club seemed to betray a condescending attitude toward the settlement residents when Tax visited her after the powwow and told her no booklets had been sold. The woman told Tax she was not surprised by the refusal and remarked she “had told us so . . . ; she knew these people. They were mighty strange about some things.” Some Meskwaki—the Carters, for example—did not like the women’s club and said “they wanted nothing to do with them” even though one of their daughters needed a scholarship for college. Since Tax visited the settlement only a few times each summer, he was not around for the extended conversations with people wherein such sentiments surfaced.37 Helping, or Breaking the Law? As if the pamphlet had not strained relations enough during the summer of 1954, the anthropologists that summer managed to irritate the Meskwaki in numerous other ways, over matters big and small. Sarah Robinson, who replaced Fred Gearing as the lead student that summer, insulted Ed Davenport by inviting him to the house for coffee, while inviting other settlement residents for dinner. Part of Robinson’s problem with Davenport may have stemmed from the fact that she was the first woman to head the field party. Chicago women often commented on problems they had talking to men on the settlement. Davenport may have felt more comfortable complaining to, and about, Robinson because of her gender. Robinson, however, also had offended Alice Carter by offering to pay her for making some pillows, which the woman had intended to make

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and give her “in the Indian way.” Furthermore, she had hired a white man from Tama to make some repairs on the university’s house rather than hiring a Meskwaki.38 While Robinson’s dealings with Meskwaki were sometimes clumsy, another student’s interactions with settlement residents bordered on hostile. Joseph Marlin disliked giving rides to settlement residents, even though previous field parties had given rides freely and Meskwaki without cars had come to expect or depend on such help. Gradually young people, at least, had stopped coming to the university house or asking to go swimming with the students. Marlin seemed hostile to having any settlement residents around the house. “I think the largest amount of action in the action program this summer is feeding Indians, which I do not approve of at all,” he groused. The student pronounced himself bored on the settlement; unable to get started on any project (no doubt in part because of his attitude toward helping Meskwaki), he left the field party in mid-August.39 At the root of these petty problems lay the attitude of the students who made up the field party in the summer of 1954. To begin with, the party was a blend of students from the University of Chicago and the University of Iowa, which Tax had invited to join the project because he feared Iowans would think the Chicagoans were “carpetbaggers.” Besides getting to know the community, members of the field party had to get to know people from the other institution. Personal differences over housekeeping and cooking chores, work and sleeping patterns, the lack of privacy in which to work, the inability to work or carry on discussions related to their projects when settlement residents were in and out all day and evening—all these factors combined to create a stressful environment and were exacerbated by the blended makeup of the field party. Additionally, some of the students came into the project less committed to the theory of action anthropology than the earlier field parties. Marlin groused about the “interminable discussions” of the project that students had in the house, for example. Those discussions no doubt mirrored the ongoing debate within the profession of anthropology over the role of the scientist and the merits and

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possibilities of remaining “neutral” while doing fieldwork. As one student put it, “All of the concerns we have had about action anthropology remain.” Perhaps because of a combination of these factors, students complained that the field party was too large even though it was similar in size to those of other years, that they had nothing specific on which to work, that their own work was not part of an overall program that would be built on in the future, and that there was no way to judge the program’s effectiveness. “It’s just too many people—rather like having a work camp that has no other project than that of discussing possible projects,” Walter Sangree complained. All these factors made a serious ethical dilemma more difficult for the anthropologists to handle.40 Some problems stemming from friendships between field-workers and settlement residents went far beyond discomfort at the thought of interviewing them. A case in point is the long-standing relationship that developed between the students and Lawrence Phillips, the young man who had complained about people coming to study the Indians. Phillips had returned to the settlement after serving in the 82nd Airborne Division during World War II but joined the marines after being home for several years. He went awol to come home in April 1954 to help his uncle, who had been seriously hurt in a fall from a bridge. Phillips got to drinking and would not go back. One time he decided to hop a freight train to leave the settlement, but he got kicked off the train in Omaha and lost all his possessions except the clothes that he was wearing, and he returned to the settlement. Soon military police began coming around the settlement, offering children seventy-five cents and a junior detective badge for revealing where Phillips was staying. Rather than go home and risk being caught, Phillips started sleeping at the University of Chicago house, expecting that the mps would not check there for him.41 Phillips promised to leave in late July, but he was still there in mid-August. He hid in the bathroom or living room when visitors came, but settlement residents still knew he was living at the house. Virtually every conversation with members of the community began with the question, “Is [Lawrence] still staying at your house?” From

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there, people went on to ask where he slept. Some people bluntly told the students they were making a mistake by allowing Phillips to stay with them when most people on the settlement, including his own relatives, would not have done so. Marie Furey wondered if they were becoming “pariahs” among settlement residents for taking in a deserter. “The [Lawrence] business has made people curious and suspicious about us,” she wrote.42 Although several students worried about the safety and welfare of Phillips, whom they liked a great deal, a broader concern was the effect his presence had on the program. “That’s all the project needs— for us to be apprehended for harboring [Lawrence],” Furey noted in her journal. Students found it hard to discuss their work because he was around all the time. “The situation imposes a strain on all of us,” wrote one student. Concerned that Tama residents would find out that the students were harboring a fugitive and turn them in, and that it would damage the reputation of the project, Robinson tried to coax Phillips into leaving the university house. Sol Tax also offered to give Phillips $10 to help him get back to his base if he would turn himself in, but Phillips rejected Tax’s help.43 Late one night after the August powwow, Phillips showed up drunk at the university house and asked the students to take him to Des Moines to turn himself in before he sobered up and lost his nerve. So all five students piled into the university’s station wagon along with Phillips, who picked up several cans of beer for the road. They dropped him off at U.S. Army headquarters in Des Moines in the middle of the night and watched sadly as the cell door clanged shut. The next morning Henry and Alice Carter told the students that they had done the right thing and that Phillips’s presence on the settlement made it impossible for residents to turn in non-Meskwaki deserters who also were hiding out in the community.44 When Phillips was court-martialed, Tax submitted a statement, which he asked the court to keep confidential, in which he said that Phillips was mentally ill and never should have been allowed to reenlist in the first place. Attempting to act as a psychiatrist rather than an anthropologist, Tax blamed Phillips’s problems, including

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his awol status, on the conflicting pressures put on him by the white and Indian worlds. While other Indians found it easy to work in the white world and return to the settlement at the end of the day or on weekends, Tax said, the passage between the two worlds was more difficult for Phillips. His uncle and surrogate father was a highly respected elder in one of the Meskwaki clans, but his sister was married to the Meskwaki minister of the settlement’s Presbyterian church. Phillips vacillated between living with one and then the other, just as he vacillated between attending clan ceremonies and making fun of Meskwaki gatherings such as the powwow. Tax interpreted Phillips’s enlistment in, and absence from, the marines as another sign of his desire to both escape from and remain in his Indian past. Tax did not believe that it was impossible for a Meskwaki to be sane in a white world, but he did believe Phillips found it impossible to satisfy his simultaneous urge to get away from his Indian heritage and remain in it. Phillips’s defense introduced Tax’s letter in order to seek a reduced punishment. It may have had some effect. Although the court sentenced him to six months at hard labor, busted him from private first class to private, and ordered him to forfeit six months’ pay and allowances, it did not order him to be dishonorably discharged.45 On the surface, hiding a fugitive from the law who had been disowned by many of his relatives seems to be purely a case of bad judgment. Several factors operated to influence the decision, however. Phillips had been a great help to Chicago field parties over the years. He had introduced new students to important people, served as interpreter, passed on gossip, gave them insights on relations within the community, and generally supported their work. Phillips also gave the students an intimate picture of a young Meskwaki who freely traversed the cultural boundaries between the white world and the Indian world and struggled to meld the two in a personally successful way. He seemed to be a microcosm of the assimilation process in which the anthropologists were interested, although students did not study Phillips per se. Year after year, students speculated in their field journals about why Phillips acted the way he did as they struggled to understand how individuals coped with and

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shaped the multiple cultures in which they lived.46 Besides the fact that Phillips was useful, the students just plain liked him. Although Phillips could be a nuisance and at times inflated the level of help he had given the project, students still enjoyed his sense of humor and felt lonely when he was not around.47 The demands of action anthropology further complicated the relationship with Phillips. Rather than remaining detached observers who studied people as though they were insects, action anthropologists allowed themselves to become part of the community and to work for the goals members of the community selected. The theory of action anthropology and its obligation to help, though, raised the ethical question of what action anthropologists should do if they disagreed with the aims selected by the community. Critics of action anthropology often framed the question in terms of whether the action anthropologists would be willing to lend aid to a tribe of cannibals rather than trying to impose their own values on the cannibals. Assuming that they were not the ones destined for the cooking pot, the action anthropologists took the approach that they would determine appropriate action if the situation arose and never came up with an answer for handling such ethical dilemmas.48 Phillips’s case put the action anthropologists into just such a quandary. Should the students help Phillips evade the authorities because that was what he chose to do, even if they disagreed with his choice and even if it placed them—and the future of the project—at risk? Did action anthropologists have the right to try to influence Phillips’s choice, or did that violate the concept of letting people make their own decisions? Was their loyalty as action anthropologists to Phillips as an individual or to the broader community, many of whom disagreed with his choice to go awol? Tax tried to have it both ways—offering Phillips a bribe of $10 to leave (and thus protecting the project and pleasing others in the community) and then trying to demonstrate loyalty to Phillips by intervening on his behalf in his court-martial. In the end Tax’s approach failed. Phillips rejected the money and turned himself in for his own reasons at a time of his own choosing. And Phillips resented Tax’s description of

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him as mentally ill contained in the letter Tax sent to the military court.49 Traditional anthropologists might well have found themselves in similar situations with an informant on whom they had come to rely, but they generally would not have held themselves out to the community as helpers in the way action anthropologists did. They might have been less concerned about letting people make their own choices and more comfortable assuming the burden of telling them what to do. The action anthropologists’ ethical dilemma was more complicated. Another Type of Entanglement While the problem of Lawrence Phillips’s presence in the university house preoccupied most of the students for nearly two months in the summer of 1954, one of the students caused other problems within the field party for his unprofessional behavior. Some students complained that a University of Iowa student, Eugene Fugle, was inconsiderate of others, did not cooperate with housekeeping chores or on anthropological projects, and was rude to settlement residents. “He is very insensitive, I think, to Mesquakie values, and laughs at their inabilities,” Marlin wrote, adding another comment that later was covered with typewriter correction fluid. Henry Carter apparently noticed Fugle’s behavior, too, and advised the students “to be patient in all our dealings with Mesquakies and said that one of us in particular would have to learn this.” Fugle also liked to drive fast on the settlement roads, kicking up dust and spewing gravel as he whizzed by children on bicycles and women on foot. On one such trip Fugle had killed a chicken belonging to a settlement family. Further complicating the matter was that Fugle got into the habit of staying out all night and getting drunk with Phillips, the awol marine.50 Occasionally the students noticed that one of their Meskwaki friends, Jessica Jones, seemed to know a lot of the details about what Phillips and Fugle were up to, more so than the students knew. Jones had been a good friend of the Taxes and was the woman whose marriage they had mended in the 1930s. Divorced and the mother of

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four children, she was well liked by the field parties each summer and often came around the house to fix Meskwaki fry bread outside over an open fire for the students. But students in the summer of 1954 noted how much she liked to talk about Fugle in particular.51 In early September Alice Carter, who had often helped the students with their work, told one of the students about rumors on the settlement that Fugle was having an affair with Jones. Unsure whether to believe it or not, the student nevertheless admitted it would explain where Fugle was when he stayed out all night. “But at any rate, he has been indiscrete and has apparently spent too much time there and been there too late at night. This is in some ways particularly disturbing, since he insists that he is coming back after we leave, but refuses to say when,” Callender wrote.52 Later a Meskwaki religious leader who was friendly to the students complained that Fugle spent too much time driving around with two settlement men, gave liquor to girls, and sometimes drank all night with Jones. “No good!” he said. Later that same day, Alice Carter told the students that stories about Fugle and Jones were “all around the settlement, you know. Everybody is talking about it. . . . It won’t do the rest of you any good. It’s too bad. Makes it hard for the rest of you. . . . She [Jones] has a reputation, you know—it looks bad.” Alice Carter also joked that Fugle had been collecting data for Kinsey’s study, referring to the work on American sexuality published in 1948 by Alfred Kinsey. She predicted that if Fugle came back to the settlement “he would be made to feel it was too hot for him to stay.” She told one student “that perhaps [the project] would be able to establish good relations again, but people will take a long time.” Callender, who recorded the same visit, speculated that “we must have been the last persons to hear of it.” The next day, as Furey put it, “It’s Eugene everywhere we turn.” She began thinking about the times when settlement residents who normally were friendly had seemed subdued and wondered if they had known about Fugle and Jones.53 Unbeknownst to the students, Fugle and Jones had been carrying on since at least late July, sometimes publicly in Tama. Jones told settlement people details of the developing relationship. She said

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that the two would be married in January after Fugle finished school and that Fugle’s wealthy parents had welcomed her as a member of the family. Fugle had even bragged about “his conquest” to a white man. As Callender speculated on the effect the alleged affair had on the field party’s relations with settlement residents, he wrote, “The whole thing is beginning to make me feel a bit sick.”54 While Callender and Furey accepted the truth of what community residents told them about Fugle, Robinson was skeptical and criticized the other students for their “readiness to believe the rumors.” Although initially concerned, she said that “we have investigated and have changed our minds” as to whether the rumors were true. The project files lack any explicit reference to such an investigation, but Tax may have questioned Jones directly because of his long-standing ties to her. In any event someone, apparently Tax, had reversed a decision banning Fugle from the house and decided Fugle could stay in the university house after the summer field party left.55 Whether Fugle was indeed having an affair with a community resident was less important than the fact that the people believed that he was. Alice Carter suggested that the situation would damage relations with future field parties because “the men tended to generalize about you [Meskwaki] women leading on men who come here.” Furthermore, the matter severed the field party’s relations with Jones, whose knowledge of kinship terminology had helped many students. When Robinson saw her on the road, “I spoke first and got one of the chillyest [sic] responses that I have heard in many a day.” As Robinson had stated, even before learning of the complaints against Fugle, “We have not done a stellar job this summer in keeping up public relations.”56 The ways in which action anthropology differed from traditional anthropology again complicated the handling of this matter. No doubt anthropologists had had affairs with members of the communities they studied long before Fugle and Jones began their relationship, whatever it actually entailed. Anthropologists who came and went, never to return to the community or at least not for a long time, may not have been too worried about what others

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felt about their relationships. Action anthropologists, who made a long-term commitment to the Meskwaki settlement, did not have that luxury. Each field party was followed by another one, which inherited the reputation earned and obligations assumed by their predecessors. Many students formed long-lasting ties to individuals in the community and kept in contact for many years. Settlement residents, however, remembered which students had failed to write after they left at the end of the summer, which ones neglected to send copies of photographs they took, which ones borrowed a book and failed to return it. Later students at times felt burdened by the failures of their predecessors when settlement residents complained about them. Some settlement residents seemed to consider the alleged affair a serious matter and still talked about it in a disapproving manner nearly fifty years later. The relationship conflicted with standards of morality held by many on the settlement. Although young women sometimes had children without being married in either the Indian or white way, the community expected them at some point to select a husband. Jones, with four children, had not done so since her divorce and as a result, she had acquired a “reputation” on the settlement. Consorting with such an individual shook the faith that many people on the settlement had in professional people. Alice Carter told one student that she had reassured her friends and neighbors “that they could trust us at the house because we were educated people” but that she “didn’t know what they would say now.”57 Rebounding from the Nadir Some of the tension that surfaced in the summer of 1954 may have been related to the slim accomplishments that the Chicago students had to show for six years of coming to the Meskwaki settlement each summer with promises to help. In the summer of 1952 Steve Polgar had led Meskwaki teenage boys in a project to convert a barn into a recreation center for the youth. In 1953 Marjorie Gearing had organized a group of girls into a cooperative that planted several acres of cucumbers and sold them to an Iowa canning factory. Although the

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girls planted, hoed, and thinned diligently in the hot sun, a dry spell cut their harvest, and the girls were disappointed with their meager earnings for the summer’s work. Fred Gearing helped the American Legion Post reestablish itself and remodel an old building to serve as a meeting place. Marjorie Gearing also helped young people organize a Halloween party for the community, a long-standing event planned and hosted each year by the young people on the settlement. To be chosen as the adult to help the youngsters put on the party was considered an honor.58 The Chicago party’s rhetoric, however, had outstripped those accomplishments. Off and on, members of the community dropped hints “that it was time the uc began producing.” One student summarized Bertha Waseskuk as saying, “Four years [the] university has promised something and nothing had happened. There must be some reason you guys are out here; [you] are not doing what you say you will do.” Researchers acknowledged the need to do something visible, noting, as Polgar did, “the many precedents of anthropologists coming out here and never actually doing something for the Mesquakie, beyond distributing lemon drops to the kids and tobacco to the old people, or paying experts for their dishing out of ‘facts.’”59 Yet the researchers also were acutely aware of the limits of what the University of Chicago project could do for the settlement. In 1952 Polgar warned against raising people’s expectations too high with assurances of assistance. The researchers, he said, must make it clear to the Mesquakie that we can do just so much and no more, we must make it clear what our own interest is, convincing the [sic] that we do not look upon them as animals in a zoo, or experimental rabbits. . . . All this is very good, but to fulfill it is very difficult. In face of the deep-seated suspicion, and the desire to use us for their own ends, we have to be very honest and straightforward. We have to lay a groundwork of deep personal friendships, through which such honesty can

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be displayed without fear of alienating the people and losing objectivity.60 Certainly with little more than living expenses available to them, the action anthropologists would have difficulty launching larger projects that would have altered the standard of living of community residents or otherwise created sweeping changes. Nevertheless, in response to calls to “produce” and the tensions of the summer, Sol Tax began a scholarship program for Meskwaki youth in 1954. The idea for one of the most fruitful efforts by the University of Chicago anthropologists to “produce” came not just from the researchers but also from a conversation between Tax and the muchmaligned tribal chairman, Ed Davenport. Late in the summer of 1954 Davenport instigated a conversation with Tax about a college scholarship for one of his daughters. Once the seed regarding scholarships was planted in Tax’s fertile mind, it blossomed into plans for a $100,000 program to send eighteen to twenty Meskwaki youth to college over a ten-year period. Tax hoped that Meskwaki youth would take up professional occupations such as nursing and law, which they could practice while still living in nearby communities. Meskwaki had come to believe that attending elementary and secondary school could lead to better lives for their children without threatening their Meskwaki identity, and Tax wanted the scholarship program to demonstrate that college and professional careers also were compatible with core Meskwaki values. Seeing Meskwaki in professional roles also would increase the self-confidence of members of the community as well as the image of the Indians held by Tama whites, he thought. Highly educated Meskwaki might also lead the community in taking a larger role in running settlement affairs.61 Tax searched for money to pay for the scholarships and finally persuaded the Gardner Cowles Foundation, set up by the family that owned Look magazine and several other publications, including the Des Moines Register, to contribute $35,000. The University of Iowa also agreed to waive tuition and fees for the equivalent of seventytwo student years for Meskwaki who chose to attend that institu-

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tion, amounting to another $12,500. Iowa State College and Iowa State Teacher’s College soon followed with their own tuition waivers. Even so, Tax had trouble getting the Cowles Foundation to release its contribution because the offer stipulated that Tax first had to raise another $70,000. Although Tax approached a wide range of other groups in Iowa, he was able to come up with less than $700 in matching funds by the fall of 1955. Exactly why is unclear, given the interest that Iowa business leaders had shown in the settlement after the two meetings held with Meskwaki in 1953. A view of the Chicago students as “carpetbaggers,” however, may have accounted for some of the reluctance among potential business contributors.62 Anxious to start the full program, Tax engaged in some clever accounting. He anticipated that some Meskwaki students would also qualify for scholarship aid from other sources, such as the American Missionary Association and the John Hay Whitney Foundation. By counting those expected funds, as well as whatever money students received directly from church groups or service clubs, Tax was able to show that he had $83,000 available for scholarships. In January 1956 the Cowles Foundation then agreed to release its contribution.63 In the fall of 1954 Tax issued a news release about the scholarship program, which was picked up by newspapers in the area. One Meskwaki youth, Joseph Daniels, was working in Moline, Illinois, when a friend told him about the newspaper article on scholarships for Meskwaki youth. Daniels made a special trip back to the settlement on the weekend to talk to the researchers about the scholarships. He flagged down one of the students as she passed by a field where he was playing touch football. The Chicago student recorded the encounter with Daniels in these words: “He says that he wants to be a doctor and had planned to go [to college] this fall but that he did not have enough money. He seemed very excited and had a gleam in his eye. He said several times ‘You don’t know what this means’ . . . I had been so stunned at first that it was not till I got away that I began to get really excited.”64 In the summer of 1955 Bob Rietz returned to Tama as field director. He and other students spent most of that summer promoting

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the scholarship program among Meskwaki, college administrators, the settlement school principal, and potential donors, as well as helping students fill out college applications and taking students to visit college campuses. Parents expressed general support for Tax’s vision. Alice Carter, for example, told one student that “she thought it would be a good idea if a Mesquakie would study law and if other people would study the different professions—it would help the people make progress.”65 From the time it began operating in the fall of 1955 until it ran out of funds in 1962, the Fox Professional Education Scholarship Program provided college funds for eighteen Meskwaki youth, in amounts ranging from $50 to $6,423. Among them was Joseph Daniels, who received $1,151 for college tuition at Drake University. By 1962 the students had completed a total of 51.5 years of college, and six had graduated. Of the scholarship recipients, two became nurses, two became teachers, and two went to graduate school. At least two others finished their college degrees later. Daniels was among those who did not complete his degree. After living away from the settlement, he returned in the 1990s and led the successful effort to bring casino gaming to the settlement.66 More students could have been helped if the project had not ended prematurely, but Tax’s tricky estimates could not make up for the fact that the ten-year, $100,000 program was underfunded. Compounding the problem of underfunding was the fact that several of the students chose private schools rather than take advantage of the tuition waivers from Iowa’s state universities. To overcome these difficulties, Meskwaki students and Rietz often scrambled to piece together a conglomeration of funding sources to cover a semester’s expenses. Rietz doled out to students the small amount of cash from the Cowles Foundation, including a small monthly spending allowance for each student, only after scholarships had been obtained from other sources.67 By the 1961–62 academic year, students had to write repeatedly to Tax to get their bills paid. One group of students was threatened with eviction because their room and board for the fall semester was still

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unpaid in December 1961. By the fall of 1962 the funds would stretch no further. When students wrote asking for funds, Tax told them the scholarship program was broke; they should look elsewhere for funding. After promising a ten-year program, Tax had been able to deliver only seven years’ worth of funding. When settlement residents learned that the scholarship fund had dried up, some immediately became suspicious. One man who had served on the scholarship committee asked for a financial statement of the fund, including the amount of money it took in and a list of itemized expenditures and recipients.68 The request no doubt reflected disappointment at the early demise of the scholarship program. A focus on the scholarship’s program premature end has dominated scholarly evaluation of action anthropology at the settlement. After Iowa State University economist Elizabeth Hoyt visited the Meskwaki community in the early 1960s, she wrote an article stressing the failures of the University of Chicago program, including the inadequate funding of a scholarship program.69 A second critique of the project was more subdued. Working from a documentary history of the project compiled by the Chicago anthropologists, Larry R. Stucki found the project lacked continuity, both in personnel and programs. Stucki compared the researchers to “do-gooders” who are at first enthusiastic about helping a community and then move on to greener pastures after finding the situation more difficult than they expected. He also criticized the anthropologists for failing to live up to their goal of creating programs based on what the Meskwaki wanted. Instead, Stucki said, the anthropologists came up with ideas and explained them to people with whom they chose to work. In doing so, however, he overlooked the importance of conversations between Tax and Davenport about college scholarships.70 More recently, one scholar who has examined the Meskwaki, Douglas E. Foley, described the project as “a tiny blip in the long flow of Mesquaki history.” Foley, in “The Fox Project: A Reappraisal,” correctly called the scholarship program one of the turning points in Meskwaki history because it introduced Meskwaki youth to the

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idea of attending college, even though only five of the recipients had returned to the settlement by 1995.71 The contrasting experiences of two students, however, demonstrate the importance of the scholarship program and the importance of incorporating a Meskwaki counterstory within an evaluation of the scholarship program. When Rebecca Full Moon graduated from high school in 1949, the school principal had encouraged her to go to college, and she was interested in doing so. Full Moon discussed her prospects with Davida Wolffson during the first summer the Chicago students were on the settlement. As Wolffson recorded the conversation, Full Moon said that “she wants to study art when she finishes high school—but doesn’t see how she can. It is very depressing to see such hopelessness in a young girl who, by all rights, should be full of enthusiasm and plans at this point.” When Full Moon’s father asked her if she wanted to go to work or continue her education, Full Moon said she would go to work because she knew her family did not have the money for a college education. Tax’s scholarship program was still six years in the future. Full Moon took a job as a maid/nanny for a well-off family in Cedar Rapids. Later, Full Moon attended Haskell Junior College to study business courses and went on to a career as a secretary for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in South Dakota and elsewhere.72 Ruth Morris graduated from Tama High School in 1955 and was starting to think about her future when Rietz came by her house one day. Described by her teachers as “good college material,” Morris told the University of Chicago students that “she wanted most to be a nurse—that she had wanted to do this ever since she was in the fifth grade—there was a nurse in Tucson whom she admired very much. . . . She said that she didn’t have any money to go to school. She also said that she would like to work around here ‘if the people need me.’” Morris fit the picture of the type of young person the action anthropologists thought would succeed in college—sincere, hard-working, poised, and confident in her dealings with whites. They set about doing all they could to find money to help her. “We weren’t getting help from the bia at that time (for college). Some people went to Haskell

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(an Indian junior college in Kansas). I wanted to go to college, but I wasn’t (financially) able to go. He (Rietz) had a couple of scholarships so I was able to go with money from the Iowa Federation of Women’s Clubs and the Kiwanis out of Waterloo,” Morris recalled. Without Rietz’s help, “I would have started looking for work probably,” but because she had taken college preparatory courses and lacked office skills, Morris doubted that she would have had much luck. After one year at the University of Iowa, Morris transferred to a nurse’s training program, graduated, and spent her career in nursing away from the settlement. Her family by then had moved away from the community. Morris considered the scholarship program the anthropologists’ most important contribution to the community.73 Generally men were less successful in completing their college educations than were women, and that strongly colored their memories of the program. One man, whose drinking and personal problems caused him to flunk out of college, had forgotten he ever got money from the fund, even after seeing a copy of the program’s report with his name in it. Some treated the experience of college life as a lark. They enjoyed living in the dormitory, partaking of campus life, and playing football without letting their academic work interfere unduly. One man was delegated by his roommates to write to Tax each month to request their spending money because he knew how to type and could write better than the others. He was surprised that his letters asking for money lingered in the project files decades later, and he would have preferred they be destroyed. When scholarship checks were slow to arrive, he recalled, students would charge books at the bookstore, then sell them for cash to get by.74 Some Meskwaki who did not participate in the scholarship program thought it mainly benefited individuals who took their degrees and went elsewhere. One woman asked, “What did it do for the community?” Her question reflects a preference common among settlement residents for putting service to the tribe above individual gain. Two of the scholarship recipients did become tribal chairs, however, and a third helped jumpstart the effort to build a casino on settlement land.75

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For other people, such as Sean Carter, son of Henry and Alice Carter, the exposure to college was a life-changing experience whose benefits extended beyond the Meskwaki settlement, even if it did not immediately result in a degree. “That was the best part of their project,” he recalled, “because it got me going when I didn’t want to do anything, just be like everybody else.” Carter had not thought about college until Rietz came by to invite him to go to Iowa City with other Meskwaki youth to see about attending the University of Iowa. Thinking they might stop for a beer afterward, Carter went along, was talked into enrolling, and came home a college freshman. Even with the tuition waiver from the university, his gi Bill monthly living allowance, and support from the scholarship fund, Carter still had to wash pots and pans at Joe’s Place to get by financially. While requesting his monthly allowance from the program, Carter wrote Tax that “my sincerest appreciation goes with this letter” and asked Tax to thank Rietz personally for his assistance.76 Although he did not finish his undergraduate degree in the 1950s, Carter became tribal secretary, was instrumental in a 1968 court battle that blocked yet another attempt by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to close the settlement school, and helped found the National Coalition of Indian-Controlled School Boards to help tribes run their own schools. He also helped develop Iowa’s Native American Graves Protection Act to protect Indian remains, resulting in its passage in 1976, fourteen years before a similar federal statute became law. In the 1970s Carter returned to college to finish his undergraduate degree, as well as earn two master’s degrees. He considered the scholarship program to have been the catalyst for many of his activities.77 Although the program never lived up to its $100,000 promise, the $83,000 in aid it did provide over seven years was an enormous amount for the time. In 2007 dollars, Tax’s scholarship program provided $640,000 in financial aid to students. In contrast to the $83,000 from the Meskwaki fund, the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1955 had set aside from its budget only $10,000 to support fiftyfour Indian students nationwide attending college. And when in 1957 Congress established a separate fund for college education for

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Indians, it appropriated only $70,000 for the nation’s entire Native American population.78 Conclusion The summer of 1954 was a period when action anthropologists, the tribal council, and competing political interests on the settlement jostled for position with the others. The most contentious time during the ten-year project, the period shows how the nature of action anthropology as carried out in the context of the Meskwaki settlement produced complicated relationships between individual Meskwaki and the anthropologists. The promise to help people within the goals that they themselves set meant the students had to traverse a political minefield where a misstep could be disastrous, as relations with the tribal council that summer showed. Leaning too far to help the Old Bears angered the tribal council. Following the council’s lead could incite discontent among the anti-council Old Bears. Tax and the students tried to listen to the people, but they found it hard to follow the people’s lead when their voices conflicted. Meskwaki continued to influence the course of action anthropology, but not all voices were heard as distinctly as others. On an individual level, the decision to help or not help a settlement resident required the students to clarify their own values regarding a certain course of action and weigh those against the individual’s wishes. Tax dismissed the cannibal analogy at a “Values in Action” symposium sponsored by the Wenner-Grenn Foundation by saying the question of what to do in such cases had “no significant bearing on what we should do tomorrow to help the Fox Indians.”79 The incident with Phillips, however, showed that such ethical conflicts could be hard to resolve when the issue was less clear-cut than cannibalism. In an academic debate Tax could effectively parry objections to combining academic study with community assistance. Students living on the settlement and trying to work through such conflicts in values needed more practical assistance. The long-term nature of the project was another aspect of action

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anthropology that hamstrung the students. Relations with Phillips and Jones had developed over many years. In resolving the dilemma regarding personal entanglements, Tax and the students had to take into account that the project’s field-workers were likely to be on the settlement for a number of years into the future. Such problems could not be ignored but had to be resolved in a way that satisfied the concerns of critics in the community. By 1954 Tax was beginning to benefit from his relationship with the Meskwaki, as shown by his growing status in national circles concerned with federal Indian policy. Results for the community had been less obvious. Tax had brought the problems of the Meskwaki settlement to the attention of state political leaders and the general public in a way that the community had not seen before. As one man said to a student, “You people have paid more attention to us than anyone . . . even Tama and Toledo . . . its [sic] only recently that they have noticed us . . . Before county officials were always against us publicising [sic] all kinds of bad stories.”80 Still, there was pressure to produce. Responding to pressure and suggestions from settlement residents, Tax and the students devised a scholarship program for high school graduates that began making good on their promises to help the community. The “pot of gold” that would allow more projects was yet to arrive.

6. Fruits of Action Anthropology

At the same time Sol Tax was launching the scholarship program, he also continued his search for a source of funds for more significant projects on the settlement. Finally in 1954 Tax chased the right rainbow and came up with a pot of gold—a $60,000 grant from the Schwartzhaupt Foundation of New York City to spend over four years. To secure the grant, Tax skewed the purpose of the project slightly to meet the foundation’s goal of promoting citizenship, by stressing that the project would help settlement residents learn to run their own affairs and that that would make them better citizens.1 The funding ultimately made possible a project that, along with the scholarship program, has borne the brunt of the scrutiny and criticism of the entire action anthropology enterprise: an arts and crafts company called Tamacraft. This examination of Tamacraft’s founding and operation looks at previous evaluations of it, presents Meskwaki evaluations of it, and examines how Tamacraft fit into the broader framework for Tax’s activity with Indians in Tama and beyond. The birth of Tamacraft essentially represents the end of the Chicago students’ presence at Tama, but not the end of action anthropology. While this form of anthropology at Tama was winding down, action anthropology on the national level was continuing to grow and become more concrete. Just as Meskwaki had shared in the creation of action anthropology, they also helped shape Tax’s involvement in Native American affairs. The basic concept—of whites helping Native Americans without telling them what to do—was the foundation for his involvement in a watershed event in the devel-

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opment of Indian political activity: the American Indian Chicago Conference. The right for Indians to continue to exist as Indians, or cultural self-determination, came at least partly out of the first field party’s goal of allowing the community to continue to exist so that individuals could make their own choices to stay or leave. Similarly, the initiatives that Tax eventually was able to launch at the Meskwaki settlement, especially related to education and economic development, both grew directly out of suggestions from individual Meskwaki. Education and economic development became part of Tax’s vision for Indian communities nationally. The settlement’s brush with withdrawal of federal services alerted Tax to the necessity for, and desirability of, self-determination for Indian communities. The genesis of Tax’s interest in developing Native American leaders is less clearly rooted in his experiences with the Meskwaki, but the timing of his first endeavor in that area suggests a link. At the end of the University of Chicago’s project at the settlement, the community had a scholarship program for their youth and a fledgling business. Tax had an enhanced reputation and a core of beliefs regarding Native Americans: they had a right to continue to exist as Indians, and they had a right to make their own decisions. Those beliefs guided his interest in education, community development, and the right of Native Americans to speak for themselves. Need for Something Dramatic Records of the action anthropology project fail to make clear exactly how Sol Tax found out about the Emil Schwartzhaupt Foundation, but the foundation had turned to the University of Chicago Sociology Department for help in formulating a program to spend the bequest of a German immigrant, Emil Schwartzhaupt, who had made a fortune in the liquor business. By 1953 the trustees had decided on a program of grants that encouraged education for citizenship. The availability of $3.5 million in grant funds may have been general knowledge in the social sciences departments at Chicago. If not, Tax’s mentor at Chicago, Robert Redfield, was close to the sociology department, having earned his doctorate in that department, and

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knew the action anthropology project well, since his daughter Lisa had participated in the first field party.2 Tax’s proposal for funding attacked a fundamental problem that often occurs when groups of people from different cultures live in close proximity to each other—the inability of individuals to communicate across cultural barriers. As the proposal put it: “We find a general lack of mutual understanding which has caused Indians mistakenly to view their neighbors as oppressors and caused other Iowans to consider the Indians as a burden which threatens to become heavier. Specific misunderstandings have prevented constructive cooperation so that the ‘problems’ continually get worse instead of better and thus increase the fears and suspicion. Thus is formed a vicious circle.”3 According to the proposal, the federal government’s policy of withdrawing services to Indians created more strain on relations between whites and Meskwaki, as settlement residents feared the loss of federal support, and whites resented the tax burden that might result. Tax proposed a cross-cultural education program that would teach whites to respect Meskwaki culture and show Meskwaki that white ways could have value. This part of the proposal extended the effort the anthropologists began in 1953 to have a small group of whites and Meskwaki meet and discuss plans for a series of radio and television programs about the Meskwaki. Other community education programs were planned, using adult education classes and discussion groups formed through various civic groups such as Rotary Club and the Federated Women’s Clubs of Iowa.4 The funding application further built on the project’s previous work by proposing to work with the settlement residents to support and then persuade Congress to develop an Indian policy to replace withdrawal, possibly along the lines of the trust fund idea the anthropologists had broached during the 1952 school controversy. Before pushing the Meskwaki to take over responsibility for health and education services administered by the federal government, Tax planned to help settlement residents gain confidence in running their own affairs by helping them set up a community center and a health clinic.

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He argued that “a community center would go far in reawakening among the people the art of working together for common ends.” Tax also hoped to attract private investment to the area that would finance small industries providing jobs for the community.5 Although Tax claimed that the program was based on years of listening to what the people wanted, the plan presented to the Schwartzhaupt Foundation actually took much of the responsibility for deciding what to do out of their hands and put it in the hands of the anthropologists. The underlying goal remained: helping the community to exist so that individuals could make their own decisions whether to stay or leave the settlement. The specifics of achieving that goal, as laid out in the grant proposal, came from Tax and the students. While community members had complained about inadequate health care, no Meskwaki had ever asked for radio and television programs. Although they did not oppose it, few people had campaigned on behalf of the alternatives to withdrawal that the anthropologists previously suggested. In the end, however, Tax remained flexible enough so that individuals could influence the path of action anthropology. The grant transformed the action anthropology project from an ad hoc exercise scraping by on a shoestring budget and the unpaid labor of graduate students to an operation that had a blue print for action and funds to implement it. In 1955 Fred Gearing became assistant director of the project, based in Chicago. Robert Rietz, who had taken a position in 1950 as an anthropologist with the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the reservation of the Three Affiliated Tribes in Fort Berthold, North Dakota, returned to Tama to be project field director. Tax began teaching an undergraduate course in action anthropology that would serve as a recruiting device for future summer participants in the project. Plans took shape for an independent evaluation of the project, including a public opinion survey of Iowans. The project gained visibility within the profession of anthropology when Tax and his students began writing articles and giving papers at various professional meetings. Action anthropology seemed at last to have arrived.6

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Rietz spent his first summer concentrating on getting the scholarship program going. In light of the pressure to do something tangible for the community, however, Rietz was not satisfied with that. He came up with the idea of a gathering spot for teens, a community need since the American Legion Post was no longer available for youth, and the barn on which Steve Polgar and Meskwaki youth worked had been torn down. As one student wrote, Rietz “felt there was a need to do something dramatic like open a teen canteen.” Rietz talked with parents about the idea before cooperating with the minister at a Presbyterian church that served the settlement to open the canteen in the church basement. The canteen included a juke box, coin-operated television set, and board games.7 Besides working on the scholarship program, Rietz also looked, without success, for an Iowa group that could sponsor the adult education program on cultural differences that the Schwartzhaupt grant envisioned. Rietz also tried, again without success, to interest the University of Iowa College of Medicine in starting a health clinic at the settlement. At the same time, Tax and Gearing worked from Chicago on trying to find a company interested in operating a factory on the settlement to provide work for residents, using as a model a plant at the Turtle Mountain Reservation in Belcourt, North Dakota, where Ojibwa workers made precision jewels for the watch industry and U.S. military.8 In the summer of 1956 the action anthropologists again found themselves involved in a dispute between the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the settlement residents over the commmunity’s school. A fire caused by arson damaged a classroom. The bia responded to the crisis by canceling the kindergarten and moving the seventh graders to the public school in Tama. Once again the bia approach was to press the tribe to agree to an already-decided-upon action. The people supported only a temporary transfer of the seventh graders to Tama until the school was repaired, and insisted on keeping the kindergarten. Rietz moved slowly, preferring to let Meskwaki come to him and ask for help if they wanted it. “Have conspicuously refrained from being Sir Galahad on this thing, to the point of losing

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time on it, but not at sacrificing of anything for Mesquakies,” Rietz wrote. At the request of Tribal Council Chairman Ed Davenport, Rietz attended an emergency council meeting on the school matter. Later, while the council lobbied both Republican representative H. R. Gross of Iowa and Republican senator Bourke B. Hickenloooper of Iowa to have the kindergarten restarted, Rietz pressured the Indian bureau to involve the community in its plans for the school. In a letter to bia officials after Meskwaki women petitioned Rietz for his help, Rietz reiterated the importance of early preschool education for children who did not speak English. He also decried the unilateral action of the bia in announcing the cancellation, so reminiscent of the bureau’s tactics in 1952. “It would be difficult to imagine a more destructive type of action than this, in terms of its consequences for the Mesquakie community, unless it were to be another threat of complete government abandonment,” Rietz said. By acting without community involvement, Rietz said, the bureau kept the Meskwaki ignorant of how to administer basic community services and prevented the settlement from developing its own leadership. Later, the tribal council passed a resolution asking Rietz to help fight the bia decision, and Rietz co-signed with Davenport letters to the bureau seeking to overturn the decision. In the fall of 1956 the bureau restarted a kindergarten program but disappointed the community by excluding children younger than five and a half.9 As Rietz concentrated on action anthropology at the ground level, Tax, Gearing, and other students in Chicago began trying to systematize and refine some of what they had learned during the previous years at the settlement and expand into new areas. Chicago graduate student Robert K. Thomas, a Cherokee from Oklahoma, studied differences in factions among the Meskwaki versus other tribes. Gearing worked on refining his theory of a “vicious circle” in white-Meskwaki relations that was included in the Schwartzhaupt grant application. Lisa Peattie concentrated on explaining a type of planning used in action programs that required both the goals and the means of reaching them to remain flexible throughout a project.

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Other students searched archives for records on Meskwaki history to fill in gaps from 1900 to 1945 and considered the practical value of knowledge of the Fox kinship system.10 Tax and his students presented papers on such topics at Central States Anthropological Society meetings in May 1955 and May 1957 and a “Values in Action” symposium in December 1957 sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation. Tax also extended the practice of action anthropology beyond Tama and beyond Native Americans to the integration of the Hyde Park community around the University of Chicago. Besides working in community organizations to ensure that the neighborhood became integrated rather than ravaged by white flight, Tax spoke on action anthropology in the urban context at the Society for Applied Anthropology annual meeting in June 1957. Gearing also wrote articles about action anthropology that appeared in American Indian and the University of Chicago Magazine. The action anthropologists also began working on a book, titled A Reader in Action Anthropology, which pulled together many of these papers. The Schwartzhaupt grant provided the money for salaries for Gearing, Rietz, and Thomas, in particular, which allowed them to try to meet their obligations to the scholarly side of action anthropology.11 While carrying out their scholarship activities, the action anthropologists began spending less time at Tama. Steve Polgar blamed this in part on “the Fox becoming highly unfashionable among the student body at Chicago.” While three graduate students joined Rietz at the settlement in the summer of 1955, the field party for the summer of 1956 consisted of Rietz and only one other student—Eugene Fugle—and he does not seem to have stayed the entire summer. Irven DeVore worked at the settlement in the summer of 1957, and Albert Wahrhaftig was there in 1958. Other students from Chicago, such as Thomas, also made brief visits. Only sketchy fieldnotes remain from these students. Since Rietz did not leave detailed fieldnotes, the record of day-to-day interaction between action anthropologists and Meskwaki in the final years of the project is spotty, especially compared to the early years.12

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Building a Meskwaki Business Despite the grand blueprint for television shows, a health clinic, a community center, and cross-cultural communication, the Tama Project took a new course over the winter of 1955 and 1956. Instead of the activities the action anthropologists had laid out, the project turned instead to promotion of a cooperative Meskwaki business. In Tax’s annual report to the Schwartzhaupt Foundation announcing the new direction, Tax said only that “the opportunity arose to launch a new major activity, a small community industry.” Tax believed that the new industry, known as Tamacraft, could be the vehicle for accomplishing all of the cross-cultural education that had been laid out in the original application.13 Apparently “the opportunity arose” from individual Meskwaki themselves. As early as 1949 Henry Carter had told Rietz about his attempts to organize an arts and crafts cooperative a year earlier.14 Many Meskwaki did beadwork and made various souvenirs that they sold to tourists, but they did so as individuals and competed with each other to sell the items at fairs and powwows. The idea behind the cooperative attempted in 1948 was to buy supplies together to cut costs and to coordinate sales rather than compete.15 Nothing developed from that lead until after Rietz returned to the settlement in 1955 with the Schwartzhaupt funding. One day in October Rietz stopped at the home of a Meskwaki artist, Charles Pushetonequa, to buy one of his paintings. Rietz joked that they should put together a paint-by-numbers kit so the public could make their own versions of Pushetonequa’s work. In Rietz’s jest Pushetonequa saw the chance to create a project that could benefit the entire community. Rietz and Pushetonequa launched an arts and crafts cooperative called Tamacraft with Pushetonequa drawing the pictures and picking out colors for the kits while Rietz bought the supplies. Within two months, eleven Meskwaki had joined the cooperative to make the paint-by-number kits. They soon branched out to silk-screening Christmas cards and later making ceramic tiles. Other community residents began helping out in the production,

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although they did not formally join the cooperative. Sales increased slowly, but in 1956 the group sold $3,000 ($23,044 in 2007 dollars) worth of craft items.16 Financial records for Tamacraft are sketchy, and sales records almost nonexistent, but the small cooperative for a time appeared to be on the verge of something bigger. Eventually, the cooperative sold Tamacraft products not just locally but in other parts of the country, especially the Southwest and in some national park gift shops. Although the Bureau of Indian Affairs had a program to encourage Indian arts and crafts, the Meskwaki project seemed to have little relationship to it. When Tax arranged to get Meskwaki products sold in national parks, he wrote directly to the National Park Service rather than going through the bia crafts program.17 In order to advertise and buy better equipment to cut production costs, Rietz arranged for Tamacraft to receive a $6,000 loan from the project’s Schwartzhaupt grant in the fall of 1956. Tax thought that if the federal government’s termination policy came to fruition, settlement residents, whose formal business ties with outsiders had been limited to renting some of their land to farmers for cash to pay their property taxes, would need to know more about white ways of doing business. Therefore, he rationalized the loan on the grounds that a successful arts and crafts cooperative run in keeping with Meskwaki values would increase people’s self-confidence and skills for dealing in the white business world, while reassuring them that adopting some white practices would not threaten their own culture. At the same time, such a venture would gain them respect among their white neighbors. Mindful of the grant application’s goal of making the Meskwaki better citizens, Tax also said that a thriving business would “hasten the day when the Indians will administer their own vital community services” rather than relying on the government. Tax saw preparing the tribe for self-determination, not producing greeting cards, as the main purpose of Tamacraft.18 One man remembered how Tamacraft operated. “Each person owned a piece of the action. . . . The more they produced, the more money they would have made,” he said. Rietz helped solicit orders.

