Professional Documents
Culture Documents
FENTON, WILLIAM N. - Iroquois Journey, An Anthropologist Remembers. (2007)
FENTON, WILLIAM N. - Iroquois Journey, An Anthropologist Remembers. (2007)
FENTON, WILLIAM N. - Iroquois Journey, An Anthropologist Remembers. (2007)
editors
William N. Fenton
Notes 175
The Publications of William N. Fenton 179
Index 195
photos
x | introduction
completing his doctorate. After receiving his degree in 1937, Bill
introduced and taught anthropology for a year and a half at St.
Lawrence University in New York’s north country. In 1939 he
joined the Bureau of American Ethnology as ethnologist, serving
with distinction in that post until 1951. There he was welcomed
by the likes of anthropologists John R. Swanton, David I. Bushnell
Jr., Henry B. Collins, John P. Harrington, and to a lesser extent,
Aleš Hrdlička. From his office in the landmark “brownstone tower”
of the Smithsonian Institution, he played an active role at the
Smithsonian War Committee and the Ethnogeographic Board
among other projects. Then, from 1952 to 1954, while a member
of the National Research Council, he became the first to hold the
position of executive secretary of the Division of Anthropology and
Psychology. Beginning in 1954, and for the next thirteen years,
Bill was assistant commissioner of the New York State Museum
and Science Service, directing the state museum in Albany. There
he initiated several major programmatic changes in the Science
Service and oversaw the early planning for the new state museum
and library, part of the ambitious South Mall project launched
by Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, who had been a classmate of Bill’s
at Dartmouth. In 1968 Bill returned to university teaching as
a member of the faculty of the State University of New York at
Albany, retiring as Distinguished Professor of Anthropology in
June 1979. But things did not end there. Bill continued to write
and publish and to inspire others to do the same, now in the role
as “Dean of Iroquois Studies.”
Bill not only contemplated, undertook, and completed a rig-
orous and far-reaching program of research on the Iroquois but
actively engaged a host of students and colleagues to follow his
lead. Fred Voget, ethnologist and long time Fenton associate, has
written that Bill left his mark on the field in many ways.3 Early in
his career, he prepared a series of “position papers” intended to
keep scholars up-to-date on the state of Iroquois research and to
direct them to matters that required attention (“Problems Arising,”
1940; “Iroquois Studies,” 1951), a number of which still wait to
be addressed. Bill introduced the method of analysis referred to
as “historical upstreaming,” which he has described as “reading
history backwards.” This approach became an integral part of the
discipline and methodology of ethnohistory—the application of
the critical apparatus of ethnology to history—of which Bill is
introduction | xi
considered a founder.4 Anthropologist Thomas Abler properly
notes that:
As one of ethnohistory’s pioneers, Bill Fenton played a leading
role in its legitimation as a scholarly endeavor. The number of
scholars who identify themselves as ethnohistorians or as students
of Indian history, and the quantity of work they produce, has mul-
tiplied enormously since Fenton published his paper on Iroquois
suicide in 1941, since he addressed the American Anthropological
Association on the training of historical ethnologists in America in
1951, and since he stood before the American Indian Ethnohistoric
Conference (now the American Society for Ethnohistory) as the
organization’s incoming president in 1961.5
xii | introduction
history. His interests in these subfields of anthropology followed
from a seminar on phonetics he took with Sapir while at Yale,
his own fieldwork on the Seneca language, his long friendship
with Floyd Lounsbury, as well as an early if brief experience on a
dig along the Missouri. This abiding concern with interdisciplin-
ary approaches fit perfectly Bill’s Boasian world view, and it was
the cornerstone upon which he built his career and guided the
Conference on Iroquois Research.
Voget’s appraisal of thirty years ago, when Bill was well into mid-
stride, brings us to the question of the outcome of his research ini-
tiatives. It is one that is easily answered. There is not a single student
of the Iroquois, areas of interest and expertise aside, who does not
owe a considerable intellectual debt to Bill Fenton. Moreover, as
if to lead by example, Bill continued to produce standard-setting
works that reflected research goals he had identified early on.
The most notable of these include Father J. F. Lafitau’s Customs of
the American Indians begun with Elizabeth Moore in 1939 (1974,
1977); The False Faces of the Iroquois (1987); The Great Tree and the
Longhouse: A Political History of the Iroquois Confederacy (1998); and,
what will surely stand as a paragon of ethnography, The Little Water
Medicine Society of the Senecas (2002).
On a bright October day in 2003, colleagues, friends, and family
converged on Cooperstown, at the foot of picturesque Otsego Lake
in upstate New York, to celebrate the life and career of Bill Fenton.
He would soon turn ninety-five.6 This was not the first time that
such a gathering had taken place, and like the others, it brought
together many of the same people. We remember Bill’s investiture
as Distinguished Professor, University at Albany, in 1979, when
Anthony F. C. Wallace delivered the honorary lecture in a room
filled with familiar faces. Three years later, at the annual Conference
on Iroquois Research, Bill was unanimously proclaimed “Dean
of Iroquoian Studies.” A festschrift, Extending the Rafters, soon fol-
lowed. Bill was feted again by his fellows in 1995 on the fiftieth
anniversary of that same conference, when for good measure he
was presented with an award for perfect attendance. And then
there was his ninetieth birthday party at his home in Slingerlands,
New York, attended by folks from all over the map.
Bill was the recipient of numerous accolades over the course
of a distinguished and productive career. A selection includes the
Peter Doctor Award of the Seneca Nation (1958), the Cornplanter
introduction | xiii
Medal for Iroquois Research (1965), and the Distinguished Service
Award of the American Anthropological Association (1983). In
1978 Bill was made Citizen Laureate of the University of Albany
Foundation, and in 1999 he was awarded the prestigious Wilbur
Lucius Cross Medal for Distinguished Alumni of the Yale Graduate
School. But there is no similar instance we can think of that so well
captured the substance of Bill’s scholarly contributions and his
influence on the field of anthropology and not incidentally, the
substance of the man, as the occasion on that early fall day.
Central to the organizing principles of Iroquois communities is
the emphasis placed on the obligations that obtain between mem-
bers of the same generation and, equally important, between per-
sons who are a generation or more apart. Together with other motifs
and manifestations of reciprocity—the very essence of Iroquois
society—these obligations give form to the bonds of continuity
that, as Bill has written, “kept it in being.” So it was with the com-
munity that had joined to honor Bill in Cooperstown.
As he had done nearly a quarter of a century earlier, Tony Wallace,
half a generation younger than the man he referred to as mentor
and friend, opened the program. Returning once again to the
theme of “extending the rafters,” he reflected on how well this
metaphor for the acceptance of other native communities and
refugees into the shelter of the Longhouse defined Bill’s continued
program of research and publication, not to mention his “constant
recruitment and lifelong encouragement and inspiration of new
students of Iroquois history and culture.”
With Bill taking the lead, the “old people” were well represented.
(This referent, we hasten to add, applies not only to chronological
seniors, but more importantly, to intellectually valued statuses—in
Bill’s words, people “who know everything.”) There was Tony of
course and Harold Conklin, recently retired anthropologist, who
spoke warmly about his and Bill’s scholarly kinship and their com-
mon descent from Yale. As he finished his comments, Hal stepped
from the rostrum and delivered a perfect rendering of kanoieo:
wi:®, a song announcing the “Feast of Dreams” at Midwinter, one
that he had learned from listening to recordings Bill had made
of Seneca singers in the 1930s. “I closed my eyes for a moment as
if I were back in Coldspring,” Bill told us.
Also stepping forward as a member of this age grade was Ernie
Benedict, a Mohawk elder and activist from the native community
xiv | introduction
of Akwesasne, which sits astride the border of the United States
and Canada. Ernie had been Bill’s student at St. Lawrence, just
down the road, in 1937 and provided the gathering with reminis-
cences from those early days. Among the many accomplishments
and contributions Ernie would make in service to his people and
“the coming faces”—Mohawk youth—was the founding of the
North American Indian Traveling College.
From the Mohawks—“keepers of the eastern door” of the con-
federacy—attention shifted to the Senecas, one of the “Three
Brothers” of Longhouse Iroquois whose duty it was to watch over
the “western door.” Maxine Crouse Dowler, Bill recalled, was a
teenager when as a graduate student and “novice fieldworker” he
first pitched his tent “in Jonas Snow’s dooryard.” Maxine’s parents,
Clifford and Myrtie Crouse, had welcomed Bill into their home.
A talented student, Maxine trained as a teacher, later became a
mediator for Seneca children, and then a member of the local
school board. In 2003 she was honored with the New York State
Women of Distinction Award by the American Association of
University Women and the New York State legislature. Today she
is a leader in the Beaver Clan at Allegany, a position long held by
her maternal grandmother. Maxine recounted for Bill the time,
many years ago, when she spirited his son John away to dance with
the Husk Faces on the sixth night of the Midwinter ceremonies
at Coldspring.
Last among the “old people” was linguist Wallace Chafe, a student
of Floyd Lounsbury, whose lineage also originated at Yale. It was
Floyd who introduced Wally to Bill, then fully involved in the second
trimester of his career as director of the New York State Museum. “I
have always retained a vivid image of the three of us talking in Bill’s
office,” Wally told us, “along with a couple of representatives of the
Education Department who seemed woefully uninformed about
the Iroquois, alleging that they had nothing that could be called a
culture. The three of us were taken aback, Bill wondering afterward
how he and Floyd could have built their careers on something that
didn’t exist.” Just then, Wally reminded us, the disastrous Kinzua
dam project was getting off the ground, which would work to so
tragically alter the lives of the Allegany Senecas.7
First to speak for the “young people,” those from the genera-
tions that followed Bill’s, was Thomas Abler from the University
of Waterloo. Discharging his obligations, Tom thanked Bill for
introduction | xv
helping him find the right path. He then made us mindful of the
debt owed to Bill for his years of research, writing, teaching, and
example. This was especially true for the role Bill’s ethnographic
fieldwork played in the development of ethnohistory, in the eyes
of many his most important scholarly contribution. This was all
the more remarkable, Tom observed, “in an era when historical
investigations were disparaged by a large and vocal portion of the
anthropological community,” for at the time, the school of British
social anthropology was dominated by Bronislaw Malinowski and
A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, both of whom were hostile to history.