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At one time he had a stack of unfilled orders eight inches high, so he recruited new people to learn how to silk-screen. “We never were salaried,” recalled one woman. “We always just put it back into materials.” Instead of receiving cash for their work, co-op members built up equity in the business. After five years of operation, total worker earnings amounted to $10,589, or $72,301 in 2007 dollars, but much of it was unpaid.19 The existence of Tamacraft stirred genuine interest in the settlement among Tama civic leaders. Instead of hoping the Meskwaki would fade away into Iowa’s white mainstream, Tama promoters decided to capitalize on the presence of Indians. Walter J. Willett, the county attorney who ten years earlier had depicted the settlement as a lawless no man’s land, suddenly saw the settlement as an asset to the Tama area. He pushed a Chamber of Commerce plan “to build a big celebration around the Indian Powwow each year. Business people would dress up like Indians to give the tourists more ‘atmosphere.’” Chamber members dreamed of attracting twenty to thirty train cars filled with tourists from Chicago who would come to experience the exotic Indian spectacle right in the middle of the nation’s staid heartland. To show its support for Tamacraft, the chamber bought some of Tamacraft’s ceramic tiles to give as gifts to farmers attending meetings at the Pioneer Seed Corn Company in nearby Toledo. Some Tama whites began to look at settlement residents in a new light. Wayne Henderson’s wife and sister-in-law were invited to join the Tama chapter of the Business and Professional Women’s Club. Henderson and another man from the settlement joined the Tama Chamber of Commerce. Rietz called the memberships “a tremendous thing, of course. Nothing quite like it has ever happened before between Tama and the Settlement. It could have some rather dramatic consequences—some not pleasant.” He did not elaborate on the last comment.20 The Meskwaki did not jump on the chamber idea of retailers dressing up like Indians to promote the powwow. Soon Tama whites came up with an even more threatening proposal—that whites take over management of Tamacraft. Convinced that Tamacraft would

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go bankrupt once the university’s commitment to the settlement ended, Tama whites lobbied Rietz to turn the business over to white managers or even to allow whites to buy a controlling interest in the operation. Rietz rebuffed their efforts.21 The record of day-to-day interaction for 1957 and 1958 is spotty, again because fewer people kept notes than in the early years of the project. The attempt to concentrate on scholarly affairs joined other factors in accounting for the smaller groups on the settlement. For one, Rietz, his wife, and two children lived in the Chicago house near the settlement, leaving less room for graduate students. Furthermore, when Rietz and Meskwaki began working together on Tamacraft, some of the work was done in the house and took up more space. Rietz also preferred smaller groups. When a University of Chicago student expressed interest in coming to Tama and helping with Tamacraft, Rietz discouraged the idea, saying there was little but clerical work for her to do. Rietz also wanted Meskwaki to take care of as many matters as possible. He feared that if too many university people were around, the new business would become the university’s project, rather than the Meskwaki’s. Thus, field training for graduate students receded into the background as a reason for the project’s existence.22 Correspondence between Tax, Gearing, Rietz, and others, however, shows that Tamacraft and the scholarship program swallowed much of Rietz’s time. As Gearing put it, “Rietz is killing himself” working on Tamacraft.23 Yet interaction with Meskwaki outside of those formal projects went on as it had since 1948. Tax spoke at the powwow in 1957, the centennial of the original Meskwaki land purchase. People stopped by for coffee. All day and into the night, the Chicago house buzzed with people coming, going, working, talking, and listening. Albert Wahrhaftig described a summer night when he sat at the kitchen table reading. Rietz worked on Tamacraft inventory sheets. Rietz’s kids played in the bathtub. Others went about tasks put off during the day when Tamacraft workers had been busy in the kitchen. He wrote in his fieldnotes:

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The night came in with [Sullivan] who hesitated through the screen door, accepted a chair and coffee, and sat silently. Work spread around and about him as it does whenever we wait for an Indian to get around to revealing what brings him to us. . . . The little ritual started. [Sullivan] would speak only to Bob, and as Bob waited through the long interval between statement and response, he worked. Sure, Bob knew [Sullivan’s] grandfather—used to joke with him all the time, even tried to play squaw dice with him once. His brother. Yes, Bob knows his brother, too—fine fellow. Talk and action interweave, slowly, ramblingly toward the goal. [Sullivan] was on the way home, walking the gravel road that winds from the highway up into the settlement. And he had seen the witch. He hadn’t stopped to see much—one glance at the body floating and no legs was enough. He had run back here to light and warm. . . . I drove [Sullivan] home. I am a stranger here; neither witches nor people yet have cause to deal with me. As long as he was with me in the car he was safe. . . . Now he was no longer silent, but he was uncommunicative. Burst of talk added up to nothing—nothing more than reassuring noise for us both. We didn’t see the witch. I didn’t anyway, and no gesture or feelings from [Sullivan] indicated that we were nearing it or had passed it. At a side road he motioned the car to a stop, and with a word of thanks got out and walked off, not too quickly, not unconfidently. I drove back a little quickly, I think.24 Thus, ten years after the first Chicago students arrived at the Meskwaki settlement, some things had changed, and some had not. The Schwartzhaupt grant was due to run out in 1958. Originally, Rietz was supposed to return to Chicago in January 1958 to begin working on a book about action anthropology at Tama, but because Tax thought the Meskwaki were not yet ready to run the scholarship

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program and Tamacraft by themselves, Rietz stayed on into the summer. Then he returned to Chicago to become director of the American Indian Center, established to help Indians who had relocated to Chicago under the bia relocation program and partly funded by a Schwartzhaupt grant Tax had helped secure. When Rietz left, the university sold the house where the students had lived. Tamacraft co-op workers kept up their silk-screening and tile-glazing. Youth on scholarship went on with their studies. The visits of Chicago students, however, came to an end.25 American Indian Chicago Conference: Forum for Indian Voices In the years before Sol Tax had funds to establish programs such as Tamacraft, he and the students had tried to assist the Meskwaki with political problems, such as the bia plan to drop its responsibility for the settlement school. With action anthropology on the ground in Tama at an end, Tax and his students extended their action anthropology efforts on the national scene. Outside Tama, the political activity with which Tax and his students are most often associated is the American Indian Chicago Conference, held at the University of Chicago June 13–20, 1961. Tax began thinking about a conference on Indian policy in April 1960 when he learned that the university had funds available from the Ford Foundation for policy conferences. Initially, he proposed a conference of sixty people, including social scientists, government policymakers, members of Congress, Native Americans, and others to discuss legislation for an Indian policy to replace the termination policy of the 1950s. With the presidential election coming up in November, Tax envisioned the conference as an opportunity to influence the direction of policy in the new administration.26 In the fall Carl Tjerandsen, Tax’s friend and executive secretary of the Schwartzhaupt Foundation, independently suggested that Tax organize a conference to write a report on Indian affairs. Over a sevenweek period from September to mid-November, the concept of the conference crystallized in Tax’s mind, and he began contacting people to help, including a former University of Chicago student, Nancy Os-

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treich Lurie. In mid-November, Tax learned that the Schwartzhaupt Foundation board had approved a $10,000 grant for a conference on Indian affairs. The news came as Tax arrived in Denver to attend a conference sponsored by the National Congress of American Indians. While there, Tax came up with the idea that Indians should write the first draft of the report. Indian leaders such as former bia official D’Arcy McNickle and ncai executive secretary Helen Peterson embraced the idea of the conference. Over the next six months Tax used the contacts and credibility he built up among Indian organizations in the 1950s to organize support for the conference.27 From January to June 1961, Tax was immersed in planning the conference. He helped organize a steering committee of Indians to oversee conference planning and preparation of the draft report of the conference. No detail was too small for Tax’s attention. He solicited news coverage from major television networks as well as newspapers and magazines. He negotiated with railroads to secure the best possible rates for Indians coming to the conference and arranged for free admission to the Chicago White Sox baseball game for conference attendees. He solicited colleagues to write background papers on key issues such as health and education so that participants could be prepared for conference discussions. The background paper on education carried strong echoes of Tax’s program for the Meskwaki in its suggestion: “Instead of demanding that the Federal Government provide more of the same types of schools it has furnished in the past, it might be better for the Indian peoples themselves to assume control of the schools and to try to create better kinds of schools.”28 Tax seems to have made a genuine effort to avoid taking over the planning himself and to leave decisions up to Native Americans. For example, he told the first meeting of the conference steering committee in February that he was willing to drop the conference if they decided it was a poor idea. Minutes of the committee’s meetings (taken by Lurie) show that after the introductory session Tax spoke little at the meetings and left the discussion to the Indians, unless called upon for information.29

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To avoid the appearance that the conference was being run by the ncai, Tax tried to include as many people as possible. He solicited names for possible attendees not only from the ncai, but also from tribes not affiliated with that group, from tribes not recognized by the federal government, and from Indians living in urban areas away from their reservations. Eventually, the conference mailing list approached five thousand names. A newsletter published periodically in the months before the conference kept people up-to-date with decisions of the steering committee, as well as with what Indians were saying about the conference, as the registration form invited comments. Tax tried repeatedly to convince Native Americans that they, not he or other whites, would write the conference report. “That is for you and all Indians to decide,” he said. To demonstrate that Indian involvement was genuinely being sought, Tax sent Indians on the mailing list a marked-up draft of the conference report. Tax urged them to write their own suggestions on the draft and take them to one of nine regional meetings being held in advance of the conference to revise the draft. He told them, “The draft is intended to be a starting point.”30 Conference planners, however, eventually ran into Native American politics. Tax had come up with the name American Indian Charter Convention for the June meeting, but at the first meeting of the steering committee, members voted to drop the word “charter” because some Indians associated it, negatively, with the business charters granted to tribes that created governments under the Indian Reorganization Act. In order to preserve the meeting’s acronym, they substituted the name American Indian Chicago Conference.31 Some Indians remained suspicious. Earl Boyd Pierce, a Cherokee from Oklahoma, feared the meetings would not faithfully represent Indian views and that the conference would alienate the Bureau of Indian Affairs, a concern not shared by other Native Americans in the planning meetings. Others, according Lurie, thought the meeting was a “big plot on Sol Tax’s part” to be appointed commissioner of Indian affairs under Kennedy, a job that he did not want. Although

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the American Anthropological Association meeting endorsed the conference, a few skeptics remained. University of Oregon anthropologist Theodore Stern wrote Lurie that he would not help with the conference because “[M]y time is already far too short to squander it on this ill-considered project.” A staff member of the Bureau of American Ethnology also wrote that he was “exceedingly dubious” about the chances of getting a representative group of Native Americans to attend “or to get anything much useful out of those who do attend.” Many Indians, however, embraced the idea of writing their own ideas for Indian policy into a report. A Winnebago man from Minnesota wrote Tax, “This has been my dream for as long as I can remember and I myself believe that the A.I.C.C. was sent to the American Indian by the Great Spirit.”32 Some five hundred Indians gathered at the University of Chicago campus in June 1961. After five days of debate, they adopted a Declaration of Indian Purpose that called for ending the termination policy and changing bia policy in order to educate tribes on how to take over their own affairs. The declaration said the basic principle behind the reorientation of bureau policy recognizes “the desire on the part of Indians to participate in developing their own programs with help and guidance as needed and requested.”33 Some historians and Indians have seen the conference as a pivotal event in Native American political activity. The assessment of Stephen Cornell is that the conference demonstrated a growing “supratribal consciousness” in Native American political activity and helped make it more potent. James B. LaGrand has called it “one of the most important Indian meetings of the twentieth century.” Troy R. Johnson termed the conference’s final document “the first pan-Indian call for self-determination, a key element and driving force that would provide the staying power during the nineteen-month occupation of Alcatraz Island.” Dorothy R. Parker attributes to some Indians the belief that the conference was “the most significant event in recent Indian history” because it permitted Native Americans to have a voice in their own affairs. Parker quoted Gerald Wilkinson, a delegate and later director of the National Indian Youth Council, as saying that the

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conference turned a group of people from different tribes and parts of the country into “‘one people. . . . With the Pan-Indian Movement for Indian rights in the 1960s and 1970s, it is easy to forget the profundity of the revolution that occurred in Chicago.’”34 Never one to be modest about his accomplishments, Tax wrote an article explaining the significance of the conference as a largescale test of the principles of action anthropology. Tax concluded that Indians at the conference made an important contribution to science by proving the value of action anthropology. He said that the meeting had demonstrated the validity of his theory that action anthropology could help people further their own goals rather than have them imposed. He reached for the most powerful analogy he could think of—the atomic bomb—to describe the significance of the meeting: “What the Fermi ‘Pile’ in Stagg Field was to atomic science, the aicc (across the street, and twenty years later) was to a new type of social science.” Recalling the conference fifteen years later, Tax called it the “greatest event in my memory” because it gave Native Americans the chance to speak for themselves.35 Others found the significance of the conference not so much in its contribution to science as in its contribution to Indian political activity. Lurie called the aicc a “seed-bed for the growth of a protest movement among young Indians.” Young Indians attending the American Indian Workshop for College Students served as pages at the conference and later met to form their own, more confrontational organization, the National Indian Youth Council.36 Tax sensed the importance of Indians knowing what Indians from other tribes were up to. After the conference he sought a way to keep up the communication that the conference newsletters had fostered. Within a year, he successfully pursued a grant from the Carnegie Corporation that included the establishment of a newspaper called Indian Voices, whose publication began with a mailing list based on the aicc conference registration. Bob Thomas edited the paper.37 One of Tax’s initial goals for the conference was to have an effect on the development of federal Indian policy in the new administration of President John Kennedy. Tax had invited the president to the

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conference, but Kennedy sent his regrets. Anxious to see that the conference’s declaration got to Kennedy, Tax accepted Secretary of Interior Stewart Udall’s suggestion that tribal delegates present a copy to the president at the White House. Months went by, however, without Udall following up on his offer. Prompted by a news report of Kennedy meeting with a group of beauty queens, Tax wrote Senator Paul Douglas from Illinois to ask him for help in arranging the ceremony. “Please do not think that this is forgotten; and it could be politically damaging for Udall and Kennedy to show so obviously that they do not keep simple promises,” Tax wrote to Douglas. With Douglas’s intervention at the White House, the ceremony finally was held on August 15, 1962.38 The Kennedy administration paid as little attention to the recommendations in the declaration as it did to the details of its presentation. Udall had appointed his own task force on Native American affairs, which recommended restricting termination to Indian communities with income and educational levels similar to those of whites. Udall’s selection for commissioner of Indian affairs, Philleo Nash, underwent a brutal confirmation process dominated by a rehashing of McCarthy-era charges of communist leanings that tainted his relationship with lawmakers influential in Indian matters. Confronted with strong termination sentiment in Congress, Nash followed a status-quo policy that avoided controversial legislation.39 Tamacraft’s Demise and Its Evaluations While Sol Tax and his students worked on federal Indian policy on a national stage, Meskwaki carried on with Tamacraft, with little oversight from Rietz after he left Tama in 1958. In 1962 an Iowa State University home economist wrote to Tax about a recent visit she paid to the settlement. Elizabeth Hoyt said when she stopped at the Tamacraft headquarters, a woman told her the enterprise was in financial trouble, people had not been paid for their work, and orders were not being met. According to Hoyt, whites from Tama still were trying to take over Tamacraft, and settlement residents feared that Rietz would give in to them.40

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While acting as director of the American Indian Center in Chicago, Rietz continued to keep records for Tamacraft and helped procure supplies, find new customers, and so on. Meanwhile, Tamacraft workers decided to pay themselves wages rather than pay commissions to their salesperson in western states. As a result, wholesale orders had slumped, and Rietz said that “the crafts project is going downhill fast and will eventually bankrupt itself, if its present direction continues.” He added that the decision on letting whites take over ownership of Tamacraft was up to the Meskwaki, not him, and that he hoped that they would refuse. He admitted, though, that the only alternative to white control was an outsider who would offer advice but let the people involved in it run the operation. Unable to find such a person in Tama, Rietz suggested in a letter to Tax that Hoyt might be interested in taking it over.41 Hoyt had no such interest, especially since she misread Rietz’s letter and thought he was suggesting she take over Tamacraft while letting the Meskwaki think they were still in charge. Her interest was in writing an article about Tamacraft that would contradict Tax’s speeches at anthropological meetings touting its success. Hoyt found that Meskwaki felt exploited by the University of Chicago research project. In a letter to Tax, she quoted one woman as saying, “Are you also coming with false promises? I suppose you have a lot of money to make this study, but are you going to deceive us? Before I answer any questions, I want to know that.” Furthermore, Hoyt accused the action anthropologists of having disparaged settlement residents and having tried to manipulate them, based on an isolated statement she found in a history of the project compiled by the researchers.42 Hoyt went on to write both a journal article and a book about the Chicago anthropologists’ project with the Meskwaki. In her book, Tama: An American Conflict, Hoyt accused the researchers of designing a plan and pretending it was what the community residents wanted. At the same time, however, she criticized the researchers for being too candid in the history of the project that they compiled and that some Meskwaki bought and read. Hoyt wrote: “It made it clear to the

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Indians that they had been the purposive subjects of experiment. They had not had the confidence of those very friends who attacked the administration of the Bureau of Indian Affairs as ‘unnecessary and patronizing.’ It was natural that their bitterness should react on research in anthropology and on to Iowa State University’s study of the settlement.”43 Hoyt described the scholarship program and Tamacraft enterprise as having only a “weak” grounding in economics and faulted the anthropologists for not calling in economists to teach Meskwaki how to run a business. Tax was furious when he saw Hoyt’s work. He wrote his former students about the “nasty things” she had written about the project and asked Rietz to write a reply. In addition, he pressured the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research to contact Hoyt and work with her to get responses from other anthropologists who would comment on it, in much the same way that the anthropology journal Current Anthropology did with the articles it published. To Hoyt, Tax wrote, “You will be disheartened now to know that you have inadvertently libeled my students, me, and the University.” Tax feared that her work labeling not only Tamacraft but the entire program at the settlement a failure would undercut other work in which he was engaged with Native Americans, including a project to revive the written Cherokee language in Oklahoma. In a long letter to Hoyt, Tax defended the researchers as having made sincere efforts to help individuals, if not everyone in the community. He wrote: “Tamacraft helped a few—it was never intended to be a whole-community cooperative; the scholarship program helped a few; both I hope indirectly helped the whole. We would have liked time and energy for many enterprises like Tamacraft and the scholarship program; but as you know even these overtaxed us. But even if we had done much more and helped more people at the level we did, resentment of others might have overweighed the mixed feelings of those helped.” Tax said the experience with the Meskwaki taught him how difficult social problems were to solve, and he admitted that “even social science well applied cannot do much.”44 The ruckus Tax raised over Hoyt’s writings seems justified from

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a professional point of view. Her work sounded amateurish. Many of her points are based on references to Indians in general. While purporting to exhibit an understanding of settlement thinking, Hoyt consistently referred to its residents as “the Tama Indians” rather than their preferred name, “Meskwaki.” She did indeed seriously misread the intent of the anthropologists in accusing them of manipulating the Meskwaki. In turn, Hoyt seriously underestimated the abilities of the people in giving the impression that they were unable to influence the researchers, were helpless to resist any “manipulation,” and were unsuccessful in imposing some of their own goals on the anthropologists’ agenda. After all, the grant application Tax wrote may have called for television programs, but in the end, in cooperation with a Meskwaki, the television shows were dropped in favor of the Tamacraft enterprise, something similar to what settlement residents had been talking about for a long time. Finally, as the researchers knew but Hoyt did not, they were only the latest in a long line of anthropologists to be the target of Meskwaki criticism. Tax might have assumed that a competent editor would have seen the problems in Hoyt’s work and rejected the manuscript. In fact, Hoyt admitted her journal article was published mainly because she knew someone on the journal’s board. She said Human Organization was interested in her book manuscript but wanted her to do more research with the Meskwaki, which she declined to do. Instead of shrugging off her criticism, Tax took aggressive action to persuade her that the work was wrong, to round up letters from others to respond to her, and even to encourage a prominent foundation to intervene. In addition, Tax gave the pertinent parts of Hoyt’s manuscript and the project history written by the researchers to a third party and asked for a review of the accuracy of Hoyt’s charges. The reviewer found the charge of explicit manipulation to be exaggerated.45 The lengths to which Tax went to rebut Hoyt’s charges and to intimidate her from publication demonstrate not only his sensitivity to criticism but also the importance of the action anthropology project to him. Much of Tax’s reputation within anthropology and Indian circles rested upon the positive depiction of the efficacy of action

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anthropology. Although Tax had published some of his work in Guatemala in his book Penny Capitalism, his major professional preoccupation throughout the 1950s had been with the Meskwaki. The papers he delivered on action anthropology had put him at the forefront of his profession. He became chairman of the Chicago anthropology department from 1955 to 1958, president-elect of the American Anthropological Association in 1958, and received the Viking Fund Medal in 1962 for his outstanding anthropological achievements. To have his work with the Meskwaki labeled a failure—even a fraud—would have been devastating to his reputation.46 At least as important to Tax was the impact that it would have had on his status within Native American circles. The American Indian Chicago Conference had enhanced Tax’s position as an advocate on behalf of Indians who was consulted by both the heads of major Indian organizations and white politicians. Grants, which were the mother’s milk of research projects, would have been hard to come by with his stature diminished, and Indian groups might have shied away from working with him. As Bob Thomas wrote Tax, “The news [about Hoyt’s criticism] is all over Indian affairs circles now.”47 In 1970 Hoyt was still trying to publish her book manuscript. She had taken Tax’s advice and shown the manuscript to some ninety people, and then she had rewritten much of it based on their comments. She still had not found a publisher. Tax’s response was much more subdued the second time around. He told her that she had misread the anthropologists’ intentions and exaggerated the Meskwaki complaints. “The discrepancy between my impression of what we tried to do, and yours, suggests the hypothesis that when you came to work in Tama and heard complaints about us—as we did all the time we were there—you got an idea set in your mind that influenced everything else you heard and read,” he wrote. That was the end of the matter.48 Competing Evaluations By 1970 Sol Tax was much more secure about criticism of the project. A second critical account of the Chicago project had appeared, written by Larry R. Stucki. Based entirely on the history of the project

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compiled by the Chicago anthropologists, the article, “Anthropologists and Indians: A New Look at the Fox Project,” concluded that the project’s chief flaw was a “lack of continuity,” both in personnel and programs. Stucki compared the researchers to “do-gooders” who are at first enthusiastic about helping a community and then move on to greener pastures after finding the situation more difficult than they expected. He also criticized the anthropologists for never arranging for an independent evaluation of the program and for failing to live up to their goal of creating programs based on what the Meskwaki wanted. Instead, Stucki said, the anthropologists came up with ideas and explained them to people with whom they chose to work. Stucki overlooked the influence of people like Ed Davenport, who planted the seed with Tax for the scholarship program, and Charles Pushetonequa, who did the same with Rietz on Tamacraft.49 Compared to Tax’s initial reaction to Hoyt’s work, his response to Stucki’s was subdued. In correspondence to former students on other matters, Tax mentioned the article and suggested people might want to write a response. Polgar responded that he agreed with the article’s contention that the program should have had a formal evaluation. Polgar wrote, “While it bothers our critic that we had no plan, no consistent direction and no evaluation, only the last of these bothers me. To formulate a plan would have meant taking even more initiative into our own hands (and away from the Mesquakie).” Tax did, in fact, have a plan, which he altered readily when Pushetonequa made another proposal.50 Tax was so nonchalant about Stucki’s article that he planned to use it in the action anthropology course he taught, along with Polgar’s rebuttal. For one thing, Tax did not think Stucki had fundamentally misinterpreted the goals and actions of the project the way he believed Hoyt had done. In addition, Tax’s standing was even more secure than it had been when Hoyt’s article seemed so threatening. He had withstood whatever criticism might have come his way as a result of her article. Furthermore, traditional anthropology was under much more severe attack itself than was action anthropology. Partially in response to the Vietnam War and other signs of social

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unrest, anthropologists were asking themselves about the relevance of their work to problems of the modern world.51 Stucki’s evaluation of the project suffered from being based solely on the project’s documentary history. Without access to the researchers’ fieldnotes, Stucki could not see the ways in which Meskwaki manipulated the anthropologists or the types of suggestions people made to them. He had no way to really gauge how true the researchers were to their pledge to help in whatever the community wanted done. He also based too much of his analysis of the program’s success or failure on the single issue of whether Tamacraft remained a solvent business or whether those who received college degrees from the scholarship program returned to the settlement. Stucki’s criticism that no evaluation was done is accurate, but he failed to suggest what an evaluation would look like. A public opinion survey of Tama whites to investigate whether their attitudes toward the Meskwaki had changed would have been of little value since the television and radio programs the researchers suggested were abandoned. And Meskwaki were not laboratory animals who could be segregated into two groups—one exposed to the anthropologists and the other kept in quarantine from their effects. Even a survey of Meskwaki would have presented challenges. Would community members have cooperated with another group of outsiders asking questions? Or would this new set of questioners have received the one-word answers and rebuffs that greeted Chicago students in 1948 and succeeding summers? A more recent evaluation of Tamacraft is more comprehensive than either Hoyt’s or Stucki’s. In an article titled “The Fox Project: A Reappraisal,” Douglas Foley faults the Chicago researchers for claiming that they worked more closely with Meskwaki people than they actually did and that they tended to “initiate action projects with little prior collaboration.” In so doing, Foley attaches too little importance to the genesis of Tamacraft. He describes Tamacraft as “apparently the collective brainchild” of Pushetonequa and Rietz, without explaining why coming up with the idea fails to count as meaningful collaboration. The co-op project clearly was something

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Pushetonequa and other settlement residents wanted to do, based on their earlier attempts to start such a venture. Foley also contends that Rietz was Tamacraft’s fund-raiser and business agent, suggesting his role displaced potential Meskwaki leaders. Since white bankers in Tama would not extend credit to the group, it is unclear what alternatives co-op members and Rietz had other than to use funds from the Schwartzhaupt grant. Assessments of the Chicago project certainly would have been negative had Rietz and Tax encouraged the start of a business without figuring out some sort of seed money to get it off the ground.52 Even after moving back to Chicago in 1958, Rietz kept his name on Tamacraft’s bank account, at the insistence of the bank, leaving him personally on the hook for any overages. Although Rietz was financially responsible for the project, in 1962 he was not handling the group’s money. He wrote Tax that “they do this themselves. They have been banking their money and paying their bills directly, without keeping me informed.” Rietz did not interfere with this arrangement, saying he kept “such records as the Fox [Meskwaki] want me to keep.” Surely trusting Meskwaki with a blank check to his personal finances is some form of collaboration.53 While scholars tend to blame Tax and Rietz for the failure of the small business, Meskwaki views are more mixed. Wendy Schmitz joined the cooperative and enjoyed the work, but she said the location of Tamacraft on the University of Chicago property just off the settlement gave some people the impression that it was a project just for a few families rather than the entire community. Other people did not join, Schmitz said, because they seemed to lack an entrepreneurial spirit. Furthermore, she said, the lack of capital kept the enterprise from being set up efficiently. Even with the University of Chicago’s $6,000 loan, workers did much of the silk-screening and other tasks in the kitchen and living room of the university farmhouse where Rietz and his family lived. As Schmitz explained, “I would have continued on, but either the glaze compound or the raw turpentine got to my fingers and gave me an allergy . . . Gloves made it worse, the itch. You’ve got to have a shop for it, too, with ventila-

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tion and all that, [instead of] inhaling all those fumes. You just got to have everything, a shop and all the equipment in one place.”54 Others put the blame for the failure of Tamacraft on members of the community. Sean Carter still refuses to speak to members of another family who participated in the project. He contends that some family members cheated the enterprise by intentionally spoiling many tiles they made so that they could sell them as seconds for their own profit rather than for the benefit of the cooperative. One woman who did not join the cooperative said it fell apart because the family most active in it went on to other things. Another man said the cooperative would have become a fantastic business by now had it continued. He blamed jealousy among the workers’ wives for keeping some people away but suggested that the biggest problem was the one cited by Rietz—the decision to pay themselves wages rather than pay their sales people. “It was the Indian, he wanted big money . . . It was nobody’s fault but the Indians’,” he insisted.55 Workshops, Higher Education for Indian Students While Tamacraft existed on the settlement and whatever benefit it had was confined to its boundaries, the impact of other parts of the Chicago project extend beyond the settlement, through the way it shaped Tax’s thinking about Indian affairs. The Meskwaki scholarship program, for example, shaped Tax’s activities regarding Indian higher education nationally. Tax’s experience in sending Meskwaki youth to college demonstrated the difficulties that many Indian students faced when beginning higher education. In Tax’s view, Indian youth struggled to reconcile their Indian values with the demands of the college environment. In 1955 Tax, graduate student Fred Gearing, and the Reverend Galen R. Weaver of the American Missionary Association of the Congregational Church came up with the idea of a summer workshop for Indian college students.56 As the workshops evolved over the next four years, people involved with them expressed their purpose in various ways. Rosalie Wax, a Tax student who conducted a follow-up study of the workshops’ ef-

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fects, defined their major purpose as being “to help the young Indian in finding himself.” Young Indians often fit into the sociological category of “marginal” people, caught between two cultures and unable to see themselves as fitting into either one. Teaching them about their history and heritage was supposed to help them establish their identity. “Even the knowledge that other young people are in the same situation often increases their self-confidence and their ability to cope with their own problems,” Wax wrote. Wax listed the workshops’ secondary purpose as developing “wise Indian leadership.” She argued that future Indian leaders needed not only knowledge of their home community but also a perspective that included the problems of Indians as a whole.57 Gearing directed the first workshop at Colorado College in Colorado Springs in July and August of 1956. The twenty-five students recruited from tribes around the nation studied Indian policy from colonial times to pending legislation affecting Indians. In all, 259 students attended the workshops between 1956 and 1966.58 After getting the workshops off the ground, in 1961 Tax turned them over to D’Arcy McNickle, director of American Indian Development, who moved them to the University of Colorado at Boulder. Among the attendees at the first aid-sponsored workshop was Clyde Warrior, who became one of the leaders of the National Indian Youth Council founded after the students attended the American Indian Chicago Conference in June 1961. Warrior’s attendance at the summer workshop later provoked a controversy over the value of the program. In his 1969 book, Custer Died for Your Sins, Vine Deloria Jr. accused the workshop of removing students from real-life problems and getting them lost in an abstract world that did not help meet the pressing needs of contemporary Indians. Furthermore, Deloria blamed the workshop for contributing to Warrior’s death due to alcoholism several years after he attended the workshop. According to Deloria, the workshop’s emphasis on Native Americans as caught between two cultures reinforced Indians’ sense of failure. When anthropologists teaching the workshops described marginal status as a contributing factor to alcoholism among Indians, students inter-

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preted that another way. Deloria said, “Real Indians, they began to think, drank and their task was to become real Indians for only in that way could they re-create the glories of the past. So they drank. I lost some good friends who drank too much.” Ironically, by the time Deloria’s criticism of the workshop was in print, the National Indian Youth Council had taken over sponsorship of the summer workshop. In 1969 the niyc renamed the program the Clyde Warrior Institute in American Indian Studies.59 The only attempt at an evaluation of the program stressed the successes of former students, rather than their failures. In 1961 Rosalie Wax mailed a survey to the 106 students who had attended a workshop. Based on 53 completed questionnaires, Wax concluded that the students “came to realize that Indians are not utterly isolated and powerless peoples,” but peoples equipped with the abilities to solve their problems in the future as they had during their long pasts. Wax quoted one woman student who wrote that after the workshop, “one no longer feels alone or lost in an advancing society.” Far from the workshops reinforcing a sense of failure, Wax found that they gave students a “newly-found sense of strength, hope, and eventual accomplishment.” Wax found that about one-fourth of her respondents believed the workshop helped them the most by teaching them about other tribes and helping them see the world from the perspective of Indians rather than their own tribe. Some respondents also asked for more practical information about how to help their tribes, and Wax recommended that such information be incorporated into future workshops.60 Wax also tracked the status of the 53 respondents and found that 23 were still in college and 24 had received college degrees, including 16 who had done some graduate study. “Since dropout from school and especially from college continues to be a problem for Indian students generally, the relative success of Workshop students is noteworthy,” she said, although she declined to ascribe their success to the workshop’s influence. Wax was also encouraged that at least 16 of the college graduates were working in Indian communities, including one who was secretary to the tribe and another who was vice

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chair of the tribal council. She added that 6 workshop students who did not respond to the questionnaire were serving as tribal officers or were active in Indian affairs generally.61 The authors of a recent work on the development of Indian activism in the 1960s, Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee, credit the summer workshop with bringing together and training a new generation of Native American leaders. Paul Chaat Smith and Robert Allen Warrior list a number of wellknown Indians from the 1960s as participants in the workshops. Mel Thom and Bruce Wilkie were both workshop participants and original members of the National Indian Youth Council, which organized 1964 fish-ins in the Pacific Northwest to draw attention to tribal fishing rights.62 The Meskwaki experience paralleled that of workshop participants from other tribes. The first class included two students from the Meskwaki settlement. Decades later, one of the Meskwaki attendees recalled the many friends she made there among students from other Indian tribes. Ruth Morris said, “You learned about the culture and history of another tribe” and so realized that many of them had experiences similar to those of the Meskwaki. Of the six settlement residents who attended workshops, all received at least undergraduate degrees. One eventually received two master’s degrees and served as executive secretary to the tribe.63 Based on the comments of the former participants, the workshops conceived by Tax and conducted by his students contributed to the growing pan-Indianism of the 1950s. They also gave confidence and education to young people who could provide leadership or professional services to Indian communities. The workshops had influence far beyond the attendees, as similar study groups sprang up. Tax students Rietz and Thomas helped start and lectured at a similar workshop for Canadian students at the University of Manitoba in 1966.64 Education remained a theme in Tax’s participation in Native American affairs. Tax served on an advisory committee to the National Study of American Indian Education, a three-year study financed by the U.S. Office of Education. The study’s final report,

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released in December 1970, had as one of its central themes that Indians should be given the authority and responsibility for education in their communities. The similarity of the report’s language with Tax’s views is apparent in statements such as, “Indian people are gaining experience with education and are becoming able to use it and to direct it toward their own goals. How far and how fast they go should be decided by them. . . . From now on the decision-making about Indian education and the execution of these decisions should be increasingly in the hands of Indians.” The recommendations certainly were in tune with the times. The Office of Economic Opportunity had allowed Native Americans to run their own Head Start programs in the mid-1960s. An Indian-controlled elementary school opened in 1966. In 1969 the National Indian Education Association was founded, and the first Indian-controlled community college, Navajo Community College, opened in 1968.65 A few years later Tax participated in the founding of the first Indian-run institution of higher education to offer Bachelor of Arts degrees, Native American Educational Services Inc. The Chicagobased college without walls, which opened in 1974, aimed to educate Indian leaders who would use their knowledge and skills to work on problems within their communities. Students worked full-time in Indian programs or communities and, as part of their degree requirements, designed a field project that would allow them to apply their knowledge and academic training to helping Indians. The requirement is reminiscent of Tax’s hopes for the scholarship program he had started at the Meskwaki settlement. He had hoped that Meskwaki would earn professional degrees and then return to the settlement, but instead many went elsewhere. naes degree requirements tried to maintain links between college-educated Indians and their communities. Initially affiliated with Antioch College, naes offered courses at its center in Chicago, the Fort Peck Reservation and Northern Cheyenne Reservation, both in Montana, and the Santo Domingo Pueblo in New Mexico.66 Tax did not conceive the idea of naes, but the college president, Faith Smith, said his involvement was crucial to the college’s forma-

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tion. Smith, an Ojibwa, knew Tax from his involvement at Chicago’s American Indian Center, and when she and others began talking about setting up a college, Tax was the first person she sought out for advice. “I think without Sol we would not be here. He gave us credibility when we didn’t have a clue about what credibility meant. He gave us credibility that we didn’t have and got out of our way. When we asked for help, he would do cartwheels [because he was glad to help],” recalled Smith. She described Tax as a working board member, who was full of optimism and ideas, yet totally without an ego. As Indian board members discussed problems, Tax “would sit almost withdrawn [during] discussion and then when it was over, he would have a hundred suggestions,” said Smith. “If people threw them out, he would just go on to other ideas. You couldn’t offend him, not that we would try.”67 naes always faced financial difficulties, partly because it did not receive any federal support until 1980. One time, the college received an offer from a Canadian group that seemed to offer financial stability. As Smith and other college officials discussed the proposal, Tax mostly listened, except for asking a few questions. After hashing out the matter, the college decided to reject the offer. Only then did Tax reveal his opinion. “He about cheered,” recalled Smith. “He would never say to us, don’t do it, this is trouble, but he was elated when we turned it down.” Smith said that approach was typical of the way Tax worked with Indians. He provided access to important people, offered suggestions, and made himself available in any crisis, but never tried to tell Indians what they should do.68 Tax’s influence on naes showed up in many ways. Smith attended one of the summer workshops he organized for Indian students, as did one of the other founders of the college. Tax student Bob Thomas served on the naes board. Tax wrote letters on behalf of naes, sometimes to grant-making organizations in support of naes funding requests and other times to University of Chicago faculty seeking advice on college problems. He personally supported the institution by donating not only cash but some of his papers to the archives of the new institution. He also saw to it that Rietz’s papers went to naes.69

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Community Development for Indian Reservations Sol Tax’s involvement in ways to improve the standard of living of residents of Native American communities was another area in which action anthropology’s impact stretched beyond the boundaries of the Meskwaki settlement. While Robert Rietz and the Meskwaki concentrated on Tamacraft, Tax participated in the activities of national organizations that touched the lives of Native American communities far away from Tama. Tax brought to that work the same philosophy in which he came to believe through contact with the Meskwaki: that people in local communities should run their own affairs, even if they need outside subsidies or advice. By the mid-1950s Tax served on the board of the National Congress of American Indians and one of its affiliates called Arrow Inc. Arrow focused on projects that “are designed by Indians for Indians and are carried out by Indians.” One of the projects was run through American Indian Development, or aid, headed by D’Arcy McNickle, former Bureau of Indian Affairs administrator. aid helped Navajo in Crownpoint, New Mexico, build a community house, train Navajo for tribal leadership, and establish a public health education program that brought together medicine men and Western doctors. Tax supported McNickle through disputes with the Arrow board and helped obtain $128,800 in grants from the Schwartzhaupt Foundation for aid.70 The 1961 Chicago conference, however, had brought Tax into prominence outside of anthropological and Indian circles. In 1966 Tax snared another opportunity to influence national policy when President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him to a White House Task Force on Indian Affairs. In order to underscore that Indian viewpoints must be taken seriously, the first thing Tax did after being appointed was to send the members copies of the Declaration of Indian Purpose and other documents from the Chicago conference. The second thing he did was to complain that the task force had only one Indian member. By 1966 both were vintage Tax approaches to helping Indians. At the urging of Tax and task force member Rob-

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ert Roessel, the panel did meet with a small group of Indian leaders to solicit their views. Like Tax, Roessel had long been an advocate of Indian-controlled education.71 At the group’s first meeting, Joseph Califano Jr., special assistant to the president, compared it to the task forces that had laid the basis for the Great Society in 1964 and 1965. Califano asked the group to rethink Indian policy from the ground up. To encourage the task force to take a no-holds-barred approach, Califano stressed that the members would work in secret to protect them from political or other repercussions resulting from their openness to new approaches. Keeping the task force—and especially his involvement in it—a secret was too much to ask of Tax. Soon after being invited to join the group, Tax wrote McNickle that he was on a “small confidential” White House task force on Indian policy that he believed reflected a genuine interest on Johnson’s part in Indian affairs. “On it [the task force] I have become convinced that the leopard may indeed be changing his spots,” Tax wrote.72 Tax was soon disappointed. Johnson did not send a message to Congress on American Indians until March 1968. In the meantime Tax and other members of the task force went public with their recommendations. The task force report called for phasing out government boarding schools and setting up all-Indian local school boards plus a national Indian education advisory board. It also recommended special tax incentives and a $200 million Indian Development Corporation that would issue bonds to encourage businesses to locate near Indian land. Furthermore, it attacked government job-training and placement of Indians as inadequate, urged the transfer of bia functions to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and suggested the federal government promise not to terminate federal aid unless requested to do so by a tribe. When Johnson finally released his own proposals, he did include several recommendations from the task force, including establishment of Indian school boards and a $500 million revolving loan and loan guaranty fund for economic development of Indian land. Although the president promised to end “the old debate about ‘termination’

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of Indian programs” and to stress self-determination and freedom of choice for Native Americans, he stopped short of promising not to terminate federal aid without a tribal request.73 For the most part, however, Tax’s concerns about economic development were more human than financial. He believed development projects that failed to take advantage of anthropology’s knowledge about other cultures could never succeed. Beginning especially in the 1960s, Tax tried to make that point to policymakers wherever he could. His appointment in April 1960 to a panel associated with the United Nations gave Tax a worldwide forum for his views. Tax accepted an invitation from A. E. Manell, executive secretary of the U.S. National Commission for unesco, to become a member of that panel, which was responsible for U.S. participation in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. It is not clear how Tax came to the attention of the commission, but he certainly had an international reputation based on his work in Guatemala and his teaching in Mexico City, as well as his work in launching the journal Current Anthropology. In 1958–59 Tax traveled throughout the world to hold twenty-six conferences to enlist scholars in the launching of the journal, creating an international network of colleagues and friends who would communicate through the journal.74 Whatever the impetus for his selection to the panel, Tax used his position to push for greater use of the social sciences in the design and implementation of economic development projects, something to which unesco already was attuned. In 1952 a unesco working paper on the teaching of the social sciences called for closer ties between economic planners and social scientists. The paper noted, “There is no question here of reducing science to a technique. In particular, the object of the social sciences is not to work out programmes of action; but social science will insist more and more that the results of their work should be taken into account when such programmes are being worked out.”75 Tax’s international reputation resulted in demands on his time that often conflicted with his work with Native Americans. For example, in April 1961, as Tax was putting together the American In-