Other presentations from the “young people” followed, includ-
ing ours. As Bill’s first PhD (Campisi) and his first graduate assis-
tant (Starna, by way of Dean Snow), we spoke of our experiences
as Bill’s students. One of us commented on how in his teaching
Bill insisted that his charges become familiar with and control as
much of the literature as possible and then apply an informed,
rigorous methodology to the problem at hand. And there was rec-
ognition of Bill’s generosity toward his graduate students, often
“subcontracting” projects to them from his own vast storehouse
of ethnographic and historic data, which often were turned into
conference presentations, articles, dissertations, and now and again
books. The other of us had firsthand experience with Bill in the
field during a trip to the Six Nations Reserve in Canada in the
early 1970s. Bill was working with Jimmy Skye on a translation and
annotation of the Tekanawita epic.8 Borrowing a technique from
Floyd Lounsbury, he used two Uher reel-to-reel tape recorders,
the first to play the text and the second to record the text being
played along with the translations, comments, and the discussions
that went on. What was so impressive was the knowledge Bill pos-
sessed, the copious notes he took, and the rapport that was so
evident between him and Jimmy, at a time when anthropologists
were unwelcome in Iroquois communities.
In assessing Bill’s career and his enormous and altogether original
body of work, it is easy to miss the essential ingredients that made
it all possible: forty-plus years of fieldwork and seventy-plus years
focused on writing on one culture, its social organization, ceremo-
nies, beliefs, material culture, history, and component societies.
This is a commitment difficult to match, and a contribution even
more difficult to equal. And he enjoyed every minute of it.
Nyawenh, Bill.
xvi | introduction
iroquois journey
one
up s tate rs i n s uburb i a a n d at h o m e | 3
on my chest. Poultices of salt pork were thought to relieve sore
throats and hoarse cough. Castor oil and cod liver oil were dreaded
household staples.
The earliest sounds that I recall were those of the postman
stamping his feet on the porch, his whistle blown twice, and the
doorbell rung twice—a morning ritual that welcomed the day.
On the stair landing one answered the telephone, a stand-up
model with receiver on the hook, number 228w, which rarely
rang. Of greater interest to a youngster was the mechanism of a
nearby grandfather clock that struck on the hour and also marked
the phases of the moon. Father had bought the clock in auction
rooms on 125th Street. It had once kept time for the Pell family,
one of the descendants of which traced the clock to Clove Road
and yearly came to call and try to persuade father to part with it,
which he finally did.
In my fourth year going on five in December, Mother persuaded
Mr. Vincent, principal of the Mayflower Elementary School and
himself an “upstater,” to admit me to kindergarten, where my
sister had preceded me the previous year. (My parents were advo-
cates of public schools.) There I came to know Fred “Fritz” Frost,
who would follow his father into architecture. One day a new boy
showed up in yellow rompers; we were told he had recently come
from Turkey. Born of Greek parents, he even then exhibited a
classic Dinaric profile. His name was Elia Kazan. We three were
destined to go through the Mayflower grades together and then
four years of New Rochelle High School. Fritz Frost excelled in
manual training, in which we all learned to handle tools and make
birdhouses in anticipation of Arbor Day. I still recall Mr. Girard’s
demonstration of how to sharpen a plane and his caution not to
set it down on the blade.
I no longer recall the name of a tall, gaunt teacher from Elmira
College who greeted our seventh-grade year with a demonstration
of how to diagram sentences. She not only made it interesting but
also taught us to identify parts of speech, and we gained some
notion of how the language we took for granted was constructed
and worked. A believer in the oral tradition, she discovered Kazan’s
talent for speech, and she selected the two of us to memorize
and practice famous examples of oratory and deliver them to the
school assembly. My assignment was Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address,
which I breezed through in rehearsal—but I blew a line in perfor-
up s tate rs i n s uburb i a a n d at h o m e | 5
man named Grosskopf, and Herr Steinmetz came to the house.
Once a week of an afternoon, when I would rather have been
tossing a ball in some vacant lot, the old Prussian would open his
violin case and say, “Now let’s get right into the business.” Bowing
technique and intonation proved less difficult than finding time
to practice an hour each day. My first instrument, a factory fiddle,
came from Gemunder’s store in New York, one of which family my
parents knew through some connection in the German community.
That instrument served me through high school and college.
After my two miserable performances in Professor Steinmetz’s
annual recitals at Germania Hall, renamed Liberty Hall in the
aftermath of World War I, where none of us felt comfortable,
Mother discovered Grace MacDermott, a student of Leopold Auer,
who had followed his virtuoso students from St. Petersburg to the
Julliard School in New York. But for a sophomore in high school,
there were too many distractions, including girls and sports, for
me to progress with the violin. Father recalled that he had once
had Al Tenzor in class, who was then playing in various orchestras
in the city, and he agreed to accept me as a student. This meant
following father’s route to 96th Street, descending from the El
carrying a violin case, and making my way alone through the tene-
ment district to the apartment of my new teacher. I was scared, at
first, but gradually became accustomed to this not unfriendly new
world where music was respected. People greeted me in passing
from their stoops.
I was now in the hands of a performing musician who was deter-
mined to put me in shape. At our second session, he assigned les-
sons in four books—Rimally’s Scales, Kreutzer’s Exercises, a book
on bowing techniques, and, to encourage me, Handel’s Sonatas.
These lessons went on for two years and gave me confidence: I
could read music. Still, I lacked a real musical sense and never
could play by ear.
Meanwhile, I played in the high-school orchestra.
Claude Bragdon, or, as students called him, “Zubu,” an alum-
nus of Bowdoin College in Maine, held up the scholastic standard
of New Rochelle High School. He invariably wore his Phi Beta
Kappa key suspended from a gold chain across his ample vest as
if to remind us that scholarship, rather than sports, was our real
purpose as students. It was an unpopular position in a city bent on
sports, especially football, but he had the support of my teacher
up s tate rs i n s uburb i a a n d at h o m e | 7
out of Grand Central, where the brass of stair rails and enor-
mous spittoons always gleamed. There we boarded the sleeper
to Buffalo. The view up the Hudson to Albany from the diner
afforded memorable glimpses of Bannerman’s Castle and West
Point. On arrival upstate in Albany, we children were put to bed
in a lower berth, the window and aisle curtains drawn, although I
invariably peeked out at Schenectady before sleeping on the way
to Buffalo. I developed a real affection for the New York Central
Railway over the years.
At Buffalo we transferred to the Buffalo and Southwestern, on
which Conewango Valley was the third stop short of Jamestown,
the end of the line. I recall creaky cars drawn by Mother Hubbard
engines that belched cinders. These high-wheeled behemoths fea-
tured the engineer’s cab halfway forward of the fire cab. Grandfather
invariably met us with the surrey, drawn by “Old Fred,” who was
more dependable than “Old Mag,” to deliver us three miles up
the Flat Iron Road to the farm. Our baggage followed in a farm
wagon with a team driven by a tenant farmer.
The farm comprised a north plot of some 220 original acres, then
farmed by tenants, and a south plot of 80 acres that Grandfather
had bought from Jim Millman in the 1880s, including a ginger-
bread Victorian house in the Queen Anne style and a matching
horse barn across the road. It had space for the surrey and buggy
and stalls for four horses. A cow barn with some twenty milking
stanchions stood empty and was used to store hay, the herd of forty-
some head of Holsteins being concentrated on the upper place
and milked by tenants. Also unused were milk house, corn crib,
chicken house, ice house, and the original farmhouse, a modi-
fied Greek-revival style building long since weathered of paint to
a pleasing silvery gray. It was then used as the farm shop and for
hardware storage, with an anvil for cracking butternuts. We chil-
dren spent rainy days there, affectionately naming it the “funny
house”—it was our favorite place.
Behind the funny house ran Butternut Creek, also called Fenton’s
Brook, a spring-fed stream that originated to the north in the town
of Leon, crossed the road south of the house, and circled the
dooryard and garden, thence west by the cow barn to its ultimate
junction with the Conewango. Two huge tamarack trees bordered
its banks just downstream of the bridge, yielding hideouts for
enormous brown trout, which I watched from above, lying on my
up s tate rs i n s uburb i a a n d at h o m e | 9
told to stay out of the kitchen. Grandfather discovered deficien-
cies in my Mayflower School education, which he and Uncle Will
(my father’s sister’s husband) proceeded to repair. They found
me wanting in tables of quantity—quarts in a peck, pecks in a
bushel—essential in measuring feed for horses, and weak on frac-
tions, which were faithfully recorded above the feed bins in the
horse barn. Mother had a fit about my using an ax, but Grandfather
demonstrated how to lop branches from a fallen tree, always put-
ting the log between one’s feet and the ax. Uncle Will taught me
to mow with a scythe, keeping the heel on the ground and the
point of the blade slightly elevated.
Firewood was delivered as maple slabs, which Grandfather split
to kitchen size and piled neatly in cords. I watched by the hour
to learn how he did it. He tilted a slab aslant of a second slab laid
crosswise to absorb the blow, held the first slab with his toe, and
proceeded to peel off pieces of stove wood by twisting the ax as it
struck, a trick that I gradually mastered.
In 1916 Father persuaded Grandfather to buy a Buick touring
car, which cost a thousand dollars, a princely sum in those days.
Grandfather, having grown up driving trotters, never quite mas-
tered the “infernal machine” and once tore down a section of fence
at the milk plant in Leon. But the car enabled Father to tour the
county searching for early-American furniture that had originally
come to western New York by oxcart or via the Erie Canal. Such
treasures had been put up in the attic or overhead in corncribs to
make way for chests and dining-room sets from nearby Jamestown
or Grand Rapids. These early pieces we restored in the funny house
or farmed out to local craftsmen for restoration.
In the early twenties the Buick took us to the Allegany Reservation
of the Seneca Nation, a drive of some twenty miles, to collect
the odd splint basket and attend the Green Corn ceremonies at
Coldspring Longhouse (Fenton, “Green Corn Ceremony,” 1963).
On these visits, the Fentons’ long friendship with the family of
Amos Snow immersed me in Seneca life. Amos’s son Jonas lived
at Allegany Reservation and worked with the “regular gang” on
the Erie Railroad. Jonas and my father shared an interest in the
arts, the one a carver of masks, the other a painter. After my fam-
ily acquired the Buick, going to the reservation to visit the Snows
and their neighbors became a favorite summer outing. Jonas’s wife
picked huckleberries along the Erie tracks and shared them with
up s tate rs i n s uburbi a a n d at h o m e | 11
known in New Rochelle, raised a dormer over each front window
and one on the back for headroom in the bathroom. Previous
residents had coped. After installing bath and furnace, we moved
in that summer of 1925. Meanwhile, sister Frances had gone off
to Connecticut College for Women, while I stayed behind in New
Rochelle to finish high school, rooming with friends of the family
named Worth, also from upstate New York, near Utica.
Graduation separated me from friends. Fritz Frost entered
Princeton. Eli Kazan and I received scholarships to Williams,
but I was also awarded scholarship aid, dependent on grades, at
Dartmouth, which I accepted, hoping to wait tables and seek other
employment to ease the burden on parents who were supporting
two children in private colleges. Father suggested Columbia and liv-
ing at home or, better yet, City College of New York, where as a city
employee he could seek free tuition. But my mind was made up.
That first summer in Westport I joined a crew of house paint-
ers as an apprentice. We worked on eighteenth-century buildings
bordering the harbor at South Norwalk, where I was put to strip-
ping windows, commonly eight over twelve panes of glass. The
older men in the crew had painted for years with Dutch Boy white
lead. Their hands shook, and they could no longer see or control
a brush. My employment lasted until the painters’ summer picnic
on Huckleberry Island—a glorious drink fest in late August.
Everett Bulkley of Southport, seasoned member of Dartmouth
class of 1929, discovered that Bob Chittim of Norwalk and I would
matriculate that fall. The lone son of a marine hardware merchant
in South Norwalk, Everett tooled the shore towns in a Model-t open
Ford, black with red wheels, and he offered to drive us to Hanover,
New Hampshire, and share expenses. That memorable journey
up the Connecticut River valley past Northampton, the weekend
destination of so many Dartmouth undergraduates, crossed toll
bridges and passed through one-way railroad underpasses to White
River Junction and Hanover. The road to Northampton would
claim the lives of too many of our contemporaries until Federal
Highway 95 superseded it. Just then it was a lark.
Dartmouth College
I arrived in Hanover with an old suitcase, a laundry case, a violin,
and a pair of worn track shoes. I had hoped to land a spot in the
freshman commons orchestra, which meant free meals, but George
up s tate rs i n s uburbi a a n d at h o m e | 13
invariably grumbled, “That damned priest with his box,” when
the pastor of the White Church came in late from evening prayer
service holding his cello overhead.
Professor Silverman, of mathematics, an accomplished musician,
headed the viola section, and western historian Robert Riegel,
as concertmaster, led the first violins, along with Dud Goldman
(’29), while my classmates Manny Glass and George Fredrickson
held the second desk.
At some point conductor Maurice Longhurst invited me to
accompany several faculty members of the orchestra for coffee
after rehearsal. We met in the backroom of Saia’s Grocery on Main
Street. The coffee was awful, but I soon learned that faculty were
human beings with all the faults and virtues of the rest of us.
The Handel Society gave one or two concerts a year, for which
we prepared at length. We lacked key instruments and competent
players for a full orchestra, but someone had left funds to bring
in “ringers,” and so members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra
(bso) appeared on the eve of our concerts and distributed them-
selves at crucial spots—the woodwinds, the first and second violin
desks. One year I had the good fortune to sit with a Dutch violinist
named Haage who had played the Beethoven symphony that we
were then rehearsing innumerable times and knew it by heart.
He taught me how to bring out the nuances at various points and
advised me to play, in the rapid movements, every first note in the
bar, and he would play the rest.
In the 1930s, when I was stationed in western New York for the
U.S. Indian Service, the bso came to Rochester, and I attended
the concert with my fiancée. I spotted old friends in the violin
sections and went backstage at intermission to greet them. Two
veterans of the Handel Society concerts proceeded to introduce me
to other members of the orchestra and recall their own Hanover
experiences. Although I have ceased to play, I enjoy attending bso
rehearsals at Tanglewood and watching the orchestra work.
Distributive requirements specified a course in the natural
sciences sophomore year. Choice lay among chemistry, physics,
and astronomy. “Cheerless” Richardson (chemistry) had the repu-
tation of screening students for medical school; Gordon Ferry
Hull, an eminent physicist, was known to be tough; and John
Merrill Poor, college astronomer, famed for his wit, gave a “pipe”
course and failed no one. Such was the talk at track practice of
up s tate rs i n s uburbi a a n d at h o m e | 15
By junior year, my financial troubles were largely over. I clerked
in the Dartmouth Co-op, which sold everything from books to skis,
and waited on a table of Phi Psi’s at the Green Lantern for lunch
and dinner, having graduated from faculty household chores at
forty cents an hour. My grades were up and so was my scholarship.
Summers in Westport I served as assistant to Frank Dayton, super-
intendent of Compo Beach, which entailed renting bathhouses
and similar duties that left me time to read. The beach was free to
Westport residents, but bathers from Wilton, Weston, and neigh-
boring townships were obliged to rent by the hour. These out-of-
towners included some famous literati—Padraic and Mary Colum,
for example, and the Shakespearean actor Walter Hamden and
his family. Mary Colum caught me reading one day and afterward
brought me books. Mondays, when the Compo Beach Volunteer
Lifeguards were at work in the city, I did lifeguard duty. Among
others, I rescued Hamden’s mentally handicapped daughter, who
got caught between tides. I soon learned that the public can be
ungrateful; one victim threatened to sue the town because she
alleged that in bringing her in, I pulled her hair.
Westport in the 1920s was loaded with talent both in the arts
and in letters. At the beach I knew Chilly Brooks, son of the liter-
ary historian Van Wyck Brooks. Junior year, when I happened to
meet Chilly in the village and mentioned that I was writing an essay
on Thoreau’s views on education for a contest (Herb West had
persuaded the Mandel Brothers of Chicago to underwrite prizes),
Chilly reminded me that his father knew a lot about Thoreau and
that I should talk with him. Somehow, spring vacation slipped by
without my seeing Mr. Brooks. I had gone through the Thoreau
Journals and had read Walden, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack
Rivers, The Maine Woods, and Cape Cod; I needed to get on with the
writing. Faculty readers said I had included too much of Thoreau
and not enough of my own ideas. I should have seen Mr. Brooks.
I received second prize.
Dartmouth enables seniors in good standing to combine their
fourth year with a year of graduate work in medicine, engineering,
or business administration, which suffices for a major, and then
go on to a fifth year of graduate work in their chosen field. I was
admitted to the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration and
Finance in the autumn of the 1929 stock market crash and lasted
until midway of the second semester. I found the courses neither
up s tate rs i n s uburbi a a n d at h o m e | 17
Saturday Review of Literature families and friends at West Cornwall,
Connecticut. Between taking the children swimming and on canoe
trips on the Housatonic River, I shared meals and was invited
evenings to the homes of the members, who included the presi-
dents of Vassar and Wesleyan. Henry Noble McCracken listened
to my discussion of migration theories and aboriginal succession
in New York State, and his daughter Maisry accompanied me to
Music Mountain for chamber music. “Lady” Canby (Mrs. Henry
Seidel Canby) persuaded me to review a book on boys’ camping
for the Saturday Review, my first venture in print.2 West Cornwall
was oriented toward New Haven.
Father, through colleagues, got me an interview in September
with Clark Wissler, curator of anthropology at the American
Museum of Natural History, who came up weekly to Yale’s Institute
of Human Relations to direct the research of some graduate stu-
dents. Wissler recognized me as an undergraduate who had come
into the museum to consult him on a career in anthropology.
After listening to my plea, Wissler picked up the phone and then
directed me to the dean of the graduate school, Wilbur Cross, in
Connecticut Hall. Dean Cross asked me where I had gone to col-
lege and examined my transcript. “What were you doing freshman
year, playing football?” After I told him that I was out for track
and trying to find an eating-club job, he remarked, “I like a tran-
script like this. You improved.” That was how I was admitted to
graduate school at Yale, before the day of the Graduate Records
Examination.
That same day I learned that Edward Sapir was coming that fall
from Chicago as Sterling Professor to head the new Department
of Anthropology. I had money to sign up for two courses: ethnol-
ogy, under George Peter Murdock, and prehistory, with Cornelius
Osgood, a Chicago PhD. I planned to live at home and commute
to New Haven from Westport.