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dian Chicago Conference, unesco invited him to be scientific director and general rapporteur of a seminar on rural life in Central America. The invitation noted that Tax was the unanimous choice of the participating agencies. Tax could only find time to write a paper for the seminar, but in declining the invitation he acknowledged his interest in the topic. He wrote, “By now it is evident that the method developed here as ‘action anthropology’ has something important to offer in the application of social science to community development.”76 Even in the midst of planning for the American Indian Chicago Conference, Tax took time to complain to the U.S. National Commission for unesco about a government publication on economic development in poor countries. Although it was titled, “Work with People,” Tax complained that it addressed only working with “land, things, institutions,” and not people at all. As an example, Tax cited its treatment of Guatemala: it dismissed the importance of small, Indian-owned farms that they “struggle to keep and work (and for which they might fight and die).” He added that it was clear that the U.S. government failed to recognize the value of the human sciences in international economic development projects and that “we have been losing out partly because” of that.77 Tax’s call for using the knowledge of anthropology in designing development projects exposed a situation that he found frustrating: Few American anthropologists were willing to work with unesco or with development programs in general. As Tax phrased it, he found himself working “against some others who want to keep the social sciences pure,” or non-involved in anything but the academic aspects of anthropology. At the November 1962 American Anthropology Association meeting, Tax and David G. Mandelbaum, a psychologist from the University of California–Berkeley, put together a panel on applying social sciences to economic development. Tax also supported what became known as the “Mandelbaum Project,” which called for having American social science organizations help unesco develop a long-term program. He persuaded the American Anthropological Association to endorse the proposal.78

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Although Tax was reappointed to the commission in 1964, he became frustrated with unesco’s limitations. Disputes based on cold war politics often erupted within unesco, as when the United States objected to use of the term “peaceful co-existence” as too communistic. Other times, the U.S. National Commission came under attack, as when it was accused of trying to brainwash American schoolchildren into supporting world government. Under such circumstances, Tax realized, it would be difficult to create meaningful change through unesco. He suggested working through professional organizations, such as the American Anthropological Association, or having the commission advise Congress directly on bringing the knowledge of the social sciences to bear on world problems.79 Cultural Self-Determination Sol Tax believed that Native Americans had a right to retain whatever aspects of their cultures that they found valuable. The development of his thinking regarding cultural self-determination coincided with his conclusion that Indians were not going away and were not going to assimilate into white society anytime soon. Indians had survived more than 450 years of contacts with Europeans and Euro-Americans and had still retained a cultural separateness while adopting some aspects of white society, and Tax saw no reason why that process would not continue. The realization marked a change in his thinking from the time at which he established the field training program at the Meskwaki settlement. He had charged the first group of students in 1948 with considering what changes would occur in the Meskwaki settlement in the next twenty years, including whether the settlement residents might become just like other Iowans. Tax’s belief in Indians’ right to cultural self-determination brought him into the controversy over Indian religious freedom and the ceremonial use of peyote, a small cactus whose buttons, when dried and chewed, can produce euphoric feelings and psychedelic effects. Native Americans in the southwestern United States have used peyote for at least four hundred years. Beginning in 1888 the Bureau of Indian Affairs campaigned against peyote use, remaining hostile to its

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use until 1934, when Commissioner John Collier directed bureau employees not to interfere with Indian religions.80 Members of the Meskwaki tribe began using peyote in 1903 or 1904 after learning of the plant from the Oto and Iowa in Oklahoma. In 1916 a band of twelve Meskwaki were regular peyote users. R. L. Russell, superintendent of the Sac and Fox Sanatorium in Toledo, reported to the bia that their use of peyote seemed to have had no harmful effect. “These people seem to be sincere in its use, and do not indulge in peyote debaches [sic],” he wrote. Nevertheless, in 1925 the Iowa Legislature passed a law prohibiting the use of peyote, largely at the insistence of the superintendent of the Winnebago agency across the Missouri River in Nebraska.81 The Meskwaki group formally organized in 1942 when it received a charter from the Native American Church, which had incorporated in Oklahoma in 1918 as part of its strategy for thwarting passage of federal legislation prohibiting peyote. In their charter the Meskwaki described the goal of their church to be religious worship including “the recognized sacramental use of tobacco and peyote.” When the first cohort of anthropology students arrived at the Tama settlement in 1948, a small group of Meskwaki peyote users were still active. Lisa Peattie and Grace Gredys attended a ceremony with Jessica Jones.82 Tax had learned of the existence of rituals based on peyote while doing his dissertation fieldwork in the community in the 1930s and included a nine-page description of the beliefs and ceremony of the peyote users. He may not have attended a ceremony himself, since he credited the information in his dissertation to an informant and did not mention that he attended one of the rituals, although elsewhere he said that he attended a funeral, adoption ceremony, and clan ceremonies.83 Yet Tax had a favorable enough opinion of the peyote religion to sign a statement on peyote in 1951 when Time magazine printed an article quoting the anti-peyote sentiments of Arizona public health commissioner Clarence Salisbury. Tax’s colleague at the University of Chicago, James Sidney Slotkin, prepared a statement describing peyotism as a legitimate religion that blended Native American

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concepts of spirituality with Christian beliefs: “The belief is that God put some of his Holy Spirit into peyote, which he gave to the Indians. And by eating the sacramental peyote the Indian absorbs God’s Spirit, in the same way that the white Christian absorbs that spirit by means of the sacramental bread and wine.” Anthropologists Weston La Barre, David P. McAllester, and Omer C. Stewart joined Tax and Slotkin in signing the statement, which appeared in Science magazine in 1951.84 In 1954 the controversy over peyote again came to public attention when the Navajo tribal council agreed to reconsider a ban on the substance that it had adopted in 1940. The Native American Church planned to hold its 1954 convention on the Meskwaki settlement. Sensing an opportunity to promote the peyote cause, Sol Tax headed to Iowa with equipment for filming the conference in hopes of making a documentary explaining the importance that the peyote ceremony had for members of the Native American Church. At an open meeting of the church, Tax said that the documentary could undermine criticisms of the church by showing that it was a sincere religion. Church members, however, were unwilling to violate the sanctity of the peyote ritual and rejected Tax’s request to film the ceremony. While some members of the church worried that they had insulted Tax, he rushed to reassure them otherwise. He told the church members that “we could be no true friends of the Indians if when we wanted to help the Indians and discovered that we were trying to help in the wrong ways, if we should persist in our ways or be angry when our ways were refused. Instead we should simply try some other way.”85 Tax did find another way to help church members demonstrate their sincerity. Frank Nye, a correspondent for Time magazine who worked for the Cedar Rapids Gazette, showed up to cover the church convention. Church president Allen Dale already had rebuffed other reporters who had wanted to write stories about the convention, but Nye succeeded in ingratiating himself with Dale by developing some photographs taken by one of Tax’s associates. Dale’s wife liked the picture of him, so Dale agreed to talk to Nye. Tax already had urged

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Dale to talk to Nye since it would be a way to force Time magazine to print a more favorable article on peyote and the church. Besides promoting Nye’s interview with Dale, Tax also had supper with Nye twice and went over the reporter’s material to make sure it was accurate and to stress the genuine religious sentiment of peyote users. Tax’s influence was evident in the notes Nye sent to his editors at Time, in which Nye wrote, “First off, let me emphasize the sacredness of the peyote ritual to the Indian. After two lengthy and futile conferences attempting to get permission for Life to photograph [the] ritual, and one lengthy interview with Allen P. Dale, national president of Vinita, Okla., I am convinced that the religion has been misinterpreted in many journals. . . . Dr. Tax has observed the ritual in [the] past and confirms my belief as to its sacredness.”86 Besides working to secure favorable publicity for the church convention, Tax provided other kinds of aid. He helped the convention draft a letter asking tribes to contribute money to a fund for lawyers’ fees stemming from a lawsuit in Texas. Tax also made an acceptance speech on behalf of Slotkin when convention delegates nominated him to the church board of directors. Slotkin later began publishing a bulletin for the church and conducted a survey to document the extent of its membership. Although Tax was not allowed to produce a documentary and derived no tangible professional benefits from his trip, he stayed for the entire convention and participated in the all-night peyote ritual as a sign of good faith.87 Tax’s Reputation Assessing Sol Tax’s reputation among Native Americans is difficult, given the diversity of viewpoints among such a large group and the lack of sources involving all but a few leaders. His career bridged the period between the anti-termination political activity carried out by organizations such as the National Congress of American Indians and younger leaders who adopted more confrontational tactics for fighting federal Indian policies. Tax got along better with the older generation of leaders than he did with some of those in the second generation. He had worked closely with Helen Peterson, execu-

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tive director of the ncai, and with D’Arcy McNickle in planning the American Indian Chicago Conference, for example. The 1969 occupation of Alcatraz by Indians of All Tribes, however, demonstrated the limitation of Tax’s appeal. Tax was spending a year at the Stanford Research Institute when supporters of Indians of All Tribes came to the institute to seek professional backing for the occupation. Tax immediately responded with his usual enthusiasm. Shortly after visiting Alcatraz, he recruited eleven other anthropologists to sign a statement endorsing the aim of the occupation, that is, the transfer of the island to Indian control for use as an educational and cultural center. Besides issuing a press release endorsing the transfer, Tax also tried to persuade the Southwest Anthropological Association to hold a session of its upcoming annual meeting on Alcatraz. In cooperation with other anthropologists, Tax tried to form a national support group of anthropologists to raise money, provide legal and historical research supporting the Indian claim to Alcatraz, and educate the public on Indian rights. He also urged the American Anthropological Association to pass a resolution endorsing the transfer of Alcatraz to Indians.88 Tax’s whirlwind approach overwhelmed the Indian occupiers of Alcatraz. Steve Talbot, a volunteer instructor at the Native American studies department at the University of California at Berkeley, had contacted Tax on behalf of the island occupiers, and he recalled in a 1994 article that Tax simply took over matters. Talbot wrote, “A powerhouse of energy and accustomed to being in command, he just could not let the Indians run their own occupation.” At the request of Indians for All Tribes, Talbot said he cut off communication with Tax and tried to discourage his involvement. Talbot called Tax’s approach “patronizing” and included him in the ranks of the “oldguard anthropologists.”89 Besides the attack from the left, Tax also was the target of Indians on the right, such as Earl Boyd Pierce, the Oklahoma Cherokee who thought Tax was the Jewish mastermind behind a socialist plot to take over the nation’s anti-poverty programs.90 Tax was neither so far left nor so far right as either group consid-

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ered him. Besides working with mainline Indian organizations such as ncai, he also supported groups that engaged in confrontational direct action protests. He loaned $10,000 to a Chicago group that began carrying out sit-ins and other protests in support of the Alcatraz occupation. The Native American Committee, Incorporated, occupied the Chicago Bureau of Indian Affairs office and took over the annual meeting of the National Conference of Social Welfare in Chicago to demand an end to the paternalistic welfare system.91 The group paid back only $6,000 of the loan. Tax forgave the rest and wrote it off on his income taxes.92 Those who worked more closely with Tax than critics such as Talbot and Forbes stressed a different side of him. Faith Smith, president of Native American Educational Services, said Tax never tried to tell the naes staff what to do. Instead, he made suggestions and opened doors for them. For example, he used his contacts at the university to help recruit the president of the University of Chicago to serve on the naes board, something Smith herself would have been unable to do. “He could help you to get to people,” she said. Tax also backed up Smith on issues when even other Indians failed to do so, such as pressing for hiring an Indian for the new Indian center at Chicago’s Newberry Library. Smith made the suggestion to the board, which was one-third Native American. “Nobody backed me up, nobody, not even the Indians, except Sol, and he said ‘Of course.’ There were people in that room who wrote about self-determination, but never did it,” she said.93 Bob Thomas considered Tax’s ability to change with the times remarkable. He wrote Tax in 1974 that he was “really impressed by some of the things you are writing and saying these days. . . . It seems that you are still growing as a scientist, quite a feat at your age, and becoming wiser with age, even more of a feat for an academician in these days.”94 Much of Tax’s reputation to which Smith and Thomas were reacting was related to speeches and other public events in which he was involved. Tax may have enjoyed the public renown that came with that work, but his involvement in causes seemed to be moti-

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vated by real concern as well. He did many private favors for Indians that earned him no public attention. Through the 1960s and 1970s, for example, Tax served as a one-person information clearinghouse on Indian policy. Indians wrote to him for help finding a lawyer to handle a claims case, for information on Indian hunting and fishing rights, and for help in legal matters. Letters that Tax received from Indians asking for help indicate that they respected his knowledge and trusted that he would help them, whether or not they were satisfied that he actually did so.95 Tax’s efforts in these matters were not the types of things that resulted in journal articles or advanced his academic career in other ways, since few people beyond the individuals involved knew about it. For example, he took a personal interest in the case of a couple who wrote to him for help in getting custody of their granddaughter. Tax testified at a custody hearing on their behalf and helped them win custody. The grandfather sent Tax a postcard conveying his respect for Tax and his appreciation of how he was “always helping the American Indians whenever possible. So thanks a million.” No request seemed too unimportant or too much of an imposition. For example, one winter night an Indian who came to Chicago to take his son to a basketball game realized he was short of cash when he arrived. The man called Tax at home to ask for a loan, and Tax drove to a downtown hotel to give the man ten or twenty dollars.96 Tax was not in a position to help Indians financially on a significant scale, but he did what he could. He routinely refused honoraria for speeches to Indian groups and often donated payments from other sources to a charitable cause. He often came up with novel ideas for providing help. Few Indians could afford to buy many books, so Tax set up a special account at the Smithsonian Institute’s Center for the Study of Man for making educational materials available to Indians at low cost. He contributed some of his own honoraria to the fund and then persuaded a publisher to print an overrun of books for sale at low prices to Indians after the authors agreed to give up their royalties on the overrun copies.97 Did all of this add up to a paternalistic relationship with Native

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Americans? Native American activists from the 1970s have said yes; others who worked more closely with Tax over a number of years have said no. For others, the answer must revolve around a judgment of how intrusively Tax attempted to manage Indians’ affairs for them, as well as a recognition of continuing evolution in Tax’s approach. If critics such as Foley are correct that Tax started projects with little Meskwaki input, Tax certainly did not run them once they were in operation. Tax and Rietz left Tamacraft in Meskwaki hands. When it came to Tamacraft, Tax practiced what he preached about the freedom to make mistakes, leaving decisions up to cooperative members. He did not tell naes board members to turn down a financial offer he thought was not in their best interests, although he was glad they did. He trusted the Native American Committee with $10,000 of his own money and did not press for repayment. He trusted Indians at the American Indian Chicago Conference to come up with their own recommendations, confining his role to housing, transportation, and a myriad of other details. He did not leave Native American friends in the lurch. After the aicc gathering, he wrote repeatedly to the Kennedy Administration to arrange for Native Americans to present their report to the president. He did not please everyone, for a myriad of reasons, but it is hard to say that Tax made a career of telling Indian people what was good for them. Impacts on Individuals While the ramifications of action anthropology beyond the Meskwaki settlement need to be considered in any evaluation of the practice, extra-settlement impacts are still an incomplete measure of its effects. Simultaneously, Tamacraft and the scholarship program do not deserve to bear the burden of proving the worth or folly of action anthropology at the Meskwaki settlement. Looking mainly at Tamacraft and the scholarship program to judge action anthropology is an approach that is at once both too narrow and too broad. Those enterprises were too thin of a slice of the action anthropology encounter on the Meskwaki settlement to be used as the sole determinants of the program’s success. While residents of the Meskwaki

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settlement bring a cultural preference for service to the community to their evaluation of the project, action anthropology did affect individuals in important ways. Among the two dozen Meskwaki whom I interviewed, I found a range of attitudes and involvement with the researchers. Some remembered Sol Tax well; others had been too busy with hunting and fishing to bother with the academics. Some became close friends with them. Others resented their presence. Many had little to do with them. Charles was one for whom the presence of the researchers was not a salient part of life from 1948 to 1958. His mother had died when he was young, and his father gave him little support, so Charles spent much of his youth in the woods of the settlement shooting deer for food or trapping muskrat, beaver, or mink for skins to sell. One time Bob Rietz hired him to mow the lawn at the project house, and Charles appreciated the pay. Otherwise, Charles said, “I was never around those students. I wasn’t one of the ones that [had] any contact with them. . . . I’ve always been kind of a loner.” Other people on the settlement talked about the students, but Charles was not interested. “A couple times they had parties out there for the students,” he said. “I went to one. I don’t usually go to parties. I don’t dance. I’m more of an outdoor person. My cousin asked me to go. To me, it was kind of dull. Some people was dancing and having fun. I just wasn’t into it.”98 Others who were in their teens during the project remember the social life Steve Polgar and other students brought to the otherwise dull settlement. William remembered working with Polgar to clean out an old barn for use as a community center where the young people had square dances. “I liked their project. They took us swimming and roller skating and took us all around, to Sportsman’s Lake for picnics, swimming and stuff like that,” he said. The students willingly accommodated the wishes of the young people. “We used to tell them what we liked [to do]. We would tell them, give them input [on] what we liked. They would agree. . . . My parents, they were all for it. They thought it was a good thing for us kids to do,” he said.

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William enjoyed Polgar, whom he described as down to earth. “You could become friends with him very, very easily. He was very warm, humorous. It seemed like people were always teasing him and he was able to tease back. He wasn’t shy,” recalled William.99 Tammy remembered parties at the project house and going places in the university car. “That old station wagon, there would be six to eight kids jammed in there,” she said. Remembering the dances in the old barn, Tammy recalled that the young people probably had more fun out behind the barn than with the activities or dances inside.100 On a personal level, many of the young people related well to the researchers. One man said he would sit and talk for hours with Rietz “about everything and nothing.” For some people on the settlement, the students were the first white people they really got to know. Except for military veterans, some adults who did not attend high school in town or have a job off the settlement had had little contact with whites. One woman acknowledged that when she said, “They taught me that there are some good white people.”101 Lisa Fredericks, daughter of Henry and Alice Carter, visited the anthropologists almost nightly with her parents and remembers eating supper there and then listening to the adults talk about the settlement and other topics. During one period she was depressed over the death of her grandmother. One of the students made a special effort to talk to her about her feelings and, over a period of time, helped bring her out of her depression.102 “We used to go up to that house and just talk and play games. . . . [Steve] used to have a blue station wagon. He used to drive us around,” recalled one man. When he grew older, he remembered how much the activities organized by Polgar and the others meant to him. “I think it was good for the kids. There wasn’t anything to do [otherwise],” he said. He credited the memories of those times with influencing his decision to become active in organizing recreational activities for current youth, such as baseball and volleyball.103 The presence of the anthropologists meant more than good times for William. He was in high school part of the time the researchers

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were present, and although he felt some of his teachers wanted him to excel, they never really expressed that to him. As for the students, however, he said, “I do think they really encouraged me to go to school.” He graduated from college and obtained a graduate degree. He worked in Iowa state government in matters dealing first with public health and later with Native Americans before serving as executive director of the tribe.104 Cathy Arrow, whose father had suggested the party to the first group of students, knew the researchers well and credited them with transforming her attitude toward herself. Her tall, thin frame made her feel awkward and increased her already shy demeanor. One of the women in the group told Arrow not to be ashamed that she was tall and to take pride in it. The talks with the researchers improved her self-esteem and taught her to think about the world beyond the settlement. “I realized there was something besides being poor and rugged and ragged and hungry,” she said. Married with small children, Arrow and her family were extremely poor, even living in a tent, because her husband was unable to keep a job. With the encouragement of the anthropologists, Arrow and her children moved to Chicago in about 1954, where she got a job. Once she was in Chicago, Arrow said the anthropologists taught her how to be “an urban person” with the emotional support and friendship they provided. Simply knowing someone in the city who would call and suggest they do something together eased the transition for her. For example, Arrow fondly recalled going swimming at the 57th Street beach in Chicago, where Polgar would lift her daughter on his shoulders and bounce her in the water.105 Arrow got a job in the dietetic office at the University of Chicago. At first she dressed plainly, but her anthropologist friends persuaded her to dress up and wear pumps and, as Arrow put it, to feel that “I could be somebody.” When her husband got sick and wanted to return to the settlement, she told him she and the children were not leaving and that he would have to go alone. Arrow believed she would not have had the courage to do that without the support of the anthropologists. After ten years in Chicago, Arrow moved to Colorado, where she was employed in social work.106

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Contact with the Chicago people also broadened the horizons of another woman. At the urging of Bob Rietz, Alice Carter ran for tribal council in 1957. She campaigned actively and was elected, becoming the first woman to serve on the council. In the same election, Ed Davenport lost his position on the council.107 Even people such as Arrow who knew the anthropologists well never fully understood why they were at the settlement. People frequently made statements like, “Apparently they tried to help people,” and “They didn’t actually say what they were here for. They were just here.”108 Conclusion The Tamacraft business and the scholarship fund did not abolish poverty on the Meskwaki settlement or transform relations between residents of the Indian community and Tama whites. Although the business went bankrupt and the scholarship program fell short of its $100,000 goal, they did partially fulfill the action anthropologists’ promise to help the people they studied. Settlement residents got practice in running a business. Young people went to college who otherwise might never have managed it. While the impact of the scholarship program seemed to be largely on individuals, some of those later held important positions within the tribe. Others, such as Cathy Arrow, saw her life take a different direction after being around the Chicago people. After participating in the creation of action anthropology, the Meskwaki community as a whole had varying degrees of success in affecting the path the project followed. By pushing for Tax and the Chicago people to begin to show results after six years on the settlement, Meskwaki residents encouraged Tax to produce something tangible. The seeds for the most visible projects—the scholarship fund and Tamacraft—did in fact come from members of the community. The grant that Tax eventually received for the project came from an application that he and the Chicago people wrote without direct involvement of settlement residents. It did incorporate some aspects of what many Meskwaki had been telling them for years—the need

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for better health care, for example. The community, however, spoke in multiple voices. The health clinic was dropped when Rietz hit upon the idea for Tamacraft after talking to a settlement artist. The new project satisfied the yearning for an arts and crafts operation that existed simultaneously with the desire for better health care. In the end, Tax and Rietz resolved the conflict between the competing voices and chose which way the project would go. The impact of the encounter between the Meskwaki and the Chicago anthropologists reached far beyond the boundaries of the settlement. The creation of action anthropology, which was shaped by Meskwaki cultural expectations, launched Tax into a prominent position in Indian affairs throughout the 1950s and 1960s. The ideas that Tax formulated in the early days at Tama—regarding Indian self-determination, education, cultural self-determination, leadership, and community involvement in development projects—were ideas on which Tax continued to work throughout his career. The precise amount of Tax’s influence on government policy is impossible to determine, but he did add his voice to those pressuring federal officials to reconsider its high-handed and paternalistic ways of dealing with Native American communities. More importantly, Tax also tried to make it possible for Indians to be heard, as at the American Indian Chicago Conference. If action anthropology resulted in nothing other than that conference, it still would deserve to be remembered. Ironically, the Indian political activism that the conference helped spark made it more likely that young Native American activists would consider Tax’s ideas outdated. A student once commented about the Chicago project that it had done more for the Chicago anthropologists than it had for the Meskwaki. Certainly the Meskwaki helped students earn degrees in anthropology and helped Tax become prominent in his field. The student’s dichotomy, however, is a false one. Indians far from the Meskwaki settlement benefited from the experiment with a new way to do anthropology.109

Epilogue

More than five decades after the first University of Chicago anthropology students came to the Meskwaki settlement, much had changed in the community. And much had not. Some issues that had bedeviled the community in the 1940s remained to be settled. New ones emerged. Old ones re-emerged in slightly different form. The tribal council government created under the auspices of the Indian Reorganization Act functioned for several decades as the undisputed legal authority on the settlement. It oversaw a growing Meskwaki fiefdom that included a profitable tribal casino, bingo operation, hotel, and convenience store. The largest employer in Tama County, the gambling operation and hotel employed more than 1,250 people. The hereditary chief, Jack Old Bear’s son, Charlie, remained an important symbol on the settlement, though he held only a janitorial position in the tribal center.1 Along with prosperity the gambling operation also apparently brought temptation. In October 2002 Meskwaki residents signed petitions recalling the entire tribal council, complaining, “They were not listening to the people.” Members of the community accused the elected council of holding closed meetings, hiring relatives, and behaving like dictators. The council accepted the petitions but refused to schedule recall elections and fired top tribal employees. The tribe’s constitution, adopted under the Indian Reorganization Act, had no judicial system to operate as a check against the council and no other provisions for situations in which the council defied the constitution. At a contentious community meeting, Charlie Old Bear rose and announced that he would appoint a new council. He

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did, and the new council took over the tribal center and the casino, reinstated the fired employees, and took up the reins of government, on the strength of a petition signed by 60 percent of adult tribal members. The elected council members, however, remained in office, if not in charge, and refused to recognize the appointed council.2 The elected council and appointed council remained in a stalemate after the U.S. District Court refused to take jurisdiction in the case, in recognition of Meskwaki sovereignty, which the tribe has so jealously guarded for years. The Bureau of Indian Affairs also refused to intervene, but by doing so continued to recognize the elected council. Meskwaki sovereignty counted for nothing, however, when it came to the decisions of state and federal agencies that regulate the tribe’s casino. The National Indian Gaming Regulatory Commission threatened to close down the Meskwaki casino if the elected council was not put back in control. Further pressure to settle the matter came from allegations that the chairman of the elected tribal council had pressured the tribe’s lobbyist for kickbacks. After a series of negotiations, the competing councils appeared to be moving toward agreement on holding elections in late spring of 2003, to be supervised by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In the meantime auditors for the state of Iowa pressed for reinstatement of the elected council by threatening to terminate the tribe’s compact with the state that permits gambling on the settlement.3 Unfortunately, an agreement on elections never materialized. The appointed council held elections, but the elected council would not recognize the results, and neither would the bia. With the federally recognized elected council not in charge of the casino, the National Indian Gaming Commission ordered the establishment closed. Federal marshals enforced the order, and gambling stopped. The closure put more than 1,250 people out of work and stopped the flow of $3 million a week in gross revenue into the tribal accounts. White observers were stunned that the Meskwaki would let the casino close and lose its revenue rather than compromise their principles in the dispute. Chairs at the casino’s slot machines and black jack tables stayed

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vacant, however, until the regularly scheduled tribal elections were held in October. Meskwaki voters tossed out the elected council members who were up for re-election and approved the recall of the four others whose terms were not yet expiring. At a special election in November, those four were replaced. In both elections Meskwaki voters chose the council members appointed by Charlie Old Bear. The Bureau of Indian Affairs recognized the election results, once again putting a federally recognized council in charge of the casino. After an audit the National Indian Gaming Commission allowed the casino to reopen on December 31, 2003.4 Throughout the months of controversy, Charlie Old Bear remained in the background except for the meeting at which he stepped in to appoint a new council, leaving the appointed tribal chairman to represent the tribe publicly. In a moment of crisis the people had turned to the hereditary chief, the embodiment of their unity and power as a community. A separation of powers, similar to the U.S. government’s separation of church and state, had operated for several decades. With his influence resting on cultural authority rather than an adopted constitution, the hereditary chief had left issues involving the world beyond settlement boundaries to a college-educated tribal administrator and the elected council. The constitutional crisis was a test of whether that system would survive, as well as a demonstration of the limits of Meskwaki sovereignty and the cultural authority of the hereditary chief under the tribe’s constitution. In a result that would have disappointed Bertha Waseskuk and others of the Old Bear community of the 1950s and 1960s, the constitution did survive the crisis. Once in power, the tribe’s first all–Old Bear council took no immediate steps to dismantle the 1937 constitutional government and revert to a hereditary chieftanship. Instead, the council members governed the tribe under the constitution their parents and grandparents had distrusted. They even made plans to strengthen the constitution. The council began writing a code of law and setting up a tribal court, using judges from outside the settlement. The Meskwaki Tribal Court will fill the gap

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that was left by the collapse of the bia-court from the 1940s and that was underscored more recently by the people’s lack of recourse when the elected council defied the constitution during the 2003 dispute. Through its hired lobbyists, the tribe pressed the Iowa Supreme Court to study how rulings from the Iowa courts and the tribal court would affect each other, yet another manifestation of the tribe’s continuing concern for its sovereignty.5 After the federally mandated hiatus, the gambling operation resumed churning out the cash that brought prosperity to the community. A Meskwaki culture, distinct in many ways from that of surrounding whites, continued to find expression in community organizations, religious ceremonies, and kinship ties. As tribal historian Johnathan Buffalo explained, “The casino has changed everything, but the casino has changed nothing.”6 Casino profits funded settlement expansion and improvements in the quality of life. The tribe provided a new house, at no cost, to each household. A few small old houses or mobile homes remained, but most dwellings from the 1950s had been replaced by the more than two hundred new split-level or ranch houses paid for by the tribe. In keeping with Meskwaki egalitarian beliefs, none of the houses was ostentatious in design or ornamentation to make it stand out from its neighbors. The housing offer attracted back to the settlement some tribal members who had left under the government relocation program of the 1950s. To make room for them, casino dollars funded an expansion of the settlement land, from the 3,300 acres it encompassed in Sol Tax’s days to more than 7,000 acres by the early twenty-first century.7 In the early twenty-first century, the Meskwaki counted more than 1,200 people as tribal members, nearly triple the number when Tax first arrived in the 1930s. About half lived on the settlement and half elsewhere in the United States. Each Meskwaki member received about $2,000 a month from casino profits, with most of the monthly payments for tribal members under the age of twenty-one put into a trust fund rather than distributed directly to them. The per capita payments funded a Meskwaki lifestyle with many more material com-

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forts than that of the 1950s and more on a par with that of their white neighbors. Community residents no longer walked the roads or had to ask others for rides to town. Shiny new cars sat in the yards around the new houses. Youngsters raced up and down the roads on all-terrain vehicles. Schoolchildren kept up with their white peers in wearing the latest clothing designs.8 Tribal services compared favorably with those offered by small towns anywhere—a tribal health clinic, water and sewer, road maintenance, and trash collection, as well as an array of social welfare programs and youth recreation programs. The tribal center’s gymnasium provided a location better suited to youth’s needs than did the barn Steve Polgar and Meskwaki youth cleaned out for their dances in the 1950s. For tribal elders a senior center provided noon meals, fellowship, and games of bone dice, as well as programs on health and nutrition. Tribal leaders planned a nursing home so that infirm elders could stay on the settlement rather than in a nursing home in nearby Toledo and so that tribal members with diabetes who needed regular dialysis treatments could receive them on the settlement rather than traveling thirty miles to a hospital.9 A new settlement school opened in October 2001 to replace a sixty-four-year-old frame building that had been condemned. The $13 million facility, paid for by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, featured computers and high-speed Internet connections. Educational programming included culture teachers who taught traditional stories and simple Meskwaki words. More than two hundred students attended the school when it opened, a 40 percent increase over the previous year’s enrollment. Tribal leaders planned to add a high school to accommodate students who attended South Tama High School. Sol Tax would have approved of the arrangement under which the Meskwaki administered the school and the bia paid for 80 percent of the costs. The tribe provided the rest of the budget. Tax also would have endorsed, and possibly taken some credit for, the tribal program that promoted and financed college education for members of the community.10 The annual August powwow remained an important gathering

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time for the tribe. Not the big tourist draw it was before powwows proliferated in Indian country, the powwow was still a time when relatives returned home, families camped under the towering oak trees on the powwow grounds alongside the Iowa River, and some Meskwaki, including the youngest, showed off their fanciest dance steps. Although the powwow was less an economic necessity for Meskwaki families in the early twenty-first century, some still set up refreshment stands to sell Indian tacos, fry bread, and cold drinks to powwow attendees. Not even the tribal leadership dispute of 2003 could prevent the community from holding the annual powwow.11 Increasingly, the tribe participated as an equal with white governments in projects affecting the region. In 2002 the tribe joined with the governments of six Iowa counties to seek and win a $600,000 grant to plan an anti-poverty program for the region. The tribe also was a partner with the cities of Tama and Toledo in 2001 in presenting a Chautauqua simulating the ones offered in the area a century previously, including a reenactment of a late nineteenth-century visit of Charles Eastman, a well-educated Indian sent by the federal government to encourage the Meskwaki to send their children to the government school.12 At least once, the Meskwaki bailed out a white organization in the town of Waterloo, about forty miles northeast of the settlement. In part because of competition from the Meskwaki gambling operation, a dog track in Waterloo went out of business. The Waterloo Cattle Congress, a private organization that sponsored an annual fair, had provided the backing for the track and was threatened with extinction. The tribe bought the dog track for $9 million and bailed out the Cattle Congress, in part to block it from installing slot machines in the vacant dog track building to compete with the Meskwaki casino.13 The Meskwaki clearly possessed the authority to interpret and present their culture to those outside the boundaries of the settlement, unlike the days of Tamacraft when Tama’s white merchants dreamed of dressing up like Indians to lure trainloads of Chicago tourists to the town. In 2001 the tribe celebrated the 144th anniver-

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sary of its return to Iowa and the purchase of the settlement’s first eighty-acre parcel with the dedication of an exhibit on Meskwaki history in the casino. Commissioned and paid for by the tribe, the History Wall presented tribal history from a Meskwaki, rather than a white, point of view.14 Plans also existed for a tribal museum and history center to provide a broader forum for Meskwaki to present themselves and their culture to the world. On a more down-to-earth level, the tribe renamed settlement roads to reflect cultural pride. Names such as Battleground Road and Meskwaki Road celebrating Meskwaki culture and achievements replaced “Whiskey Bottom Road” and its unflattering connotations.15 Some longstanding legal issues were settled in ways that reflected the tribe’s concern with sovereignty. The tribe’s right to control hunting and fishing within its boundaries, at issue ever since the 1948 transfer of law and order responsibility to the state, was reaffirmed in 2002 under an agreement with the state of Iowa. The pact recognized the tribe’s jurisdiction in the matter, subject only to federal laws and regulations. Law and order, on the whole, remained a bone of contention, however, as it was in 1948. The Meskwaki tribal council objected that Tama County charged the settlement far more for law enforcement services than it did much larger white towns. After negotiations with the county broke down, the tribal council pursued plans for setting up its own law enforcement system. Given the tribe’s unhappy experience with its own system in the early 1940s, the council’s stance might have been a negotiating ploy, but the tribe’s gambling revenues made it a credible threat. In any event the county and tribe reached an agreement on a new contract in 2001 after the tribe began making its own plans.16 Cultural life continued to blend white and Meskwaki elements. Few Meskwaki practiced Christianity, and the missionaries were long gone. Only a small number of community residents, however, regularly joined in Meskwaki religious ceremonies. In the yards around their new homes some Meskwaki still planted gardens with beans, squash, and corn. Women still made fry bread. Meskwaki was still spoken, but mostly by elders. Children grew up knowing only Eng-

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lish. And even tribal council meetings were conducted in English because too few council members knew Meskwaki. Some community residents feared their language would fall into disuse. Sean Carter, who had become a respected elder, warned, “Language death is cultural death.” Disputes among tribal members, however, hindered efforts to start programs to reignite interest in the language. One elder phrased it in a way that would have sounded familiar to the anthropologists, “We can’t get together.”17 Intra-tribal dissension continued in many areas. One Meskwaki man, who had received some college education under Tax’s scholarship program, attended every council meeting to act as a watchdog on council actions. The council allowed him to raise objections and participate in discussions of tribal issues. People freely criticized the council, as they had in Tax’s day. Led by Cathy Arrow, who returned to the settlement when she retired, a group of settlement women successfully pressured the council to grant widows the same right to a new home on the settlement that men enjoyed. Some male elders, however, criticized Arrow for failing to respect tribal tradition. One wrote that tribal tradition required that women “not act aggressively in the forefront, stay at home peacefully where your authority is, and ends,” and that they ask their male relatives to take care of public matters.18 Despite Johnathan Buffalo’s hope that the casino changes were only material ones, he admitted that the return of Meskwaki to the settlement and their reincorporation into community life presented challenges. Some returnees brought values and attitudes toward the land that were more urban than Meskwaki, as reflected in support for draining swamps that breed mosquitoes rather than leaving them undisturbed. Others brought non-Meskwaki family members—white wives, children fathered by African American men, and Latino boyfriends. The tribal constitution’s regulations on tribal membership became increasingly contentious. Women who had married outside the tribe complained that their children had no status as enrolled tribal members, even though they might be half Meskwaki. Meanwhile, the children of men who married outside the

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tribe were enrolled and eligible for all tribal benefits, even though some had as little as one-eighth Meskwaki blood. With the ranks of the un-enrolled expanding, some Meskwaki pressed the council to enroll the mixed offspring of Meskwaki women. Others feared that increased diversity would lead to the demise of Meskwaki culture and urged changes that would limit tribal membership to those who were at least one-quarter Meskwaki. Clearly the debate over who was a Meskwaki remained as alive as it was in 1954 when the tribe discussed removing some “foreigners” from the settlement.19 More than fifty years after the first generation of Chicago students came to the Meskwaki settlement, few physical traces of their project remain. Samples of the ceramic tiles made by Tamacraft are on display in a case at the tribal center, but there is no explanation of their origins. Copies of the pamphlet that caused such controversy in 1954, The Mesquakies of Iowa, were on display at the 2002 powwow. This time no one objected to them, if indeed anyone even noticed. Despite the lack of physical reminders of the Chicago project, it would be wrong to conclude that the project left no mark on the Meskwaki. The project’s impact remained on individuals who attended college, formed friendships with the students, learned more about white people, or received the support they needed to start new lives in Chicago to escape the poverty of the settlement. The project’s impact extended far beyond the confines of the settlement, in the ways it foreshadowed, and likely helped produce, changes in Indian policies regarding the rights of Native Americans to remain culturally distinct, to be recognized as sovereign nations, and to run their own affairs. An Impact, Not a Resonance Just as visible reminders of action anthropology are hard to find on the Meskwaki settlement, some historians have argued that the influence of Sol Tax and action anthropology on the field of anthropology also is hard to discern. One historian of anthropology, George Stocking Jr., has argued that words such as “influence” or “impact” would overestimate Tax’s anthropological legacy. Instead Stocking

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limited himself to saying that some of Tax’s ideas had “resonances” in the field.20 Another scholar, anthropologist John Bennett, has written that by the time of the social unrest and reform movements of the 1960s and 1970s, those questioning the relevance of anthropology did not rely on action anthropology but rather on “left-humanist ideology.” The critiques of anthropology certainly were “reminiscent” of action anthropology, Bennett said, but he was not sure if those critiques actually had been influenced by the approach since their authors did not mention action anthropology.21 Without specific references, finding a Tax impact on the debate over the role of anthropology requires some work. The critique of anthropology to which Bennett referred grew out of the 1960s protest movements swirling around the Vietnam War, racism, and other social problems. The involvement of anthropologists in the controversial Project Camelot, a U.S. Army effort to study ways to stifle dissent in Latin American countries, gave some anthropologists added motivation for questioning their own profession’s role in maintaining what some saw as an oppressive status quo. Revelations of Michigan State University’s involvement in a project in South Vietnam and of the U.S. Army’s use of anthropologists to battle rebels in Thailand fueled the debate. Then in 1969 Vine Deloria Jr. added a specifically American slant to the issue of anthropologists’ role in society with his criticism of anthropologists’ relationships with Native Americans.22 Anthropologists rebelling against the old guard within the discipline demanded that anthropologists admit the impossibility of a value-free science, respect the people they studied as human beings, and move away from research that served to support American imperialist aims. The three radical essays laying out the manifesto of the advocates of a new approach to anthropology appeared in 1968 in Current Anthropology and set off a lively debate. Tax not only founded the journal in which the articles appeared, but he also designed the article’s publication format, under which the essays were circulated to fifty-one scholars and then published along with comments from the twenty-four scholars who replied. Although Bennett

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and Stocking are correct that none of the writings specifically noted Tax’s influence, Tax had created the forum for a worldwide scholarly discussion of the issue.23 Despite the lack of footnotes referencing action anthropology in similar articles, Tax did influence members of the generation that prompted the crisis of anthropology in the late 1960s and 1970s. Former Tax students such as Steve Polgar were active in the Society for Applied Anthropology by the time anthropologists were debating the relevance of their profession in the postcolonial world, and they stepped into the debate. In 1970, for example, Polgar pressed the Society for Applied Anthropology to pass a resolution urging more study of dominant groups oppressing poor people, and for more anthropology done by members of minority groups and nonWestern peoples. The resolution did not pass, but the society agreed to place the issue on its next annual program.24 Furthermore, Polgar edited a commentary section in the society’s journal, Human Organization. In the inaugural column Polgar and his co-editor said they would devote the commentary section to controversial papers not just from social scientists but also from “advocates of social change, clients of the social sciences, researched populations, and students.” Among the topics the editors wished to be discussed were ethical problems in anthropology and the politics of social science research—issues that were on the cutting edge of the revolt against traditional anthropology.25 Polgar obviously was in the thick of the debate over the power of anthropologists vis-à-vis the people they study and the role of anthropology in twentieth century industrialized societies. By that time, however, Polgar no longer used the term “action anthropology.” Instead he called for “radical” or “committed” anthropology, terminology more in keeping with the mood of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Polgar urged “committed anthropologists” to work for “the re-emergence of the local community as the most important political unit, and the substitution of world-wide economic coordination for nationalistic and multinational corporation-determined exchange relationships.” Committed anthropology seemed to differ

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from action anthropology in that anthropologists had goals of their own, rather than putting themselves—or trying to—at the service of the people they studied. Polgar’s call for committed anthropology certainly was more than a “resonance” of action anthropology in that it allowed for the presence of value judgments in anthropological work. Committed anthropology came as much from his experience in Tama as from “leftist-humanist rhetoric.”26 Lisa Redfield Peattie applied the adjective “advocacy” to her work in planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Joint Institute of Urban Studies of mit and Harvard. In a talk at a 1967 conference sponsored by Students for a Democratic Society on “Radicals in the Professions,” Peattie analyzed the obstacles to helping the poor make their voices heard in the urban planning process. As a member of Urban Planning Aid, Peattie described her work in trying to represent the interests of residents in neighborhoods affected by the building of a new high school in Lower Roxbury, Massachusetts, and the rerouting of a highway in Boston and Cambridge. Peattie discussed the difficulties of deciding who upa’s clients were and whose interests to represent when only a few people came to meetings, and those who were involved often had competing interests. She also struggled with the question of whether upa was representing or manipulating the people, especially one time when local residents kicked city officials, developers, and even upa out of the room. Peattie did not say so, but the problems she recounted were similar to those of action anthropologists on the settlement trying to decide to which voices of the Meskwaki they should listen and treading carefully between competing factions. A footnote is not needed to demonstrate the influence of the project on Peattie’s thinking.27 Although Peattie also referred to her style of anthropology as “engaged anthropology” and Polgar used other terms, the label “action anthropology” remained in use throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Tax student Leonard Borman, for example, still called himself an action anthropologist in 1981, although he noted, “I will not hassle over the issues of identity and labels.” This permissive attitude toward label-

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ing their work may contribute to the difficulty of tracing the impact of action anthropology. Yet even in the twenty-first century, anthropology graduate students at the University of South Florida were still writing dissertations using the action anthropology format.28 When Vine Deloria Jr. brought the critique of anthropology to American shores, another Tax associate joined the debate over the role of anthropology. At a 1970 symposium held in response to Deloria’s work, Nancy Lurie urged anthropologists to adopt the principles of action anthropology to meet many of the concerns of Native Americans. She said the reason that action anthropology was not more widely viewed as responsive to those complaints was because of “its very unobtrusiveness.” By that she meant that effective action anthropologists worked as catalysts with Native Americans, who supplied the leadership in the situations for which they sought help.29 Studying the Indians: What Knowledge? The aspect of the action anthropologists’ presence at Tama that most irritated some Meskwaki was the fact that they were being studied. Yet the question often of most interest to anthropologists is the one sarcastically asked of a student by one Meskwaki: “So what did you learn, studying the Indians?” Academic anthropologists tended to answer: Not much. As Douglas Foley put it, the students’ efforts “produced far less intellectual ferment and new theory than one would expect from a science based on trial-and-error and dialogue.” Foley does note that the reflexive nature of the action anthropologists about what they were doing was remarkable for the day and compares favorably with contemporary practice. Still, questioning the fundamental basis of anthropology—the right of one group of people to study another—at a time when few other anthropologists were willing to do so is not enough “new theory” for some.30 What “new theory” did come from the project? How much should have come from it? One way to answer the first question is to consider how many articles project participants published and how often they are cited now. One of the problems with that approach is the scarcity of research done on Meskwaki. While settlement residents