Marriage to Olive
In late May 1934—while I was still a graduate student, just begin-
ning my second summer of fieldwork and boarding with Henry,
Sherman, and Clara Redeye—I acquired a 1926 Packard roadster
by paying the overdue storage at Nash’s warehouse in Westport. I
drove it to Salamanca on the Allegany Reservation of the Seneca
Nation. Betimes, I sought the company of old friends. Charles
Kammire and his wife, Alene, introduced me to Olive Ortwine,
and we all went dancing at the Dudley Hotel. Olive was a beautiful
creature, and we got on well together. She had graduated from
Syracuse University, which she had attended through the benefi-
cence of an uncle, Harry Vibbard, professor of music, who, having
no children of his own, asked the chancellor to provide a scholar-
ship for his niece. Having majored in English, she became a teacher
at the upper-high-school level, just then in Oakville, New York, near
Batavia and the Tonawanda Senecas. The Redeyes used to tease
me for going up to Salamanca evenings and returning downriver
late when it was foggy; mist would fill the Allegheny Oxbow. One
day Clara asked me, “You aren’t going to marry that white girl,
are you? We thought you would marry some movie star.” By late
Northwestern
In 1946 I began serving on a new Committee on International
Relations in Anthropology organized by the anthropologist Melville
J. Herskovits, of Northwestern University, for the National Research
Council of the National Academy of Sciences (nas).3 Serving on
a committee of the nrc makes one visible in the academic world.
One day in the spring of 1947, Mel Herskovits called on me at the
Smithsonian and, in the course of conversation, informed me that
A. Irving “Pete” Hallowell was returning home from Northwestern
to Philadelphia to resume his professorship at the University of
Pennsylvania. Would I be interested in replacing him? Aware of my
growing interest in the political history of the Iroquois League, he
sensed that political anthropology and ethnohistory were fertile
fields in our discipline. Meanwhile, would I join Carl Voegelin
(Indiana) for the summer session? I agreed to the latter, but remov-
ing permanently from Turkey Run to Evanston and abandoning
12. Chauncey
Johnny John
preparing a hoop
for a game, 1933.
13. Sherman Redeye (left), who “got it right,” and Bill, 1934.
14. Bill’s faithful Packard, 1936.
Brazil, 1954
Herbert Baldus, an expatriate living in Brazil who had attended
both the Americanist Congress in Cambridge and the icaes in
Vienna 1952, conscripted a number of us to attend as guests of
Brazil a biennial meeting of Americanists in Sao Paulo in the
summer of 1954. We had just settled in Albany, New York, but
the round-trip ticket I received departed from Albany, Georgia.
I appealed to Wallace Atwood, International Relations nas–nrc,
for credentials and help in getting a visa to Brazil. Wally came
back and advised that it would be simpler to pick up the visa in
Miami, but he would issue a certificate of identity with nrc, with
seal and ribbon attached.
In Miami I met up with a New York delegation from Columbia
and the American Museum of Natural History, headed by Charles
Wagley, who spoke Portuguese, which proved useful later. The
Brazilian consulate appeared to be in disorder: they could do noth-
ing for me; I showed my special passport, still valid from Vienna,
and the certificate from the nas–nrc. I was told to go back to my
lodging and wait. At midnight someone banged on the door. It
was the man from the consulate, still angry. I had put them to
much trouble on short notice. But he had the visa in hand, which
he finally gave me. We would learn two days later why the Miami
consulate was in confusion.
We took off from Miami for the long flight to Rio, via Belem at
the mouth of the Amazon. On the flight, Mel Herskovits distributed
chapters of a dissertation by his visiting student at Northwestern,
a native of Sao Paulo, to prepare us to sit as a committee at the
student’s dissertation defense. On landing in Belem, our plane was
seized by authorities, pending the outcome of the revolution that
was in progress. All we learned was that President Vargas had com-
mitted suicide. We did not know how long we would be stranded,
although the fact explained the turmoil in Miami.
How does one fill the hours while awaiting the outcome of a
Latin revolution? Belem has an ethnographic museum, the Museo
Goldi, which has a fine collection from the Amazon region. We also
Family Matters
After Turkey Run, Olive never liked the house and barn that I had
bought unseen by her in North Greenbush. For two years she lived
with workmen, notably a “farmish” carpenter named Clarence
22. Jim Skye and Bill with award for teaching Cayuga, given by the
State University at Albany, 1978.
23. Bill in his Slingerlands study, 1989.
24. Harold Conklin (left), Bill’s sponsor for the Wilbur Cross Medal,
and Bill, 1999.
25. Presentation of the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal for Distinguished
Alumni of the Yale Graduate School, 1999.
26. Maxine Crouse Dowler and Bill with beadwork frame at
celebration in Cooperstown, October 2003.
seven
Iroquois Redux
A decade after the Philadelphia Congress of icaes of 1956, Frolich
“Fro” Rainey retired as director of the University Museum after a
long tenure. In preparing for the festivities honoring him, Fro made
one request: that Bill Fenton invite the same Iroquois Indians who
had come to Philadelphia and taken part in the 1956 Congress.
Accordingly, I called Howard Skye, who had led the first party, and
he reassured me that he would assemble the same people, with
one or two exceptions and a few additions. The original members
still talked about their previous visit.
Olive was slated to accompany me, but our daughter, Betsey,
needed relief from caring for illnesses of husband and children.
Olive opted to substitute and send Betsey to Philadelphia in her
stead. The noted archaeologist Mary Butler and her husband,
Cliff Lewis, hosted us in their modern home in Media. Betsey had
thrown a few things in a bag for the last-minute flight and needed
a dress for the reception that evening. Mary proceeded to dress
her for the occasion. The two women went shopping for a suit-
able dress, and Mary rounded up white kid gloves and slippers.
Betsey looked smashing.
The reception was an early evening affair, while it was still day-
light in early summer, held in the University Museum garden.
At the appropriate hour the Lewises drove us into Philadelphia,
picking up Ward Goodenough on the way. Ward had followed
me at Yale graduate school, and we had much to talk about. My
Iroquois friends, wearing feathers, were already in the garden when
we entered. George Buck, our neighbor at Lower Cayuga on Six
170 | l i f e af te r uni ve rs i ty
benches, but since this was a confederate matter, I expected them
to sit in a tripartite arrangement, as if all the nations were repre-
sented, even though the Oneida and Seneca chiefs were absent.
The seating arrangement can be diagrammed as follows:
Onondaga
Oneida Mohawk
(Fire)
Cayuga Seneca
Guest Nation
The events of the repatriation ceremony followed the order
customary for a chiefs’ council:
1. Preliminaries: greeting guests
2. Tobacco invocation
3. Returning thanks from earth to sky
4. Issue of the moment: two cultures (two-row wampum belt)
5. Accommodation: reciprocal gifts
6. Speaker for guests (wnf)
7. Closing thanksgiving address
8. Terminal feast
l i f e af te r u n i v e r si t y | 171
bols for a projected grammar of wampum symbolism. Hale sent
copies of the photographs to concerned scholars, including E.
B. Tyler of Oxford University, to whom he reported on mapping
the languages of interior northwestern America.2 J. N. B. Hewitt
left me a copy of one of these photographs, which I carried to
and from the field for years while researching the Condolence
Council. I used it as the frontispiece of the 1963 reprint of The
Iroquois Book of Rites and sent it to the National Anthropological
Archives in 2001.3
To the dismay of later scholars, Hale’s manuscripts and field
notes went up in smoke when a fire destroyed his Clinton, Ontario,
study. A grammar of wampum symbolism remains to be done.
In 2000 Denis Foley drove me to London, Ontario, for the
meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory, sponsored by
the University of Western Ontario, with Regna Darnell as hostess.
I did not prepare a paper but was told to appear at the annual
meeting. To my surprise, Ray DeMallie read a citation awarding
me the John C. Ewers Award for The Great Law and the Longhouse,
which had been published in 1998, as the best book of the year on
the ethnohistory of an American tribe. The award was given by the
Western Historical Association at its meeting in San Antonio, Texas,
whence DeMallie had brought it, knowing I would be present.
Since I had been unable to attend services for Jim Skye, Denis
and I stopped at Six Nations over the weekend returning, to pay
respect to Jim’s close relatives—his wife, daughter, and brother.
Chief Peter Skye, present wampum keeper of the Confederacy,
received us cordially at home in the center of Ohsweken. (We
had met at the hearing in New York.) His wife was making cook-
ies, which we were soon eating. I sat face to face with Peter. After
courtesy greetings, Peter reached for my hand and thanked me
once more for my role in returning the eleven belts. Chief Skye
believes, as did his grandfathers when they commenced the struggle
for their return early in the last century, that these belts were all
that was left of their heritage in the League tradition.
Removal to Cooperstown, New York, on May 1, 2001, after forty-
three years’ residence in Slingerlands and the preceding four
years in the Albany environs, marked a significant change in my
lifestyle. I had been living alone, rattling around in eight rooms,
upstairs to study and bed, downstairs for meals and errands. My
generation of neighbors had either died off or moved elsewhere,
172 | l i f e af te r uni ve rs i ty
although the new generation gave me a splendid going-away party.
Contact with the university at Albany, which I had enjoyed since
1979, soon faded as I put seventy miles between us. Yet several
of the PhDs whom I trained have kept in touch, not to mention
other colleagues. Denis Foley in particular has kept me involved
in Iroquois studies, visiting frequently, driving me to conferences,
bringing ritual holders here—when I assumed the role of infor-
mant and they asked questions as we shared tape recordings of
their predecessors, to ensure that they got it right. I have tried to
avoid new projects.