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had the impression they were studied endlessly, the scholarship on the tribe actually is slim. The bibliography of Foley’s 1995 book, for example, lists sixteen works about the Meskwaki written since 1960, including five unpublished manuscripts and three works of fiction. This small community far from what most scholars consider “Indian country” simply does not attract the attention either of anthropologists or scholars of Indian history in the way that larger tribes such as the Navajo, Sioux, Hopi, and other tribes do. Furthermore, it is difficult to discern the line between scholarship that grew out of the project and that which did not. Any search for footnotes, therefore, will have ambiguous results. Participants in the Fox Project produced three dissertations, twenty-six articles, and two books. Since action anthropology was a direct outgrowth of the project, one book and eight other articles about action anthropology and its variations should be counted as its fruits, even if they do not deal directly with the Meskwaki or the project at their settlement. The few instances that later scholars have referred to these works partly is a reflection of slim interest in the tribe.31 Throughout his career and afterward, Sol Tax was cited liberally by his colleagues, according to the Social Science Citation Index. His most cited work, aside from volumes he edited, was Penny Capitalism, which has been cited 96 times, including 14 times in the decade ending in 2006. His article on the Meskwaki in Social Anthropology of North American Indian Tribes has been cited 79 times (including twice between 1996 and 2006), while his 1958 article on the project in Tama has been cited 37 times, including 7 times since 1996. Overall, Tax’s works remained cited well into the late 1990s, with 95 citations between 1996 and 2006.32 Fred Gearing’s work also was cited regularly, a total of 200 times through 2006. Among his work on the Meskwaki, Face of the Fox has been cited 12 times, including 6 times between 1996 and 2006, and the Documentary History of the Fox, co-edited with Robert Netting and Lisa Peattie, 25 times, with 5 citations in the decade ending in 2006.33

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Steve Polgar’s work on Meskwaki teenage boys also was cited into the last decade, with 3 citations between 1996 and 2006. Throughout Polgar’s career, his work on population was more widely cited than his work on the teenagers: 24 citations for the article on teenagers versus 158 citations for two articles on health and population through 2004.34 Scholars have cited Lisa Redfield Peattie’s work 592 times. Her most cited works are her book on Venezuela planning, View from the Barrio, cited 106 times, including 19 times in the decade beginning in 1996, and “Reflections on Advocacy Planning,” with 68 citations, including 11 between 1996 and 2006. Her 1958 article about action anthropology, titled “Interventionism and Applied Science in Anthropology,” has been cited 10 times, none in the decade beginning in 1996.35 Walter B. Miller’s work on authority in Meskwaki society, based on his dissertation, was cited 28 times, including once between 1996 and 2006. His work on juvenile delinquency and gangs is extensive and has been cited 1,420 times through 2006.36 Charles Callender’s work has been cited 111 times through 2006. His most cited work, “The North American Berdache,” includes material about the Meskwaki and has been cited 50 times, including 18 times in the decade ending in 2006. His article on the Meskwaki in the Handbook of North American Indians has been cited 26 times, including 13 times between 1996 and 2006.37 Scholars have cited the work of Eugene Fugle 11 times through 2006, including twice in the decade between 1996 and 2006, with most of the citations based on his work in archaeology.38 Perhaps more citations would have resulted if more students had written their dissertations based on work at Tama. Gearing said he was unable to write a dissertation based on his work there because of the group nature of the project. “I didn’t have control . . . enough control over it to take charge, intellectually take charge of the fieldwork and make it go in a direction. It went in the direction of the project, which was fine, except that I couldn’t see a dissertation in there,” he said. Providing dissertations was never a fundamental

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purpose of the project. Even in the beginning, the purpose of the project was to help students learn how to do fieldwork, in the way Tax himself did when he went to the Laboratory of Anthropology summer field school in New Mexico in 1931. As Gearing said about the Tama project, “When they first went out there, they went out to get their feet wet in anthropological fieldwork.” Furthermore, two of the students were undergraduates and still years away from looking for a thesis topic.39 One student who did write his dissertation based on Tama was not an anthropologist but a philosophy graduate student. Paul Diesing’s dissertation, “An Action Program for the Fox Indians,” dealt not with the details of the program itself but with how means and ends for the program could be decided. He argued that in planning programs, goals and the means for reaching them are really in dialogue, rather than the ends fixed in advance and only the means adjusted. In at least two of his books Diesing referred to Tax as “our Fox project director and hero Sol Tax,” but he never cited any Tax work directly. Using only the crude measure of citations, Diesing was not influenced by Tax and action anthropology, and his theory is unrelated to action anthropology. A deeper analysis discloses otherwise.40 The answer to the second question posed by some anthropologists—how much “new theory” should have come from the Chicago project—also has complications. One way of approaching the answer is to compare the Chicago project with other group projects of about the same era, such as the Harvard Values Study and the Harvard Chiapas Project. Carried out from 1949 to 1956 in New Mexico, the Harvard Values Study sought to study and compare the values of people of five cultures. Rather than a fieldwork training school for graduate students, the Harvard Values Study was “a major, highly visible, even star-studded project” looking at the important question of values in the post–atomic bomb era and attempting to build a theory of values. Well-funded from the beginning, the project began with a $100,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation and received a second $100,000 in 1953. Although Clyde Kluckhohn, Talcott Par-

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sons, Evan Vogt, and others churned out 83 articles, monographs, and books, and 22 dissertations or theses by 1966, none of the work met the central goal of the project—producing a general theory of values. Nor did it have much long-term impact on the field. After Kluckhohn died unexpectedly in 1960, work on the project’s first volume stopped and had to be picked up by others. Scholar Willow Roberts Powers has speculated that interest in the project by the time the last book was published in 1966 was minimal because both anthropology and society had moved on from the question of values. Although the Chicago project at Tama produced less written scholarship, its contribution to the intellectual discussion of the profession in the 1950s and 1960s was comparatively larger than that of the Harvard study.41 Vogt, who served as field director and later coordinator of the Harvard Values study, may have learned something about coordinating group projects that carried over to a second one to which Tax’s Tama project can be compared. Starting in 1957 and continuing through 1980, Vogt oversaw a fieldwork program in Chiapas, Mexico, that focused on the indigenous population. The irony of comparing Vogt’s project to Tax’s is that the Chiapas fieldwork owed much to Tax.42 Vogt, who received his doctorate from the University of Chicago, considered doing fieldwork under Robert Redfield and Tax for his dissertation but switched to a study of Navajo veterans instead, a decision he later regretted. After working with the Harvard Values Study from 1948 to 1955, Vogt in 1957 applied for grants to do fieldwork in Chiapas, using Tax’s fieldnotes for reference. Recalling his tour of the area the first year in the field, Vogt said, “The journey had been a visual review of Sol Tax’s classic article on the municipios of the Midwestern highlands of Guatemala.” Tax’s influence became even more personal. In the summer of 1959 Tax’s daughter Susan joined the project as a Harvard graduate student to do work on weaving, bringing her extensive experience in the region due to the time the Tax family spent in the field. She became the first of the Harvard field-workers to live with an Indian family. Simultaneously, Tax was directing his own fieldwork project in the region, to which

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he had unsuccessfully tried to recruit Vogt before Vogt started his own project.43 Vogt seems not to have picked up any of the action anthropology aspects of Tax’s thinking. His idea was to study cultural change among the Indians as the government of Mexico put in place programs of health care, education, instruction in Spanish, new agricultural practices, and so on. The goal was fine-grained ethnological work, with Tax’s fieldnotes serving as the baseline data. That initial plan proved too ambitious. Vogt scaled back the project to concentrate on just a few geographical areas and to concentrate on basic Tzotzil linguistics and culture before studying cultural change.44 Although Vogt concentrated on doing traditional anthropology, unlike Tax and the students at Tama, some evidence exists that Vogt dealt with many of the same pressures that Meskwaki applied to the Chicago students. “Rapport could not have been better,” Vogt recalled. “I decided that the countless visits, Land Rover rides, and meals we had served to people had at last paid off.” After a few years in the field, Vogt found he had to avoid too much contact with Mexican government programs and officials and to identify more with “conservative segments of the Indian communities.” Some of his actions even look like action anthropology. At one point he tried to get a grant for $10,000 in order to buy an extinct volcano for a community that considered it sacred. “The title would have been vested in the ejido; hence, the community would benefit not only from the control of its sacred volcano but also from the grazing and farming land that would be added to its holdings,” Vogt recalled. The proposed purchase has overtones of helping while studying, but Vogt did not call it anything like action anthropology. Nor did he see such interference in the society he was studying as posing any conflict with his traditional, objective anthropological research. Only in 1982 did Vogt acknowledge Mayan complaints about the anthropologists’ work, noting their informants said that “we had taken our knowledge away with us.”45 Besides being free from the responsibilities to informants that

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the action anthropologists assumed, Vogt’s project differed in other ways. It lasted much longer (twenty-seven years in the field versus ten) and involved many more students (143 versus 21 directly under Tax and with significant involvement at Tama). It also covered a much larger, more populated area compared to the Tama settlement, providing more opportunities for dissertation material. The Harvard project was better funded from the beginning. In the project’s first year, Vogt had $3,700 for himself and one graduate student for one month in the field. The next year he received a $63,000 five-year grant from the National Institutes of Mental Health. Three more five-year grants followed. In the beginning at least, the program also was much more structured than the one at Tama. Although Tax came to Tama a few times each summer for several days of meetings with students, he mostly kept in touch with students through the reports and fieldnotes they submitted. Vogt, on the other hand, worked one on one in the field with a graduate student. He afforded his students far less latitude than did Tax. He rejected research topics that students proposed as being too broad or for other reasons. Once he assigned a student the research topic of fireworks, although the student had little interest in it. In the end Vogt said the student produced “a fine example of what can be accomplished with a well-designed and focused summer project.” Tax, on the other hand, was known for a nondirective approach. Gearing recalled Tax’s approach as similar to a dialogue with a devil’s advocate. “Whatever you said, he would say no, and wait for you to come back and then he would come back and then you’d decide what the real situation was and do it. He wasn’t being obtuse or adamant or anything. Just trying to get the discussion going,” he said.46 For these and other reasons, the total scholarly output of the Harvard Chiapas project exceeds that of the Tama students. Vogt listed 21 doctoral dissertations and 33 senior honors theses as coming out of the project between 1959 and 1980. By 1992 participants in the project had published more than 40 books, 180 articles, and 2 novels.47

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Tax’s Broader Legacy: A Broader Anthropology By the time the debate over the role of anthropology in the modern world erupted with full force in the late 1960s, Sol Tax and his students already were doing anthropology in a spirit similar to what the rebels demanded. Tax’s legacy extends beyond debate to innovations that expanded the types of activities in which anthropologists were involved in a bid to make it more relevant. Students who studied or associated with Tax came away from the experience devoted to an expanded vision of anthropology’s role in the world, convinced that anthropology’s fieldwork techniques and emphasis on culture could be used to solve modern problems while simultaneously helping anthropologists learn something, the twin goals of action anthropology. True, they did not always work with poor people as Tax had with Meskwaki and other Indian groups, but nothing in action anthropology restricted it to helping only poor people. While not always called “action anthropology,” the work of Tax’s students definitely expanded the role of anthropologists in the world and tried to make their knowledge and skills applicable to modern problems. Academic obstacles, however, hampered their ability to have a larger impact on the field.48 Foremost among the reasons that action anthropologists did not have a larger impact is that not all Tax students received doctorates and so were not in a position to train new graduate students. Murray Wax, whose wife Rosalie Wax directed the summer workshops for Native American youth for two summers, criticized Tax for not making a greater effort to see that his students got their degrees. He accused Tax of ignoring the costs, in terms of foregone degrees, paid by graduate students who labored toward the “realization of his idealism.” Wax said action anthropology should have “concern not only for the peoples targeted but for the agents at the site.” Bob Rietz and Robert K. Thomas are two examples of Tax students who did not complete their doctorates.49 Of those who did receive degrees, not all came away enthusiastic about Tax’s ideas, or Tax himself. Grace Gredys, for example, was in

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the first field party at Tama when action anthropology was born. Although she had enjoyed his classes, which stressed student participation and discussion rather than lecture, Gredys found it hard to get to know Tax as a person. She recalled: “He could be tough, he could be cryptic, he was somebody that you wanted to be on the good side of him, but you never quite knew where you stood. He had this aura of great bonhomie, but it was not all that there was to him.”50 Gredys had doubts about whether anthropologists could become involved in a community and still produce bias-free results, and circumstances converged to take her out of Tax’s orbit. She and her husband went to Africa for two years on British fellowships and on their return decided to study under Meyer Fortes for a year at Cambridge. Gredys said Tax became enraged at them for “being seduced by British structuralism” and told them their graduate credits would not transfer if they returned to Chicago. “He was essentially telling us that he didn’t want us to come back at all, that we had proved to be traitors to the cause of cultural anthropology and we could get lost,” Gredys said.51 Others who received degrees and decided to pursue action anthropology faced difficulties due to a lack of academic respect for the concept. Len Borman, for example, wrote a dissertation on his work helping resettle a group of Buddhist refugees from the Soviet Union, known as Kalmuks. His committee found it insubstantial. Borman wrote another dissertation, resulting in a graduate career of thirteen years. Joan Ablon also ran into trouble from University of Chicago faculty over her dissertation topic having to do with Indians who relocated to San Francisco under the Bureau of Indian Affairs relocation program of the 1950s. The topic, an early entrant into the field of urban anthropology, was novel enough to make Ablon worry that members of her dissertation committee, especially Fred Eggan, would reject it. Ablon wrote to Tax that she planned to send Eggan only the final draft of her dissertation, “hoping the complete work will be more acceptable to him than the general idea was.” The dissertation was accepted, and Ablon shared her findings with the bia to let them know the problems Indians saw with the program.52

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Finances often were a problem for action anthropologists. Despite applying for several grants, for example, Borman had trouble getting money to support himself while he did his research. As Tax told Borman in the midst of his funding woes, “The course of the action anthropologist, by definition, doesn’t run smooth.” Some action anthropologists, like Gearing, found doing action anthropology overwhelming after a few years. Gearing’s involvement in an action anthropology project in California schools kept him on a treadmill of carrying out projects, publishing results, and seeking new grants to carry out more projects. Gearing said he felt that he let Tax down when he decided to take a strictly academic job at the State University of New York at Buffalo.53 Those caveats aside, Tax’s students did participate in broadening anthropology’s reach and increasing its relationship to the modern world. Although his first dissertation was rejected, Borman’s dissertation on patient councils in mental health hospitals had a strong action anthropology component. As chief of anthropology service at the U.S. Veteran’s Administration Hospital at Downey, Illinois, Borman studied the role of self-determination in the formation of patient councils. After obtaining his doctorate, Borman worked for two foundations in Chicago before creating the Self-Help Institute at the Center for Urban Affairs at Northwestern University in 1974 and the Self-Help Center in Evanston in 1980. Borman carried out research on and promoted self-help groups for the mentally ill, widows, alcoholics, victims of child abuse, heart patients, and others. The center served as a clearinghouse for information on creating self-help groups and for research on their effectiveness that helped persuade professionals of their value.54 Leukemia cut short Borman’s career at the age of fifty-eight, but his colleague Morton Lieberman, a professor at the University of Chicago, summarized Borman’s accomplishments: “It is well-nigh impossible to think about self-help groups without thinking about Leonard Borman. He, more than any other person, galvanized the professional and research community to look upon a major social movement that heretofore had been ignored.”55

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Like Borman, Steve Polgar died too young to have trained many graduate students, collapsing of a heart attack alone on a park bench in 1978 at the age of forty-seven. Polgar left his mark in other ways. After entering the University of Chicago graduate program after just two years as an undergraduate, Polgar received his doctorate from Chicago and held a number of academic positions, including as a lecturer in public health at the University of California at Berkeley, professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina, and a fellow in the Carolina Population Center. His 1962 essay, “Health and Human Behaviour: Areas of Interest Common to the Social and Medical Sciences,” contributed to the formation of medical anthropology as a field. While at North Carolina, Polgar led the expansion of anthropology’s traditional interest in village censuses and genealogy into the science of population studies. In the three volumes of essays on population that he edited, Polgar attempted to demonstrate the importance of making birth control technology fit the values of the people for whom it was developed. Polgar linked that effort to “a philosophy of anthropology that attempts to divorce itself from economic and cultural . . . imperialism.”56 Joan Ablon was another Tax student who pushed the boundaries of anthropological work. Her dissertation, on relocated Native Americans, introduced her to many Indians in California. When she heard about the arrest of three Navajo near Needles, California, for possession of peyote, Ablon arranged for anthropologist and peyote scholar Omer Stewart to testify on behalf of the Indians as an expert witness in the case. The Navajo eventually saw their right to religious expression upheld in the California Supreme Court. Stewart credits Ablon with helping call in people with the legal and other expertise to help the litigants. Ablon went on to help found the alcohol and drug study group within the American Anthropological Association in 1978.57 Educational anthropology was another field that a former Tax student helped develop. Rosalie Wax, who studied with Tax, and her husband, Murray Wax, produced one of the earliest ethnographic studies of schools—and the first one involving Indian children—af-

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ter receiving a grant in 1959 from the U.S. Office of Education to study Ogalala Sioux schoolchildren on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. In 1968 the Waxes and Gearing formed the Council of Anthropology in Education after a well-attended session on education at the aaa annual meeting.58 One of the most intellectually influential Tax students was one of those who did not get a doctorate. The scholarship of Robert K. Thomas significantly impacted thinking about Indian affairs. Early in his career Thomas conferred with Tax about publishing articles. In a letter that may refer to his article on colonialism, Thomas told Tax that Edward Spicer, professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona, was encouraging him “to write an article for the Anthropologist about the disastrous consequences of the structural relationship between the bia and Indian communities. . . . His conclusions are in the same vein as ours. And he says it is time some of us start writing articles saying these kinds of things about Indian affairs.”59 Thomas’s 1966 article, “Colonialism: Classic and Internal,” introduced the concept of colonialism to the study of relations between the U.S. government and Indian communities. Thomas defined colonialism as the external administration of a people’s affairs so that they are deprived of the experiences that would allow them to change and adapt to new circumstances in keeping with their cultural values. An analysis of that influential essay clearly shows the mark of the Meskwaki and Tax. Although Thomas never spent a summer on the settlement as did other Tax students, Thomas did visit the settlement and was involved in Chicago campus discussions on action anthropology. Allowing Indians to run their own affairs formed one of the central themes of Tax’s ideas for Indian policy, as shown as early as 1952 when he argued that Meskwaki should be able to run their own school.60 Thomas drew on the experience of the Meskwaki with Tamacraft to demonstrate his point of how Indian experience with administration of their own affairs could stimulate growth. In one case Thomas used the hypothetical example of a Meskwaki who missed work because his uncle asked for a ride to town. The man’s white boss fired him,

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and the man went away thinking that whites are greedy and mean. When Meskwaki ran Tamacraft, an uncle who would ask such a favor would soon learn that all his other relatives in the business would be angry with him if he took his nephew away from the job, and he would pay more attention to the timing of his requests. Thomas also related the experience of Tamacraft workers when the artist producing many of the designs for their products had to go into seclusion for four days after a death in the family. With the key Christmas selling season approaching, the people involved in Tamacraft went to a religious leader for advice. Together they came up with the solution that the artist could work in a closed room by himself during the seclusion period and slide his completed drawings under the door. Thomas wrote, “Now that’s experience and change. That’s facing other kinds of people and your environment in terms of your own aspirations and in terms of the kind of life you’re leading.”61 Native American scholars such as Jack D. Forbes and Ward Churchill consider Thomas a leader in the application of the idea of colonialism to Indian affairs. In an essay included in a book of articles published in honor of Thomas (who died in 1991 at the age of sixty-five), Forbes wrote, “Certainly by the late 1970s the pioneering work of Bob Thomas had borne fruit. The concept of colonialism and its usefulness as a tool of analysis in Native affairs had become well recognized.” Churchill said Thomas’s essay on colonialism “has assumed a decisive conceptual importance in terms of our understandings of ourselves and what it is we are about.” Furthermore, Churchill said, Thomas’s work also influenced many Native Americans who engaged in the direct action protests of the late 1960s, including those who led the fish-ins in 1967 and the occupation of Alcatraz Island in 1969. Churchill argued that Thomas’s application of colonialism to Indian affairs helped turn Indian leadership away from seeking civil rights wholly within the American political system and toward enforcement of treaty rights and a re-emphasis of tribes as sovereign nations.62 Thomas engaged in an action anthropology program under Tax’s direction, co-directing a cross-cultural education project among

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the Eastern Cherokee under a grant from the Carnegie Foundation. The project participated in a revival of the Cherokee language by developing a typewriter for the Cherokee written language, as well as establishing a Cherokee newspaper and a biweekly radio program in Cherokee. The underlying philosophy of the project was that reviving Cherokee interest in their own language would stimulate Cherokee interest in English literacy and education more broadly.63 From 1981 to 1986 Thomas directed the American Indian Studies Program at the University of Arizona, which under his leadership became the first Native studies program in the United States to offer a master’s degree. The standards he set for the program helped establish the credibility of the field. In an introduction to a book of essays in Thomas’s honor, a former student, Steve Pavlik, described Thomas as “one of the founding fathers of the field of American Indian studies.” Based on these examples, action anthropology did more than “resonate” in the career of Bob Thomas.64 Working with Thomas on the Cherokee cross-cultural education project was another Tax student, Albert Wahrhaftig. On the face of it a language project would seem to have few components of action anthropology. The results of the project, however, extended far beyond literacy research to include participation in President Johnson’s War on Poverty Program. Wahrhaftig counseled Sidney Woolner, who was in charge of all American Indian programs in the Office of Economic Opportunity, to design the programs so that they appealed to traditional Indians, not just Indian leaders who live and think like whites. Wahrhaftig’s activities upset conservative Cherokee tribal leaders, and they began a campaign attacking Wahrhaftig, Thomas, and Tax as communists and the University of Chicago in newspaper articles as “a center of Red domination and infiltration.” Tax was concerned enough about the attacks to notify Carnegie Foundation officials about the charges before they learned of them from other sources and to explain why they were groundless.65 Wahrhaftig’s later career showed his continued allegiance to the values of action anthropology. As professor of anthropology at Sonoma State University, Wahrhaftig teaches classes that include

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fieldwork for the Burbank Housing Development Corporation in Burbank, California. His undergraduate students have studied the culture of children’s play in housing projects, the experiences of the elderly in public housing, and similar topics.66 A member of the first group of anthropology students to go to Tama in 1948, Bob Rietz had a long association with Tax and action anthropology. Rietz died in 1971, without having trained any graduate students in action anthropology. He worked in an action anthropology project at Fort Berthold, North Dakota, from 1950 to 1954 before returning to Tama to oversee the establishment of Tamacraft and the scholarship program at the Meskwaki settlement. From there, he returned to Chicago to become executive director of the American Indian Center, where he reported to an all-Indian board of directors. Originally started by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the center served Native Americans under the bureau’s relocation center by providing welfare assistance, social contacts, and other services to help them adjust to urban life. Sol Tax had become involved in the operation in the mid-1950s and helped it secure a $45,000 grant from the Emil Schwartzhaupt Foundation. Tax also helped Rietz get the job as director. Although Rietz never had a full-time academic appointment, he did publish articles, teach at Chicago area colleges, and offer advice to those establishing Indian centers in Oakland, California.67 Tax also influenced students outside of the University of Chicago. For example, he helped other universities establish anthropology departments. When the University of South Florida wanted to establish an anthropology program, it was Tax whom school administrators called on for advice. On an individual level Stephen Schensul also sought Tax’s help when he was doing community development work and advocacy with a Latino neighborhood in Chicago. Although he was carrying out projects similar to action anthropology, Schensul said, “I was making it up as I went along.” Schensul and his wife, Jean Schensul, count Tax and action anthropology as one of the influences in their development of a participatory action research program in Hartford, Connecticut, in which they train high school

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students and community members to do research on community problems.68 Nancy Lurie also considers Tax an important influence on her career as a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and head curator of anthropology for the Milwaukee Public Museum, even though she received her doctorate from Northwestern University rather than from Chicago. Lurie’s early association with Tax was not promising, however. After earning her master’s degree at Chicago, Lurie failed to get the required “high pass” on one of the fields of her Ph.D. qualifying exam. Tax and Fred Eggan notified her that she should consider her master’s degree to be terminal and asked her to leave the university because they did not consider her Ph.D. material. Lurie transferred to Northwestern University to get her doctorate but kept in touch with Tax because of their mutual interest in, and similar thinking on, Indian policy. When Tax was organizing the American Indian Chicago Conference, he turned to Lurie to help coordinate the meeting.69 In the hectic months leading up to June 1961 meeting, Lurie learned what a taskmaster Tax could be. So focused was he on the job that Tax had trouble understanding how anyone’s personal life could come between them and their work. Lurie and others preparing for the conference made up a song, sung to the tune of “Ta-RaRa-Boom-De-Ay,” listing all the things that Tax expected of them. It ended with the verse, “We are Tax’s faithful crew. / Indian Friends, what we’ve gone through / He would never ask of you / But blithely says what we must do. / Pow-Wow-How-Taxed-We-Are.” Tax did show his appreciation to Lurie by admitting to her, “‘we have made some serious mistakes with our graduate students.’”70 The Chicago conference led Lurie into her own brand of action anthropology by assisting Wisconsin Winnebago who wanted to organize under the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. At the request of Helen Miner Miller and other Winnebago, Lurie helped the tribe secure a grant from the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1962. Lurie felt the responsibility heavily. She wrote Tax, “After years of hearing my anthropological colleagues using that

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proprietary phrase, of which I was also guilty at times perhaps, ‘my tribe,’ I find to my delight that I’m referred to as ‘our anthropologist.’ But my delight is not just amusement and it gives me a sense of serious pause. Something is expected of me as an anthropologist.”71 In the years following the Chicago conference, Lurie crossed paths with Indians who were there. When a member of a group of Potawatomi needed an anthropologist to testify in their case against the federal government for past land claims, they called her. Lurie wrote Tax that the group’s secretary “said it was our offer as standing by to help at aicc that brought him to me.” Starting in 1970 Lurie also served as a resource person for the group of Menominee who fought to overturn the federal government’s decision to terminate the tribe in 1961. Ada Deer, who became commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs under President Bill Clinton, had organized drums (Determination of Rights and Unity for Menominee Shareholders) to reverse the termination that had been supported by some Menominee elites. Lurie recalled that Deer contacted her and asked, “I’ve seen what you have been doing with the Winnebago. Would you join in with us?”72 While Tax reached out to influence others beyond the University of Chicago, his position within his own institution eventually declined. A colleague who joined the Chicago anthropology department near the end of Tax’s career said by then Tax was isolated within the department and accorded little respect because others in the department considered action anthropology little more than social work. Schensul saw it differently: “Sol was in the wrong department. His material got buried. Only the force of his personality and his commitment to applied anthropology and to anthropology kept it alive.” Shunned by mainstream traditional anthropology, Tax and action anthropology have been subsumed into applied anthropology. In 2002 the Society for Applied Anthropology, for example, established an award in Tax’s honor for distinguished service to the organization.73 It is beyond the scope of this project to follow the careers of all former Tax students, let alone analyze the impact of their students.

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The careers of Polgar, Borman, Ablon, Lurie, Peattie, and the others, however, demonstrate that Tax and his students participated in the expansion of the boundaries of anthropology. While anthropologists in the 1960s and 1970s demanded that anthropology demonstrate its relevance to the modern world and turn its gaze to industrialized societies, many Tax students were busily creating spaces where anthropologists could do so. Tax’s students were at the forefront of the expansion of anthropology into fields dealing with medical care, education, urban areas, and self-help. They worked in the service of Indian leaders to overturn Menominee termination, implement anti-poverty programs, and provided the intellectual framework of colonialism that many Indian activists used to power direct action protests. Conclusion The encounter between Sol Tax and the Meskwaki did not singlehandedly change the relationship between anthropologists and the people they study, but it did demonstrate the truth and fallacies of the analysis Vine Deloria Jr. wrote more than two decades later. The relationship that Deloria depicted was but a caricature of such encounters. The meeting of Meskwaki and anthropologists that took place in Tama was a meeting of real people, including Native Americans with their own contexts and agendas. Deloria’s harsh interpretation of the relationship between anthropologists and Native Americans set off the public expression of Indian attitudes that had long simmered below the surface, as shown by the participation of Meskwaki in the creation of action anthropology. The critique of anthropology that took place across the profession in the 1960s and 1970s was a sweeping one that made no exceptions for any anthropologists who had been experimenting with a new relationship. In that sense Deloria may have been unfair to Tax and his crew of action anthropologists, but Deloria’s polemic would have been less effective had he made it more nuanced by discussing exceptions. Whether Tax thought Deloria treated him unfairly, however, is un-

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clear. Correspondence between the two was slim, but their relationship seems to have been cordial. For example, the two appeared on a television show together to discuss Deloria’s book, Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties. In commenting on the book for Delacorte Press, Tax praised it, as well as all of Deloria’s previous work, and said the new book should “become the platform on which American Indian tribes and people may unite and on which—or from which—their friends can offer to hang together.” Deloria must have had some confidence that Tax thought well of him because he gave Tax’s name as a reference when he applied for a post at the University of Arizona.74 On the other hand, Deloria may have been unfair to Native Americans when he suggested that Indians were reduced to “chessmen” whom researchers could manipulate at will. Such a characterization denied the agency of the Indians, which they retained even though anthropologists saw them as objects of study. In the Chicago project the Meskwaki come through as independent people, fully as competent and resourceful as the students. At many points in the Chicago project, for example, it is unclear which groups were doing the most manipulating. Neither the reluctant interviewees, who gave one word answers to students’ questions, nor Lawrence Phillips, who put students on the defensive with his taunts about studying the Indians, were pawns for anyone. Many times students felt it was they who were being manipulated, as in the case of Edward Davenport’s political machinations, or the student who felt like a “sucker” for driving young boys all around the settlement. The ultimate Meskwaki manipulation was the insistence that anthropologists answer Robert Lynd’s question: Knowledge for What?75 In his discussion of the encounter between anthropologists and Native Americans, Deloria failed to take into account the empowering effects of anthropologists’ desire for information in a Native American setting. Meskwaki’s years of experience with previous anthropologists had taught them the rules of engagement. Beyond the boundaries of the settlement, Meskwaki might have been in an inferior position when confronted with a well-educated, middle-class white asking questions. Within the boundaries of their own nation,

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however, settlement residents knew the knowledge that only they possessed was more valuable than academic credentials and, in fact, sometimes made those credentials obtainable. At all times settlement residents were free to participate or not in the field party’s activities—whether it was moccasin game parties in the school gym or joining the Tamacraft cooperative. Sometimes the anthropologists collaborated more closely with the community than at others. The school issue was a case where community leaders effectively took advantage of the support anthropologists offered to stop the federal government’s hasty, unilateral move. Despite Deloria’s claim that anthropologists stifled Indian leadership, people in the Meskwaki community never surrendered their freedom to use their own resources and ideas, as when they used a town meeting television show to air their complaints on the school issue or wrote their U.S. senator to protest the move. Bertha Waseskuk’s willingness to lobby federal officials personally and to ask the Meskwaki’s congressional representative to remove them from the termination resolution is another example of independent political skill. The multiple voices within the community also demonstrated that Meskwaki were not inanimate chess pieces. Their ongoing internal disagreements showed they had a lively political climate, with power shared by elected officials and their opponents. The distribution of power checked the ability of the tribal council to act, as when it debated ejecting the Chicago project from the settlement. Although it had the power to order them to stay away, the tribal council did not exercise that power, perhaps because it feared repercussions from those who liked the anthropologists or because it thought the anthropologists had been of some value after all. While the Meskwaki were not pawns, neither were the researchers mere order takers for the desires of the community. They, too, retained their agency during the length of the project. On a personal level, the anthropologists made friends, became entangled in Meskwaki lives, hurt some feelings, and felt badly when they did. The anthropologists heard multiple, competing voices within the settlement. Unable to respond to all of them, researchers made choices

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on whether to exert their efforts or offer their own suggestions in situations that the community faced. The experimentation that began at Tama permitted new types of cooperation among Indians and anthropologists that went far beyond the researcher-informant relationship that anthropologists previously cultivated. By the end of the twentieth century, the relationship between Indian tribes and anthropologists was far different than it had been before 1948 or 1969. The relationship created by the Meskwaki and the Chicago anthropologists foreshadowed arrangements in which tribes hired archeologists for assistance in repatriation of Indian remains and artifacts, used anthropological articles to reconstruct aspects of their history, and called them as witnesses in court battles over federal recognition. As Lurie remarked to Tax, anthropologists no longer had “their” tribes, but tribes had “their” anthropologists.76 Yet the relationship between anthropologists and the people they study remained problematic. As recently as 1994 some anthropologists complained about federal regulations requiring researchers to provide assurances that the rights of the people they study will be respected. The informed consent procedures have been blamed for making it impossible to do some types of research or to observe people unobtrusively. And in 2000 international anthropology was rocked by allegations that two anthropologists who worked among the Yanomami tribe of the Amazon River basin of Brazil and Venezuela in the late 1960s had endangered the people they studied. A book by Patrick Tierney, Darkness in El Dorado, accused Napoleon Chagnon, professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the late James V. Neel, formerly professor of human genetics at the University of Michigan, of reckless practices. Tierney claimed that Chagnon “had subtly encouraged murderous violence among the Yanomami” and that Neel administered measles vaccines to the Yanomami more for reasons of scientific curiosity than medical practice.77 A report by the American Anthropological Association criticized Tierney’s book for its “sensationalistic accusations” against the an-

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thropologists, which the report said were unfounded. The report also said the book had raised ethical questions about the conduct of the two researchers, including Neel’s failure to obtain informed consent for drawing blood and Chagnon’s failure to respond to news accounts representing the Yanomami as “fierce people.”78 The University of Michigan responded to the controversy in 2001 by sponsoring a series of discussions entitled “Science, Ethics, Power: Controversy over the Production of Knowledge and Indigenous Peoples.” The discussions about anthropologists’ right to represent the people they study and the uses of knowledge they produce echoed the arguments of thirty years earlier. As discussion moderator Fernando Coronil noted, the Darkness in El Dorado controversy produced a new round of discussions about “knowledge for what and for whom?” Like a latter-day Deloria or Lawrence Phillips, Lilikala Kame’eleihiwa of the Center for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaii disputed the value of anthropology for indigenous people, saying, “I reject anthropology and I do not understand why it’s a discipline.”79 The discussion series was one in which Sol Tax and his students would have been at home. Tax likely would have said what he said on many occasions—that he learned anthropology from Indians. It was more than a throwaway line. The Meskwaki and anthropologists did learn from each other. Controversies that erupt such as that involving Darkness in El Dorado show that the question often posed by residents of the Meskwaki settlement was still being asked: What good is anthropology anyway?

Appendix 1: Participants in University of Chicago Project at Tama, Iowa, 1948–1958

1948* Lloyd Fallers Grace Gredys Walter B. Miller Lisa Redfield Peattie Robert Rietz Davida Wolffson 1949 Irving Gerick Charles Leslie Robert Rietz Florence Simon Caroline Wiesender 1950 No students went to the Meskwaki settlement 1951 Walter B. Miller 1952 Fred Gearing Marjorie Gearing

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William McCormack Steve Polgar 1953 Ariane Brunel (Barnard College undergraduate) Carl Couch (University of Iowa) Fred Gearing Marjorie Gearing Richard Kluckhohn (University of Chicago undergraduate) Steve Polgar Carol Ruppe (University of Iowa) Reynold Ruppe (University of Iowa) Lucinda Sangree Walter H. Sangree 1954 Charles Callender Marie L. Furey Eugene Fugle (University of Iowa) Joseph R. Marlin Sarah Anne Robinson 1955 Herbert Becker Robert Claus (University of Iowa) Jerry Jayne Robert Rietz 1956 Eugene Fugle (University of Iowa) Robert Rietz 1957 Robert Rietz

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1958 Robert Rietz Albert Wahrhaftig *This list includes only students who made extended stays at Tama and excludes several who visited for only a few days at a time.

Appendix 2: Publications Related to Meskwaki

Articles or Book Chapters Derived from the Fox Project Callender, Charles. “Fox.” In Handbook of North American Indians, ed. William C. Sturtevant. Vol. 15, Northeast, ed. Bruce G. Trigger. Washington dc: Smithsonian Institution, 1978. Diesing, Paul. “A Method of Social Problem Solving.” In Documentary History of the Fox Project: A Program in Action Anthropology, ed. Frederick O. Gearing, Robert McC. Netting, and Lisa R. Peattie. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960. Fallers, Lloyd A. “The Problem of Value-Judgments.” In Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History of the Fox Project. ———. “The Role of Factionalism in Fox Acculturation.” In Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History of the Fox Project. Fugle, Eugene. “Mesquakie Witchcraft Lore.” Plains Anthropologist 6.11 (1961): 31–39. Gearing, Fred. “First, They Listen.” University of Chicago Magazine, May 1956. ———. “Today’s Mesquakies.” American Indian 7.2 (Spring 1955): 24– 37. ———. “We Are the Mesquakie Nation.” In Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History of the Fox Project. Miller, Walter B. “Authority and Collective Action in Fox Society.” In Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History of the Fox Project. ———. “Preliminary Ideas on the Fox Problem.” In Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History of the Fox Project.

314

appendix 2

———. “Two Concepts of Authority.” American Anthropologist 57.2 (April 1955) 271–89. Peattie, Lisa R. “Being a Mesquakie Indian.” In Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History of the Fox Project. ———. “Interventionism and Applied Science in Anthropology.” Human Organization 17.1 (Spring 1958): 4–8. Polgar, Steve. “Applied, Action, Radical, and Committed Anthropology.” In Currents in Anthropology: Essays in Honor of Sol Tax, ed. Robert Hinshaw. The Hague: Mouton, 1979. ———. “Biculturation of Mesquakie Teenage Boys.” American Anthropologist 62.2 (April 1960): 217–35. ———. “From Applied to Committed Anthropology: Disengaging from Our Colonialist Heritage.” In Politics of Anthropology: From Colonialism and Sexism toward a View from Below, ed. Gerrit Huizer and Bruce Mannheim. The Hague: Mouton, 1979. Rietz, Robert. “A Discussion of Contemporary Fox Social Organization, Together with a Proposal for a Combined Program of Social Engineering and Social Science Research.” In Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History of the Fox Project. Tax, Sol. “Action Anthropology.” America Indigena 12.2 (April 1952): 103–9. ———. “Action Anthropology.” Current Anthropology 16.4 (December 1975): 514–17. ———. “Anthropology for the World of the Future: Thirteen Professions and Three Proposals.” Human Organization 36.3 (Fall 1977): 225–34. ———. “The Bow and the Hoe: Reflections on Hunters, Villagers, and Anthropologists.” Human Organization 16.4 (December 1975): 507–13. ———. “The Fox Project.” Human Organization 17.1 (Spring 1958): 17–19. ———. “Pride and Puzzlement: A Retro-Inspective Record of 60 Years of Anthropology.” Annual Reviews in Anthropology 17 (1988): 1–21.

appendix 2

315

———. “Replies” to Sam Stanley, “The Panajachel Symposium.” Current Anthropology 16.4 (December 1975). Thomas, Robert K. “Colonialism: Classic and Internal.” New University Thought 4.4 (Winter 1966–67): 37–44. Tjerandsen, Carl. Education for Citizenship: A Foundation’s Experience. Santa Cruz ca: Emil Schwartzhaupt Foundation, 1980. Books Resulting from the Fox Project Gearing, Frederick O. Face of the Fox. Chicago: Aldine, 1970. Gearing, Frederick O., Robert McC. Netting, and Lisa Peattie, eds. Documentary History of the Fox Project: A Program in Action Anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960. Hinshaw, Robert, ed. Currents in Anthropology: Essays in Honor of Sol Tax. The Hague: Mouton, 1979. Dissertations Resulting from the Fox Project Callender, Charles. “Central Algonkian Social Organization.” Ph.D. diss. University of Chicago, 1958. Diesing, Paul. “An Action Program for the Fox Indians.” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1952. Miller, Walter B. “Authority System of the Fox Indians.” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1955. Articles Resulting from Action Anthropology Borman, Leonard D. “Action Anthropology and the Self-Help/Mutual Aid Movement.” In Currents in Anthropology: Essays in Honor of Sol Tax, ed. Robert Hinshaw. The Hague: Mouton, 1979. ———. “Some Comments on the Clinical Anthropology Discussions.” Medical Anthropology Newsletter 12.3 (May 1981): 9–12. Lurie, Nancy. “Action Anthropology and the American Indian.” In Anthropology and the American Indian: A Symposium. San Francisco: Indian Historian Press, 1973. ———. “Sol Tax and Tribal Sovereignty.” Human Organization 58.1 (Spring 1999): 108–17.

316

appendix 2

Peattie, Lisa R. “Reflections of an Advocacy Planner.” Journal of American Institute of Planners 34 (March 1968): 80–87. Schensul, Stephen L. “Action Research: The Applied Anthropologist in a Community Mental Health Program.” In Anthropology beyond the University, ed. Aldon Redfield. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1973. ———. “Skills Needed in Action Anthropology: Lessons from El Centro de La Causa.” Human Organization 33.2 (Summer 1974): 203–9. Tax, Sol. “Residential Integration: The Case of Hyde Park in Chicago.” Human Organization 17.3 (November 1958): 22–29.

Notes

Acknowledgments 1. Tax, “Replies,” Current Anthropology 16.4 (December 1975): 534. Series Editors’ Introduction 1. An exception is the recent book in our series by Keelung Hong and Stephen Murray, Looking through Taiwan (2005). Introduction 1. One of the difficulties in writing about the Meskwaki was what to call them. It is no minor matter. For one thing, as tribal historian Johnathan Buffalo has demonstrated, outsiders over hundreds of years assigned various names to the Meskwaki—as many as 128. See Johnathan Buffalo, Tribal Synonymy, copy in possession of the author. Furthermore, historians now understand that the name applied to a certain group is an important signifier of its status vis-àvis those using the name. As David Hurst Thomas argued in his history of the relations between archeologists and Native Americans, the power to name a people often masked power struggles between the two groups. He wrote, “The power to name becomes the power to define one’s identity and very existence.” See David Hurst Thomas, Skull Wars, xxxviii–xxxix. Although I decided to call settlement residents what they called themselves—Meskwaki, or People of the Red Earth—the names that other people used instead of Meskwaki appear in sources that I cite. Briefly, these names include Sac and Fox, Mesquaki, or Fox. When Sol Tax wrote his dissertation, he referred

318

notes to pages 2–7

to the community as the Fox. So did his students. Thus, their project with the Meskwaki came to be called “the Fox Project.” In keeping with current tribal preference, I used Meskwaki except when unavoidable, as in direct quotations, and substituted “Chicago project” for “Fox Project.” 2. Walter Miller Journal, July 15, 1948, Box 15, Folder Miller Duplicate Interviews, Fox Project Papers, National Anthropological Archives, Suitland md, hereinafter referred to as fpp; Lynd, Knowledge for What? 3. Vine Deloria Jr., Custer Died for Your Sins, 83–104. 4. Deloria, Custer Died for Your Sins, 83–104 (quotations on 98 and 99). 5. Mead, “American Indian,” 68–74; Stewart, “Anthropologists as Expert Witnesses,” 35–42. 6. Redfield, “Values in Action,” 20–22; Arensberg, “Values in Action,” 25–26. 7. Bennett, “Applied and Action Anthropology,” S24, S37–S38; Stocking, “‘Do Good, Young Man,’” 254–55. For an overview of the critique of anthropology from the 1960s and 1970s, see Current Anthropology 9.5 (December 1968) 391–407, especially Berreman, “Is Anthropology Alive?” 391–96. 8. Hoyt, “Children of Tama,” 15–20. 9. Stucki, “Anthropologists and Indians,” 300–317. 10. Foley, “Fox Project,” 171–83 (quotations on 179–180). Foley’s insightful book Heartland Chronicles also touches on the Meskwaki experience with action anthropology, but primarily the book deals with race relations between Tama whites and settlement residents. 11. Gearing, Face of the Fox, 96, 108. 12. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, 2, 3. 13. Slotkin, Readings in Early Anthropology, xi, 7, 8. 14. Slotkin, Readings in Early Anthropology, xi, xii, 45; Thwaites, Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents; Joseph Lafitau, Customs of the American Indian Compared with the Customs of Primitive Times (1724) referred to in van Willigen, Applied Anthropology, 18–19. 15. Stocking, “Scotland as the Model of Mankind,” 65–90; Bieder,

notes to pages 8–13

319

“Albert Gallatin,” 91–98. Slotkin puts the beginning of anthropology even earlier, in the fifteenth century, when “commercial capitalism and extensive acculturation spread a secular world view among intellectuals” that challenged understandings of the world and its peoples based on Old Testament accounts of creation. Slotkin, Readings in Early Anthropology, vii, 38. 16. Van Willigen, Applied Anthropology, 19, 22; Bennett, “Applied and Action Anthropology,” S24. 17. Darnell, “Theorizing American Anthropology,” 43–44; Fogelson, “Nationalism and the Americanist Tradition,” 77–78. 18. Fogelson, “Nationalism and the Americanist Tradition,” 78–79; Henry R. Schoolcraft, Information Respecting the History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, cited in van Willigen, Applied Anthropology, 19; Partridge and Eddy, “Development of Applied Anthropology,” 9–10, 13. 19. Partridge and Eddy, “Development of Applied Anthropology,” 9, 13. 20. Partridge and Eddy, “Development of Applied Anthropology,” 12; Keesing, “Applied Anthropology in Colonial Administration,” 373–98; Kelly, “Anthropology and Anthropologists,” 6–24. 21. Horowitz, Rise and Fall of Project Camelot, 47–49; Peter Braestrup, “Researchers Aid Thai Rebel Fight,” New York Times, March 20, 1967, copy in Box 175, Folder 7, Sol Tax Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, hereinafter referred to as stp; “Official Reports: American Anthropological Association Council Meeting, Saturday, November 19, 1966, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,” in American Anthropologist, n.s., 69.3/4 (June–August 1967) 383. 22. Berreman, “Is Anthropology Alive?” 391–96. 23. Gjessing, “Social Responsibility.” 24. Gough, “New Proposals for Anthropologists,” 403–7. 25. Asad, Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter, 12–19. 26. Asad, Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter, 18; Ahmed, “Some Remarks from the Third World,” 259–70 (quotation on 260). 27. Hymes, Reinventing Anthropology, 4–61.

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notes to pages 13–24

28. Anthropology and the American Indian, 60, 104–5. 29. Medicine, “Anthropologists and American Indian Studies Programs,” 81; Ortiz, “Indian Anthropologist’s Perspective on Anthropology,” 89. In a volume of essays published after the symposium, former Bureau of Indian Affairs official D’Arcy McNickle echoed many of Beatrice Medicine’s complaints and said presentations of Indians as frozen in time gave credibility to government assimilationist policies. See McNickle, “Indians Who Never Were,” 29–35. 30. Anthropology and the American Indian, 110. 31. Medicine, Learning to Be an Anthropologist; Mihesuah, Natives and Academics; Allen, “Special Problems”; Fixico, “Ethics and Responsibilities.” 32. Bonney and Paredes, Anthropologists and Indians; Biolsi and Zimmerman, Indians and Anthropologists. 33. Jackson, “I Am a Fieldnote,” 5–33. 34. Ottenberg, “Thirty Years of Fieldnotes,” 139–44. 35. Modell, Ruth Benedict, 178–79. 36. Redfield to Tax, January 15, 1943, Box 35, Folder 1, Robert Redfield Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, hereinafter referred to as rrp. 37. Ottenberg, “Thirty Years of Fieldnotes,” 147. 38. Robert Rietz Fieldnotes, July 29–30, 1948, and October 1, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 186–87, 248. 39. Fred Gearing Fieldnotes, Powwow 1952, Box 288, Reel 4, stp, 3073–80. 40. Lisa Peattie Field Diary, July 10, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 1531. 41. Fugle’s relationship with settlement residents is discussed in chapter 5. The files do not contain copies of any fieldnotes from Fugle from that summer, but they do contain notes from his visit in the summer of 1956. 42. Lederman, “Pretexts for Ethnography,” 90. 43. Joe Marlin Journal, July 8, 1954, Box 288, Reel 6, stp, 4392. 44. Buffalo, “Ever Wonder Why Indians Hate Needles?” 45. Fluehr-Lobban, “Informed Consent in Anthropological Research.”

notes to pages 29–31

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1. Making the Modern Meskwaki Nation 1. John Keliiaa, August 1951, “Survey of Possibilities of Withdrawal of Federal Supervision and Services in Affairs of the Sac and Fox Indians of Tama, Iowa,” Reel 5, 3075; Tax, “Primitive Social Organization with Some Description of the Social Organization of the Fox Indians” (master’s thesis, University of Chicago, December 1932) Reel 7, 13. Leslie, “Fox Impressions,” Reel 3; W. H. Sangree Fieldnotes, August 18, 1953, Reel 5, 3312; Peattie Field Diary, June 27, 1948, Reel 2, 151, all in Box 288, stp. 2. Keliiaa, “Survey of Possibilities of Withdrawal,” 3032 and 3057; Wolffson Journal, August 13 and 15, 1948, Reel 2, 1669 and 1673, and W. H. Sangree Fieldnotes, August 27, 1953, and September 3, 1953, Reel 5, 3337 and 3342, both in Box 288, stp. 3. D’Arcy McNickle to Mr. Harper, December 30, 1936, File #9715A 1936 068, Record Group 75, Records of Bureau of Indian Affairs, Entry 1012, General Records Concerning Indian Organization for 1934–1956, Sac and Fox, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington dc, hereinafter referred to as File #9715-A. Indian Organization Division, Bureau of Indian Affairs, May 29, 1944, “Reservation Over-All Program, Sac and Fox Sub-Agency, Toledo, Iowa,” Box 288, Reel 5, stp, 3006. Lloyd Fallers, “Role of Factionalism in Fox Acculturation,” Box 288, Reel 6, stp, 3836. McNickle to Mr. Harper, December 30, 1936, File #9715-A. 4. “Reservation Over-All Program,” Reel 5, 3000–3026; Carolyn Wiesender Journal, July 29, 1949, Reel 2, 451; and William McCormack Fieldnotes, September 6, 1952, Reel 4, 39822, all in Box 288, stp. 5. Westwood to Collier, January 29, 1937, File #9715-A. Fallers, “Role of Factionalism,” Reel 6, 3829; W. H. Sangree Fieldnotes, September 3, 1953, Reel 5, 3342; Keliiaa, “Survey of Possibilities of Withdrawal,” Reel 5, 3043. Fallers Journal, July 5, 1948, Reel 2, 1384; Joseph R. Marlin Journal, July 16, 1954, Reel 6, 4408; Davida Wolffson Journal, August 6, 1948, Reel 3, 2153; and William McCormack Fieldnotes, July 22, 1952, Reel 4, 39797, all in Box 288, stp. Robert Rietz Fieldnotes,

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notes to pages 32–34

September 17, 1949, Box 6, fpp. Although Keliiaa wrote his report in 1951, it is unlikely that more children spoke English two decades earlier. 6. “Reservation Over-all Program,” Box 288, Reel 5, stp. 7. McCormack Fieldnotes, September 21 and 26, 1952, Box 288, Reel 4, stp, 39871 and 39874; Edmunds and Peyser, Fox Wars, 9. The bulk of the book provides the best recent discussion of Meskwaki conflict with the French fur-trading empire, which resulted in eventual Meskwaki migration out of Wisconsin. 8. Edmunds and Peyser, Fox Wars, 200, 206, 207. 9. Edmunds and Peyser, Fox Wars, 208; copy of legislation, House Files, Senate Files, Box 5, Folder Secretary of State, General Assemblies, 5th General Assembly, 1856—Extra House Bills, HF19–62, State Historical Society of Iowa, Des Moines ia. Iowans were less pleased with the presence of other Native Americans in the state. A January 15, 1855, petition signed by twenty-four people from the area of Fort Dodge, north and west from Tama, complained that some Sioux Indians in their neighborhood were stealing stock and grain and “alarming our citizens by their nocturnal powwows and animalism [sic] revels.” Similar petitions came from residents in two other areas of northwest Iowa. See Secretary of State General Assembly Petitions, Box 6, Folder Secretary of State General Assembly Petitions—Indians, State Historical Society of Iowa, Des Moines, Iowa. Meskwaki tribal historian Johnathan Buffalo said tribal oral history indicates that Meskwaki used their history as fierce foes of the Sioux to persuade Tama County residents that having them as neighbors would keep the Sioux away. 10. Lloyd Fallers, “Role of Factionalism in Fox Acculturation,” Box 288, Reel 6, stp, 3824, 3825, 3826–27. The 2001 Proclamation Day ceremonies included the unveiling of a “history wall” in the Meskwaki Bingo, Casino and Hotel and the announcement of plans for a cultural center to include a library, museum, and modern art gallery. Event observed by author. Edmunds and Peyser, Fox Wars, 208. 11. Prucha, Great Father, 304–5; Fallers, “Role of Factionalism,” 3834.

notes to pages 34–40

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12. “Reservation Over-All Program,” Reel 5, 3006. Keliiaa, “Survey of Possibilities of Withdrawal,” Reel 5, 3034–35; Miller Journal, August 5, 1948, Reel 2, 507, all in Box 288, stp. Wolffson Journal, August 10, 1948, fpp, Box 2, 1665–66; Fallers, “Role of Factionalism,” 3836. 13. Miller, “Authority and Collective Action in Fox Society,” 1948, Box 288, Reel 6, stp, 3936–37. Miller cited local newspaper articles in 1879 and in unspecified earlier years. Charles Leslie Journal, August 6, 1949, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 1788; “Powwow: White Aid in Organizing,” Tama News Herald, August 1951, redacted version of article in Box 8, fpp. Yet another Meskwaki version is that whites heard drums and singing when a settlement family got together, and the whites came to see what was happening. See Irv Gerick and Carolyn Wiesender journals, August 22, 1949, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 456. 14. “Greatest Powwow since 1923; Indians Made $7,400; Each Full Share, $22.80,” Tama News Herald, August 25, 1949; and “Jim Poweshiek Dies after Life of Leadership and Service in Tribe,” Tama News Herald, October 12, 1950, copies in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. 15. Wanatee, “Lion, Fleur-de-lis,” 79–80. 16. Tax, “Anthropology and Administration,” 21–33; Tax to Collier, September 4, 1934, Box 8, fpp. 17. W. Carson Ryan Jr. to Tax, September 12, 1934, Box 8, fpp; Kelly, “Anthropology in the Indian New Deal,” 6–24. 18. Prucha, Great Father, 324. 19. Kurtz, “Economic and Political History,” chapter 7; Furey, “Problem of Factionalism,” 293; Fallers, “Role of Factionalism,” 3825; Indian agent Thomas Forsyth quoted in Wallace, Prelude to Disaster, 3. 20. Wanatee, “Lion, Fleur-de-lis,” 79; Fallers, “Role of Factionalism,” 3834; handwritten notes on Fox council, Box 288, Reel 7, stp, n. pag. 21. Miller Journal, August 3, 1951, Box 288, Reel 3, stp, 2191, emphasis in the original; Ira D. Nelson to Collier, August 10, 1934, File #9715-A. 22. Nelson to Collier, August 10, 1934, and Charlotte T. Westwood to Collier, January 29, 1937, both in File #9715-A; Helen Fagin Fieldnotes, July 23, 1949, Reel 2, 1199; Fred Gearing Fieldnotes, July 13, 1952, Reel 4, 2370; Fallers, “Role of Factionalism,” Fall 1948, Reel 6,

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notes to pages 40–42

3833, all in Box 288, stp. Fagin, not a University of Chicago anthropologist, was working with a team of psychologists from the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station at the University of Iowa who interviewed Meskwaki parents regarding child development. See “Iowa Child Welfare to Carry Out Program with Mesquakie Tribe,” Toledo Chronicle, July 14, 1949, copy in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. Redacted versions of “Mesquakie Booster,” articles from January and May 1916, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 1831 and 1833. 23. McCormack Fieldnotes, September 21, 1952, Reel 4, 39871; Gearing Fieldnotes, July 13, 1952, Reel 4, 2370; Fallers, “Role of Factionalism,” Reel 5, 3833; Miller Journal, June 30, 1948, Reel 2, 71; W. H. Sangree Fieldnotes, July 16, 1953, Reel 5, 3262; all in Box 288, stp. 24. Prior to congressional approval of the Indian Reorganization Act, Jacob Breid, superintendent of the Sac and Fox Sanatorium, sent a letter to tribal members saying the commissioner of Indian Affairs had suggested the Meskwaki set up a business committee as other tribes had done because “at the present time there apparently is no definite organization that is authorized to represent the tribe.” Breid to “My Friend,” May 25, 1933, Box 288, Reel 4, stp; Nelson to Collier, August 10, 1934, Westwood to Collier, January 29, 1937, McNickle to Harper, December 30, 1936, Westwood to Organization Division, March 16, 1937, and Ben Reifel to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, March 1, 1937, all in File #9715-A. 25. W. H. Sangree Fieldnotes, August 24, 1953, Reel 5, 3333, and Miller Journal, August 3, 1951, Reel 3, 2191, both in Box 288, stp. 26. “Horace Poweshiek, 90, Buried; Prominent in Tribe’s History,” newspaper clipping dated September 17, 1982; “Jim Poweshiek Dies after Life of Leadership and Service in Tribe,” newspaper clipping dated 1950; “George Young Bear, Tribal Leader, Dies at 73,” newspaper clipping dated 1971; and various other clippings from 1929 with the byline of George Young Bear, all in obituary files of Tama County Historical Museum, Toledo ia. 27. For the comments of one Indian suspicious of the ira see Frank O. Jones to Rep. Lyle H. Boren, April 13, 1938, Folder Frank O. Jones, Record Group 75, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Records

notes to pages 43–46

325

of the Offices of the Chief Clerk and Assistant Commissioners of Indian Affairs, Correspondence of Assistant Commissioner William Zimmerman, 1935–1948, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington dc, hereinafter referred to as nara; Jack Old Bear to Ickes, December 18, 1934, File #9715 1936 066, rg 75, Entry 1012, General Records Concerning Indian Organization for 1934–1956, Sac and Fox, nara, hereinafter referred to as File #9715. 28. Collier to Jack Old Bear, undated, and Nelson to Collier, February 4, 1935, both in File #9715. 29. Collier to Secretary of the Interior, September 22, 1937, File #9715-A; John H. Holst, “Report on the Sac and Fox Reservation,” June 4, 1938, File #9715; Westwood to Collier, January 29, 1937, File #9715-A. 30. Kelly, “Anthropology and Anthropologists,” 10–11; Parker, Singing an Indian Song, 11, 68; McNickle to Harper, December 30, 1936, File #9715. Parker found that “the ‘paper trail’ of McNickle’s early work with the Bureau is faint,” and the documents she found “reveal few traces of his specific activities.” McNickle’s report of his visit to the Meskwaki makes the paper trail clearer. See Parker, 70–71. 31. McNickle to Harper, December 30, 1936, File #9715. 32. McNickle to Collier, January 4, 1937, File #9715-A. 33. McNickle to Collier, January 4, 1937; Collier to Nathan R. Margold, January 5, 1937; Westwood to Collier, January 29, 1937; Constitution of the Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa, Article X, Section 1, (a)–(q), all in File #9715-A. 34. Zimmerman to Constitution Committee, May 20, 1937, and Zimmerman to Reifel, May 20, 1937, both in File #9715-A. 35. Certification of election, November 19, 1937, File #9715-A. Holst, “Report on the Sac and Fox Reservation,” File #9715. Young Bear to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, December 13, 1937, and John Tataposh et al. to Ickes, December 13, 1937, both in File #9715-A. Tataposh to Roosevelt, February 2, 1938, File #9715. (The Indian Reorganization Act often is referred to as the Wheeler-Howard Act based on its two main sponsors.) F. H. Daiker to Charles Davenport, February 12, 1939 [sic], File #9715-A. The year 1939 on the date

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notes to pages 46–51

stamp must be in error because the letter follows the 1937 petition and from the context, it is clear that the council under the new constitution has just been elected. 36. Tataposh to Secretary of Interior, April 18, 1938, File #9715. The charter, which would have made the Meskwaki eligible for economic development programs under the Indian New Deal, never came to fruition. Bureau officials dissuaded tribal leaders from going ahead with it in light of the depth of opposition shown by Tataposh’s petition, until an agreement could be reached on amendments to the constitution that would have made it more acceptable to the opposition, but Holst determined that opponents were not interested in amendments, only repeal. See Daiker to Nelson, May 25, 1938, and Holst to Collier, June 4, 1938, both in File #9715. 37. Holst memo, April 14, 1938; Holst to Collier, “Report on Sac and Fox Reorganization,” and cover letter, June 4, 1938, all in File #9715. 38. D. E. Livesay to Collier, July 8, 1942, File #9715-A. 39. Fallers, “Role of Factionalism,” 3838–39. 40. Foley, Heartland Chronicles, 172–75. 41. Philp, Termination Revisited, 4–8, 77–81. 42. Testimony of Bertha Waseskuk, Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, Subcommittee on Indian Affairs, Hearing on H.R. 4725, 80th Cong., 2nd sess., April 1, 1948, 9, hereinafter referred to as Hearing on H.R. 4725. 43. Poweshiek to Collier, April 7, 1938; Frank G. Moorhead to Daiker, April 27, 1938; Daiker to Poweshiek, April 22, 1938; Reifel to Collier, August 28, 1940; H. P. Davis to Nelson, August 26, 1940, all in File #9715. 44. Reifel to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, August 26, 1940, File #9715; Peattie Field Diary, August 15, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 541. 45. Affidavit, August 30, 1940, and Davis to Nelson, August 26, 1940, both in File #9715. Article in Tama News-Herald, March 27, 1941, redacted version in Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 1876. 46. Peru Farver to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, May 29, 1944, Box 288, Reel 5, stp, 3001. Article X, Section 1, Subsection (n) of the

notes to pages 51–54

327

tribal constitution provides that the tribal council may “take action to preserve order among members of the Tribe which action shall be supplementary to and not in conflict with the activities of the Federal and State authorities.” 47. Fallers Diary and Interview, July 26 and 28, and August 3, 1948, 533 and 557; Peattie Interview, August 3 and 15, 1948, 541 and 548– 49; Peattie Diary, August 15, 1948, 541, all in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. 48. House Committee on Indian Affairs, Hearings on H.R. 166, 78th Cong., 1st sess., 1943, 1–2; House Subcommittee of the Committee on Indian Affairs, Field Hearings, Part 3, 78th Cong., 2nd sess., 1944, 1–5, 53–55. 49. Field Hearings, 54–55; House Committee on Public Lands, Subcommittee on Indian Affairs, Hearings on S. 543, S. 959, H.R. 4596, and H.R. 4605, 80th Cong., 2nd sess., 1948, 23, hereinafter referred to as Hearings on S. 543. 50. Philp, Termination Revisited, 141; Daiker to Zimmerman, December 19, 1946, Folder Memoranda from Staff (2 of 3), rg 75, Offices of the Chief Clerk and Assistant Commissioners of Indian Affairs, Memoranda of Assistant Commissioner William Zimmerman, 1935– 1948, nara. 51. Daiker to Zimmerman, December 19, 1946; House, Hearings on S. 543, 13–14; articles, Tama News Herald, August 7, 1947, September 18, 1947, and October 7, 1947, redacted versions, and Peattie and Fallers Interview, July 1, 1948, 602–3, all in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. 52. Fallers Diary, July 6, 1948, 618–21; Mrs. W. G. MacMartin to Mrs. R. P. Ink, April 6, 1947, and MacMartin to Zimmerman, April 7, 1947, redacted versions, 622–24, all in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. 53. Rietz Fieldnotes, July 16, 1948, 645–49; “Mitchell Given Three Years for Drunken Driving; Willett Speaks of Law on Reservation,” Tama News-Herald, May 6, 1948, redacted version, 1880; Peattie and Fallers diaries, July 1, 1948, 602, all in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. Robert L. Larson to Willett, December 1, 1947, Tama County Grand Jury Resolution, October 29, 1947, and Tama County Board of Supervisors Resolution, November 26, 1947, all in House, Hearings on S. 543, 19. Lost in the hyperbole was the fact that county and state authorities

328

notes to pages 55–57

had retained the right to prosecute Indians for crimes against nonIndians. Only crimes by Indians against Indians on the settlement were at issue. 54. Philp, Termination Revisited, 144–45; Hickenlooper to Davenport, April 22, 1948, Box 32, Folder Legislative File, General, Sac and Fox Indians, 1967, Bourke B. Hickenlooper Papers, General, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa, hereinafter referred to as bhp; House, Hearings on S. 543, 2. Philp concentrated on disputes over jurisdiction of Indians in California and New York, omitting the Meskwaki matter on the grounds that the people had consented to it. The hearings he cited do not reference specifically any support from the community. See Philp, Termination Revisited, 142–45 n22, 211. In fact, Congressman John Gwynne of Iowa, one of the bill’s sponsors, noted that he did not know how Meskwaki felt about the bill and had not tried to find out. House, Hearings on S. 543, 4. In another hearing on state legal jurisdiction not cited by Philp, bia commissioner Dillon Myer commented that the bureau had proposed the bills “after consultation with local groups” and that “they favor it.” Myer, however, was referring to bills regarding Indians in California and Oregon, as well as one that simply would recodify the original Iowa measure. See House Committee on Judiciary, Subcommittee No. 2, Hearings on H.R. 6035, H.R. 5476, H.R. 6036, H.R. 6695, 182nd Cong., 2nd sess., April 7, 1952, 9–10. In this hearing Myer commented that getting rid of federal responsibility for law and order should be “one of the first steps taken to get us out of the business” of Indian affairs. See 7–8. 55. House, Hearings on S. 543, 11–19. 56. House, Hearings on S. 543, 36; House, Hearings on H.R. 4725, 2; House Committee on Public Lands, Subcommittee on Indian Affairs, Hearings on H.R. 4596, S. 543, S. 949, H.R. 4725, February 10, 1948, 80th Cong., 2nd sess., 36; Philp, Termination Revisited, 144–45; Willett to Hickenlooper, February 6, 1948, Box 53, Folder Sac and Fox Indians, 1948, S1820, bhp, Legislative Files, Sponsored. 57. Senate, Hearings on H.R. 4725, 8, 11, 19. 58. “Attorney General to Discuss New Law with Indians,” Tama

notes to pages 58–60

329

News-Herald, November 18, 1948, redacted version, 1887–1888; Peattie Diary, November 28, 1948, 551–52; Fallers Diary, July 26, 1948, 557; Peattie and Fallers Interview, July 1, 1948, 602; Fallers Diary, July 26, 1948, 557–58; and Peattie Field Diary, November 28, 1948, 551, all in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. 59. A. L. Wathen to Collier, July 1, 1943, and Wathen to Collier, June 7, 1945, both in Folder Memos from Staff (3 of 3), rg 75, Zimmerman Correspondence, nara; “Reservation Over-All Program,” 3012–22, 3026. 60. McCormack Fieldnotes, July 11, 1952, Reel 4, 39787; Farver, agency superintendent, to Collier, May 29, 1944, Reel 5, 3001, both in Box 288, stp. 61. Cowger, National Congress of American Indians, 119; Officer, “Termination as Federal Policy, 119–21. Officer does an excellent job of laying out the gradual development of the movement for termination that culminated in passage of House Concurrent Resolution 108, arguing that the notorious 1953 resolution came after years of pressure by Congress for termination and was not “something dropped out of the blue.” 62. Fallers, “Role of Factionalism,” 3839. For removal of King, see Tama News-Herald article, August 17, 1947, redacted version, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 1879; “Reservation Over-all Program,” 3009. The figure of $13,237 was an average over the five years from 1939 to 1943. 63. Sande to A. B. Caldwell, November 8, 1946, Folder 806.1— Schools, Day, Sac and Fox, rg 75, Great Lakes Agency, General Correspondence Files, nara—Great Lakes Region, Chicago. For return of veterans, see “1946–1947 Work Programs,” Unsigned Report, Folder Program, 1947, rg 75, Offices of Chief Clerk and Assistant Commissioners of Indian Affairs—Memos of Assistant Commissioner William Zimmerman, 1935–1948, nara; Sande and P. W. Danielson to Mr. Hass, March 28, 1946, Folder Programs, 1947, rg 75, Zimmerman Memos, 1935–1948, nara; Sande to Caldwell, November 8, 1946, Folder 806.1—Schools, Day, Sac and Fox, rg 75, Great Lakes Agency, General Correspondence Files, nara—Great Lakes Region, Chicago.

330

notes to pages 60–62

64. C. W. King to Caldwell, December 18, 1946; King to D. E. Murphy, April 4, 1947; and R. C. Smith to Sande, June 12, 1947, all in Folder 806.1—Schools, Day, Sac and Fox, rg 75, Great Lakes Agency, General Correspondence Files, nara—Great Lakes Region, Chicago; Ben Jones to Superintendent Tomah Indian Agency, Green Bay, August 7, 1947, and Sande to Agency Superintendents and School Directors, July 3, 1947, Folder 806—Schools, Miscellaneous Correspondence, 1942–1960, rg 75, Great Lakes Agency, General Correspondence Files, nara—Great Lakes Region, Chicago. Although King suggested consulting with the tribal council before contacting the Tama board, the files have no indication that that was done. 65. Edward Mays to Tomah Indian Agency, August 5, 1948, rg 75, Great Lakes Agency, General Correspondence Files, Folder 806— Schools, Miscellaneous Correspondence, 1942–1960, nara—Great Lakes Region, Chicago; Memo on Enrollment of Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin Indian Children in Boarding Schools, undated, rg 75, Great Lakes Agency, General Correspondence Files, Folder 806—Schools (Miscellaneous Correspondence Not Otherwise Classified), nara—Great Lakes Region, Chicago. A letter attached to the memo on Great Lakes Indian Agency stationery bears the date April 5, 1948. 66. “Caged Like an Animal: Jim Old Bear Placed in Pen,” Tama News-Herald, undated copy; “Old Bear Leaves Reservation for Gov’t Institution,” Tama News-Herald, August 25, 1949, microfilmed copy; and Miller Journal, June 30, 1948, 599, all in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. 67. List of veterans compiled by Gearing, October 1952, Reel 4, 2250, and “Waseskuk New Commander of Mesquakie Legion,” press release submitted to Tama, Toledo newspapers, October 15, 1952, 2253, Reel 4; Wolffson Journal, June 28, 1948, Reel 2, 185; Rietz Fieldnotes, July 13, 1948, Reel 2, 321; Peattie and Fallers diaries, July 10, 1948, Reel 2, 416; “Tama Indian Asks for Bill of Rights for Indians,” Letter to Editor of Tama News-Herald, June 5, 1947, Reel 2, 435–36, and “Indian Writes Protest Letter to D. M. Register,” Tama News-Herald, November 18, 1948, abstract, Reel 2, 1885, all in Box 288, stp. The press release on veterans mentions 55 veterans of World War II in

notes to pages 62–66

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the community, but the 60 names listed by Gearing included one veteran of World War I and 15 men who were in the armed services in 1952, most of whom were too young to have served in World War II, leaving 44 men from the list as World War II veterans. Since the list may have been incomplete, an indeterminate number has been used. For problems with liquor at the legion post, see Wolffson Journal, July 4, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 1614. 68. Peattie Field Diary, August 7, 1948, Reel 2, 160; unsigned, undated, untitled document, Reel 4, 3765; and Rietz Miscellaneous Notes, March 1949, Reel 2, 594, all in Box 288, stp. 69. Cowger, National Congress of American Indians, 100–101; House Special Investigating Committee of the Committee on Indian Affairs, To Investigate Indian Conditions in the United States, 78th Cong., 2nd session, December 4, 1944, 16; Philp, Termination Revisited, 71– 75; “Reservation Over-All Program,” 3012–14. For more on the plan and Meskwaki reaction to it, see Gearing Fieldnotes, October 1952, 2260–61, and McCormack Fieldnotes, September 26, 1952, 39881, both in Box 288, Reel 4, stp. 2. Sol Tax and the Value of Anthropology 1. Bennett, “Applied and Action Anthropology,” S34; Beck, Sewer Socialists, 1:i, 22–28. The U.S. House refused to seat its first Socialist member, Victor Berger, despite his election win, but Berger won again in 1922 and was seated. Weinstein, Decline of Socialism in America, 93, 169n. 2. Beck, Sewer Socialists, 27–28; Bennett, “Applied and Action Anthropology,” S34; Sol Tax, “Last on the Warpath: A Personalized Account of How an Anthropologist Learned from American Indians,” Box 273, Folder 2, stp. 3. Blanchard, “Beyond Empathy,” 420; Bennett, “Applied and Action Anthropology,” S34–S35; McMillan, “Study of Anthropology,” 149. 4. Stocking, “‘Do Good, Young Man,’” 174; Sol Tax, “Action Anthropology: A Personal Memoir,” Box 282, Folder 2, stp; Tax handwritten notes, January 1971, Box 6, Folder 8; “U.W. Liberal Club May Join Na-

332

notes to pages 66–70

tional Body,” May 30, 1928, and “Warrant Refused for Gordon Critic,” clippings in Box 6, Folder 8, stp. 5. Stocking, “‘Do Good, Young Man,’” 174; Tax, “Action Anthropology: A Personal Memoir”; and Bennett, “Applied and Action Anthropology,” S35. 6. Stocking, “‘Do Good, Young Man,’” 174; Tax, “Action Anthropology: A Personal Memoir”; Modell, Ruth Benedict, 178–79. Tax Fieldnotes, June 12, 1931, Folder 12, and Tax to Scudder MeKeel, May 8, 1940, Folder 19, both in Box 10, stp. Of the six students in the field school, five were men. 7. Nancy Lurie, interview with the author, April 29, 2002, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 8. Mead, Anthropologist at Work, 317; Benedict to Tax, January 8, 1932, Box 18, Folder 4, stp; and McMillan, “Study of Anthropology,” 235 n27. Benedict held a less generous opinion of Tax’s mentor, A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, whom she considered condescending to American anthropologists despite his own ignorance of Native Americans. See Mead, Anthropologist at Work, 326–27. Portions of the Benedict quotation about the field school students appear in McMillan, “Study of Anthropology,” 147–49. For Cole’s views, McMillan quotes a letter from Cole to the university Fellowship Board written March 14, 1932. 9. McMillan, “Study of Anthropology,” 83, 109, and Rubinstein, Doing Fieldwork, 6. 10. McMillan, “Study of Anthropology,” 90, 93, 101, 113, 114, 123, 131. 11. McMillan, “Study of Anthropology,” 138, 146–49,152. 12. McMillan, “Study of Anthropology,” 116, 146–49. 13. Eggan, Social Anthropology of North American Tribes; Tax, “Pride and Puzzlement,” 3; and Rubinstein, “Conversation with Sol Tax,” 182. 14. Tax, “Social Organization of the Fox” (diss.), 144–45, 176–84, and Redfield to Tax, August 1, 1933, and August 21, 1933, Box 34, Folder 3, rrp. 15. “Child Training-Childbirth,” “Marriage,” “Menstruation,” Box

notes to pages 71–75

333

19, Folder (51) Child Training-Childbirth, fpp; Tax Fieldnotes, Box 288, Reel 1, 844–55, and Charles Callender Diary, July 6, 1954, Reel 6, 4464, both in Box 288, stp. “Jessica Jones” and “Jeremy Jones” are pseudonyms. 16. Fallers Diary, July 9, 1948, 1351, and Miller Journal, June 29, 1948, 1471, both in Box 288, Reel 2, stp; [Meskwaki woman], interview with the author, summer 2001, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia; Tax, “Social Organization of the Fox Indians” (thesis), 12; Wiesender Journal, July 29, 1949, Box 288, Reel 2, 453, stp; and Mrs. John E. Holland to Tax, May 8, 1933, Box 126, Folder 4, stp. Ferber’s novel Cimarron was published in New York by Grosset and Dunlap in 1930. 17. Tax to unknown recipient, summer 1934, stp, Box 126 Folder 4. 18. Tax to unknown recipient, summer 1934, stp, Box 126 Folder 4. 19. George Young Bear to Tax, March 27, 1937, stp, Box 126, Folder 4. 20. Tax, “Social Organization of the Fox” (diss.), 175; Tax, “Last on the Warpath.” 21. Tax, “Social Organization of the Fox” (diss.), 141–45. 22. Eggan, American Indian, 15–40; Rubinstein, Doing Fieldwork, 9– 10, and Tax, “Social Organization of the Fox” (diss.), 17, 75 n3. As Tax explained the chart he invented, each kinship term was represented by a different color. Lines of the appropriate color were drawn to connect the triangles and circles (used to represent people), indicating the type of relationship that existed between two individuals. Morgan attached the date January 1866 to his work Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family, but it was not published until 1870. 23. Tax, “Social Organization of the Fox” (diss.), 114, 121. 24. Tax, “Social Organization of the Fox” (diss.), 114–15. 25. Radcliffe-Brown to Tax, June 22, 1937, Box 55, Folder 1, stp, and Eggan, Social Anthropology. 26. Rubinstein, Doing Fieldwork, 7–8; Tax, “Pride and Puzzlement,” 3; Tax, Penny Capitalism, and William J. Griffith, review of Penny Capitalism: A Guatemalan Indian Economy, in Hispanic American Historical Review 34.1 (February 1954): 61–62. 27. Rubinstein, Doing Fieldwork, 11.

334

notes to pages 76–82

28. Mark C. Smith, Social Science in the Crucible. 29. Kelly, “Anthropology in the Indian New Deal,” 7–11. 30. Kelly, “Anthropology in the Indian New Deal,” 11–13, 17–18. 31. McNickle to Harper, December 30, 1936, File #9715-A; Parker, Singing an Indian Song, 73. 32. Keliiaa, “Survey of Possibilities of Withdrawal,” 3061. See chapter 1 for a more complete discussion of the issues of jurisdiction, attitudes toward the ira constitution, and land issues. The land purchase proposal was part of the twenty-year $1.1 million plan put forward in 1944 titled “Reservation Over-All Program, Sac and Fox Sub-Agency, Toledo, Iowa” discussed in chapter 1. 33. Kelly, “Anthropology and Anthropologists,” 15–17. 34. White, Roots of Dependency, 271–75, 281, 313–14; Kelly, “Anthropology in the Indian New Deal,” 15. White’s comment on the Navajos being the most studied people on earth was a summary of the retrospective comments of bia superintendent E. R. Fryer. 35. Szasz, Education and the American Indian, 56–59, 86; Kelly, “Anthropology in the Indian New Deal,” 9. 36. Kelly, “Anthropology in the Indian New Deal,” 19–22, and Parker, Singing an Indian Song, 86–87. 37. Eddy and Partridge, Applied Anthropology in America, 29–31, and Kelly, “Anthropology in the Indian New Deal,” 23. 38. McMillan, Study of Anthropology, 158–60. 39. Rubinstein, Doing Fieldwork, 4–5; Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, 6, 7, 14, 18. 40. Rubinstein, Doing Fieldwork, 60, 66–67, 75, 79. The Taxes did speak Spanish. 41. Rubinstein, Doing Fieldwork, 126–27; Tax to Redfield, August 7, 1933, and Redfield to Tax, August 9, 1933, both in Box 34, Folder 3, rrp. 42. Tax Fieldnotes, November 10, 1935, Box 95, Folder 10, stp; Tax to Redfield, April 29, 1935, Box 34, Folder 4, and October 5, 1935, Box 34, Folder 11, both in rrp, and Rubinstein, Doing Fieldwork, 81, 99, 147, 150, 156. 43. Rubinstein, Doing Fieldwork, 100, 158, 255, 282.

notes to pages 83–89

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44. Rubinstein, Doing Fieldwork, 91–92, 168. 45. Lurie interview with the author. 46. [Meskwaki woman] to Gertrude Tax, September 9, 1934; [Meskwaki man] to Tax, August 24, 1935; [Meskwaki woman] to Taxes, April 10, 1936; [Meskwaki woman] to Gertrude Tax, November 22, 1934, all in Box 126, Folder 4, stp. The Taxes also exchanged photographs with one family. 47. [Meskwaki man] to Tax, July 31, 1937, Box 126, Folder 4, stp. 48. Rubinstein, Doing Fieldwork, 44–45 n1 and n3; George Young Bear to Tax, July 31, 1937, Box 126, Folder 4, stp, emphasis in the original. Villa Rojas, listed as co-author with Redfield of Chan Kom: A Maya Village (Washington dc: Carnegie Institute of Washington, 1934), became a leading Mexican anthropologist. Carrera attended the University of Chicago, from which he received a master’s degree. He directed the National Indian Institute of Guatemala and later held Guatemalan ambassadorships. 49. Lynd, Knowledge for What? 129, 157–58. 50. Lynd, Knowledge for What? 166, 186; emphasis in the original. 51. Lynd, Knowledge for What? 136, 180, 184, 186. 52. Lynd, Knowledge for What? 175–77. 53. Howard, Margaret Mead, 220–21; Mead, And Keep Your Powder Dry. 54. Howard, Margaret Mead, 221–26, 402. 55. Eddy and Partridge, Applied Anthropology in America, 38. 56. Redfield to Tax, May 1, 1941, Box 34, Folder 9, rrp; Eddy and Partridge, Applied Anthropology in America, 38; McMillan, “Study of Anthropology,” 129–30; and Rubinstein, Doing Fieldwork, 39–40, 64, 99, 125. 57. Tax to Redfield, July 30, 1942, Folder 10, and Redfield to Tax, August 4, 1942, Folder 11, both in Box 34, rrp. 58. Eddy and Partridge, Applied Anthropology in America, 31–32; Redfield to Tax, January 26, 1943, Box 35, Folder 1, rrp. 59. Van Willigen, Applied Anthropology, 25; Parsons and Vogt, “Clyde Kay Maben Kluckhohn,” 145; Howard, Margaret Mead, 230, 239, 241; Eddy and Partridge, Applied Anthropology in America, 33–36.

336

notes to pages 90–96

60. Eddy and Partridge, Applied Anthropology in America, 34–35. 61. Redfield to Tax, September 7, 1942, Box 34, Folder 11, rrp; Redfield to Tax, January 15, 1943, Box 56, Folder 2, stp. 62. Redfield to Tax, January 15, 1943, Box 56, Folder 2, stp. 63. Morris, Nelson Rockefeller, 112–34. 64. Morris, Nelson Rockefeller, 133–34, 155; Persico, Imperial Rockefeller, 33. 65. Parker, Singing an Indian Song, 84; David H. Stevens to Robert Redfield, May 27, 1942, Box 34, Folder 10, rrp; Partridge and Eddy, Applied Anthropology in America, 36–37; Stevens to Redfield, May 27, 1942, Box 34, Folder 10, rrp. Eddy and Partridge mistakenly state that the government did not seek anthropological advice for the Latin American program until the 1950s. In fact, the Commerce Department tried unsuccessfully to obtain such advice from the start. 66. Morris, Nelson Rockefeller, 159–61. 67. Redfield to Donald Young, Social Science Research Council, May 28, 1942, Box 34, Folder 10, rrp. It also is possible that Redfield did not mean the Rockefeller Foundation itself, but merely Nelson Rockefeller. 68. Tax to Boke, undated, Tax to Stevens, May 29, 1942, both in Box 34, Folder 10, rrp. For discussion of one such funding request—paying the cost of graduate education for a Guatemalan man at the University of Chicago—see Rubinstein, Doing Fieldwork, 322, 323. 69. Tax to Redfield, November 9, 1942, Box 34, Folder 11, rrp; Tax to Redfield, January 29 and February 17, 1943, Box 56, Folder 2, stp. 70. Redfield to Tax, February 25, 1943; Tax to Redfield, March 1, 1943; W. M. Gilbert to Draft Board Number 88, June 21, 1943; Alfred V. Kidder affidavit, Form 42A, undated, all in Box 56, Folder 2, stp. 71. Fay-Cooper Cole to Ralph W. Tyler, February 10, 1945, Box 35, Folder 2, stp; Kidder to Redfield, December 21, 1944, Box 35, Folder 2, rrp. 72. Tax, “Anthropology and Administration,” 23–24. 73. Stocking, “‘Do Good, Young Man,’” 176; Tax, “Anthropology and Administration,” 24, 29–30. 74. Tax, “Anthropology and Administration,” 32.

notes to pages 97–103

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75. Tax, “Anthropology and Administration,” 33. 76. Sady, “Comentario al articulo ‘Anthropology and Administration’,” 177–79. 77. Alfred F. Whiting [University of Oregon anthropology department] to Tax, April 10, 1945, Box 184, Folder 9, stp. 78. Tax, “Personal Memoir.” 79. Handwritten notes, dated 1984, Box 282, Folder 3, stp. In 1954 Tax bought the house near the University of Chicago in which Fermi had lived while working on the Manhattan Project. 80. Redfield to Peattie, Undated, Box 1, Folder 9, rrp-Addenda. 81. Redfield to Peattie, Undated, Box 1, Folder 9, rrp—Addenda. Portions of this letter were reprinted in Stocking, Anthropology at Chicago, 30. 82. Camfield, “American Psychological Association,” 91–114; Stocking, “Ideas and Institutions in American Anthropology,” 115. For an account of the activities of some of those whom Boas accused of spying during World War I, see Harris and Sadler, Archeologist Was a Spy. Although Harris and Sadler present a celebratory account of the wartime spying of Sylvanus Morley, Herbert Spinden, and others, they do give an account of Boas’s complaint and its aftermath. See pp. 284–89. 83. Herman, Romance of American Psychology, 74–77, 123, 134; Capshew and Hilgard, “Power of Service,” 171. 84. Bennett, “Applied and Action Anthropology,” S26–S27. 85. Linton, Science of Man, 17; Halpern, “Women in Applied Anthropology,” 198. Linton dismissed as “groundless” the fears of other anthropologists that the profession would be “torn limb from limb and the bleeding fragments distributed among its older and stronger neighbors” if interdisciplinary work were continued. 86. Howard, Margaret Mead, 230. 87. Price, “Gregory Bateson and the oss,” 379–84. 88. Coon, North Africa Story, ix–xi, 125, 127–38. 89. Herman, Romance of American Psychology, 133. 90. Powers, “Harvard Study of Values,” 18–19. 91. Powers, “Harvard Study of Values,” 19.