Four relatives made the move possible and bearable. Daughter
Betsey made innumerable trips from central New York to Albany
to sell the house, engage movers, and attend to details; her hus-
band, Mayo, packed my fishing gear and tools and unpacked a
mountain of packing cases left by the movers in the Cooperstown
garage. Son John’s wife, Diane, drove my station wagon loaded
with me and my fishing tackle to Cooperstown, and John followed
in Diane’s car for their return. For the preceding month Diane
had devoted days to packing the contents of my Slingerlands study
and labeling boxes.
The present house, which Betsey found, overlooks Lake Otsego
and the village from the east. The property adheres to “Lakeland
Shores,” an involuntary association of residents dating from the
1960s, which affords access to a lakeside park, swimming, boat
launch, docking, and canoe racks. Betsey and Mayo, having sold
their Homer house, live on Lake Street across the lake. The New
York State Historical Association at Fenimore House holds the
Thaw Collection of Native American Art and maintains a small
but adequate library that serves me well.
An appeal to the museum program for a student who might
like to earn a few dollars brought Andy Marietta, a real treasure
with many skills: computer literate since age eight, at home with
tools, and knowledgeable about the town and its cultural resources.
Andy set up my study, unpacked and shelved books, moved stuff
to storage in the basement, and set up my computer center. He
continues to respond to my gaffes.
An event in Iroquois studies, to which I have already alluded, also
involved me in 2001. Denis Foley arranged for a delegation of Six
Nations life chiefs, led by Peter Skye, to visit me in Cooperstown,
seeking reassurance that their version of the condolence ceremony
l i f e af te r u n i v e r si t y | 173
accorded with the versions I had recorded in the 1940s from their
predecessors. In a transformation of roles, I as ethnologist became
informant, and they asked the questions as we all listened to tapes
of the originals from the Library of Congress.
The chiefs hosted a dinner for us that evening at the Hotel
Otesaga, and next morning we viewed the Thaw Collection at
Fenimore House. Not a bad record for my ninety-third year.
I launched my ninety-fourth year with my eleventh and final
visit as a “reader” at the Huntington Library, going back to 1950.
Daughter Betsey and her long-ago Pembroke roommate, Kari Scott
Gunn, conspired to enable me to spend six weeks in San Marino
during January–February 2002. Kari flew out and back with me and
proved an expert at freeway driving, and Betsey came out midway
to enable Kari to return to duty at the Boston Museum of Fine
Arts. Kari’s presence and her father’s eminence among his former
students at the Huntington brought me unexpected recognition
there. I worked on these memoirs while my book The Little Water
Medicine Society of the Senecas was in production at the University
of Oklahoma Press. The book appeared in October 2002, and at
Christmas that year I presented copies to my five grandchildren,
three of whom were present. Two of my seven great-grandchildren,
Grace and Angus, blew out the candles on the cake honoring my
birthday ten days before.
174 | l i f e af te r uni ve rs i ty
notes
Introduction
note s to pa g e s 5 7 – 1 2 4 | 177
4. William N. Fenton. 1965. American Participation in the VIIth
International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences,
Moscow 3–10, 1964. American Anthropologist 67: 771–3. 127th Annual
Report . . .of the New York State Museum and Science Service for the
year ended June 30, 1965: 1–4.
5. Without waiting for the proceedings of the congress to appear (1967),
I submitted the piece to Ethnology 4, 3 (1965): 471–84.
1. Olive died on April 5, 1986, the day after our fiftieth wedding
anniversary.
2. I saw and examined the Tylor copies during a brief visit to the
Pitt Rivers Museum 1952, when I was concerned with other things. See
Elisabeth Tooker, “A Note on the Return of Eleven Wampum Belts to the
Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy on Grand River, Canada,” Ethnohistory
45, 2 (1998): figs. 2, 3.
3. Tooker, “A Note on the Return of Eleven Wampum Belts.”
1931
1935
(With Cephas D. Hill) “Reviving Indian Arts among the Senecas.” Indians
at Work 2 (21): 13–15.
“The Tonawanda Indian Community Library.” Indians at Work 3 (5):
46–48.
1936
1937
1940
“A Further Quest for Iroquois Medicines.” In Explorations and Field-work of
the Smithsonian Institution in 1939, 93–96. Washington, dc.
“Problems Arising from the Historic Northeastern Position of the Iroquois.”
In Essays in Historical Anthropology of North America. Smithsonian
Miscellaneous Collections 100, 159–251. Washington, dc.
“An Herbarium from the Allegany Senecas.” In The Historic Annals of
Southwestern New York, edited by William J. Doty et. al., 787–96. New
York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company.
[Research Report]. In Fifty-sixth (1938–1939) Bureau of American Ethnology,
Annual Reports, 5–6. Washington, dc.
1941
1942
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1945
(With J. N. B. Hewitt) “Some Mnemonic Pictographs Relating to the
Iroquois Condolence Council.” Journal of the Washington Academy of
Sciences 35 (10): 301–15.
“A Day on the Allegheny Ox-Bow.” The Living Wilderness 10 (13): 1–8.
“Place Names and Related Activities of the Cornplanter Senecas, I: State
Line to Cornplanter Grant: Northern Approaches.” Pennsylvania
Archaeologist 15 (1): 25–29.
“Place Names and Related Activities of the Cornplanter Senecas, II:
Cornplanter Grant: The Place Where Handsome Lake Rose to
Preach.” Pennsylvania Archaeologist 15 (2): 42–50.
“Place Names and Related Activities of the Cornplanter Senecas, III:
Burnt House at Cornplanter Grant.” Pennsylvania Archaeologist 15
(3): 88–96
“Place Names and Related Activities of the Cornplanter Senecas, IV:
Cornplanter Peak to Warren.” Pennsylvania Archaeologist 15 (4):
108–18.
“Pennsylvania’s Remaining Indian Settlement.” Pennsylvania Park News
44 (October), 2 pp.
[Research Report]. In Sixty-first (1943–1944) Bureau of American Ethnology,
Annual Reports, 3–4. Washington, dc.
Reports on Area Studies in American Universities. (Six reports prepared
for the Ethnographic Board, Washington dc. Mimeographed.)
1946
“Integration of Geography and Anthropology in Army Area Study
Curricula.” Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors
32 (4): 696–706.
1947
1948
1950
“The Roll Call of the Iroquois Chiefs: A Study of a Mnemonic Cane from
the Six Nations Reserve.” Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 111
(15): 1–73. Washington, dc.
[Obituary] “John Montgomery Cooper.” Journal of the Washington Academy
of Sciences 40 (2): 64.
“Second Progress Report: Political History of the Six Nations.” In The
American Philosophical Society Year Book 1949, 186–88. Philadelphia.
[Research Report]. In Sixty-sixth (1948–1949) Bureau of American Ethnology,
Annual Reports, 3–4. Washington, dc.
1951
(Editor) Symposium on Local Diversity in Iroquois Culture. Bulletin of the
Bureau of American Ethnology 149. Washington, dc.
“Introduction: The Concept of Locality and the Program of Iroquois
Research.” In Symposium on Local Diversity in Iroquois Culture, edited
by William N. Fenton, 3–12. Bulletin of the Bureau of American
Ethnology 149 (1). Washington, dc.
“Locality as a Basic Factor in the Development of Iroquois Social Structure.”
In Symposium on Local Diversity Iroquois Culture, edited by William N.
1952
“The Training of Historical Ethnologists in America.” American Anthropologist
54 (3): 328–39.
“Research on National Disasters.” News Report, National Academy of
Sciences, National Research Council 2 (1): 3–5.
“Seventh Conference on Iroquois Research.” American Antiquity 17:
292–294.
[Research Report]. In Sixty-eighth (1950–1951) Bureau of American
Ethnology, Annual Reports, 4. Washington, dc.
1953
The Iroquois Eagle Dance: An Offshoot of the Calumet Dance, with an Analysis
of the Iroquois Eagle Dance and Songs by Gertrude P. Kurath. Bulletin of
the Bureau of American Ethnology 156. Washington, dc.
“Cultural Stability and Change in American Indian Societies.” Journal of
the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 83 (2):
169–74.
“A Calendar of Manuscript Materials Relating to the History of the Six
Nations or Iroquois Indians in Depositories Outside of Philadelphia,
1750–1850.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 97 (5):
578–95. Philadelphia.
[Research Report]. In Sixty-ninth (1951–1952) Bureau of American Ethnology,
Annual Reports, 3–4. Washington, dc.
1954
“Anthropology.” In Britannica Book of the Year 1954, 47–49. Chicago:
Encyclopaedia Britannica.
“The Hyde de Neuville Portraits of New York Savages in 1807–1808.”
New-York Historical Society Quarterly 38 (2): 118–37.
1956
“The Science of Anthropology and the Iroquois Indians.” New York State
Archeological Association Bulletin 6 (March): 10–14.
“Toward the Gradual Civilization of the Indian Natives: The Missionary and
Linguistic Work of Asher Wright (1803–1875) Among the Senecas
of Western New York.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society
100 (6): 567–81. Philadelphia. (Also Library Bulletin of the American
Philosophical Society for 1956.)
“A Request from Scientist to Farmers.” Rural New Yorker, April 7, p. 280.
“Iroquois Research” (Ninth Conference on Iroquois Research). Science
123 (3185): 69.
“A Century of Natural History Research in Albany.” Times-Union (Albany,
ny) Centennial Edition, April 22.
“Some Questions of Classification, Typology, and Style Raised by Iroquois
Masks.” Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2nd ser., 18
(4): 347–57. New York.
1957
American Indian and White Relations to 1830: Needs and Opportunities for
Study. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
“Factionalism at Taos Pueblo, New Mexico.” Bulletin of the Bureau of American
Ethnology 164 (56): 297–344.
(Editor) “Seneca Indians by Asher Wright (1859).” Ethnohistory 4 (3):
302–21.
“Long-term Trends of Change among the Iroquois.” In Cultural Stability and
Cultural Change, edited by Verne F. Ray, 30–35. Proceedings of the 1957
Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society. Seattle.
1958
[Research Report]. In 119th (July 1, 1956–June 30, 1957) Annual Report,
Bulletin 370, New York State Museum and Science Service, Annual Reports,
7–12. Albany.
1959
1960
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(Editor with John Gulick) Symposium on Cherokee and Iroquois Culture. Bulletin
of the Bureau of American Ethnology 180. Washington, dc.
(With John Gulick) “Foreword by the Editors.” In Symposium on Cherokee
and Iroquois Culture, edited by William N. Fenton and John Gulick,
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“Iroquoian Culture History: A General Evaluation.” In Symposium on
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“Folklore (American Indian).” In Encyclopaedia Britannica, 441–42. vol.
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[Comment on] “Method of Studying Ethnological Art,” by Herta
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1963
“The Seneca Green Corn Ceremony.” The New York State Conservationist
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“Horatio Hale (1817–1896).” In The Iroquois Book of Rites, edited by
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(Reprinted: 1965).
[Research Report]. In 124th (July 1, 1961–June 30, 1962) Annual Report,
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1964
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“La théorie de L. H. Morgan de périodisation de l’histoire de société
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The False Faces of the Iroquois. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. (With
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2002
Page numbers in italic indicate illustrations Argonauts of the Western Pacific (Malinowski),
Abbott, Charles Greeley, 59, 64, 74 43
Abeel, Henry, 130 Arlington Cemetery, 58
Abercromby, James, 79 Army Specialized Training Program, 62
Abler, Thomas, 142 Atwood, Wallace, 122
acls. See American Council of Learned Auer, Leopold, 6
Societies
Adams, Henry, 65 Bacon, Elizabeth, 62
adoption by the Senecas, 25–30 bae. See Bureau of American Ethnology
Akwesasne (St. Regis), xv, 52, 73, 157 Baily, Nick, 49–50
Albany Institute of History and Art, 111, Baldus, Herbert, 122
117 Baldus, Herman, 104
Allegany Reservation, 1, 10–11, 37, 71 Bartlett, Francis, 99–100
Allegany School of Natural History, 44 Bateson, Gregory, 99
Allegany State Park, 44 Beaglehole, Earnest, 165
Allen, James, 117, 120–21 Beaglehole, Pearl, 165
American Anthropological Association, 63, Bear Clan (Seneca), 27, 29, 176n2
82–83, 84, 141, 157 Beatty, Willard, 74, 75
American Anthropologist, 63, 110, 154 Beaver Clan (Seneca), 90, 176n2
American Council of Learned Societies Becker-Donner, Etta, 104
(acls), 55, 61–62, 71 Beirut University, 42, 93
American Council on Education, 62 Beloit College, 70
American Museum of Natural History, 18, Benedict, Ernest, 42
107, 119, 122 Benedict, Ruth, 31, 59, 159
American Philosophical Society (aps), 72 Benezet, Louis, 158–59
American Society for Ethnohistory, 172 Bergamini (Dr.), 141
ancestors of William Fenton, 1–2, 95–96 Bern Historical Museum, 135
Ancient Society (Morgan), 136–37 “Bigheads,” 46
Angus (great-grandson), 172 Birket-Smith, Kaj, 130
Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, Bishop Museum, 160
57 Blackfeet Reservation, 80–82
Anthropological Society of Washington Blackwood, Beatrice, 100–101, 102
(asw), 59; Eleanor Roosevelt and, Bleimeyer, Rose, 44
63–65 Bloch, Herb, 42
anthropology, factionalism in, 74–82 Boas, Franz, 15, 31, 45
“Anthropology during the War, VII: The Bodleian Library, 101–2
Arab World” (Fenton), 94 Bond, Richmond P., 115
Bowles, Gordon, 110 Chittim, Bob, 12
Braddock, Edward, 74 clanship, obligations of, 29–30
Bragdon, Claude, 6 Clute, Alex, 52
Brant, Joseph, 116 Cochrane (Mr.), 138
Brantford, Ontario, 23, 54, 55, 56, 116, 171 Coe, Mr. and Mrs., 112–13
Brazil, 122–24 Cohen, Felix, 81, 177n4
British Museum and Library, 97 Cohn, Harvey, 13
Bronk, Detlev, 107 Coldspring Longhouse, 26–30, 34, 46
Brooks, Chilly, 16 Collamer, Jeannette, 35
Brooks, Van Wyck, 16 Collier, John, 32–33
Broughton, John, 108, 156 Collins, Henry B., 47, 58–60, 132
Bruce, Louis, 36 Collins, “Van,” 143
Bruner, Laman, 116 Colum, Mary, 16
Buck, George, 117, 124–25, 152–53 Colum, Padraic, 16
Buck, Peter, 23, 30–31, 61, 159, 164–68 Committee on Anthropological Research
Buffalo Creek, 71 in Museums, 157
Buffalo Museum of Science, 44 Committee on Disaster Studies (of nrc),
Buffalo ny, 8, 37, 79, 142 91–94
Bulkley, Everett, 12 Committee on International Relations in
Bureau of American Ethnology (bae), 32, Anthropology, 69, 93, 94, 110
45, 46–51, 63, 84 Compo Beach, 16, 103
Bureau of Indian Affairs (bia), 74–77 Conable, Barber, 170
Bush, Vanever, 66 Conant, James Bryant, 66
Bushnell, David I., Jr., 47 Concha, Eliseo, 76–77
Bushnell, Geoffrey, 98 Condolence Council, 56, 68, 153–54, 172
Butler, Mary, 152, 153 Conference on Iroquois Research, xii, xiii,
66, 67, 84
Cahalane, Victor H., 114, 118, 140 Conewango Valley ny, 1, 2, 7–11, 20
Calloway, Cab, 103 Congdon, Charles E., 67
Calumet Dance, 37, 83 Conklin, Harold, 22, 148
Cambridge University, 94–101 Connally (Senator), 103
Cameron, Duncan, 140 Constas, 137
Canandaigua Treaty, 72 Cooper, John M., 50
Canby, Mrs. Henry Seidel, 18 Cooperstown ny, xiii, xiv, 119, 132, 172,
Cape Cod (Thoreau), 16 173
Carr, Fanny, 2, 96 Corey, Albert, 45, 108
Carr, John, 96 Cornell University, 31, 35, 43, 115, 138
Cash, Johnny, 142 Corning, Erastus, 117, 119
Cattaraugus Reservation, 1, 25 Cornplanter, Elsina, 34
Caughnawaga ny, 52–53 Cornplanter, Jesse, 33, 35, 45, 176n1
Cayuga-Onondaga Indians, 54 Cosmos Club, 65–67, 94
Celestial Astronomy (Russell), 15 Council on the Arts, 156
Chalmers, Arvis, 111 Couper, Chancellor, 120–21
Chapman, Oscar, 74, 75, 77–78, 79 Cox (Mr.), 164, 165, 166
Charles, Abram, 55 Crazy Bear, 22
Chicago Tribune, 70 Cross, Wilbur, 18
chiefs of the Seneca Nation, 68–69, 170–71 Crowfoot, Ted, 103
children of William Fenton, 43, 46, 50, 69, Curti, Merle, 73
71, 83, 138–39, 141, 146, 159, 177n2; “Customs of the Indians” (1968), 151
in adulthood, 133, 173, 174; during
Fenton’s fieldwork, 75–76, 80–82 dance and music, Iroquois, 24, 26, 37, 83,
Childs, Marquis, 67 84, 153
196 | inde x
Danish National Museum, 129 The False Faces of the Iroquois (Fenton), 169
Darnell, Regna, 172 Fatty, Esther, 26
Dartmouth College, 12–18 Feest, Christian, 128
David, Elijah, 33–34 Fejos, Paul, 69, 104
Davies, A. Powell, 66–67 Fenton, Anna Belle Nourse, 2–4, 5, 9–10,
Dayton, Frank, 16 41, 50
Deardorff, Merle, 60, 62, 142 Fenton, Betsey, 43, 50, 54, 69, 71, 138, 159,
DeForest, J. W., 21 173, 174; as companion to the icaes of
Defreestville ny, 112, 153 1956, 152–53; children of, 133; during
DeGrange, McQuilkin, 15 Fenton’s fieldwork, 75–76, 80–82
Deignan, Bert and Stella Lesche, 135 Fenton, Diane, 173
de Laguna, Frederica, 93 Fenton, Douglas Bruce, 69, 75, 80, 83,
Deloria, Vine, Jr., 156 138–39, 141
DeMallie, Ray, 172 Fenton, Frances, 3, 12, 19, 20, 50, 52, 53
Demos, John, 152 Fenton, Geoffrey, 96
Denmark, 129–30 Fenton, Harry, 69, 177n2
Department of Defense, U.S., 91–92 Fenton, John William (father of William