338

notes to pages 103–112

92. Tax, “Can Social Science help to set values or offer a choice between alternative value systems?” Spring 1949, Box 264, Folder 3, stp; emphases in the original. 93. Tax, “Can Social Science help?” 94. Powers, “Harvard Study of Values,” 15, 21–23. 95. Powers, “Harvard Study of Values,” 25–26. 96. Tax, “Social Organization of the Fox” (diss.), 145. 97. University of Chicago Department of Anthropology Departmental Meeting Minutes, June 12, 1947, Box 24, Folder 16, Department of Anthropology Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, hereinafter referred to as dap. 98. Rubinstein, Doing Fieldwork, 8–16, 288–89. 99. McMillan, “Study of Anthropology,” 126. 100. Tax, “Personal Memoir”; Grace Gredys, interview with the author, October 23, 2002, Rochester ny. 101. Tax handwritten notes, October 28, 1992, Folder Finding Aid and Document Indexes, Bob Rietz Papers, Native American Education Services Center, Chicago, hereinafter referred to as brp; Gredys interview with the author. 102. Rubinstein, Doing Fieldwork, xii, 280. 103. Redfield to Peattie, Tito and Joanna, April 21, no year, and Redfield to Peattie, undated, both in Box 1, Folder 9, rrp—Addenda. 104. Gredys interview with the author. 3. “Science Has to Stop Somewhere” 1. Wolffson Journal, June 25, 1948, Box 2, Folder Wolffson, 1948, fpp, and Peattie Diary, June 27, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 1492. 2. Peattie Diary, June 30, 1948, 1500, and Wolffson Journal, July 3, 1948, 1610, both in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. 3. Peattie Diary, June 25, 1948, 1485, and Wolffson Journal, July 16, 1948, 1637, both in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. 4. Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, 6, 7, 14, and 18; Stocking, Ethnographer’s Magic and Other Essays, see chapter 1. 5. Clifford, Predicament of Culture, 41–44, 59–60. Clifford cites the

notes to pages 112–118

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work of Kevin Dwyer and Vincent Crapanzano as examples of attempts to alter the power relationships inherent in ethnology and to see the product of an ethnographic encounter as negotiated between the researcher and the people interviewed. 6. See the introduction for more discussion of the imperfections of fieldnotes as sources. 7. [Meskwaki man], interview with the author, summer 2001, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia. 8. Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History of the Fox Project, 30–32. 9. Tax, “A Personal Memoir,” Box 282, Folder 2, stp. 10. Tax to Peattie, August 4, 1948, Box 14, Folder Fox Correspondence Copies, fpp. 11. “Outline History of the Fox Project,” undated, Box 6, fpp; Tax to John H. Provinse, May 11, 1948, and Peattie to Provinse, July 11, 1948, both in Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History, 27–29. Making the request to federal officials might have carried some validity if the Meskwaki settlement had been on federal land, but the Meskwaki owned their own land. It is unclear how many reports besides Peattie’s on law and order were filed. For references to Tax’s and Provinse’s careers at Chicago, see McMillan, “Study of Anthropology,” 129–30, 184. 12. Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History, 26; Purchase agreement, January 17, 1949, Box 126, Folder 6, stp. The students arrived on different dates. Grace Gredys’s married name is Grace Harris. The university paid $8,000 for the farm and buildings. 13. Fallers Interview, July 8, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 1–16; Wolffson Journal, June 26, 1948, Box 2, Folder Journals-Wolffson, 1948, fpp; Wolffson Journal, July 6, 1948, 1619, and Fallers Interview, July 2, 1948, 790, both in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. “Fred Arrow” is a pseudonym. 14. Peattie Diary, July 2, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, 1507–8, 1510, stp. 15. Wolffson Journal, July 3, 4, and 23, 1948, and August 15, 1948, 1610, 1614, 1640–41, 1674; Fallers Interview, June 19, 1948, 1; and Caroline Wiesender Journal, July 9, 1949, 1800, all in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. Wolffson’s fieldnotes recount a time during a baseball game

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notes to pages 118–122

when the Meskwaki pitcher was speaking in Fox to the first baseman. A white woman in the stands commented, “Wish that guy’d speak English so you could understand him.” Older Meskwaki love to tell the story of an all-Meskwaki football team at South Tama High School that called signals in Meskwaki to confuse the other team. See also Polgar Journal, June 21, 1952, Box 288, Reel 6, stp, 4315. 16. Wolffson Journal, July 3, 1948, 1611, and Fallers Interview, July 5, 1948, 44–45, both in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. 17. Miller and Fallers Interview, August 15, 1948, stp, Box 288, Reel 2, 469. 18. Fallers Interview, July 5, 1948, stp, Box 288, Reel 2, 45–46. 19. Gredys Diary, July 1 and 12, 1948, 1372–73, 1406, and Peattie Diary, July 26, 1948, 1554, both in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. 20. Wolffson Journal, June 28, 1948, 179, and Gredys and Peattie Interview, undated, 537, both in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. 21. Peattie and Fallers Interview, August 3, 1948, 521; Leslie and Rietz Interview, July 20, 1949, 214, both in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. 22. Miller Journal, June 29, 1948, and July 9, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 253, 257, 290. “Lawrence Phillips” is a pseudonym. 23. Gerick Journal, July 9–10, 1949, and September 1–7, 1949, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 695–1696, 1732. On the original copy of the fieldnotes, in Box 8, Folder Journals-Gerick, 1949, fpp, the dates were crossed out and changed by hand to July 8 and 9. 24. Marrouchi, Signifying with a Vengeance, 29. Sonya Rose, professor of history at the University of Michigan, suggested Marrouchi’s work to me. 25. Gerick Journal, July 5, 1949, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 1690. 26. Miller Journal, July 15, 1948, Box 15, Folder Journals-Miller 1948, 1–5, fpp. See the introduction for a fuller discussion of the incident. 27. Sally Deer, interview with the author, July 11, 2001, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia; Wolffson Fieldnotes, July 7, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 1395. “Sally Deer” is a pseudonym. 28. Fred Gearing, interview with the author, October 23, 2002, Buffalo ny; Miller Journal, July 15, 1948, Box 15, Folder Fieldnotes— Rietz, Gredys, Miller, Tax (Duplicates) fpp.

notes to pages 122–127

341

29. Cathy Arrow, interview with the author, summer 2001, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia. “Cathy Arrow” is a pseudonym. 30. Fallers Diary, July 5, 1948, 1339, and Wolffson Journal, July 6, 1948, 1388, both in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. 31. Peattie Interview, July 13, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 362, and Peattie, “Some Value Problems in the Fox ‘Action Anthropology’ Project,” January 1955, Box 6, Folder Proposals, Reports, Memos—Peattie, fpp. Peattie was one of the more self-reflective of the students, most likely because of her background. See chapter 2. 32. Rietz Fieldnotes, July 29, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 186–87. 33. Wolffson Journal, July 29, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 1655. 34. Fallers Diary, July 30, 1948, and August 15, 1948, 783, 1370; Fallers and Miller Interview, August 15, 1948, 464–68, all in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. Bertha Waseskuk did not mention having attended the party, but others in the group had been at it. 35. Michelson, Contributions to Fox Ethnology, 2: 25–27, 81. 36. Tax Fieldnotes, 1932–34, Box 288, Reel 1, stp, n. pag.; Tax, “Social Organization of the Fox” (diss.), 173. 37. Polgar Journal, June 17, 1952, Box 288, Reel 6, stp, 4310. This seems to suggest that Meskwaki in 1948 remained as generous as when Tax visited them in the early 1930s. “Henry Carter” is a pseudonym. 38. Meskwaki residents, interviews with the author, summer 2001, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia. 39. Miller Journal, June 29, 1949, and Miller Interview, July 9, 1948, 253, both in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. 40. Fallers Diary, July 1, 1948, 1327; Fallers and Peattie Interview, August 1, 1948, 545; Miller and Fallers Interview, August 15, 1948, 464–68, all in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. 41. Rietz Fieldnotes, July 29, 1948, 186–87; Peattie Diary, July 26, 1948, 1554, both in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. 42. Tax, “Action Anthropology.” In this memoir Tax said he was looking for a new term because labels such as “applied anthropology” and “action research” (which refers to German psychologist Kurt Lewin’s efforts beginning in the late 1930s to apply psychology

342

notes to pages 128–131

to social problems) did not fit the outlines of what anthropologists were doing at Tama. 43. Gerick Journal, July 8–9, 1949, 1697–98, and Peattie Diary, July 28, 1948, 1557, both in Box 288, Reel 2, stp; Robert Claus Interview, June 22, 1955, Box 8, Folder Economics—Claus, fpp. 44. Polgar Journal, June 22, 1952, Reel 6, 4316; Gerick Journal, July 8–9, 1949, Reel 2, 1697–98, both in Box 288, stp. Gerick had asked if it was all right for him to enter the place were a clan dance was being held and found out later that one should wait outside until invited in. See also Polgar Journal, July 12, 1952, Box 288, Reel 6, stp, 4321. 45. Polgar Journal, September 18, 1952, Box 288, Reel 6, stp, 4344. 46. Fallers Interview, July 5, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 44–51; Claus Interview, June 24, 1955, and July 29, 1955, Box 8, Folder: Economics—Claus, fpp. 47. Sarah A. Robinson Fieldnotes, August 1, 1954, 4604, and Joseph R. Marlin Journal, July 30, 1954, 4435, both in Box 288, Reel 6, stp. “Henry Carter” is a pseudonym. 48. Irv Gerick and Wiesender Interview, July 10, 1949, Reel 2, 458, and Polgar Journal, June 24, 1952, July 12 and 16, 1952, Reel 6, 4319, 4325, and 4328, all in Box 288, stp; Claus Daily Journal, July 11, 1955, Box 8, Folder Economics—Claus, fpp; Gearing Fieldnotes, August 10, 1953, Box 288, Reel 5, stp, 3122. 49. Leslie Journal, July 5, 1949, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 1751. 50. Clifford, Predicament of Culture, 41–44, 59–60; Peattie Diary, July 2, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 1508; Tax to Peattie, August 4, 1948, Box 14, Folder Fox Correspondence Copies, fpp, and Gredys interview with the author. Gredys said in some cultures people are not considered fully adult until they are married. 51. Wiesender Journal, July 7, 1949, 1792; Miller Journal, June 30, 1948, 694, both in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. For another example similar to the one cited by Wiesender, see Wolffson Journal, July 5, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 1618. 52. Leslie Interview, July 14, 1949, Reel 2, 225, and McCormack Fieldnotes, August 11, 1952, Reel 4, 39803, both in Box 288, stp; Lucinda Sangree, interview with the author, October 22, 2002, Rochester ny.

notes to pages 131–136

343

53. Wiesender Journal, July 7, 1949, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 1793; Leslie, “Fox Impressions,” in Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History, 89; Leslie Journal, July 5, 1949, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 1751. The concept of “playing Indian” is laid out in Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian. 54. Peattie Diary, July 1, 1948, 1503, and Leslie Interview, undated, 338–39, both in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. 55. Peattie and Fallers Interview, July 31, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 227–28. 56. Leslie Journal, July 2, 1949, 1741, and Wolffson Interview, July 1, 1948, 215, both in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. 57. Miller Journal, July 15, 1951, Box 288, Reel 3, stp, 2175; and [Meskwaki man] to Gross, January 9, 1952, N. J. Oganovic to Gross, February 14, 1952, and Gross to [Meskwaki man], February 18, 1952, all in Box 49, Folder: Correspondence: District—Tama County, Sac/ Fox Tribe (Meskwaki) 1949–1959 (1 of 2), H. R. Gross Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa, hereinafter referred to as hgp. 58. Miller Journal, July 15, 1951, Reel 3, 2175; Gerick and Wiesender Interview, August 24, 1949, Reel 2, 462; and Rietz and Gredys Interview, July 9, 1948, Reel 2, 437, all in Box 288, stp. 59. Gerrick and Wiesender, August 24, 1949, 461, and Peattie and Gredys Interview, June 30, 1948, 283–84, both in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. 60. Peattie and Fallers Interview, July 11, 1948, 330, 334, and Peattie Interview, July 9, 1948, 360, both in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. 61. Peattie and Fallers Interview, July 31, 1948, 228; Miller Interview, July 6, 1948, 232, both in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. 62. Gerick Journal, July 9–10, 1949, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 1695. 63. Peattie Interview, July 26, 221, and Gredys Journal, July 7, 1948, 1391, 1395, both in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. 64. Polgar Journal, July 16, 1952, July 29, 1952, and August 29, 1952, stp, Box 288, Reel 6, 4328–29, 4333, and 4338; Claus Interview, June 17, 1955, Box 8, Folder Economics—Claus, fpp, n. pag. 65. See Wolffson Journal, July 4 and 14, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, stp,

344

notes to pages 136–142

1613 and 1633, for two examples. Walter Sangree Fieldnotes, July 16, 1953, Box 288, Reel 5, stp, 3263; [Meskwaki man], interview with the author; Polgar Journal, July 14, 1953, Box 288, Reel 5, stp, 3438–39. 66. Rietz Fieldnotes, September 28, 1949, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 247. “Bill Cloud” is a pseudonym. 67. Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity, 246–49. 68. [Meskwaki woman], interview with the author, spring 2003, Waterloo ia. Taussig’s analysis would offer a different sort of explanation: Cloud may have been practicing a sort of “sympathetic” magic. He may have thought that by copying Rietz he would acquire Rietz’s abilities and knowledge. Rather than practicing Rietz’s listening technique over and over, however, Cloud may have been thinking along the lines of a form of magic in which, according to Taussig, a copy “acquires the properties of the represented.” Although some Meskwaki do believe in a type of sympathetic magic, Rietz gave no indication if the listener did. See Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity, 47–48. 69. [Meskwaki woman], interview with the author, July 24, 2001, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia. 70. Marjorie Gearing Journal, February 23, 1955, Box 1, Folder Journals, Gearing, M., 1955, fpp; Deer interview with the author; Gredys interview with the author. 71. McCormack Fieldnotes, August 15, 1952, Reel 4, 39808; Florence Simon Fieldnotes, July 5, 1951, Reel 3, 2037, and Bob Rietz Fieldnotes, October 13, 1948, Reel 2, 718–21, all in stp, Box 288. [Meskwaki man], interview with the author, summer 2001, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia; Polgar Journal, June 18 and 19, 1952, Box 288, Reel 4, stp, n. pag. 72. Peattie and Fallers Interview, July 11, 1948, 329–34; Peattie Interviews, July 9 and 23, 1948, 357–61, 362; Peattie Diary, July 13, 1948, 1538, all in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. “Phil Smith” and “Julie Smith” are pseudonyms. 73. Peattie Fieldnotes, July 6, 1948, stp, Box 288, Reel 2, 1521. 74. Fallers Diary, July 2, 6, 9, and 30, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 1333, 1344, 1351, 1356; Gredys interview with the author. 75. Peattie and Fallers Interview, July 11, 1948, Reel 2, 333; McCormack Fieldnotes, July 12, 1952, and August 11, 1952, Reel 4, 39788

notes to pages 142–148

345

and 39803; Leslie Interview, 1949, Reel 2, 346; Polgar Journal, July 12, 1952, Reel 4, n. pag. all in Box 288, stp. 76. Fallers Diary, July 6, 1948, 1343, and Leslie Journal, July 13, 1949, 530, both in Box 288, Reel 2, stp; Gredys interview with the author; Polgar Journal, June 22, 1952, Box 288, Reel 4, stp, n. pag. 77. Peattie Diary, August 6, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 1579. 78. Peattie Diary, July 3, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 1512. 79. Claus, General Notes, July 27, 1955, Box 8, Folder Economics— Claus, fpp. See chapter 6 for later funding of the project. 80. Polgar Journal, June 21, 1952, Box 288, Reel 6, stp, 4315. 81. Claus, General Notes, June 26 and 29, 1955, and August 3, 1955, Box 8, Folder Economics—Claus, fpp, n. pag. 82. Report of Expenditures: Fox Field Party, September 10, 1949, Box 17, Folder: Miscellaneous Accounts 1948–1954, fpp; Wolffson Journal, July 6, 1948, Reel 2, 1623, and Polgar Journal, July 6, 1952, Reel 6, 4324, both in Box 288, stp; [Meskwaki man], interview with the author, July 12, 2001, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia. 83. [Meskwaki resident], interview with the author, summer 2001, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia, and Claus Journal, June 17, 1955, Box 8, Folder Economics—Claus, fpp. 84. Gearing interview with the author, October 23, 2002, Buffalo ny; Polgar Journal, June 22, 1952, 4316, and Gearing Fieldnotes, August 2, 1952, 4749, both in Box 288, Reel 6, stp. 85. [Three Meskwaki women], interviews with the author, summer 2001, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia. The article Polgar produced was titled “Biculturation of Mesquakie Teenage Boys.” 86. Polgar Journal, July 12 and 29, 1952, Box 288, Reel 6, stp, 4321 and 4333. 87. Polgar Journal, September 5, 1952, Box 288, Reel 6, stp, 4341. 88. Polgar Journal, September 18, 1952, Box 288, Reel 6, stp, 4344, and Robinson to Tax, August 9, 1954, Box 16, Folder S. Robinson, fpp. 89. Polgar Journal, August 3 and August 12, 1952, Box 288, Reel 6, stp, 4334 and 4336. Gearing said there were rumors about Polgar having an affair, but he did not know whether they were true. Gearing interview with the author.

346

notes to pages 148–155

90. Holquist, Dialogism, 89; McCormack Fieldnotes, September 6, 1952, Box 288, Reel 4, stp, 39822. Holquist notes that “Heteroglossia is a plurality of relations, not just a cacophony of different voices.” “Alice Carter” is a pseudonym. 91. Peattie Diary, August 6, 1948, Reel 2, 1579, Leslie and Gerick Interview, July 24, 1949, Reel 2, 570, and Marie Furey Field Journal, August 29, 1954, Reel 6, 4756–57, all in Box 288, stp. For examples of attempts to analyze these divisions, see Wolffson Journal, July 29, 1948, 1653, and Miller Interview, August 5, 1948, 508–11, both in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. 92. Gearing Fieldnotes, June 25, 1952, Box 288, Reel 4, stp, 2359, 2363. 93. Gearing Fieldnotes, June 27, 1952, Box 288, Reel 4, stp, 2366. 94. Gredys Diary, July 21, 1948, 1437, and Miller Journal, July 2, 1948, 699, both in Box 288, Reel 2, stp; Claus Daily Journal, July 30, 1955, Box 8, Folder Economics—Claus, n. pag., fpp; W. H. Sangree Fieldnotes, July 4, 1953, Box 288, Reel 5, stp, 3257. “Wayne Henderson” is a pseudonym. 95. Rietz Fieldnotes, July 14, 1949, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 870; Peattie to Provinse, July 11, 1948, Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History, 28–29. 96. See chapter 2 for a fuller discussion of Peattie’s background. 4. Action Anthropology and the Values Question 1. Peattie to Tax, August 16, 1948, in Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History, 35–36; “Memorandum on the Fox Project,” 1949, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 1301. 2. “Memorandum on the Fox,” Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 1302–3; Davida Wolffson, “Problems of the Fox,” in Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History, 38. 3. Miller and Fallers Interview, August 15, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 466. At a meeting with Bertha Waseskuk about the right of Indians to keep their identity as Indians, Miller told her that the students were “for the same thing” as the Old Bears.

notes to pages 155–164

347

4. Rietz Interview, July 9, 1949, Reel 2, 203–4, and Rietz paper, undated, Reel 5, 3746–47, both in Box 288, stp. 5. Rietz and Fallers Interview, August 16, 1948, 261–62; Peattie Interview, August 7, 1948, 159; “Problems of the Fox,” 1948, 1291–92; Tax to Peattie, August 4, 1948, n. pag., all in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. 6. Leslie Journal, 1949, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 343. 7. Rietz Fieldnotes, March 1949, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 586. 8. See chapter 1. 9. See chapter 1. 10. Transcript, Aberdeen Area Conference, Aberdeen, South Dakota, August 14–15, 1950, Folder 508.14, 62, and “Commissioner Myer Outlines Bureau Objectives,” Bureau of Indian Affairs Information Circular no. 8, March 1951, Folder 513.09-513.13.2, 3, both in brp. 11. Resolution Directing Secretary of the Interior to Study the Tribes of Indians under His Jurisdiction, 81st Cong., 2nd sess., H.R. 490; Keliiaa, “Survey of Possibilities of Withdrawal,” August 1951, Box 288, Reel 5, stp, 3027–70. Quotations on school finance are on 3066. The Bosone resolution never passed the Senate. 12. McCormack Fieldnotes, September 6, 1952, Box 288, Reel 4, stp, 39822–23. 13. Leslie Journal, July 14, 1949, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 169–70. 14. Jack Old Bear and Peter Morgan to Oscar Chapman, March 12, 1952, Box 49, Folder Correspondence—District—Tama (Meskwaki) 1949–1959, 2 of 2, hgp. Emphasis added. 15. Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History, 197–98. 16. Gearing Memo Draft, Spring 1952, Box 288, Reel 6, stp, 4104–5. 17. Gearing Fieldnotes, March 1952, Box 288, Reel 3, stp, 2243– 44. 18. Gearing Fieldnotes, March 1952, Box 288, Reel 3, stp, 2242. 19. Gearing Fieldnotes, March 1952, Box 288, Reel 3, stp, 2243. 20. Gearing Fieldnotes, March 1952, Box 288, Reel 3, stp, 2243. 21. Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History, 202; Gearing Fieldnotes, July 9, 1952, Box 288, Reel 4, stp, 2330. 22. Gearing Fieldnotes, July 11 and 12, 1952, Box 288, Reel 4, stp, 2332 and 2334.

348

notes to pages 164–168

23. Gearing Fieldnotes, July 11 and 12, 1952, Box 288, Reel 4, stp, 2340; Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History, 201–2. 24. Gearing to Tax, August 4, 1952, in Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History, 203–4. 25. Gearing and Davenport to Tax, July 15, 1952, in Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History, 201–3; Gearing Fieldnotes, July 12 and 28, 1952, 2334 and 2378, and McCormack Fieldnotes, July 17, 1952, 39793, all in Box 288, Reel 4, stp. 26. Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History, 204–5; Gearing Fieldnotes, September 18, 1952, Box 288, Reel 4, stp, 2346–47. 27. Tax to Davenport, July 31, 1952, Box 14, Folder Fox Correspondence Copies, fpp; Tax to Redfield, August 14, 1952, Box 35, Folder 4, rrp. 28. Redfield to Tax, August 24, 1952, Box 35, Folder 4, rrp; Gearing and Davenport to Tax, July 15, 1952, in Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History, 202. In the letter Gearing and Davenport said they believed the state department was worried about bad publicity in the Des Moines Register. 29. Gearing Fieldnotes, March 1952, Box 9, Folder Non-Tama Whites 46, fpp; The Whole Town Is Talking, April 17, 1952, WOI-TV tape, copy in possession of Johnathan Buffalo. 30. Fern Sullivan to Hickenlooper, April 21, 1952; John G. Lingenfelter to Hickenlooper, April 17, 1952; and Hickenlooper to Lingenfelter, April 24, 1952, all in Box 70 Folder Executive Department Files, Interior Department, Bureau of Indian Affairs, 1952, bhp. 31. Poweshiek to Hickenlooper, June 7, 1952, and June 20, 1952; Hickenlooper to Myer; Rex Lee to Hickenlooper, July 8, 1952; Hickenlooper to Poweshiek, August 19, 1952, all in Box 70, Folder Executive Department Files, Interior Department, Bureau of Indian Affairs, 1952, bhp. 32. Carl Roth to Poweshiek, July 28, 1952, Box 123, Folder Indian Affairs, Bureau of, 1950–1973, hgp. In his early years in Congress, Gross sometimes signed his correspondence with tribal members as “H. R. Gross (White Buffalo).” For an example, see Gross to Davenport, December 19, 1949, Box 49, Folder Sac/Fox Tribe (Meskwaki), hgp.

notes to pages 169–174

349

33. Gearing Fieldnotes, October 16, 1952, Box 288, Reel 4, stp, 2348. 34. McCormack Fieldnotes, September 13, 1952, 39865, and Gearing Interview, July 28, 1952, 2379, both in Box 288, Reel 4, stp. 35. Gearing Fieldnotes, June 25, 1952, Box 288, Reel 4, stp, 2362. Gearing did not name the state that Davenport visited. See also Gearing Fieldnotes, June 27, 1952, Box 288, Reel 4, stp, 2366. 36. Gearing Fieldnotes, August 2, 1952, Box 288, Reel 6, stp, 4749. 37. Sean Carter, interview with the author, June 5, 2001, Meskwaki Settlement, Tama ia. “Sean Carter” is a pseudonym. 38. Leslie and Gerick Interview, July 20, 1949, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 348. 39. Gearing Fieldnotes, July 11, 1952, and November 21, 1952, Reel 4, 2332 and 2358; Fallers Interview, July 22, 1948, Reel 2, 165; Leslie Interview, July 11, 1949, Reel 2, 137; Gerick Interview, September 2, 1949, Reel 2, 176; and Gearing Interview, August 4, 1953, Reel 5, 3103–4, all in Box 288, stp. 40. Davenport and Gearing to Tax, July 15, 1952, Box 288, Reel 4, stp, 2341. 41. E. J. Riley to Don C. Foster, September 24, 1952; Foster to Pascal Maggart, August 28, 1953; K. W. Dixon to Foster, August 31, 1953, and Dixon to Maggart, September 1, 1953, all in Record Group 75, Great Lakes Agency General Correspondence Files, Folder 806.1—Sac and Fox Day School, nara—Great Lakes Region, Chicago. 42. House Concurrent Resolution 108: That Certain Tribes Be Freed from Federal Supervision, 83rd Cong., 1st sess., 1 August 1953. For a discussion of H.C.R. 108 without a reference to the Meskwaki situation, see Fixico, Termination and Relocation, 91–110. 43. House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, Subcommittee on Indian Affairs, House Concurrent Resolution 108: That Certain Tribes Be Freed from Federal Supervision, 83rd Cong., 1st sess., July 10, 1953, 4–5; House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, House Concurrent Resolution 108: That Certain Tribes Be Freed from Federal Supervision, 83rd Cong., 1st sess., July 15, 1953, 2. 44. Waseskuk to Gross, October 1, 1951, and Gross to Waseskuk,

350

notes to pages 175–178

October 2, 1951; Davenport to Gross, December 29, 1950, and Gross to Davenport, November 15, 1950, all in Box 49, Folder Sac/Fox Tribe (Meskwaki), 1949–1959 (1 of 2), hgp; McCormack Fieldnotes, Box 288, Reel 4, August 17, 1952, stp, 39810. 45. Subcommittee on Indian Affairs, H.C.R. 108, 1–5; House Committee, H.C.R. 108, July 15, 21, 22, and 27, 1953; Davenport to Gross, July 24, 1953, and Gross to Davenport, July 28, 1953, both in Box 48, Folder Correspondence—District—Tama (Meskwaki) 1949–1959 (1 of 2), hgp; George Young Bear to Congressmen and Senators, December 22, 1953, and Gross to Young Bear, January 11, 1954, both in Box 49, Folder Correspondence—District Sac/Fox (Meskwaki) 1949–1959 (2 of 2), hgp; Gearing, “Interview with Old Bear Council,” July 26, 1953, Box 288, Reel 5, stp, 3099. The competency bill and H.C.R. 108 both were discussed at the committee’s July 27 meeting. Harrison agreed to take Osage Indians out of the resolution at that meeting because they and their congressional representatives opposed inclusion. Harrison said he agreed to the move “to save the resolution.” He may have been equally amenable to a similar plea from Gross. See p. 3 of the committee transcript. 46. Robert Merrill to Tax, September 29, 1950, Box 3, Folder October 16, 1950, Letter, and “Fort Berthold Agency News Bulletin,” September 21, 1950, Box 4, Folder R (1 of 11) News Bulletin, 1, all in Fort Berthold Papers, National Anthropological Archives, Suitland, Maryland, hereinafter referred to as fbp. 47. Provinse to Tax, April 17, 1951, Box 3, Folder April 23, 1951 Letter, fbp. 48. Rietz to Tax, April 17, 1952, Folder 524.9.2-525.12.21, brp. 49. Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History, 201. 50. Gearing to Tax, August 4, 1952, in Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History, 204; Gearing to Tax, August 4, 1952, Box 16, Folder Fox Correspondence Copies, fpp. 51. “Changing Relations with the Indian Service,” in Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History, 197–98; Bennett, “Applied and Action Anthropology.” 52. Rietz Fieldnotes, June 30, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 609–10.

notes to pages 178–181

351

53. Wolffson Journal, July 23, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 1640; [Meskwaki man], interview with the author, summer 2001, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia. 54. Fallers Diary, June 30, 1948, 560; Peattie and Fallers Interview, July 1, 1948, 602, both in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. Fallers’s notes are dated the same date as Rietz’s notes on the doctor, but Fallers made reference to the Rietz interview, suggesting that Rietz shared the information with other students before writing it up. 55. Miller Journal, July 13, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 664. 56. Polgar Journal, September 9, 1952, Reel 4, n. pag.; Television Show Meeting Notes, August 6, 1953, Reel 6, 4231–37; and Gearing Fieldnotes, August 17, 1953, 3750, Reel 5, all in Box 288, stp. Gearing said in a published article in 1955 that there were five babies who died between September 1952 and March 1953 and that two of those deaths might have been preventable. See Gearing, “Today’s Mesquakies,” 30. 57. Gearing Fieldnotes, June 11, 1953, Reel 5, 3227; “Program on Behalf of the Mesquakies and Nearby Whites of Iowa,” January 1954, Reel 6, 4127, 4223–43; Gearing Fieldnotes, July 20, 1952, Reel 4, 2375–76; Myer to Don C. Foster, bia area director, July 1952, Reel 4, 2383, all in Box 288, stp. See chapter 5 for more discussion of these meetings with Iowa leaders. The files do not indicate what, if anything, came of Waseskuk’s effort. 58. Mays to R. E. Miller, acting superintendent, Tomah Agency, April 13, 1948, Great Lakes Agency, General Correspondence Files, 734-Medical Examinations, nara—Great Lakes Region, Chicago; Miller Interview, June 30, 1948, 599, and Eleanor Hollenberg Interviews, undated and July 30, 1949, 1151–52 and 1275, all in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. By 1951 the county had agreed to assume transportation costs so the women could give birth at University Hospitals. See Keliiaa, “Survey of Possibilities of Withdrawal,” 3049. 59. Hollenberg Interview, July 28, 1949, 1240; Peattie Diary, July 28, 1948, and August 4, 1948, 369 and 1573–74; Miller, “Preliminary Ideas on Fox Problem,” undated, 1315, all in Box 288, Reel 2, stp. 60. Peattie Interview, July 26, 1948, Reel 2, 222; Miller, “Preliminary Ideas on Fox Problem,” 1948, Reel 5, 1315, both in Box 288, stp.

352

notes to pages 182–191

61. Gearing interview with the author; [Meskwaki man], interview with the author, summer 2002, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia; W. H. Sangree Fieldnotes, July 21, 1953, Box 288, Reel 5, stp, 3271. For one example of the use of traditional remedies along with the doctor’s recommendations, see Wolffson Journal, July 26, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 1647. 62. Wolffson Journal, July 26, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 1647. 63. Miller, “Preliminary Ideas on Fox Problem,” Reel 2, 1315; Gearing Fieldnotes, July 2, 1952, and September 14, 1952, Reel 4, 2275 and 2375; and Myer to Foster, undated, Reel 4, 2383, all in Box 288, stp. 64. Rietz Fieldnotes, July 1949, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 872. 65. Rietz Fieldnotes, July 1949, Reel 2, 873; Marjorie Gearing Fieldnotes, August 21, 1952, Reel 4, 2409–10, both in Box 288, stp. 66. Television Show Notes, 4235–37. Emphasis in Polgar quote is in the original. The arts and crafts project that researchers launched instead of the clinic is discussed in chapter 6. 67. Gearing, “Today’s Mesquakies,” 31. 68. Television Show Notes, 4235. 69. Gearing interview with the author. 70. Vine Deloria Jr., Custer Died for Your Sins, 98. 71. Resolution Copy, Box 6, Folder Proposals, Report, Memos— Tax, fpp. 72. Tax, “The American Indian,” Box 232, Folder 2, and Tax, “Values in Action: The Fox Project,” Box 265, Folder 8, both in stp. 5. 1954—Project Nadir and Rebound 1. Robinson to Tax, August 8, 1954, Box 16 Folder S. Robinson, fpp. 2. Furey Journal, August 16, 1954, and Tax to Robinson, Box 8, Folder Fox Field Data—Powwow, fpp. 3. Lucinda Sangree, “Discussion of the Action Anthropology Project, Summer 1953,” Box 288, Reel 5, 3370–71, stp; Gearing to Tax, August 4, 1952, Box 16, Folder Fox Correspondence Copies, fpp; “Interview with Old Bear Council,” July 19, 1953, Box 288, Reel 5, stp, 3095–3102.

notes to pages 192–195

353

4. “Program on Behalf of the Mesquakies and Nearby Whites of Iowa,” January 1954, Box 288, Reel 6, stp, 4124–25. 5. Gearing Fieldnotes, June 11, 1953, Box 288, Reel 5, stp, 3227. 6. Gearing Fieldnotes, June 11, 1953, Box 288, Reel 5, stp, 3228. The dates of the meetings may account for this lack. The meeting in June occurred right before most students came to the settlement for the summer, and the one in September came right after they left. 7. Gearing Fieldnotes, July 29, 1953, and undated, 3230, 3237–38; Polgar, “Mesquakie Problems Discussed in Des Moines,” 3237–40, all in Box 288, Reel 5, stp. 8. Polgar Journal, July 30, 1953, 3413–14, and Polgar, “Mesquakie Problems Discussed in Des Moines,” 3240, both in Box 288, Reel 5, stp. 9. “Wenner-Gren Foundation Supper Conference,” 387–88; Provinse to Tax, November 18, 1953, Box 215, Folder 6, stp; Provinse et al., “The American Indian in Transition,” American Anthropologist 56.3 (June 1954) 388–94. 10. Copy of program, “The Fox Indian Project: A Program of Action Anthropology,” Central States Anthropological Society Symposium, May 5, 1955, Box 5, Folder Proposals, Reports, Memos, 1955, May 5, fpp; Tax, “‘Termination’ Versus the Needs of a Positive Policy for American Indians,” May 4, 1957, Box 11, Folder: Action Anthropology Review (2 of 2), fpp; “‘Termination’ Versus a Positive Policy for American Indians,” 85th Cong., 1st sess., Congressional Record 103, no. 116 (July 3, 1957), copy in Box 12, Folder Tax: Termination—Congressional Record July 1957, fpp; Tax, Address to Annual Convention of National Congress of American Indians, October 30, 1957, fpp, Box 13, Folder Tax: Federal Indian Policy and ncai, 1957, fpp; Tax, “Federal Indian Policy and the ncai,” Box 26, Folder 217, D’Arcy McNickle Papers, Newberry Library, Chicago, hereinafter referred to as dmp. 11. Tax, Penny Capitalism; Tax, Civilizations of Ancient America; Tax, Heritage of Conquest; Tax, Acculturation in the Americas; Tax, Indians Tribes of Aboriginal America; and Kroeber, Anthropology Today. Tax was on the editorial team for Anthropology Today and then edited An Appraisal of Anthropology Today. University of Chicago Board of Trustees Minutes, October 13, 1949, vol. 39, 334, University of Chicago Regen-

354

notes to pages 196–200

stein Library; Miller, “Two Concepts of Authority”; Fallers, “Predicament of the Modern African Chief”; Gearing, “Structural Poses of 18th Century Cherokee Villages.” 12. Reynold Ruppe and Frederick O. Gearing, “Iowa’s Mesquakie Indians Are Here to Stay!” Reel 5, 3209–15, and Gearing, “We Are the Mesquakie Nation,” Reel 6, 4175–4215, both in Box 288, stp. 13. Gearing, “Why There Will Always Be a Mesquakie Community,” in Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History, 206–7. Emphasis in the original. 14. Gearing, “Why We’d Just as Soon Not Farm Much,” in Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History, 209. 15. Ruppe and Gearing, “Iowa’s Mesquakie!” Box 288, Reel 5, 3209– 19, stp. 16. Unsigned, “The Mesquakies of Iowa,” Box 288, Reel 5, stp, 3216–20. 17. Gearing Fieldnotes, Undated, Box 288, Reel 4, stp, 2267–70. 18. Gearing Fieldnotes, Undated, Reel 4, 2267–72; Gearing and Polgar, “Summary of Relations between Project and Tribal Council,” May 1, 1954, Reel 6, 4766, both in Box 288, stp. 19. Gearing and McCormack Interview, July 1953, 3106; Polgar Journal, June 22, 1953, 3405; Gearing Interview with Old Bear Council, July 26, 1953, 3099–3102, all in Box 288, Reel 5, stp. 20. W. H. Sangree Fieldnotes, August 24, 1953, Reel 5, 3333–34, and Callender Field Diary, July 27, 1954, Reel 6, 4494, both in Box 288, stp. 21. Lucinda Sangree, “Discussion of the Action Anthropology Project,” Summer 1953, Reel 5, 3379, and Polgar Journal, July 14, 1953, Reel 4, 3410–11, both in Box 288, stp; Gearing interview with the author. Part of Sangree’s work was a pilot study on differences between Meskwaki and white etiquette. 22. W. H. Sangree Fieldnotes, July 26, 1953, 3278–79; Gearing and McCormack Fieldnotes, July 1953, 3106, both in Box 288, Reel 5, stp. 23. “Program on Behalf of the Mesquakies and Nearby Whites of Iowa,” January 1954, Box 288, Reel 6, 4126, stp. 24. “The Mesquakies of Iowa: The First Five Years,” (n.p.: Federated

notes to pages 201–205

355

Women’s Clubs of Iowa, 1954); W. H. Sangree Fieldnotes, August 30, 1953, Box 288, Reel 5, 3339, stp. 25. Marlin Journal and Callender Field Diary, both July 13, 1954, stp, Box 288, Reel 6, 4401 and 4474. 26. Callender Field Diary, June 28 and July 8, 14, 15, and 17, 1954, stp, Box 288, Reel 6, 4453, 4467, 4476, 4479, and 4482; Marlin Journal, July 14, 1954, 4405, all in Box 288, Reel 6, stp. 27. Marlin Journal, July 20, 1954, 4419, and Callender Field Diary, July 15, 1954, 4478, both in Box 288, Reel 6, stp. People on the settlement commonly, both in the 1950s and fifty years later, referred to Tax as “Soltax,” all one word. 28. Gearing and Polgar, “Summary of Relations,” May 1, 1954, Box 14, Folder Fox Correspondence Copies, fpp. Much later, Gearing believed that getting the council’s permission would have had little meaning since it likely would have boiled down to whether those in power at the time liked individual researchers. Gearing interview with the author. 29. Gearing and Polgar, “Summary of Relations”; Gearing Fieldnotes, July 19, 1953, Reel 5, 3095–98, and “Chief Old Bear Seeks Authority to Represent Tribe,” July 27, 1950, in Tama News-Herald, Reel 2, n. pag., both in Box 288, stp. 30. Gearing and Polgar, “Summary of Relations,” and Gearing Fieldnotes, July 19, 1953, Box 288, Reel 5, stp, 3095. 31. Gearing and Polgar, “Summary of Relations.” 32. McCormack Fieldnotes, July 17, 1952, Reel 4, 39793; Gearing Fieldnotes, June 22, 1952, Reel 4, 2391; Gearing and Polgar, “Summary of Relations;” Fallers Diary, July 6, 1948, Reel 2, 618–19; Mrs. W. G. MacMartin to William Zimmerman, April 7, 1947, Reel 2, 624; and Ruppe Fieldnotes, August 5, 1953, Reel 5, 3110, all in Box 288, stp. 33. Polgar Notes, “Report of May 1954 Talk between Tax and the Tribal Council,” stp, Box 288, Reel 6, 4769. 34. Gearing and Polgar, “Summary of Relations.” 35. Polgar, Letter to Sol Tax and Paper, May 4, 1958, Box 126, Folder 4, stp; unsigned, untitled document dated April 5, Box 11, Folder Steve Polgar Letter, fpp.

356

notes to pages 206–211

36. Callender Field Diary, July 18, 1954, Box 288, Reel 6, stp, 4483. 37. Callender Field Diary, August 20, 21, and 22, 1954, and September 13, 1954, 4557, 4560, 4564, and 4600; and Furey Field Journal, August 25, 1954, 4700, all in Box 288, Reel 6, stp. The pamphlet fiasco did have one bright spot for the community. The women’s club later sold five hundred of the pamphlets through its own channels at the Iowa State Fair and elsewhere and found that contributions to its scholarship fund for Meskwaki youth “greatly increased.” Robinson Fieldnotes, August 25, 1954, and October 15, 1954, Box 288, Reel 6, 3791 and 4619, stp. 38. Robinson Fieldnotes, August 6 and 9, 1954, 4606 and 4610; Furey Field Journal, August 15, 1954, 4689; and Callender Field Diary, August 27, 1954, 4576, all in Box 288, Reel 6, stp. 39. Marlin Journal, July 21 and August 5, 1954, 4422 and 4441, Box 288, Reel 6, stp. 40. W. H. Sangree Fieldnotes, August 6, 1953. stp, Box 288, Reel 4, 3293. 41. Fallers Diary, July 7, 1948, Reel 2, 1357; Record of Trial by Court Martial, November 9, 1954, Reel 7, n. pag.; Marlin Journal, July 9, 1954, Reel 6, 4394; Callender Field Diary, July 1, 1954, Reel 6, 4459, all in Box 288, stp. 42. Callender Field Diary, July 20, 24, 27, and 31, 1954, and August 5 and 8, 1954, 4486, 4489, 4496, 4505, 4512, 4529; Furey Field Journal, July 31, 1954, 4644, all in Box 288, Reel 6, stp. 43. Furey Field Journal, July 26 and 31, 1954, and August 9, 1954, 4624, 4645, 4667; and Callender Field Diary, July 26, 1954, 4492, all in Box 288, Reel 6, stp. 44. Callender Field Diary, August 24 and 25, 1954, 4570 and 4571; Furey Field Journal, August 24, 1954, 4698, all in Box 288, Reel 6, stp. 45. Tax to Robert L. Smith, 2nd lieutenant, October 15, 1954, Reel 6, 4827; record of trial, November 9, 1954, Marine Corps Air Station, Cherry Point nc Box 288, Reel 7, n. pag., both in Box 288, stp. Phillips already had spent two and a half months in the brig at the time of his court-martial. The record is unclear as to whether he served the remainder or appealed his sentence.

notes to pages 212–215

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46. As an example of the anthropologists’ observations of Phillips, see Gearing Fieldnotes, Powwow 1952, Box 288, Reel 5, stp, 3073–75. 47. Callender Field Diary July 6, 1954, Box 288, Reel 6, stp, 4465. 48. The issue was raised at a symposium entitled “Values in Action” in December 1957 sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation. Tax said that he could not think of anything to say in response to the question of whether action anthropologists would help cannibals. “But whatever my personal position on this, it has no significant bearing on what we should do tomorrow to help the Fox Indians develop more constructive relationships within their community, or with other Iowans,” he said (emphasis in the original). Tax’s colleague Robert Redfield appeared on the same program and chided Tax for being unwilling as a scientist to probe for the limits of his methodology. Redfield’s daughter, Lisa Redfield Peattie, also was on the program and spoke in favor of action anthropology. The symposium papers were published in Human Organization (Spring 1958), 1–43. See Tax, “Fox Project,” 17–19, and Robert Redfield, “Values in Action,” 20–22. 49. Phillips came home on furlough for the powwow the following summer. Herbert Becker Daily Journal, August 17, 1955, Box 1, Folder Journals, Becker 1955, fpp. 50. Marlin Journal, July 10, 1954, 4395; Callender Field Diary, July 30 and August 1, 1954, 4499 and 4507; Furey Field Journal, September 10, 1954, 4706, all in Box 288, Reel 6, stp. 51. Callender Field Diary, July 27, 1954, 4493; Furey Field Journal, August 2 and 8, 1954, 4652 and 4666, all in Box 288, Reel 6, stp. 52. Callender Field Diary, September 5, 1954, stp, Box 288, Reel 6, 4593. 53. Furey Field Journal, September 10 and 11, 1954, 4704–6, 4708; Callender Field Diary, September 10, 1954, 4595; all in Box 288, Reel 6, stp. 54. Callender Field Diary, September 11, 1954, 4599, and Robinson Fieldnotes, October 15–17, 1954, 3792–3800, both in Box 288, Reel 6, stp. 55. Robinson Fieldnotes, October 15, 1954, Box 288, Reel 6, stp, 3793.

358

notes to pages 215–220

56. Robinson Fieldnotes, August 22 and October 15–17, 1954, 3792–3800 and 4617, Box 288, Reel 6, stp. 57. [Two Meskwaki residents], interviews with the author, summer 2001, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia; Furey Field Journal, September 10, 1954, Box 288, Reel 6, stp, 4706. The interviewees declined to name the parties involved in the affair, both of whom were long deceased. 58. Marjorie Gearing Fieldnotes, September 29, 1952, Reel 4, 2291–95, and July 27 and August 11, 1953, Reel 5, 3131A–3131L; Fred Gearing Fieldnotes, August 11, 1953, Reel 5, 3136–39, all in Box 288, stp. Marjorie Gearing was married to Fred Gearing and was not an anthropologist. 59. Gearing Fieldnotes, August 1952, Reel 4, 2257; McCormack Fieldnotes, September 6, 1952, Reel 6, 4353; Polgar Journal, June 22, 1952, Reel 6, 4316, all in Box 288, stp. 60. Polgar Journal, June 22, 1952, Box 288, Reel 6, stp, 4316. 61. “A Program for Professional Education,” Box 12, Folder Fox Indians Professional Education, 82–84, fpp. 62. Harold S. Saunders to Sol Tax, September 14, 1954; David Kruidenier Jr. to William B. Cannon, January 24, 1955; Tax to Kruidenier, January 31, 1956, all in Box 10, Folder Prof. Ed. Correspondence—54 on, fpp; Becker Journal, August 1, 1955, Box 1, Folder Journals, Becker, 1955, fpp. 63. Tax to Kruidenier, January 31, 1956, Box 10, Folder Prof. Ed. Correspondence—54 on, fpp. 64. Robinson Fieldnotes, October 17, 1954, Box 288, Reel 6, stp, 3799. “Joseph Daniels” is a pseudonym. 65. Becker Journal, July 15, 1955, Box 1, Folder Journals, Becker, 1955, fpp. 66. Tax to Kruidenier, May 31, 1962, Box 10, Folder Prof. Ed. Correspondence-54 on, fpp; “A Program for Professional Education,” part of a larger document, “Action Anthropology as Field Program,” Box 12, Folder Fox Indian Professional Education, fpp; Joseph Daniels, interview with the author, summer 2001, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia.

notes to pages 220–226

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67. Tax to [Meskwaki student], October 25, 1960, Box 17, Folder Letters on Scholarship Program, fpp. 68. [Meskwaki students] to Tax, December 10, 1961; Lee T. Gobble to “Gentlemen,” December 11, 1961; Tax to [Meskwaki student], all in Box 17, Folder Letters on Scholarship Program, fpp. [Meskwaki resident] to Robert Rietz, July 25, 1962, Box 11, Folder Fox Scholarship Program, fpp. 69. Hoyt, “Children of Tama,” 15–20. 70. Stucki, “Anthropologists and Indians,” 300–317. 71. Foley, “ Fox Project,” 171–83. 72. Rebecca Full Moon, interview with the author, spring 2002, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia. “Rebecca Full Moon” is a pseudonym. 73. Wolffson Journal, July 10, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 1627–28; Ruth Morris, interview with the author, summer 2002, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia. “Ruth Morris” is a pseudonym. 74. Becker Field Diary, July 18, 1955, Box 1, Folder Journals, Becker 1955, fpp; [two Meskwaki men], interviews with the author, summer 2001 and summer 2002, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia. 75. [Meskwaki woman], interview with the author, summer 2001, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia. 76. Sean Carter interview with the author; and [Meskwaki man] to Sol Tax, October 31, 1958, Box 17, Folder Letters on Scholarship Program, fpp. “Sean Carter” is a pseudonym. 77. Sean Carter interview with the author. 78. Testimony of Rex Lee, director of education for Bureau of Indian Affairs, House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, Subcommittee on Indian Affairs, Hearings on H.R. 1591, 84th Cong., 1st sess., February 21, 1955; Prucha, Great Father, 353. For inflation calculation, see http://www.bls.gov/home.htm. 79. The papers from the 1957 symposium, which focused on action anthropology and other approaches to mixing academic work with service to the public, were published in Human Organization (Spring 1958) 1–43. See Tax, “Fox Project,” 17–19. Emphasis in the original. 80. Claus Daily Journal, July 31, 1955, Box 8, Folder Economics— Claus, fpp.

360

notes to pages 227–232

6. Fruits of Action Anthropology 1. Tax, “The Tama Project: A Proposal Submitted for Financing,” May 15, 1954, Box 5, Folder Proposals, Reports, Memos, Schwartzhaupt Foundation Report, fpp. 2. Carl Tjerandsen, Education for Citizenship: A Foundation’s Experience (Santa Cruz ca: Emil Schwartzhaupt Foundation, 1980) Internet version: http://comm-org.utoledo.edu/papers2003/tjerandsen/ contentsd.htm#about (accessed May 5, 2005; accessed October 26, 2007, at http://comm-org.wisc.edu/papers2003/tjerandsen/content sd.htm). The department sent up a committee on education for American citizenship, whose members included faculty from the departments of history, social sciences, political science, and education. Among the committee members were Daniel J. Boorstein, associate professor of history; Ralph W. Tyler, dean of the Social Science Division; and Louis Wirth, professor of sociology, who served as its first chairman. 3. Tax, “Tama Project,” 3. 4. Tax, “Tama Project,” 3, 5, 7. 5. Tax, “Tama Project,” 4, 7. 6. “The Schwartzhaupt Foundation Tama Indian Project, Report of Activities, 1954–55,” April 25, 1955, Box 5, Folder Proposals, Reports, Memos, Schwartzhaupt Foundation Report, fpp. 7. Becker Daily Journal, September 10, 1955, Folder Journals, Becker 1955; Fred Okita Journal, November 5–6, 1955, Folder Journals, Okita, 1955, both in Box 1, fpp. 8. “Summary of Conversation: Tax, Rietz, Gearing,” May 3, 1956, Box 9, Folder Tama 12 (2 of 2), fpp. 9. Rietz to Tax, February 14, 1956; Rietz to Minneapolis Area Office, Bureau of Indian Affairs, May 14, 1956; Petition from Women’s Missionary Society, Mesquakie United Presbyterian Church, to Rietz, May 14, 1956; Rietz to Gearing, May 21, 1956; Rietz and Davenport to Bourke B. Hickenlooper, July 21, 1956; Acting Commissioner, Bureau of Indian Affairs, to Hickenlooper, August 16, 1956, all in Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History, 353, 359, 362,

notes to page 233

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365, 369–72, and 373. The Documentary History deleted the names of bureau officials. 10. “Summary of Conversation: Tax, Rietz, Gearing,” May 3, 1956, Box 9, Folder Tama 12 (2 of 2), fpp. 11. Symposium Program, “The Fox Indian Project: A Program of Action Anthropology,” Central States Anthropological Society, May 5, 1955, fpp, Box 5, Folder Proposals, Reports, Memos, 1955, May 5; Tax, “Termination Versus the Needs of a Positive Policy for American Indians,” paper given at Central States Anthropological Society meeting, May 4, 1957, reprinted in Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History, 276–81; “Values in Action: A Symposium,” sponsored by Wenner-Gren Foundation at American Anthropological Association meeting, December 1957, papers reprinted in Human Organization 17 (Spring 1958): 1–33; Tax, “Residential Integration”; Gearing, “Today’s Mesquakies”; Gearing, “First, They Listen.” 12. Polgar to Tax, May 4, 1958, Box 126, Folder 4, stp. The absence of large numbers of students, however, did not free Rietz from having to live with the fallout from those who had come before him. A case in point is that of Richard Kluckhohn. Kluckhohn, son of Harvard University anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for shooting a woman from a hotel window in Raleigh nc in 1955, two years after he was at the Meskwaki settlement. The woman died instantly. Kluckhohn testified that he had been working on his pistol, a Lugar, in his hotel room when it went off accidentally. He said he did not know anyone had been shot when he checked out of the hotel ten minutes later. Kluckhohn was sentenced to five to ten years in the state penitentiary. An article from Inside Detective magazine featured the shooting and trial. A handwritten note on a copy of the article in the fieldnotes of Herb Becker states, “This article in general circulation at Tama, Aug., 1955.” See William Whitney, “Dry Fire,” in Inside Detective, September, 1955, copy in Box 1, Folder Journals, Becker, 1955, fpp. Becker’s fieldnotes mention one white and one settlement resident who commented on the article to him, but he does not elaborate on the conversations. See Becker Fieldnotes, August 13–14, 1955, Box 1, Folder Journals,

362

notes to pages 234–237

Becker, 1955, fpp. Becker did note that several people complained to him that Kluckhohn had taken many pictures during his summer on the settlement but did not give people any prints. Becker took hundreds of photos in 1955 and said he gave away between four hundred and five hundred prints to settlement residents because he wanted “to wipe out an unfortunate memory of theirs.” See Becker Fieldnotes, September 11, 1955, Box 1, Folder Journals, Becker, 1955, fpp. Jerry Jayne also made brief references to people bringing up the Kluckhohn matter. See Jayne Fieldnotes, August 6, 7, and 14, 1955, Box 1, Folder Journals, Jayne, 1955, fpp. 13. “The Schwartzhaupt Foundation Tama Indian Program, Report of Activities, 1955–56,” February 1957, Box 5, Folder Proposals, Reports, Memos, Schwartzhaupt Foundation Report, fpp, 3. 14. Rietz, “Copy of Document,” September 1949, Box 8, Folder Economics, Rietz, fpp. 15. Rietz, “Copy of Document.” 16. “Chapter III: Action Anthropology as Field Program,” undated, Box 12, Folder Action Anthropology Reader, fpp, 61–66. For value in 2007 dollars, see inflation calculator at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics web page, http://stats.bls.gov/. 17. See monthly Accounts Receivable statements for December 1959, January 1960, and February 1960 for examples of places where Tamacraft products were sold. Box 11, Folder Tamacraft and Schwartzhaupt Accounts, fpp. Tax to Jean C. Harrington, National Park Service, February 9, 1955, Box 9, Folder, G-H, fpp. 18. See “Chapter III: Action Anthropology as Field Program,” 66– 67. 19. [Two Meskwaki residents], interviews with the author, summer 2001, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia. For inflation calculation, see bls inflation calculator at http://stats.bls.gov/. 20. “68 at Chamber of Commerce Dinner, Progress Retold,” Tama News-Herald, January 16, 1958, p. 1; Rietz to Tax, November 17, 1957, and March 29, 1958, Box 9, Folder Tama 12 (2 of 2), fpp. 21. Rietz to Tax, September 14, 1957, and March 29, 1958, Box 9, Folder Tama 12 (2 of 2), fpp.

notes to pages 237–240

363

22. Rietz to Tax, November 17, 1957, Box 9, Folder Q-R; “‘Tamacraft’ Furnishes a New Home Industry to Help Mesquakie Indians,” January 4, 1957, Traer (Iowa) Star-Clipper, reprint in Box 9, Folder Miscellaneous; Rietz to Gearing, February 24, 1956, Box 12, Folder Fox Indian Professional Education, all in fpp. 23. Gearing to Marlin, January 17, 1956, Box 10, Folder M-N, fpp. 24. Wahrhaftig Fieldnotes, July 3, 1958, Box 10, Folder Action Files (Old Material) (2 of 2), fpp. “Sullivan” is a pseudonym. 25. Tax to Rietz, February 10, 1958, and Tax to Carl Tjerandsen, October 10, 1958, Box 9, Folder Tama 12 (2 of 2), fpp. Tjerandsen allowed the Tama grant to be extended for a fifth year, with another grant of $14,000. This meant that the project extended through 1959, but activities in Tama ended in 1958. 26. Tax to Alec Sutherland, April 18, 1960, Box 10, Folder Sol Tax S General (contd.), Chicago Conference Papers, National Anthropological Archives, Suitland, Maryland, hereinafter referred to as ccp. 27. Tax, handwritten document titled “Diary-Record to be Filled In,” April 1960, Box 1, Folder Historical: Beginnings of aicc, ccp. Although the diary begins with entries in April 1960, Tax did not begin writing it until November 24, Thanksgiving Day, and filled in the earlier entries from memory or documents in his files. 28. Tax to Fred Friendly, December 29, 1960, Box 6, Folder Sol Tax, Fre . . . ; Tax to Chet Hagan, May 22, 1961; John B. Buckstaff to Tax, May 25, 1961, Box 7, Folder Sol Tax, H General; Tax, “Final Report of the Coordinator,” May 26, 1961, Box 1, Folder Sol Tax Mailings; Tax to Ed Short, May 18, 1961, Box 10, Folder S General (contd.); Murray Wax, “Memorandum on Indian Education for aicc, 1961,” Box 4, Folder Memorandum on Indian Education for aicc, 1961, all in ccp. Tax arranged for the Santa Fe Railroad to provide a $500 subsidy for Indians traveling long distances to Chicago. 29. Tax spoke extensively at the first meeting of the Indian advisors to the conference, giving an extended account of its history and stressing his desire to provide an opportunity for Indians to get together but not influencing the outcome. The minutes from the second session quote Tax only once, telling the group that it could

364

notes to pages 241–244

hold a press conference if it wished. A transcript of the third session shows Tax acted as a resource person, answering a question about who would supply data for various sessions of the conference. See Minutes of aicc Advisory Committee meeting, February 10–13, 1961, Box 2, Folder Chicago Indian Advisors, ccp. 30. Tax to All American Indians, Undated, and D’Arcy McNickle, “The New Frontier in Indian Affairs: Policy and Program for the Sixties,” December 1, 1960, both in Box 1, Folder Sol Tax Mailings, ccp. The copy has marginal notes written by Tax. 31. Notes on aicc Meeting of Indian Advisory Committee, February 10–14, 1961, Box 2, Folder Sol Tax, Chicago Indian Advisors, ccp. For Tax’s selection of the word “charter,” see Report of the Coordinator of aicc, March 16, 1961, Box 1, Folder 9, dap, 1955–70. 32. Minutes of aicc Session 7, February 12, 1961, Box 2, Folder Sol Tax, Chicago Indian Advisors; Lurie to Donald Ames, March 31, 1961, Box 4, Folder Sol Tax, A general; Stern to Lurie, January 24, 1961, Box 10, Folder Sol Tax, S General (contd.); William C. Sturtevant to Lurie, December 7, 1960, Box 10, Folder Sol Tax, S General (contd.); Peter J. LaPoint to Tax, June 5, 1961, Box 7, Folder Sol Tax, Le . . . , all in ccp. 33. Johnson, Occupation of Alcatraz Island, 14; “Declaration of Indian Purpose,” June 1961, in Prucha, Documents of United States Indian Policy, 245–47. 34. Cornell, Return of the Native, 124; LaGrand, Indian Metropolis, 168; Johnson, Occupation of Alcatraz Island, 14; Parker, Singing an Indian Song, 187–89. LaGrand has a detailed account of Tax’s role in planning the conference. 35. Tax, untitled, undated, handwritten document, Box 244, Folder 1; Tax speech, June 16, 1976, Box 274, Folder 6, both in stp. 36. Lurie, “What the Red Man Wants,” 67. 37. Tax to Walter Taylor, April 23, 1962, Folder Sol Tax–Walter Taylor, Box 10, and Thomas form letter to “Dear Friend,” Undated, Box 16, Folder Sol Tax Miscellancy, both in cpp. 38. Stewart Udall to Tax, June 7, 1961, Box 6, Folder Sol Tax, Delegates to White House; Tax to Douglas, March 16, 1962, Box 6, Folder Sol Tax, D General (contd.); Douglas to Tax, April 17, 1962, Box 11,

notes to pages 244–252

365

Folder Sol Tax, Wh . . . ; Tax to All American Indians, August 3, 1962, Box 4, Folder Sol Tax Summer ’62—Mailing 8-3-62, all in ccp. 39. Clarkin, Federal Indian Policy, 24–43, 77–80. 40. Elizabeth Hoyt to Tax, October 12, 1962, Box 126, Folder 4, stp. 41. Rietz to Tax, October 14, 1962, Box 126, Folder 4, stp. 42. Hoyt to Tax, January 15, 1963, Box 126, Folder 4, stp. 43. Hoyt, Tama. The work was distributed in fifty mimeographed copies. Hoyt sent a draft copy to Tax for comment. The journal article was published as “The Children of Tama.” 44. Tax to Gearing, January 15, 1964; Hoyt to Tax, January 15, 1963; Tax to Hoyt, January, 27, 1964, all in Box 126, Folder 4, stp. Hoyt’s letter referred to “the booklet from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, sent out under your direction, and the suggestions for response from Associates.” The file contained no correspondence from Tax to the foundation regarding the matter. 45. Hoyt to Richard Kluckhohn, February 5, 1964; Hoyt to Tax, February 2, 1964; Robert Odess to Tax, March 1964, all in Box 126, Folder 4, stp. 46. Sam Stanley, “Community, Action, and Continuity: A Narrative Vita of Sol Tax,” Current Anthropology 37 (February 1996): S131–S136. 47. Thomas to Tax, February 3, 1964, Box 126, Folder 4, stp. 48. Hoyt to Tax, October 5, 1970, Box 126, Folder 4; Tax to Hoyt, November 2, 1970, Box 129, Folder 5, both in stp. 49. Stucki, “Anthropologists and Indians.” 50. Steve Polgar “Comments on L. R. Stucki, Plains Anthropologist [12] 1967:300,” Box 53, Folder 3, stp. 51. Tax to Polgar, January 31, 1969, Box 53, Folder 3, stp. As an example of the debate, see Gerald Berreman, “Is Anthropology Alive? Social Responsibility in Social Anthropology,” in Current Anthropology 9:5 (December 1968) 391–96. 52. Foley, “Fox Project”; Rietz to Tax, October 14, 1962, Box 126, Folder 4, stp. 53. Rietz to Tax, October 14, 1962, Box 126, Folder 4, stp. 54. Wendy Schmitz, interview with the author, summer 2001,

366

notes to pages 252–256

Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia; “Tamacraft Furnishes a New Home Industry to Help Mesquakie Indians,” January 4, 1957, Traer (Iowa) StarClipper, copy in Box 9, Folder Miscellaneous, fpp. “Wendy Schmitz” is a pseudonym. 55. Sean Carter interview with the author; [Meskwaki woman, Meskwaki man], interviews with the author, summer 2001, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia. 56. Introduction to Study Packet on American Indian Affairs, undated, Box 157, Folder 6, stp. 57. Rosalie Wax, “A Brief History and Analysis of the Workshops on American Indian Affairs,” October 1961, Folder Scholarly Papers— Wax, Rosalie H., brp. 58. Introduction to Study Packet on American Indian Affairs, undated, Box 157, Folder 6, stp. 59. “College Workshop on American Indian Affairs,” April 13, 1966, Box 157, Folder 5, stp; McNickle to Rietz, September 7, 1960, Folder American Indian Development—September 1960–May 1962, brp; “Students Accepted for 1961 Workshop,” undated, Folder Education Summer Workshop—1961, brp; Smith and Warrior, Like a Hurricane, 56–57; Vine Deloria Jr., Custer Died for Your Sins, 87–90; “Institute in American Indian Studies,” undated, Folder Education—Institute in American Indian Studies, brp; Statement from National Indian Youth Council Inc., undated, Folder Education—Clyde Warrior Institute in American Indian Studies, brp. Deloria did not attend a workshop as a student. 60. Wax, “Brief History and Analysis,” 21–29. 61. Wax, “Brief History and Analysis,” 21–22, 29–31. 62. Smith and Warrior, Like a Hurricane, 40–45. Warrior is no relation to Clyde Warrior, viii. 63. “College Workshop on American Indian Affairs, “April 13, 1966, Box 157, Folder 5, stp; Morris interview with the author. 64. “Canadian Students Attend First University Summer Session,” undated, Folder Canadian Indian Workshop, brp. 65. Robert J. Havighurst to Tax, April 12, 1968, Box 136, Folder 5, stp; National Study of American Indian Education, “The Education of Indian Children and Youth: Summary Report and Recommenda-

notes to pages 256–259

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tions,” December 1970, Box 137, Folder 4, stp; Szasz, Education and the American Indian, chapter 11. For Navajo Community College, see Stein, Tribally Controlled Colleges, 10. Robert Roessel, who served on the White House Task Force on Indian Affairs with Tax, assisted the Navajo in launching the college and served as president for its first two years, before stepping aside in favor of Indian leadership. Stein, Tribally Controlled Colleges, 10–15. 66. “Summary Statement of the Case for naes College—Building a Model for Higher Indian Education,” undated, Box 138, Folder 7, stp. 67. Faith Smith, interview with author, January 15, 2002, naes, Chicago. 68. Smith to Board of Directors, June 20, 1980, Box 137, Folder 8, stp; Smith interview with author. 69. For details on these steps on behalf of naes, see the following letters in Box 137, Folder 8, stp: Smith to Tax, April 23, 1979; Anne F. Cunningham to Tax, March 18, 1981: Smith to Tax, March 9, 1983: Tax to Edward H. Levi and Cyril O. Houle, April 21, 1983; Smith to Tax, September 17, 1984. Since its beginning in 1974 through 2001, naes awarded 225 degrees. Now accredited by the North Central Association and no longer affiliated with Antioch College of Yellow Springs, Ohio, naes has campuses in Minneapolis–St. Paul, Fort Peck, Montana, and the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin. Smith interview with the author. 70. Tax to Helen Peterson, Box 135, Folder 6, stp; Tax to D’Arcy McNickle, December 10, 1957, and “Arrow, Inc.” document, undated, both in Box 25, Folder Sol Tax Correspondence 1957–1965, dmp. Grants listed in Tjerandsen, Education for Citizenship, appendix B. 71. Tax to Walsh McDermot, October 15, 1966, Folder 7, and Tax notes from task force meeting, undated, Folder 8, both in Box 152, stp; Stein, Tribally Controlled Colleges, 10. Tax’s papers do not identify the Indians. 72. Tax notes from task force meeting, undated, Box 152, Folder 8, and Tax to McNickle, October 29, 1966, Box 133, Folder 4, both in stp. Although Tax’s notes are undated, the task force meeting most

368

notes to pages 260–262

likely occurred sometime in November or December 1966. Tax’s invitation to serve on the task force was dated October 7, 1966, and another letter, dated December 23, 1966, thanked him for his insistence that the task force take explicitly Indian attitudes and values into account. See James C. Gaither to Tax, October 7, 1966, and David Tilson to Tax, December 23, 1966, both in Box 152, Folder 8, stp. The emphasis on “small confidential” is in the original. 73. Tax notes, undated, and Eric Wentworth, “Study Hits Treatment of U.S. Indians,” February 13, 1968, Washington Post, both in Box 152, Folder 8, stp; Lyndon Johnson, “Special Message to the Congress on the Problems of the American Indian: ‘The Forgotten American,’” March 6, 1968, in Public Papers of the Presidents, 1:335–44. 74. Tax to A. E. Manell, April 4, 1960, Box 69, Folder 1, stp; Stanley, “Community, Action, and Continuity,” S134. 75. unesco Working Paper from Inter-Disciplinary Meeting on the Teaching of the Social Sciences, September 16–19, 1952, Box 66, Folder 10, stp. 76. H. M. Phillips to Tax, April 26, 1961, and Tax to Phillips, September 5, 1961, both in Box 68, Folder 3, stp. No copy of the paper Tax wrote was in the file. 77. Tax to L. Arthur Minnich Jr., May 22, 1961, Box 69, Folder 2, stp. Minnich was executive secretary to the U.S. National Commission for unesco. 78. Tax to Eleanor R. Richards, December 30, 1964, Box 70, Folder 6; Bryce Wood, Social Science Research Council memo, March 25, 1963, Box 69, Folder 6, both in stp. In the same file as the memo is the U.S. National Commission for unesco’s report from its meeting April 26–28, 1962, which noted the lack of participation by U.S. social scientists in unesco work and called on them to develop communities of scholars across national lines as Current Anthropology had done. That undoubtedly reflects Tax’s influence. 79. On the dispute over the term “peaceful co-existence,” see report on the thirteenth session of the General Conference of unesco, undated, Box 71, Folder 6, stp. The dispute was resolved by publishing a document in which “peaceful co-existence” was used in Rus-

notes to pages 263–266

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sian and French versions, but in English and Spanish versions the phrase was translated as “peaceful cooperation and living peacefully together.” For the allegations of teaching world government, see L. A. Minnich to U.S. National Commission Members and Voluntary Organizations, January 5, 1962, Box 69, Folder 5, stp. On Tax reappointment, see Dean Rusk to Tax, March 4, 1963, Box 69, Folder 2, stp. On Tax frustrations, see Tax to L. M. C. Smith, February 3, 1964, Box 70, Folder 6, stp. 80. Stewart, Peyote Religion, 3, 18–19, 131–36, 232. 81. Tax, “Social Organization of the Fox” (diss.), 188; Stewart, Peyote Religion, 167–69, 228. Stewart suggests that Meskwaki learned of peyote from Winnebago Indians who passed between Nebraska and Wisconsin, but he does not cite a source. See Stewart, Peyote Religion, 168. 82. Stewart, Peyote Religion, 169; Peattie Diary, July 17, 1948, Box 288, Reel 2, stp, 1539–41. On page 239 Stewart lists the date of the Iowa charter as 1943. 83. Tax, “Social Organization of the Fox” (diss.), 144, 185–94. Tax did tell a reporter in 1954 that he had witnessed a peyote ritual but did not say when or where. See Frank Nye to Art White, undated, Box 288, Reel 6, stp, 4808. 84. Stewart, Peyote Religion, 301–2; Weston La Barre et al., “Statement on Peyote,” Science 114:2970 (November 30, 1951) 582–83, reprint in Box 8, Folder Social Organizations Peyote, fpp. 85. Stewart, Peyote Religion, 302; Otis Imboden, “Conference of the Native American Church, Tama, Iowa, July 22–25,” July 1954, Box 288, Reel 6, stp, 4772–78. 86. Imboden Fieldnotes, 4780–84, and Nye to White, 4808, both in Box 233, Reel 6, stp. 87. Imboden Fieldnotes, 4783, 4804-5, Box 233, Reel 6, stp; Stewart, Peyote Religion, 242–43. 88. Stanford University News Service press release, December 15, 1969, Box 176, Folder 7; Tax to Magoroh Maruyama, December 29, 1969, Box 42, Folder 1; Ad Hoc Committee to aaa members, undated, Box 176, Folder 6, and Tax to George Foster, January 22, 1970, Box 176, Folder 7, all in stp.

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notes to pages 266–268

89. Talbot, “Indian Students and Reminiscences of Alcatraz,” 109–12. Talbot’s article was first published in 1994 in American Indian Culture and Research Journal 18.4 (1994). Although Talbot wrote that the Indians of All Tribes council decided to “kill” the committee of anthropologists of which Tax was a member, representatives of the occupiers still sought Tax’s help. The council’s attorney, Aubrey Grossman, wrote Tax for information on establishing the legality of the Indians’ claim to surplus federal property. As late as April 8, 1970, Aubrey described himself as “working closely” with Tax. Grossman to Virgil Vogel, April 8, 1970, Box 176, Folder 6, stp. 90. Al Wahrhaftig to Tax, January 8, 1966, Folder Carnegie—April 1964–January 1966, brp. 91. LaGrand, Indian Metropolis, 228–34. 92. Tax to file, December 29, 1973, Box 137, Folder 7, stp. 93. Smith interview with the author. Smith and Tax lost that battle, as the board hired Frederick Hoxie, a non-Indian, as the center’s first director. 94. Thomas to Tax, July 1, 1974, Box 146, Folder 10, stp. 95. Tax to Ruth Mallory, February 10, 1965, and Tax to Jocelyn Wilson, February 22, 1971, both in Box 132, Folder 8, stp. 96. Leon M. Despus to Tax, June 18, 1976, Box 123, Folder 8; George Deloney to Tax, undated, Box 123, Folder 8; Tax note to archives, March 14, 1989, Box 132, Folder 8, all in stp. Tax attached a note recalling the incident to a newspaper clipping about the man (in another context) that was published the same date. Tax said in the note he did not recall if the man repaid him. 97. Tax to Virgil Vogel, August 8, 1972, and Jeannette Hopkins to Tax, January 12, 1973, both in Box 154, Folder 7, stp. Hopkins, of Harper and Row Publishers, informed Tax that his overrun project was carried out with Virgil Vogel’s book, This Country Was Ours: A Documentary History of the American Indian (New York: Harper & Row, 1972). Tax’s idea allowed the Smithsonian to sell the book to Indians for $1.28, compared to the normal retail price of $12.95. For an example of Tax refusing honoraria, see Everette Edgar Sentman to Tax, May 24, 1962, Box 132, Folder 1, stp.

notes to pages 270–276

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98. [Charles], interview with the author, summer 2001, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia. 99. [William], interview with the author, summer 2001, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia. 100. [Tammy], interview with the author, summer 2001, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia. 101. [Meskwaki man], interview with the author, summer 2001, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia; [Meskwaki woman], interview with the author, summer 2002, Tama ia. 102. Lisa Fredericks, interview with the author, summer 2001, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia. “Lisa Fredericks” is a pseudonym. 103. [Meskwaki man], interview with the author, summer 2001, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia. 104. [William] interview with the author. 105. Arrow interview with the author. 106. Arrow interview with the author. 107. Rietz to Tax, November 17, 1957, Box 9, Folder Tama 12 (2 of 2), fpp. 108. [Two Meskwaki residents], interviews with the author, summer 2001, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia. 109. Marlin Journal, “Some Reflections on Action Anthropology,” 1953, Box 288, Reel 6, stp, 4153. Epilogue 1. Sac and Fox of the Mississippi in Iowa Fact Sheet, no date. Copy in possession of the author. 2. Johnathan Buffalo, telephone interview with the author, spring 2002; Jessica Miller, “Meskwaki Council Accused of Illegal Practices,” Waterloo/Cedar Falls (Iowa) Courier, April 10, 2003, http://www.wcf courier.com (accessed April 10, 2003); Associated Press, “Leadership Overthrown at Meskwaki Settlement,” Waterloo/Cedar Falls Courier, March 27, 2003, http://www.wcfcourier.com (accessed March 27, 2003). 3. Mark Siebert, “Judge Stays out of Meskwaki Power Struggle,” Des Moines Register, April 16, 2003, http://www.dmregister.com (accessed

372

notes to pages 277–279

April 16, 2003); Jessica Miller, “Meskwaki Leadership Struggle Could Temporarily Close Casino,” Waterloo/Cedar Falls Courier, April 9, 2003, http://www.wcf.courier.com (accessed April 9, 2003); Miller, “Casino Remains Open,” Waterloo/Cedar Falls Courier, May 4, 2003, http:// www.wcfcourier.com (accessed May 4, 2003); Miller, “Tribal Chairman Denies Asking for ‘Kickbacks,’” Waterloo/Cedar Falls Courier, April 18, 2003, http://www.wcfcourier.com (accessed April 19, 2003); Miller, “Meskwaki Councils Reject Election Plans,” Waterloo/Cedar Falls Courier, April 25, 2003, http://www.wcfcourier.com (accessed April 26, 2003); Miller, “Pressure Building for Meskwaki Leaders to End Power Struggle,” Waterloo/Cedar Falls Courier, May 7, 2003, http://www.wcf courier.com (accessed May 7, 2003). 4. Siebert, “Closed: Marshals Enforce Order to Shut Down Casino,” and “The Settlement,” both May 24, 2003, and “Court Keeps Indian Casino Shut,” May 30, 2003, all in Des Moines Register; Marc Hansen, “Gamblers Forced to Fold as Fight Turns Nasty,” Des Moines Register, May 24, 2003; Miller, “Candidates Selected for Remaining Meskwaki Seats,” October 30, 2003, and “Appointed Meskwaki Council Wins Final Election,” December 6, 2003, both in Waterloo/Cedar Falls Courier; editorial, “Tribe, Town, Casino Workers Can Breathe Sight of Relief,” Waterloo/Cedar Falls Courier, December 23, 2003. 5. Jeff Reinitz, “Tribal Justice,” April 17, 2005, and Jessica Miller, “Supreme Court Will Write Rules on Handling Meskwaki Judgments,” April 21, 2005, both in Waterloo/Cedar Falls Courier. 6. Johnathan Buffalo, interview with the author, summer 2002, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia. 7. Associated Press, “Meskwakis Making It: Scottish Filmmaker Returns to Find Tama Tribe Not Struggling the Way It Did 40 Years Ago,” Cedar Rapids Gazette, July 8, 2001; “Sac and Fox of the Mississippi in Iowa Visitor Information Guide,” undated. 8. Associated Press, “Meskwakis Making It,” July 8, 2001. 9. Visitor Information Guide; “Meskwaki Public Works News,” Meskwaki Nation Newsletter, April 19, 2002. 10. Miller, “School Days: New Learning Facility Graces the Tama Community,” Waterloo/Cedar Falls, undated clipping; “Higher Education Report,” Meskwaki Nation Newsletter, April 19, 2002.

notes to pages 280–285

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11. Miller, “Baby Steps: Youths Dance to Keep Tradition Alive,” Waterloo/Cedar Falls Courier, August 8, 2003. 12. “Anti-poverty Project Has Daunting Task to Confront,” Waterloo/Cedar Falls Courier, August 24, 2002; Marie K. Vileta, “Chautauqua Returns to Tama, Toledo and the Meskwaki Nation,” and “Of Wooden Bowls and Wooden Spoons; Language and Religion: Charles Eastman and His Encounter with the Meskwaki Nation,” both in the Scene, Summer 2001. 13. “Former Senator’s Lawsuit against Meskwaki Council Still Unsettled,” Waterloo/Cedar Falls Courier, undated newspaper clipping. 14. Kristophere Owens, “Meskwakis celebrate 1857 move to Iowa,” Cedar Rapids Gazette, July 12, 2001. 15. Miller, “The Start of Something Big: Meskwakis Celebrate Day Land Became Theirs,” Waterloo/Cedar Falls Courier, July 15, 2001. 16. Tribal News Release, February 27, 2002, “State of Iowa and Sac and Fox Tribe of Iowa Sign Intergovernmental Agreement for the Regulation of Hunting and Fishing on the Meskwaki Indian Settlement,” copy in possession of the author; Talbert Davenport Sr., “Costs of Tama County Patrols Are Inequitable,” Des Moines Register, August 2001, clipping in possession of the author. 17. Sean Carter interview with the author. 18. [Meskwaki man], interview with the author, summer 2001, Meskwaki settlement, Tama ia; copy of untitled essay in possession of the author. 19. Buffalo interview with the author; “Public Hearing to Be Held on September 22, 2001,” Tribal Enrollment Update 1.1 (September 2001): 1. No action was taken on the enrollment matter. 20. Stocking, “‘Do Good, Young Man,’” 255–56. 21. Bennett, “Applied and Action Anthropology,” S23–S53. 22. Horowitz, Rise and Fall of Project Camelot; Tax to Stephen T. Boggs, April 18, 1966, and Peter Braestrup, “Researchers Aid Thai Rebel Fight,” New York Times, March 20, 1967, both in Box 175, Folder 7, stp; Vine Deloria Jr., Custer Died for Your Sins. 23. See the introduction for a discussion of the articles in Current Anthropology.

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notes to pages 285–286

24. Society for Applied Anthropology 1970 Annual Business Meeting, Human Organization 29.3 (Fall 1970): 225. 25. Steven Polgar and Delmose Jones, eds., “Commentary,” Human Organization 30.1 (Spring 1971): 95–101. 26. See John F. Marshall, “Obituary—Steve Polgar (1931–1978),” 7, clipping in Box 53, Folder 3, stp. The quotation is from Polgar, “From Applied to Committed Anthropology.” There are hints of potential Tax influence, or at least connections, with others who were definitely influenced by leftist sentiments. Tax maintained correspondence, including some on personal matters, with people such as David Aberle, Kathleen Aberle, Kurt H. Wolff, and Eric Wolf. Their relations with Tax deserve more exploration before being dismissed. In the case of Wolf, for example, Wolf’s work on Mexico and Guatemala followed after and built on Tax’s Penny Capitalism. Wolf also joined Tax in rejecting the demand that anthropology hold onto its claim of “scientific objectivity.” In an article he co-wrote, Wolf said that the concept of scientific objectivity “implies the estrangement of the anthropologist from the people among whom he works” and called for anthropologists to take sides with the oppressed peoples of the world. Wolf and Tax were among the anthropologists who found it appalling that anthropologists were working for the U.S. military in Thailand during the Vietnam War under the project code-named Project Agile. News of the scandal “shook me considerably,” Tax said at the time. Tax immediately contacted staff of the American Anthropological Association to see if it were possible to identify the unnamed anthropologists. It is unclear what became of Tax’s inquiries, but aaa staff wrote back suggesting alternatives such as bringing the matter to the attention of the aaa executive board. Wolf’s activities were much more public. In 1970 anti-war students gave Wolf copies of documents that named the anthropologists, and as chair of the aaa Ethics Committee, Wolf wrote privately to them and asked for clarification before bringing the matter to the attention of the full organization. When the aaa executive board reprimanded Wolf for his actions, he resigned from the committee. The aaa later appointed a special committee to look into the work of an-

notes to pages 286–288

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thropologists in Thailand and Wolf’s role in exposing the scandal. Wolf, who taught briefly at the University of Chicago, corresponded with Tax for at least thirteen years. Tax helped Wolf look for work and persuaded the University of Chicago Press to publish one of Wolf’s books, Sons of the Shaking Earth. Tax called the book “a brilliant interpretive description” of Mexico and Guatemala and a “great tour de force.” Wolf also sent Tax one of his complimentary copies of a journal article, on which he wrote, “With Best Wishes, Eric.” Wolf and Jorgensen, “Special Supplement.” In the case of Kurt H. Wolff, Tax selected him to comment on the Fox Project at the symposium on action anthropology held in 1957 and sponsored by the WennerGren Foundation. Wolff’s comments, praising Tax for raising “urgent and important” questions about social sciences and values, were published as “Values in Action: A Comment,” in Human Organization 17.1 (Spring 1958). 27. Peattie, “Reflections on Advocacy Planning” (paper presented at the Conference on Radicals in the Profession, Ann Arbor mi, July 14–16, 1967), copy in University of Michigan, Hatcher Graduate Library Special Collections. Peattie’s talk was published under the same title in the Journal of American Institute of Planners 34.2 (1968): 80–88. 28. Leonard Borman, “Some Comments on Clinical Anthropology Discussions,” Medical Anthropology Newsletter 12.3 (May 1981): 9–12 (quotations on 10); Brian Alan McEwen, “An Action Anthropology Perspective on Change in a Leadership Development Organization” (Ph.D. diss., University of South Florida, 2003). 29. Symposium on Anthropology and the American Indian, November 1970, Anthropology and the American Indian (San Francisco: Indian Historian Press, 1973). 30. Foley, “Fox Project,” 183. 31. See Appendix 2 for a complete listing of publications related to the Meskwaki. 32. Tax, Penny Capitalism; “Social Organization of the Fox” (diss.); and “Fox Project.” The searches on the citation index were performed in June and July 2006 and employed variations of the last names and

376

notes to pages 288–291

initials of the project participants to capture as many citations as possible. 33. Gearing, Face of the Fox; and Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Documentary History. 34. Polgar, “Biculturation of Mesquakie Teenage Boys”; Polgar, “Population History and Population Policies from an Anthropological Perspective,” Current Anthropology 13.2 (1972); and Polgar, “Health and Human Behavior—Areas of Interest Common to the Social and Medical Sciences,” Current Anthropology 3.2 (1962). 35. Peattie, View from the Barrio (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1968); Peattie, “Reflections on Advocacy Planning,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners 34.2 (1968); and Peattie, “Interventionism and Applied Science in Anthropology,” Human Organization 17.1 (1958). 36. Miller, “Two Concepts of Authority;” and Miller, “The Authority System of the Fox Indians” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1955). Miller’s work on juveniles and gangs is extensive, but one of the most extensively cited is “Lower-Class Culture as a Generating Milieu of Gang Delinquency,” Journal of Social Issues 14.3 (1958). 37. Callender, “The North American Berdache,” Current Anthropology 24.4 (1983); Callender, “Fox,” Handbook of North American Indians, ed. William C. Sturtevant, vol. 15, Northeast (Washington dc: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1978). Callender’s name is often misspelled as “Callendar” in citations. 38. Fugle, “Mill Creek Culture and Technology,” Journal of Iowa Archaeology 11.4 (1961–62). Fugle has been cited at least once that did not show up in the citation index. Edmunds and Peyser referred to his work in Fox Wars but spelled his name “Fugler” (see p. 263). 39. Gearing interview with the author. 40. Diesing, “An Action Program for the Fox Indians” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1952); Diesing, Science and Ideology in the Policy Sciences (New York: Aldine, 1982) 202; and Diesing, How Does Social Science Work? Reflections on Practice (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991), 349. 41. Powers, “Harvard Study of Values,” 15–16, 21, 26; and Powers,

notes to pages 291–295

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“Harvard Five Cultures Values Study and Postwar Anthropology” (Ph.D. thesis, University of New Mexico, 1997), 173, 230. 42. Vogt, Fieldwork among the Maya, 46–51. 43. Vogt, Fieldwork among the Maya, 81, 96, 134, 139, 157; Vogt to Tax, February 15, 1956, Box 90, Folder 11, stp. Tax’s project in the area was called the Man-in-Nature project and was funded by the National Science Foundation. See University of Chicago Press Release, August 7, 1959, Box 103, Folder 11, stp. 44. Vogt, Fieldwork among the Maya, 59, 81–87, 185, 209. 45. Vogt, Fieldwork among the Maya, 179, 209–12, 343. 46. Vogt, Fieldwork among the Maya, 88, 114, 199–200, 212; Gearing interview with the author. 47. Vogt, Fieldwork among the Maya, 347. 48. Some students may have come to Tax with that view already in place, but Tax certainly nurtured it rather than attempting to change it. 49. Wax, reply to Bennett, “Applied and Action Anthropology,” S23–S53. Of 22 University of Chicago students who did fieldwork at Tama, 11 received doctorates in anthropology from that institution: Lloyd Fallers, 1953; Fred Gearing, William McCormack, and Steve Polgar, all in 1956; Charles Callender, 1958; Charles Leslie and Walter H. Sangree, 1959; Irven DeVore, 1962; Sarah Robinson, 1963; Lisa Redfield Peattie, 1968; Albert Wahrhaftig, 1975. In addition Grace Harris received a master’s degree in anthropology from Chicago but a doctorate in anthropology from Cambridge. Walter B. Miller received a master’s degree in anthropology from the University of Chicago but a doctorate in social relations from Harvard University. Lucinda Sangree was a sociology student and received a master’s degree in that field from Chicago in 1956. Davida Wolffson Higgin received her degree elsewhere. 50. Gredys interview with the author. 51. Gredys interview with the author. 52. Tax to David Schneider, December 10, 1964, Box 61, Folder 1, stp; Ablon to Tax, April 25, 1963, Box 112, Folder 4, stp; Fred Zimring to Ablon, June 19, 1963, Box 112, Folder 4, stp; Ablon to Tax, June 4,

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notes to pages 296–297

1962, Box 5, Folder J Ablon, Continued, fpp. Borman’s rejected work stemmed from an action anthropology project he began in 1952, when Tax arranged for him to help resettle a group of more than five hundred refugees from the Soviet Union known as Kalmuks. The Kalmuks were Buddhist Mongols who had fled the Soviet Union during World War II and earlier. Borman helped Kalmuks get to job agencies, doctor appointments, schools, and courts. He helped them fill out job applications, requests for unemployment, and other forms. See Len Borman to Percy Baker, January 12, 1954, Box 235, Folder 3, stp. 53. Borman to Tax, October 23, 1952; Borman to Roland Elliott, November 6, 1952, Borman to Tax, December 12, 1952, and Tax to Borman, January 27, 1952, Box 235, Folder 3, stp; Gearing interview with the author. 54. Ablon, “Leonard D. Borman, 1927–1985,” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 17.4 (August 1986): 111–12. 55. Ablon, “Leonard D. Borman,” 111–12. Borman lobbied for state funding of a clearinghouse for self-help information, but he died before that goal was achieved. The Illinois Self-Help Coalition that resulted from the legislation remained active in 2002. See “About the Illinois Self-Help Coalition,” http://www.selfhelp-illinois.org (accessed December 5, 2002). 56. Marshall, “Obituary—Steve Polgar”; Marshall and Polgar, Culture, Natality, and Family Planning; Polgar, Culture and Population; Polgar, Population, Ecology and Social Evolution; Polgar and Marshall, “Search for Culturally Acceptable Fertility Regulating Methods,” 217. Polgar’s “Health and Human Behaviour: Areas of Interest Common to the Social and Medical Sciences” appeared in Current Anthropology in 1962. 57. Stewart, Peyote Religion, 308–10; Genevieve Ames and Linda Bennett, “The Formative and Early Years of adsg,” Newsletter, Alcohol, Drug, and Tobacco Study Group of the American Anthropological Association, http://www.fgcu.edu/adsg/volume35_1/ames.html (accessed December 9, 2002). Ames and Bennett credit Ablon with being the instigator for formation of a special interest group for al-

notes to pages 298–300

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cohol and drug studies within the aaa after several people presented papers on alcohol issues at a aaa annual meeting. In 1980 the study group became formally associated with the aaa. 58. “Highlights in the History of the Council of Anthropology in Education,” http://new.aaanet.org/cae/history.htm (accessed December 9, 2002). 59. Thomas to Tax, October 26, no year, Box 10, Folder Sol Tax, T General, fpp. Although the letter’s date does not include a year, Thomas wrote the letter after the 1961 American Indian Chicago Conference while he was in Arizona. Spicer was editor of the American Anthropologist for three years ending in 1963. Off and on from 1959 to 1986, Thomas taught at Wayne State University’s Monteith College, where he gave a lecture to an undergraduate class in 1965 on which his colonialism article was based. See Robert K. Thomas, “Colonialism”; and Pavlik, Good Cherokee, xv. 60. Thomas, “Colonialism.” See chapter 4 for a discussion of the school controversy. 61. Thomas, “Colonialism.” 62. Pavlik, Good Cherokee, xiii–xiv; Forbes, “Colonialism as a Theme in American Indigenous Writing,” 241–57 (quotation on 257); Churchill, “Remembering Bob Thomas,” 281–90. 63. Sol Tax, “Self and Society,” speech delivered at Claremont Graduate College, Claremont ca, February 9, 1968, Box 173, Folder 3, stp. 64. Pavlik, Good Cherokee, xvi. 65. Wahrhaftig, “Community and the Caretakers”; Earl Boyd Pierce to Robert Burnette, September 25, 1963, quoted in Tax to Lloyd Morrisett, January 14, 1966, Box 119, Folder 8, stp; Wahrhaftig to Tax, January 8, 1966, Folder Carnegie—April 1964–January 1966, brp; Thomas to Tax, December 22, 1965, Box 119, Folder 7, stp; Joseph J. Mays, “Tribes Speaker Raps Cultural Study Groups,” Muskogee (Oklahoma) Daily Phoenix, July 14, 1966, Box 119, Folder 8, stp; Tax to Lloyd Morrisett, January 14, 1966, Folder Carnegie—April 1964–January 1966, brp. Pierce had tangled with Tax during planning for the aicc. See chapter 6.