Deskaheh, 124–25 Fenton), 2–3, 9–10, 11, 18, 20, 41, 50
Dickey, John, 15 Fenton, John William II (son of William
Digby, Adrian, 98, 99 Fenton), 46, 50, 69, 71, 105, 111,
Discovery Dance, 153 138–39, 159, 173; in adulthood, 153;
Disher, Ken, 46, 50 during William Fenton’s fieldwork,
Dixon, Roland B., 17 75–76, 77, 80–82
Dodge, Ernest, 67–68, 105–6 Fenton, Olive, 50, 52, 61, 65, 89, 108,
Dodge, Irene, 67–68 111, 141–43, 152, 159; children of,
Doob, Leonard, 15 43, 46, 50, 69, 83, 133, 138–39, 146,
Dorsey, Harry, 64 173, 174, 177n2; death of, 170, 178n1;
Dorsey, Nick, 48, 64 in Europe, 126–36; at home in North
Dowd, Miss, 43 Greenbush, 111–13, 137–39; marriage
Dowler, Maxine Crouse, 150 to William Fenton, 37–39, 145; parents
Duke of Bedford, 98 of, 58; during William Fenton’s field-
Duval, Admiral, 67 work, 45, 53–54, 75, 80–82
Dybeau, Katie, 52–53 Fenton, Reuben E., 95
Fenton, Robert Bruce, 3
Eagle Dance, 37, 83, 84 Fenton, “Tui,” 165
Edgerly, Clifton T., 7 Fenton, William, 145, 150; ancestors of,
Edgerton, Halsey T., 17 1–2, 95–96; automobiles owned by, 88;
Eggan, Fred, 159 at the Blackfeet Reservation, 80–82;
Eiseley, Loren, 92, 107 in Brazil, 122–24; at the Bureau of
Eisenhower, Dwight, 141 American Ethnology, 32, 45, 46–51, 63,
Eliot, John, 99 84; childhood of, 3–7, 19, 20; children
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, 30 of, 43, 46, 50, 69, 71, 75–76, 80, 83,
England, 94–102, 115–16 133, 138–39, 141, 146, 159, 173, 174,
Ethnohistory, 170 177n2; and the Committee on Disaster
Evans-Pritchard, E. E., 103–4 Studies, 91–94; and the Cosmos Club,
Ewers, Jack, 22, 75 65–67; at Dartmouth College, 12–18; in
Ewers, John C., 172 Denmark, 129–30; Eleanor Roosevelt
and, 63–65; in England, 94–102;
factionalism in anthropology, 74–82 English relatives of, 96; on factionalism
Fadden, Ray, 73 in anthropology, 74–82; family farm,
false faces, Iroquois, 56, 124, 130, 134, 7–11; family ties to the Senecas, 1–2;
169, 175n1 fieldwork by, 23–30, 44–45, 52–56,
i n d e x | 197
Fenton, William (cont.) Fortune, Reo, 43
67–69, 75–82, 85, 87, 153–55; and the Foster, Michael, 170
Four Kings exhibit, 115–18; in France, Four Kings exhibit, 115–18
135; as a Fulbright scholar, 158, 159; France, 135
in Germany, 127–29, 130–32; home Frankfurt (am Main), 126–27, 128
in North Greenbush, 111–13, 137–39; Fredrickson, George, 12–13, 14
and the International Congress of Friedmann, Herbert, 59
Anthropological and Ethnological Frobenius Institute, 127
Sciences, 94, 108, 124–26; and the Frost, Fred “Fritz,” 4, 12
International Council of Museums, Fulbright scholar, William Fenton as, 158,
126–36; at the Klamath Reservation, 159
79–80; last years at the New York State Funk, Robert, 139
Museum, 139–44; marriage to Olive
Ortwine, 37–39, 145, 170, 178n1; as a Gaines, Clarence, 42
member of the Hawk clan, 25–30; in Geoghegan, Dick, 7
Moscow, 136–37; in the Netherlands, Geneva, 135
126, 131–32; in New Zealand, 158–68; Geologic Map of New York, 139
at Northwestern University, 69–70; and Germany, 127–29, 130–32
Ghobashy, Omar, 156
the Office of Naval Intelligence, 61;
Gibson, Hardy, 55
parents of, 2–4; recruited by the New
Gibson, Jemima, 54, 55, 88
York State Museum, 107–9; and reloca-
Gibson, John Arthur, 55, 56
tion of the New York State Museum,
Gibson, Simeon, 54–56, 63, 72, 154
118–22; retirement of, 169–74; in Santa
Glass, Manny, 14
Fe, 75–78; during summer 1953 in
Goldenweiser, Alexander, 55, 154, 155
New England, 105–7; at suny Albany,
Goldman, Dud, 14
151–53; in Sweden, 130; in Switzerland,
Goodenough, Ward, 152
133–35; teaching at St. Lawrence
Gordon, Robert, 44
University, 42–46; in the U.S. Indian
Gordon, Willie, 60
Service, 14, 32–37; at the University of
Gosnell, Charles Francis, 115, 116
Michigan, 83–84; in Vienna, 102–5,
Grace (great-granddaughter), 174
128, 132; and the Wampum contro-
Grand River, 54, 56, 73, 101, 116, 128,
versy, 155–58; in Westport, 11–12;
171, 178n2 (chap. 8)
writings of, 56–57, 62–63, 73, 83, 94, Graves, Mortimer, 62, 71
151, 154–55, 169, 172; at Yale, 21–23, Gray, Dwight, 66–67
30–32, 40 The Great Law and the Longhouse (Fenton),
Fenton, William T. (grandfather of William 73, 155, 172
Fenton), 3, 10, 11, 95 Green Corn Ceremony, 10
festivals and ceremonies of the Seneca, Grotanelli, Vinigi, 103
26–27, 28–30, 170–71; Field Day, Gunn, Kari Scott, 174
34–35, 36; midwinter, 48; recorded by Gusinde, Martin, 103, 124
William Fenton, 67–69, 173–74; texts Guthe, Carl, 59–60, 106
of, 55–56
fieldwork of William Fenton, 75–82, Hadlock, Wendell, 105
153–55; among the Senecas, 23–30, Hagerty, Ross, 81–82
44–45, 52–56, 67–69 Hahn-Hissink, Karin, 127–28
Fife, Ella, 7 Hale, Emmons, 171
Fishing, 9, 60, 106, 161, 163, 173 Hale, Horatio, 101, 155
Flannery, Regina, 50 Hallowell, A. Irving “Pete,” 69–70, 71, 132
Flick, Alexander, 120 Hamden, Walter, 16
Flick, Hugh, 120–21, 121, 156 Handel Society, 14, 15
Foley, Denis, 172, 173 Hanks, Jane, 159
Forde, Daryl, 96, 104 Harriman, Governor, 117–18
198 | inde x
Harrington, J. P., 47–48 International Congress of Americanists,
Harrington, M. R., 2 94, 122–24
Harrison, Wallace K., 33, 121, 140 International Congress of Anthropological
Harvey, Homer, 38 and Ethnological Sciences (icaes), 94,
Hatt, Bob, 69 108, 124–26, 177n2; Iroquois Indians
Hatt, Marcel, 69 at, 124–25, 152–53; meeting in Moscow,
Haupapa, Emily, 167 136–37
Havasupai Ethnography (Spier), 30 International Congress of Anthropology
Hawk Clan (Seneca), 24–27, 28, 34, 176n2 and Ethnology, 118
Heaton, Lucia, 43 International Council of Museums (icom),
Heine-Geldern, Robert, 93, 94, 103 126–36
Henry E. Huntington Library, 74, 78–79, The Iroquois Book of Rites (Fenton), 172
169, 174 Iroquois False Face Society, 56
Heron Clan (Seneca), 29, 176n2 Iroquois Indians: Condolence Council,
Herrick, James, 177n6 56, 68, 153–54, 172; Eagle Dance, 83,
Herskovits, Melville J., 69–71, 93–94, 122, 84; and false faces, 56, 124, 130, 134,
124, 132–33 169, 175n1; field days of, 34–35; at the
Hertzfeld, Karl, 50 icaes, 124–25, 152–53; medicine of,
Herzog, George, 26
57, 154; music and dance of, 24, 26, 37,
Hewitt, J.N.B., 45–46, 54–56, 62, 72, 110,
83, 84, 153; mutual aid societies of, 34;
154, 172
political history of, 71, 83–84; rituals
Heye, George, 11, 170
of, 170–71; suicide among, 49; texts
Heyerdahl, Thor, 104, 123
on, 79, 154–55; Tonawanda community
Hill, Cephas, 35
of, 33–34, 38, 76, 101. See also Seneca
Hill, Hilton, 54, 89
Indians
Hill, W. W., 30
Iroquois League, 23, 55, 69, 71, 153, 155,
Hillman, Harry, 13
157
Hochschild, Harold K., 120, 126, 129
Hohenwart-Gerlachstein, Anna, 103–4
Jackobson, Carlyle “Jake,” 92
Holt, John, 45
Jacobs, John “Twenty Canoes,” 27
Hopi Indians, 22
Jacobson, Carlyle, 106
Hoz (husband and wife), 134
Jamieson, Sadie, 68
Hrdliçka, Aleš, 49–50
Hull, Gordon Ferry, 14 Jamnback, Hugo, 139
Human Origins (MacCurdy), 22 Jemison, Mary, 36
Huntington Library, 74, 78, 169, 174 Jenness (Mrs.), 53
Hurd, Norm, 121 Jenness, Diamond, 53
Huron, 52, 53, 105, 116 Jesuit Relations, 111, 121
Husk Faces, xv, 130 Jimmerson, Avery, 27
Hutchins, Marynard, 22 Jimmerson, Johnson, 26–27
Johnny John, Chauncey, 11, 45
icaes. See International Congress of Johns College, 94–101, 99
Anthropological and Ethnological Johnson, G.H.M., 171
Sciences Johnson, John E., 17
icom. See International Council of Johnson, William, 166
Museums Jones, Albert, 24, 28, 29
Ihimaera, Witi, 161, 165 Jones, Alice, 25, 28