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notes to pages 301–305

66. Al Wahrhaftig was listed as emeritus faculty at Sonoma State University. A summary of his teaching appears at http://www.ssualu mni.org/pubs/nb/08_18_06/page2.html (accessed December 1, 2007). 67. Tax to Carl Tjerandsen, October 10, 1958, Box 9, Folder Tama 12 (2 of 2) fpp; Rietz to Catherine F. Stearns, February 9, 1963, Folder American Indian Center, Dec. 1962–Feb. 1963, brp; Tjerandsen, Education for Citizenship, 51–58; Kirk S. Bennett to Rietz, April 23, 1969, Folder Evaluation—Student Papers, 1967 A-G, brp; Rietz to Catherine F. Stearns, February 9, 1963, American Indian Center, Dec. 1962–Feb. 1963, brp. 68. Alvin W. Wolfe, reply to John Bennett, “Applied and Action Anthropology,” Current Anthropology 36 (suppl.) (February 1996): S47– S48; Stephen Schensul, interview with the author, March 9, 2002, Atlanta ga. 69. Lurie interview with the author. 70. Lurie interview with the author; song lyrics, undated, Box 8, Folder Sol Tax, N.O.L.—June 1961 to Present, ccp. 71. Lurie to Tax, October 22, 1962, Box 132, Folder 1, stp. 72. Lurie to Tax, May 8, 1963, Folder 1, and Lurie to Menominee members et al., December 11, 1970, Folder 3, both in Box 132, stp. 73. [Colleague], interview with the author, January 25, 2003, Chicago; Schensul interview with the author; author’s notes from conference, March 9, 2002, Atlanta ga. 74. Tax to Marti Sladek, January 16, 1975, and Tax to Richard Kennedy, July 23, 1974, both in Box 123, Folder, 9, stp; Vine Deloria Jr., Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties; James W. Clarke to Tax, April 10, 1978, Box 123, Folder 9, stp. The file does not have a copy of any reference letter Tax might have written in response to Clarke’s letter. Deloria’s father, Vine Deloria Sr., apparently respected Tax, although they do not appear to have known each other well. The elder Deloria wrote Tax that “certain persons, places, and things become engraved upon my mind for all time. You are one of those persons. For the past 21 years.” See Deloria Sr. to Tax, December 8, 1982, Box 123, Folder 9, stp.

notes to pages 305–308

381

75. Vine Deloria Jr., Custer Died for Your Sins, 99. 76. Grobsmith, “Growing Up on Deloria,” chapter 2. 77. Fluehr-Lobban, “Informed Consent in Anthropological Research”; Glenn, “Report Criticizes Yanomami Researchers and Accuser.” Fluehr-Lobban listed a number of objections that anthropologists had raised to informed consent regulations and debunked them. She did not name individual anthropologists. 78. Glenn, “Report Criticizes Yanomami Researchers and Accuser.” 79. Author’s notes from “The Uses of History,” in the series “Science, Ethics, Power: Controversy over the Production of Knowledge and Indigenous Peoples,” April 6, 2001, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

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Index

Aberle, David, 11, 374–75n26 Aberle, Kathleen, 374–75n26 Ablon, Joan, 295, 297, 304 action anthropology: cannibal analogy and, 4, 212, 357n48; creation of, 114–27; defining, 4; ethical challenges of, 27, 138–43, 190, 212–16, 225; evolution of, 127–38, 341–42n42; funding of, 175–77; ideals of, 4; impact on discipline of anthropology, xi, 283–87; implementation and outcomes of, 227–74; multilevel endeavors of, 166; national attention of, 191, 194–207, 226, 239; origins of, 4; politics of helping and, 143–51, 153; twin goals of, 26, 294 “An Action Program for the Fox Indians” (Diesing), 290 African Americans, 107, 132, 133 Ahmed, Abdel Ghaffar M., 12 Alcatraz, Indians of All Tribes occupation of, 266, 267, 299 alcohol, 50, 51, 62, 133, 150, 151, 214, 253 Allen, Paula Gunn, 15 “America” (Tax), 66 American Anthropological Association (aaa): alcohol and drug study group, 297–98, 378–79n57; censuring of Boas, 100, 337n82; endorsement of aicc, 242; Ethics Committee of, 14, 374–75n26; on informed consent procedures, 307–8; resolution on examining bia policy, 187; resolution on Vietnam War, 10–11 American Anthropologist, 194, 195 American Antiquarian Society, 8 American Ethnological Society, 7, 8–9

American Indian, 233 American Indian Center, 257 American Indian Chicago Conference (aicc): as forum for Indian voices, 239–44, 253; Tax’s role in, 17, 27, 260–61, 266, 269, 302 American Indian Development (aid), 253, 258 American Indian Studies Program, 300 American Indigena, 97, 98 Americanist anthropology, xi American Legion Post, 150, 202, 217, 231 American Missionary Association, 219 American Philosophical Society, 8 American Psychological Association, 100 American School of Prehistoric Research, 66 And Keep Your Powder Dry (Mead), 86 Anthropologist, 298 “Anthropologists and Indians: A New Look at the Fox Project” (Stucki), 249 Anthropologists and Indians in the New South (Bonney and Paredes), 15 anthropology: as bourgeois discipline, 12; colonial and imperialist roots of, 4–5, 6–7, 10, 12, 14; definitional issues of, 9–10, 26; ethical goals of, xi, xii; failure to include Indian voices, 14; government services of, 88–95; influences on policies, 12–13; as “problem-oriented” discipline, 11; scientific aims of, xi; social usefulness of research, 2; as value-free, 11, 284; value of, 22; work with American military, 10, 11 Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (Asad), 12

406 Antioch College, 256 applied anthropology: appearance of, xiii; emergence of, 10 Applied Anthropology, 87 Arawaks, 7 Arrow, Cathy, 122, 272, 273, 282, 341n29 Arrow, Fred, 117, 122, 126, 156, 157, 179 Asad, Talal, 11–12 atomic bomb, 98–100, 243 Bahamas, 7 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 148 Bateson, Gregory, 86, 89, 102 Beardsley, William, 193 Becker, Herbert, 310, 361–62n12 Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties (Deloria), 305 Benedict, Ruth, 18, 66–67, 68, 69, 332n8 Bennett, John, 4, 66, 101, 177, 284–85 Berreman, Gerald D., 11 Biolsi, Thomas, 15 birth control, 181, 186, 297 Black Hawk, 32 boarding schools, 35 Boas, Franz, 68, 80, 100, 102, 337n82 Boke, R. L., 92 Bonney, Rachel A., 15 Borman, Leonard, 286, 295, 296, 304, 377–78nn52–55 Bosone, Reva Beck, 158 Brown, Gordon, 90 Brunel, Ariane, 310 Buchanan, James, 9 Buffalo, Johnathan, 23, 24, 278, 282, 317–18n1 Buffalo Dance, 134 Bureau of American Ethnology, 9, 242 Bureau of Indian Affairs (bia): Applied Anthropology Unit in, 43, 76, 79; cultural information collected by, 9, 14; education goals and policies of, 35; funding for, 61, 63; health care programs of, 179–80, 182, 183; as imperial power, 114; Meskwaki tribal council appointed by, 38–39; postwar and long-range plans of, 57–63, 77, 172–73; relocation programs of, 239, 295; schools and education programs

index of, 78–79, 158, 161–66, 224, 231, 239, 279 Bureau of Sociological Research, 89 Business and Professional Women’s Club, Tama chapter of, 236 Califano, Joseph, Jr., 259 Callender, Charles, 201, 214, 215, 289, 310 Camfield, Thomas M., 100 cannibal analogy, 225 Capshew, James H., 100 Caribs, 7 Carlisle Indian School, 40, 41 Carnegie Corporation, 243 Carnegie Foundation, 300 Carnegie Institution, 87, 90, 94, 95 Carrera, A. Goubaud, 84 Carter, Alice: children of, 170, 224, 271; elected to tribal council, 273; as head of women’s club, 148; on Meskwaki scholarship program, 220; opinion on Meskwaki deserter, 210; as settlement resident, 138, 146, 207, 214, 215, 216 Carter, Henry: children of, 138, 170, 224, 271; coy behavior with students, 129; Old Bear views of, 169, 200; opinion on Meskwaki deserter, 210; as settlement resident, 125, 132, 133, 146, 159, 213, 234, 341n37 Carter, Sean, 170, 224, 252, 282, 349n37 Cedar Rapids Gazette, 197, 264 Central States Anthropological Society, 194, 233 Ceremony (Silko), 15 Chagnon, Napoleon, 307, 308 Chapple, Eric, 87 Chautauqua, 280 Cherokee, 15, 266 Cheyenne River Reservation, 176 Chiapas, Mexico, xii, 290, 291 Chicago Project: beginnings of, 26, 105–8; critique and evaluations of, 244–52; expectations of students and Meskwaki, 112–13, 219; as Fox Project, 317–18n1; funding of, 177; goals and commitment of, 155; housing for students, 24, 116; later years of, 233, 239,

index 361–62n12; 1954 nadir and rebound of, 189–226; participants of, 106, 109–53, 309–11; role of values in research of, 154–55, 157; ten year period of, 151–52, 228; trust fund proposal for Meskwaki, 191. See also action anthropology; Meskwaki settlement; Tax, Sol Chiloco Trade School, 41 Chiricahua Apache, 66 Christianity, 31, 141 Churchill, Ward, 299 Cimarron (Ferber), 71 Civilian Conservation Corps (ccc), 30 Claus, Robert, 310 Clifford, James, 111–12, 130, 338–39n5 Clinton, Bill, 303 Cloud, Bill, 136–37, 138, 186, 344n68 Clyde Warrior Institute in American Indian Studies, 254 Cohen, Felix S., 49 cold war, 62, 262 Cole, Fay-Cooper, 68, 79 Collier, David, 79–80 Collier, John: as bia commissioner, 9, 30, 39, 42, 43, 44, 49, 76; changes in Japanese American internment camps, 89–90; grazing limits imposed, 78; on Meskwaki land holdings, 34; on preservation of Indian cultures, 59, 79, 263; Tax’s correspondence with, 36; views on Indian justice, 52 colonialism, 4–5, 6–7 “Colonialism: Classic and Internal” (Thomas), 298 colonialist anthropology, 8 colonial other, 16 Colorado College, 253 Columbus, Christopher, 7 Committee on Food Habits, 89 Committee on National Morale, 86 Committee on Science, Philosophy, and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, 103 Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, 86 Conference on the Scientific Spirit and Democratic Faith, 103

407 Congressional Record, 195 Coon, Carleton, 102 Cornell, Stephen, 242 Coronil, Fernando, 308 Costo, Jeannette Henry, 14 Couch, Carl, 310 Council of Anthropology in Education, 297, 298 Cowles Foundation, 218, 219, 220 cross-cultural communications, 2 cultural crossings, 25, 26 cultural relativism, 134 cultural self-determination, 262–65, 274 Current Anthropology, 11, 246, 260, 284 Cushing, Frank, 111 Custer Died for Your Sins (Deloria), 2–3, 253 Customs of the American Indian Compared with the Customs of Primitive Times (Lafitau), 7 Daiker, F. H., 46 Dale, Allen, 264–65 Daniels, Joseph, 219, 220 Darkness in El Dorado (Tierney), 307, 308 Darnell, Regna, 8 Daubenmier, Judith, xi, xii Daughters of the American Revolution (dar), 53 Davenport, Charles, 39, 41 Davenport, Edward: asking favors of project students, 146, 147, 149–50; on bia management of Meskwaki school, 163, 164, 165, 167, 169, 170, 172, 174; childhood and education of, 39–40; Meskwaki tribal leadership by, 1, 2, 22, 45, 46, 47, 50, 55, 58, 148, 149, 155, 192, 201, 202–3, 204, 206, 207, 218, 232, 249, 273, 305; signifying of, 120; support for state jurisdiction over settlement, 63; on tribal constitution, 41; on value of anthropology, 64; work in Washington dc, 121 Davis, Herb, 57 Dawes Act, 33–34 Debs, Eugene V., 64, 65 Declaration of Indian Purpose, 242, 258 Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (Smith), 6

408 Deer, Ada, 303 Deer, Sally, 121, 133, 138 Deloria, Vine, Jr.: critique of anthropologists, 2, 13, 15, 16, 27, 28, 111, 187, 284, 287, 304–5, 306; on impact of Indian student workshops, 253–54 Deloria, Vine, Sr., 305, 380n74 Des Moines Register, 109, 192 de Vitriaco, Jacobus, 7 DeVore, Irven, 233 D’Ewart, Wesley A., 55 Diesing, Paul, 290 Documentary History of the Fox project (Gearing, Netting, and Peattie, Eds.), 288 Dogon, 111, 112 Douglas, Paul, 244 drums (Determination of Rights and Unity for Menominee Shareholders), 303 Drum Society, 110, 139–40, 142 Dutch West Indies, 9

index

Eastman, Charles, 280 economic anthropology, 75 educational anthropology, 297–98 Eggan, Fred, 70, 74, 295, 302 Embree, John, 90 Evans, Ron, 13 evolution, deterministic theory of, 9

of, 115, 126; participant observer method, 115; reading others’ fieldnotes, 18 Five Civilized Tribes, 70 Fixico, Donald L., 15 Flathead tribe, 43 Fogelson, Raymond, 8 Foley, Douglas, evaluation of Fox Project, 5, 221, 250–51, 269, 287, 288, 318n10 folk-urban model of social change, 74 Forbes, Jack, 267, 299 Ford Foundation, 167, 239 Forrestal, James, 91 Fort Berthold nd, 17, 175, 176, 230 Fortes, Meyer, 295 Fort Peck Reservation, 256 Foster, Don, 161, 162, 163 Fox: kinship system of, 233; as Sac relatives, 71, 317–18n1 Fox Professional Education Scholarship Program, 218, 220 “Fox Project,” 288, 317–18n1, 318n10 “The Fox Project: A Reappraisal” (Foley), 5, 221, 250–51 Fredericks, Lisa, 271 Fugle, Eugene, Meskwaki fieldwork by, 20, 213, 214, 215, 233, 289, 310, 320n41 Full Moon, Rebecca, 222 Furey, Marie, 210, 215, 310

Face of the Fox (Gearing), 6, 288 Fallers, Lloyd: friendships with Meskwaki residents, 140, 141; Meskwaki fieldwork by, 20, 106, 117–18, 119, 123, 124, 126, 140, 142, 155, 179, 195, 309 Farver, Peru, 58 Federated Women’s Clubs of Iowa, 184, 200, 207, 223, 229, 356n37 Ferber, Edna, 71 Fermi, Enrico, 98, 337n79 fieldnotes: head notes, 19; interpretation/reinterpretation of, 20; reading others’, 18; scratch notes, 19; selectivity in, 112; showing cultural growth, 18 fieldwork: avoidance techniques in, 144; etiquette of, 24; immersion technique of, 111; “interferer observer” method

Gallatin, Albert, 7, 318–19n15 Gardner Cowles Foundation, 218, 219 Garrison Dam, 175 Gearing, Fred: as assistant director of Chicago Project, 230, 232; on bia management of Meskwaki school, 165, 166, 169–70, 172, 176, 177, 186, 203; in Council of Anthropology in Education, 297, 298; involvement in action anthropology projects, 296; Meskwaki fieldwork by, 6, 20, 121, 139, 145–46, 149, 165, 195, 217, 288, 289–90, 309, 310; on Meskwaki health care issues, 180, 183, 184–85; newspaper articles on Meskwaki, 196–99, 200, 205; on philosophy of Chicago anthropologists, 161; summer workshops

index for Indian students, 252–57; on trust fund proposal for Meskwaki, 191, 192; view of bia management of Meskwaki school, 163, 166 Gearing, Marjorie, 216, 217, 309, 310 Gerick, Irving, 120, 309 Germany, Nazi control of, 91 Ghost Dance religion, 9 gi Bill, 62, 101 Gilbert, W. M., 94 Gjessing, Gutorm, 11 Gordon, David, 66 Gorer, Geoffrey, 87 Gough, Kathleen, 11 Great Britain, colonial use of ethnological information, 8 Great Depression, 30, 64, 75, 85, 86, 88 Great Manitou, 124–25 Great Society, 259 Gredys, Grace: Meskwaki fieldwork by, 106, 107, 139, 141, 142, 263, 294–95, 309; pretending as married in the field, 130 Griaule, Marcel, 111 Grimes, James W., 33 Gross, H. R., 132, 133, 168, 174, 175, 232, 348n32 Gros Ventre, 136 Gwynne, John, 55 Hakluyt, Richard, 7 Handbook of North American Indians (Sturtevant, Ed.), 289 Hansen, Asael T., 90 Harper, William Rainey, 68 Harrison, William Henry, 173 Harvard: Chiapas Project, 290, 293; Study of Values, 104, 290 Haskell Institute, 42 Haskell Junior College, 222 Head Start, 256 “Health and Human Behaviour: Areas of Interest Common to the Social and Medical Sciences” (Polgar), 297 health care, on Meskwaki settlement, 23, 29, 177–85, 186, 279, 352n61 Henderson, Wayne, as settlement resident, 150, 171, 179, 192–93, 198, 199, 200, 204, 236

409 Herman, Ellen, 102 Herskovits, Melville, 18 heteroglossia, 148, 346n90 Hickenlooper, Bourke B., 55, 56, 167–68, 232, 328n54 Hilgard, Ernest R., 101 Hillel Foundation, 66 Hiroshima, 98 Hispanic populations, studies of, 104 Holocaust, 99 Holst, John, 47 Hopi, 79, 288 Hopkins, Harry, 91 horses, 71 House Concurrent Resolution 108 (H.C.R. 108), 172, 174, 175, 193, 194, 350n4 House Resolution 4725 (H.R. 4725), 55 Hoyt, Elizabeth, 5, 221, 244–48 Human Organization, 87, 247, 285 Hymes, Dell, 12–13 Ickes, Harold L., 42, 46 Illinois Self-Help Coalition, 296, 378n55 Indian New Deal, 30, 31, 36, 88 Indian Reorganization Act (ira): Indian self-government and, 54; Indian suspicions of, 37, 42–43, 44, 324–25n27; opposition to, 42, 43; plan of, 30; role of anthropologists in, 76; as Wheeler Howard Act, 46, 325–26n35 Indians and Anthropologists: Vine Deloria, Jr. and the Critique of Anthropology (Biolsi and Zimmerman), 15 Indians of All Tribes, 266 Indian Voices, 243 informed consent, 307 “interferer observers,” 115, 126 intermarriage, 31 internment camps, of Japanese Americans, 89, 90, 100 “Interventionism and Applied Science in Anthropology” (Peattie), 289 Iowa: Department of Public Instruction, 163; Meskwaki settlement in, 32, 33; Native American Graves Protection Act, 224; Supreme Court of, 278 Iowa Indians, 263

410 Iowa River, 33, 34 Iowa State College, 219 Iowa State Conservation Commission, 50 Iowa State Teacher’s College, 219 Iowa State University, 221 Iroquois, 32 Jackson, Jean E., 18 Japanese American internment camps, 89, 90, 100 Jefferson, Thomas, 8 Jesuit Relations, 7 Jesuits, 7 Joffee, Natalie, 84, 118 John Hay Whitney Foundation, 219 Johnson, Lyndon B., 258, 259, 300, 368n73 Johnson, Troy R., 242 Joint Morale Survey, 89 Jones, Ben, 60 Jones, Jeremy, 71, 72, 83 Jones, Jessica: friendships with Tax and students, 83, 143; on Meskwaki kinship, 70; as settlement resident, 71, 72, 145, 213, 216, 226, 263 Jones, William, 73, 118 Kalmuks, 295 Kame’eleihiwa, Lilikala, 308 Kames, Lord, 7 Kansas, Meskwaki settlements in, 32–33, 38 Kelley, Russell, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 172 Kelly, Lawrence, 76, 78 Kennedy, John F., 241, 243–44, 269 Kidder, Alfred V., 87, 94 Kimball, Solon, 78, 90 King, C. W., 59, 60 Kinsey, Alfred, 214 kinship systems, 9, 69, 73–74, 81, 233, 333n22 Kiwanis, 223 Klamaths, 59, 173 Kluckhohn, Clyde, 89, 101, 103, 104, 290–91 Kluckhohn, Richard, 20, 310, 361–62n12 Knowledge for What? (Lynd), 2, 10, 85

index Kraschel, Nelson G., 49 La Barre, Weston, 264 Laboratory of Anthropology, 66, 290 Lafitau, Joseph, 7 LaGrand, James B., 242 Lasley, Larry, 24, 25 Lasswell, Harold, 89 Latin America, U.S. interests in, 90–91, 284, 336n65 Lawson, Robert, 57 Learning to Be an Anthropologist and Remaining Native (Medicine), 14 Lederman, Rena, 20 Lee, Rex, 168 Leighton, Alexander, 90 Leslie, Charles, 131, 142, 156, 309 Lewin, Kurt, 153 Lieberman, Morton, 296 Life, 265 Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee (Smith and Warrior), 255 Lincoln, Harry: on project paying for information, 119, 198–99; as settlement resident, 53; as settlement resident informant, 118, 132, 138, 148, 165 Lincoln, Oliver, 119 Linton, Ralph, 66, 69, 103 Luomala, Katherine, 90 Lurie, Nancy Ostreich: aicc planning with Tax, 239–40, 241, 242, 243; views on action anthropology, 287, 302–3, 304, 307 Lynd, Helen Merrell, 85–86 Lynd, Robert, 2, 10, 85, 305 MacMartin, Mrs. W. G., 53, 55 Maggart, Paschal N., 169 Malinowski, Bronislaw, 9, 80, 111, 140 Mandelbaum, David G., 261 Mandelbaum Project, 261, 368n78 Manell, A. E., 260 Manhattan Project, 98 Manzanar ca internment camp, 90 Margold, Nathan R., 48–49 Marlin, Joseph, 208, 213, 310 marriage, 130, 342n50

index Marrouchi, Mustapha, 120 Mays, Edward, 60, 126, 127, 160, 180, 183 McAllester, David P., 264 McCarthy era, 102 McCormack, Bill, 159, 310 McMillan, Robert, 69 McNickle, D’Arcy: as aid director, 253, 258, 259; in bia Applied Anthropology Unit, 43–45, 49, 76–77, 79; planning aicc with Tax, 240, 266; summer workshops for Indian students, 253 Mead, Margaret, 3, 86–87, 89, 96, 103 Medicine, Beatrice, 13, 14 Menominee, 81, 173, 303, 304 menstrual beliefs, 184 Mescalero Apache, 66, 67 Meskwaki: as Algonquin woodlands tribe, 32; Bear Clan in, 37–38; clan events of, 31, 342n44; critique of anthropology, 15–16; federal annuities to, 33, 322n9; hereditary chief of, 37, 38, 39, 149, 155, 171, 202, 275; historic battle of, 171; intellectual property of, 25; kinship system of, 70, 73–74, 118, 333n22; language of, 281–82; migration of, 32, 322n7; modern nation of, 29–63; oral history of, 22, 32; as People of the Red Earth, 317–18n1; peyote use of, 263; reciprocity expectations of, 25, 112, 125, 151–52, 153; traditional religious practices of, 31, 124–25; tribal membership in, 45, 48, 201, 278–79, 282–83; village chief of, 37–38; war chief of, 37 Meskwaki Senior Center, 24 Meskwaki settlement: access to electricity and running water, 62, 145; annual powwow of, 20, 34, 71, 167, 189–90, 207, 210, 236, 279–80, 283, 323n13; behaviors with students, 128–29, 144; bia school on, 29, 36, 58, 59, 116, 126, 158, 161–66, 224, 231, 239, 279; casino gambling on, 220, 223, 275–80, 278; college scholarship program for, 5, 27, 200, 218, 220, 269, 273; consensusstyle governing of, 38; constitution of, 40–41, 275, 324n24; contemporary survivors of, xi; distrust of whites,

411 156; farming of lands, 30, 34; gender norms of, 142, 183, 207–8; health care of, 177–85, 186, 230, 279, 352n61; Indian New Deal government and, 36, 37–48; jobs in nearby towns, 30, 34; land ownership of, 30, 31–32, 33, 77, 334n32; law and order on, 48–57, 157, 173, 277–78, 281, 327–28n53; political fragmentation on, 155; population trends of, 30; Proclamation Day ceremony of, 33, 323n10; Tamacraft, arts and crafts company of, 5, 27, 156, 227, 234–39, 244–47, 250, 251, 269, 273, 274, 280, 283, 298–99, 301, 306; timber sales of, 47–48, 58; tribal council of, 202, 276, 355n28; welfare services of, 60–61, 279; Wolf clan, 131; World War II veterans return to, 62, 113, 132, 133, 150–51, 152, 209, 330–31n67. See also Chicago Project; Old Bear political group; Young Bear political group Meskwaki Tribal Council, 58 Meskwaki Tribal Court, 277–78 Messersmith, George, 93 Michelson, Truman, 1, 40, 105, 118, 121, 197, 206 Mihesuah, Devon A., 14 Miller, Helen Miner, 302 Miller, Walter B.: dissertation of, 289, 309; Meskwaki fieldwork by, 106, 119, 120, 123–24, 126, 130, 132, 133, 179, 181, 195; on social usefulness of anthropology, 1–2 moccasin game, 123, 156 Mooney, James, 9 Morgan, Lewis Henry, 9, 73 Mormons, 104 Morris, Ruth, 222, 223, 255 Myer, Dillon S., as commissioner of Indian Affairs, 158, 159, 163, 164, 165, 168, 173, 174, 177, 194 Nagasaki, 98 Nash, Philleo, 89, 101, 244 National Anthropological Archives (naa), 17 National Coalition of Indian-Controlled School Boards, 224

412 National Congress of American Indians (ncai), 55, 158, 195, 240, 241, 258, 265, 266 National Indian Education Association, 256 National Indian Gaming Regulatory Commission, 276, 277 National Indian Youth Council, 242, 243, 253, 254 National Institutes of Mental Health, 293 National Park Service, 235 National Research Council, 89 National Study of American Indian Education, 255 Native American Church, 263, 264 Native American Committee, 269 Native American Educational Services Inc. (naes), 256, 257, 267, 367n69 Native American Graves Protection Act, 224 Native Americans: anthropological studies of, 2–3, 13–14; as colonized subjects, 6, 16; national policies toward, xii; peyote use, 262–65, 369n81; political activism of, xi, xii, 242, 274; postwar federal policy toward, 157–64; repatriation of remains and artifacts, 224, 307; utilizing anthropological studies, xi Natives and Academia: Researching and Writing about American Indians (Mihesuah, Ed.), 14 Navajo: range lands of, 78; studies of, 79, 104, 258, 264, 288 Navajo Community College, 256, 366–67n65 Neel, James V., 307, 308 Nelson, Ira D., 43 Netting, Robert, 288 New Deal, 29, 80, 158 New France, 7 “Newsboys’ Republic,” 65 New York Daily Worker, 66 “The North American Berdache” (Callender), 289 Northern Cheyenne Reservation, 256 Nye, Frank, 264, 265

index Office of Strategic Services (oss), 102 Ogalala Sioux, 298 O’Hara, Barratt, 195 Ojibwa, 231 Old Bear, Charlie, 275, 277 Old Bear, Jack, 42, 160, 171, 275 Old Bear political group: as conservative, 149, 155, 198, 204, 225, 346n3; opposition to ira constitution, 56, 200, 277; on relationships with federal government, 160, 169, 175, 202; women members of, 143, 148 Opler, Marvin K., 90 Opler, Morris, 67, 80 oral history, 14 Ortiz, Alfonso, 14 “other,” colonial, 16 Oto, 263 Ottenberg, Simon, 18, 19 Pan, Ramon, 7 Papago Indians, 79 Paredes, J. Anthony, 15 Park, Robert E., 68 Parker, Dorothy, 76, 77, 78, 242 Parker, Jesse, 163, 164, 166, 171 Parsons, Talcott, 104, 290–91 Pavlik, Steve, 300 Pearl Harbor, 88 Peattie, Lisa Redfield: on action research, 153; anthropological experience of, 106–7, 153; on becoming “interferer observers,” 115, 126, 151, 153; on challenges of fieldwork, 122, 341n31; dancing at Meskwaki powwow, 130, 142; on defining goals of action programs, 232; friendships/ relationships with Meskwaki, 140; on jurisdiction of Meskwaki settlement, 116, 339n11; as member of Urban Planning Aid, 286; Meskwaki fieldwork by, 20, 117, 119, 131, 155, 229, 263, 288, 304, 309; on Meskwaki health care issues, 181; Venezuela planning studies by, 289 Penny Capitalism (Tax), 75, 83, 195, 248, 288 Peterson, Helen, 240, 265–66

index peyote/peyotism, 205, 262–65, 297, 369n81 Phillips, Lawrence: as awol marine, 209–13, 225, 226, 305, 356–57nn45–46, 357n49; interactions with project students, 119, 120, 135, 136, 145, 155 Philp, Kenneth R., 48, 54, 55 Pierce, Earl Boyd, 241, 266 Pine Ridge Reservation, 298 Pioneer Seed Corn Company, 236 Pipestone mn, 60 Planned Parenthood, 181 “playing Indian,” 128, 130–31, 343n53 Polgar, Steve: on “committed” anthropology, 285–86; on critique of Chicago Project, 249; dancing at Meskwaki powwow, 130, 148, 190; death of, 297; on final years of Chicago Project, 233; on limits of Chicago Project, 217–18; on Meskwaki behaviors with students, 129–30, 144, 147, 148, 345n89; Meskwaki fieldwork by, 136, 139, 142, 184, 216, 272, 304, 310; on Meskwaki health care issues, 179–80, 182, 352n61; organizing Meskwaki recreation center, 146–47, 231, 270–71; study of teenage Meskwaki boys, 142, 289; on trust fund proposal for Meskwaki, 193 polio, 179 Polo, Marco, 6–7 polygenesis, 7 Poston az internment camp, 90 Potawatomi, 303 Powell, John W., 9 Powers, Willow Roberts, 103, 291 Poweshiek, Chief, 41 Poweshiek, Horace, 41, 46, 49, 198 Poweshiek, Jonas, 168 Poweshiek, Willie, 41 Price, David H., 102 Project Agile, 10, 374–75n26 Project Camelot, 10, 284 Provinse, John, 78, 80, 87, 116, 176, 183, 194 psychology, military and wartime works of, 100

413 public anthropology, xiii “purposivists,” 76 Pushetonequa, Charles, 234, 249, 250, 251 Pushetonequa, Chief, 35, 38, 39, 42, 149 Radcliffe-Brown, A. R., 9, 68, 70, 73–74 A Reader in Action Anthropology, 233 Redfield, Lisa, 99. See also Peattie, Lisa Redfield Redfield, Robert: correspondence with Tax, 80, 81, 87–88, 89, 90, 93, 166; Guatemala fieldwork by, 81, 82, 83, 85, 153; impact of atomic bomb, 99; as research associate with Carnegie Institution, 75; sociology influences of, 68; as Tax’s mentor, 17, 18, 69, 74, 228–29; trips to Meskwaki field, 108; work with War Relocation Authority, 89, 90 “Reflections on Advocacy Planning” (Peattie), 289 Reifel, Benjamin, 40–41, 50 Richards, Audrey, 108 Rietz, Robert: as anthropologist with bia, 175–76, 230; as Chicago Project director, 230–33; death of, 301; as director of American Indian Center, 239, 245, 301; lobbying Iowa liquor prohibition, 151; Meskwaki fieldwork by, 19–20, 106, 135–39, 155, 176, 178, 179, 183, 186, 219–20, 294, 309, 310, 311; oversight of Tamacraft, 234–35, 237–39, 244, 250, 251, 258, 269, 274, 301; role in Meskwaki scholarship program, 220, 222–23, 224, 231, 301; work at Fort Berthold nd, 301 Rimrock nm, Harvard project, xii Robinson, Sarah, Meskwaki fieldwork by, 207–8, 215, 310 Rockefeller, John D., 91 Rockefeller, Nelson, 91, 92 Rockefeller Foundation, 93, 103, 104, 290 Roessel, Robert, 258–59 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 29, 30, 91 Rotary Club, 229 Ruppe, Carol, 310

414 Ruppe, Reynold, 184, 197, 310 Ryan, W. Carson, Jr., 36 Sac: federal annuities to, 33, 322n9; as Meskwaki relatives, 32, 71, 317–18n1 Sac and Fox Day School, 31, 59 Sac and Fox Sanatorium, 43, 59, 180, 263 Sady, Emil, 97 Salisbury, Clarence, 263 Sande, O. R., 59, 60 Sangree, Lucinda, 25, 136, 310, 354n21 Sangree, Walter, 136, 182, 209, 310 Santo Domingo Pueblo, 256 Sapir, Edward, 68 Saskatchewan Society of Métis of Canada, 13 Savilla, Agnes, 13 Schensul, Jean, 301 Schensul, Stephen, 301, 303 Schmitz, Wendy, 251 Schoolcraft, Henry R., 9 Schwartzhaupt, Emil, 228 Schwartzhaupt Foundation, Tamacraft funding by, 227, 228, 230, 234, 238, 239, 240, 251, 258, 301 Science, 264 “Science, Ethics, Power: Controversy over the Production of Knowledge and Indigenous Peoples,” 308 The Science of Man in the World Crisis (Linton), 103 Seidel, Emil, 64 Senecas, 9 signifying, 120 Silko, Leslie Marmon, 15 Silk Road, 7 Simon, Florence, 309 Sioux, 79, 288 Slotkin, James Sidney, 263, 264, 265 Smith, Faith, 256–57, 267 Smith, Julie, 140, 155, 181 Smith, Linda Tuhiwai, 6 Smith, Mark, 75 Smith, Paul Chaat, 255 Smith, Phil, 139–42, 155, 171 Smithsonian Institution, 17, 40, 268, 370n97 Social Anthropology of North American Indian Tribes (Tax), 288

index Social Democratic Party, 65 social evolution, 7 Socialism, 64, 65 “Social Organization of the Fox Indians” (Tax), 70, 74 Social Science Citation Index, 288 Social Science Research Council, 103 social sciences: role of profession in modern world, 75–80. See also action anthropology; anthropology Society for Applied Anthropology, 10, 87, 233, 285, 303 “Some Problems in Social Organization” (Tax), 74 Southwest Anthropological Association, 266 Spaulding, G. Warren, 193 Spicer, Edward, 298, 379n59 Standard Oil Company, 91 Standing Rock Sioux, 13 State Historical Society of Iowa, 168 St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, 61 Stern, Theodore, 242 Stewart, Omer, 264, 297 Stocking, George, Jr., 5, 95–96, 97, 283–84, 318–19n7 Stolpe, Bert, 192, 193 Stucki, Larry R., 5, 221, 248–50 Sullivan, 238, 363n24 summer houses, 29 Talbot, Steve, 266, 267, 370n89 Tama: An American Conflict (Hoyt), 245 Tama Chronicle, 42 Tamacraft, Meskwaki arts and crafts company of, 227, 234–39, 244–47, 251, 269, 273, 274, 280, 283, 298–99, 301, 306 Tama News-Herald, 198 Tataposh, John, 42, 46, 47, 326n36 Taussig, Michael, 137, 344n68 Tax, Gertrude, 70, 71, 82, 83, 84 Tax, Sol: on aicc for Indian advocacy, 239–44; atomic bomb and influences, 98–99; birth and childhood of, 64; correspondence with Redfield, 80, 81, 87–88, 105, 166; on cultural selfdetermination, 262–65, 274; death

index of, 17; defending Chicago Project, 244–48; education of, 65–66; on ethnography as intersubjective experience, xii; Fort Berthold project, 175; “getting rich” from fieldwork, 121–22; graduate studies of, 67–70; Guatemala fieldwork by, 75, 80–83, 195, 248, 260, 261; influences on naes, 256, 257; at Instituto Nacional de Anthropologia e Historia, 75, 88, 90; kinship studies by, 73–74, 333n22; legacy of action anthropology, xi, 4, 64, 114, 127, 283–87, 341–42n42, 374–75n26; on Meskwaki school issue, 165, 166, 169–70, 172, 186; Meskwaki studies by, 1, 36, 66, 67, 70–75, 125, 263, 317–18n1; national attention to action anthropology, 194, 226, 239, 353n10; openness with fieldnotes, 18–19; on peyotism, 263–65; political views of, 64; reputation among Native Americans, 265–69; on scholarship program for Meskwaki youth, 200, 218, 221; staying connected with Chicago Project, 203–4; as “Sultax,” 71; on value of anthropology, 95–98; views of federal Indian policies, 191, 193, 226, 267–68, 370nn96–97; wartime work and studies, 94; White House Task Force on Indian Affairs, 258; work with unesco, 260–61 Tax, Susan, 291–92 Thailand, 10, 284, 374–75n26 Thom, Mel, 255 Thomas, David Hurst, 317–18n1 Thomas, Robert: as director of American Indian Studies Program, 300, 379n59; Meskwaki fieldwork by, 232, 294; on naes board, 257, 267; scholarship of, 16, 248, 298, 299–300; work with National Indian Youth Council, 243 Thompson, Laura, 79 Thorpe, Jim, 40 Three Affiliated Tribes, 175, 230 Tierney, Patrick, 307 Time, 263, 264 Tjerandsen, Carl, 239 Tomah Agency, 60

415 tribal fishing rights, 255 Trinity Project, 98 Trobriand Islanders, 80, 111 Truman, Harry S., 132, 158 tuberculosis, 146 Tule Lake or internment camp, 90 Turtle Mountain Reservation, 231 Tzotzil, 292 Udall, Stewart, 244 United Nations, 260 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (unesco), 260, 261, 262, 368n75 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), 102 United Presbyterian Church, 40, 41 United States: Department of Agriculture, 78; Department of Commerce, 91; Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 259, 302; Department of Interior, 40; Office of Economic Opportunity, 256; Office of Education, 255, 298; Office of Facts and Figures, 89; Office of Strategic Services (oss), 102; Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, 91; Office of War Information, 89; Senate Subcommittee on Indian Affairs, 56; Soil Conservation Service, 78; treaties with Native Americans, 32, 54, 159; Veteran’s Administration Hospital, 296. See also Bureau of Indian Affairs (bia) University of Chicago: anthropology department of, 68–70; Committee on Human Development, 79; farmhouse purchased near Meskwaki settlement, 24, 116, 144; Regenstein Library, 17; Sociology Department, 228. See also Chicago Project; Meskwaki settlement University of Chicago Magazine, 233 University of Colorado, 253 University of Iowa, 218–19 University of Iowa College of Medicine, 231 value-free social sciences, 10, 11 “Values in Action,” 225

416 Vietnam War, 10, 11, 249, 284 View from the Barrio (Peattie), 289 Villa Rojas, Alfonso, 84 Vogt, Evan, 291–93 Wahrhaftig, Albert, 233, 237, 300–301, 311 Wallace, Henry A., 30 Warner, W. Lloyd, 68–69 War on Poverty Program, 300 War Relocation Authority, 90 Warrior, Clyde, 253 Warrior, Robert Allen, 255 Waseskuk, Bertha: education of, 142–43; on federal management of Indian schools, 165, 169, 171, 306; interviews with fieldworkers, 118, 123, 124, 126, 217; on jurisdiction of Meskwaki settlement, 174, 175; on Meskwaki health care issues, 180; opposing tribal council, 56–57, 149, 202, 204, 277; on trust fund proposal for Meskwaki, 191, 198, 200 Waterloo Cattle Congress, 280 Watkins, Arthur, 56 Wax, Murray, 294, 297, 298 Wax, Rosalie, 252–53, 254–55, 294, 297, 298 Weaver, Galen R., 252 Welles, Sumner, 91–92 Wenner-Gren Foundation, 4, 194, 233, 246 Westwood, Charlotte, 45 Wheeler Howard Bill, 42, 46, 325–26n35 White, Richard, 78, 334n34 “White Buffalo,” 168

index The Whole Town Is Talking, 167, 192 “Why There Will Always Be a Mesquakie Community” (Gearing), 196 “Why We’d Just as Soon Not Farm Much” (Gearing), 196–97 wickiups, 109, 110, 118, 189 Wiesender, Carolyn, 130, 131, 142, 309 Wilkie, Bruce, 255 Wilkinson, Gerald, 242 Willett, Walter J., 52, 53, 54, 55, 57, 236 Wilson, George, 55 Winnebago, 263, 302, 369n81 Wisconsin Liberal Club, 66 WOI-TV, 167 Wolf, Eric, 374–75n26 Wolff, Kurt, 374–75n26 Wolffson, Davida: fieldnotes of, 110; on improving life on Meskwaki settlement, 115; Meskwaki fieldwork by, 106, 117, 178, 179, 222, 309, 339–40n15; pretending as married in the field, 130 Woolner, Sidney, 300 Works Progress Administration (wpa), 30 Yanomami, 307, 308 Young Bear, George: on bia school on settlement, 169; as chief of Meskwaki, 42, 45–46; on jurisdiction over Meskwaki settlement, 50, 51; working with Tax, 72, 84, 197, 198 Young Bear political group, 149, 155, 201 Zimmerman, Larry J., 15 Zimmerman, William, 45, 53, 54, 63 Zuni, 79, 104, 111

In the Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology series Invisible Genealogies: A History of Americanist Anthropology Regna Darnell The Shaping of American Ethnography: The Wilkes Exploring Expedition, 1838–1842 Barry Alan Joyce Ruth Landes: A Life in Anthropology Sally Cole Melville J. Herskovits and the Racial Politics of Knowledge Jerry Gershenhorn Leslie A. White: Evolution and Revolution in Anthropology William J. Peace Rolling in Ditches with Shamans: Jaime de Angulo and the Professionalization of American Anthropology Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz Irregular Connections: A History of Anthropology and Sexuality Andrew P. Lyons and Harriet D. Lyons Ephraim George Squier and the Development of American Anthropology Terry A. Barnhart Ruth Benedict: Beyond Relativity, Beyond Pattern Virginia Heyer Young Looking through Taiwan: American Anthropologists’ Collusion with Ethnic Domination Keelung Hong and Stephen O. Murray

Visionary Observers: Anthropological Inquiry and Education Jill B. R. Cherneff and Eve Hochwald Anthropology Goes to the Fair: The 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition Nancy J. Parezo and Don D. Fowler The Meskwaki and Anthropologists: Action Anthropology Reconsidered Judith M. Daubenmier The 1904 Anthropology Days and Olympic Games: Sport, Race, and American Imperialism Edited by Susan Brownell