Indian Arts project, Rochester Museum, 35 Jordan, Wes, 162
Indian Reorganization Act (ira), 74, 81 Journal of American Folklore, 110–11
Intensive Language Teaching Program, 62 Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute,
Inter American Committee on Indian 98
Affairs, 74 Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences
Interior Department, 47, 74, 75 (jwas), 62, 83
i n d e x | 199
Kammire, Alene, 37 The Little Water Medicine Society of the Senecas
Kammire, Charles, 37 (Fenton), 174
Kazan, Elia, 4–5, 7, 12 Little Water Society, 45
Kearny, Pat, 13 London, England, 94–102
Keene Valley, 151, 154 longhouse: Coldspring, 26–30, 34, 46;
Kennard, Ed, 105 Onandaga, 54, 155; songs and rites, 55;
Kidder, Alfred “Ted,” II, 99, 103, 125 St. Regis, 52; Tonawanda, 76
Kidder, A. V., 99 Longhurst, Maurice, 14
Kidder, Mary, 99 Loudoun, Lord, 74
Kimmey, Clarence, 137–38 Lounsbury, Floyd, 154, 155
King, Clarence, 65 Lunde, Anders, 43
King, John Bird, 130 Lyons, Oren, 158, 170
Kirby, Marvin, 111
Kirkland, Samuel, 71, 73 Macall, Buzz, 50
Klamath Reservation, 79–80 MacCurdy, George Grant, 22
Kluckhohn, Clyde, 59, 108 MacDermott, Grace, 6
Knickerbocker, 111 Magenau, Gene, 17, 105, 106
Knopf, Alfred, 73 Magenau, Sally, 105, 106
Knowles, Sir Francis and Lady, 101 The Maine Woods (Thoreau), 16
Knox College, 159–60 Male, Dave, 163
Kohn, Bob, 111 Malinowski, Bronislaw, 31–32, 43
Krieger, Herbert, 63 Mandeno (Mr. and Mrs.), 162–63
Kroeber, A. L., 31, 48 Maoris of New Zealand, 158–68
Kurath, Eddie, 83 Marietta, Andy, 173
Kurath, Ellen, 83 marriage of William Fenton, 37–39, 170,
Kurath, Gertrude, 83 178n1
Kurath, Hans, 83 Marsden (Professor), 13
Marsden, Mary, 13
Lafitau, J. F., 53, 151 Martinez, Seferino, 76–78
LaFrance, Noah, 52 masks, Iroquois, 56, 124, 130, 134, 169,
Language (Sapir), 15, 53 175n1
“The Last Passenger Pigeon Hunts of the Mason, Helene, 20
Cornplanter Senecas” (Fenton), 62 Mason, Lena, 38
Lathem twins, 13 Mason, Roy M., 35, 38, 117, 118
Leacock, Craven, 17 Massachusetts Historical Society, 72
League of the Iroquois (Morgan), 33, 77 Mayflower Elementary School, 4
Lehman, Henri, 117 McCracken, Henry Noble, 18
Lehman, H. H., 117, 118 McCracken, Maisry, 18
Leland, Dean, 70 McFeat, Tom, 126, 141–42
Leroi-Gourhan, Andre, 132 McIlwraith, Thomas F., 141
Lesser, Al, 31 McKennan, Bob, 17
Lewis, Cliff, 152, 153 McNickle, Darcy, 74, 75, 76
Lewis, Dorothy, 46 Mead, Margaret, 31, 84, 137
Lewis, Ralph, 44, 46 medicine of the Iroquois, 57, 154
Library of Congress, 66, 67, 174 Mencken, H. L., 73
Lieder und Sagen aus Buin (Thurnwald), 61 Métraux, Alfred, 59, 93, 103, 104, 133
Lindig, 127–28 Metzge, Joan, 164, 166
Lindsay, Caroll, 140 Michelson, Truman, 39, 47
Lingelbach, William E. “Billy,” 72, 73 Midwinter Festival (Hawk Clan), 25, 28,
Linton, Ralph, 42, 46 46, 48
Lippman, Walter, 67 Millman, John, 8
Lismer, Marjorie, 44 The Mind of Primitive Man (Boas), 15
200 | inde x
Mittman, Carl, 59 Service: budget of, 114; Four Kings
Mohawk Indians, 52–53, 89, 171; sent to exhibit at, 115–18; new building for,
England as diplomats, 115–16 118–22; reorganization of by William
Moore, Elizabeth, 53, 151 Fenton, 113–15; William Fenton
Morehead, Warren King, 2 recruited by, 107–9; William Fenton’s
Morgan, Lewis Henry, 33, 49, 53, 124, 130, last years at, 139–44
133, 136–37, 155 New Zealand, 158–68
Morrell, William Parker, 166 Northwestern University, 69–70
Morse, Fred, 111 Norton, Buster, 106–7
Morton, Billy, 5, 7 Nourse, Anna Belle, 2. See also Fenton,
Moscow, 136–37 Anna Belle Nourse
Munich Ethnological Museum, 131 nrc. See National Research Council (nrc)
Murdock, George Peter, 18, 21 Nyquist, E. B. “Jo,” 120–21
Musee de l’Homme, 105, 117
Museo Goldi, 122–23 Oakfield ny, 38
Museum of the American Indian, 11, 159, O’Callaghan, E. B., 102
169 Octavec, Heinie, 5
music and dance, Iroquois, 24, 26, 37, 67, Oderagge, Professor, 133
83, 153 Oehser, Paul, 65–66, 94–95
mutual aid societies, 34 Office of Naval Intelligence, 61
Ogde, Eugene, 139
Nanticoke, Alex, 68 Ohsweken, Ontario, 55, 56, 67, 116, 172
Nash, Philleo, 74, 79 Oka (Lake of Two Mountains; Kanesatake),
National Academy of Sciences, 30, 177n3 53
National Endowment for the Humanities, Onandaga Indians: Longhouse, 54, 155;
169 wampum controversy and, 156–58
National Geographic Society, 159 Oneida Indians, 73, 171
National Intitutes of Health, 57 Opler, Morris, 62, 83
National Museum of Canada, 53 O’Reilly, Henry, 72
National Museum of Man, 141 Ortwine, Bonner, 75, 76, 108, 111, 113,
National Park Service, 44 138
National Research Council (nrc), 58, 59, Ortwine, Olive. See Fenton, Olive
69; Committee on Disaster Studies, Osgood, Cornelius, 18, 22, 72
91–94; Department of Defense and, Otago University, 159, 166
91–92 Ottawa, Ontario, 53, 141
National Youth Administration, 36 Overholser, Winifred, 67
Netherlands, 126, 131–32 Oxford University, 100–102
Newberry Library, 169
Newhouse, Seth, 72 Paar, Alexander, 131
New Rochelle ny, 3, 5, 6, 7, 12, 65, 109 Paar, Victoria, 131
Newsom, Carroll, 106–9, 111, 120 Park, Julie, 164
Newtown (Cattaraugus Reservation), 25, Park, Stuart, 164
27, 176n1 (chap. 3) Parker, Arthur C., 2, 35, 71
Newtown Longhouse, 26, 27 Parrish, Warren, 17
New York Historical Society, 72 Peabody Museum, 68, 72, 105
New York Indian Agency, 32 Pearl Harbor: attack on, 56, 57, 58, 63, 71
New York Public Library, 72 Pennsylvania Historical Commission, 60
New York State Department of Education, Perlmutter, Dean, 143
107 Peters, Andy, 43
New York State Historical Association, Peterson, Roger Tory, 95
173–74 Phonetic Transcription of American Indian
New York State Museum and Science Languages (Sapir), 23
i n d e x | 201
Pickering, Timothy, 72 Schmidt, Father, 103
Pitt-Rivers Museum, 100 Schniebbs, Otto, 44
Plains Indians, 22 Schuyler (General), 121
political history of the Iroquois, 71, 83–84 Schuyler, Peter, 117
Poor, John Merrill, 13–15 Schuyler, Philip, 72
Powell, J. Wesley, 65 Scrogg, Henan, 34, 38
Powless, Irving, 156 Seelye, Dorothea, 47–48
Prague, 5, 125, 126, 132–37 Seelye, Laurens, 42, 43, 44, 45, 47–48
Price, Leontyne, 103 Seneca Indians: Amos Snow of, 1–2;
Putnam, Herbert, 66 Cattaraugus and Allegany Reservations
of, 1, 10–11, 25, 37, 71; chiefs of,
Quain, Buell, 31 68–69, 171; clan system of, 176n2;
Queen Anne’s American Kings (Bond), 115 Condolence Council of, 56, 68; festivals
and ceremonies of, 26–27, 28–30,
Radcliffe-Brown, A. R., 32 170–71, 173–74; and language transla-
Ragged Mountain Club, 106–7 tion and phonetics, 23, 154–55; music
Rainey, Frolich, 152–53 and dance of, 24, 26, 37, 67; William
Randle, Colonel, 54 Fenton’s fieldwork among, 23–30,
Rau, Marjorie, 164, 165–66, 167 44–45, 52–56. See also Iroquois Indians
Redeye, Clara, 25, 27, 29, 37, 44 Seneca Nation, 1, 10, 23, 28, 33, 37, 142
Redeye, Henry, 27, 37 Setzler, Frank, 64
Redeye, Sherman, 27–28, 29, 37, 87 Shank, Anna Belle, 5
Red Power movement, 159 Shapiro, Harry, 107, 109, 119–20
Rehder, Harald, 66 Shenandoah, Leon, 170
Reichert, Fred, 11–12 Shervill, Cole, 161–63, 166
retirement of William Fenton, 169–74 Shimkin, Dimitri, 62
Rice, Norman, 111, 117 Shimony, Annemarie, 84
Richardson, “Cheerless,” 14 Shipman, Mrs., 94
Riegel, Robert, 14 Silverman (Professor), 14
Rietberg Museum, 134 Sioui sisters, 53
Ritchie, James, 166 Sisson, Fred, 44
Ritchie, William, 139 Six Nations, 54, 58, 67, 73, 101, 116, 124,
Rochester Museum, 35 141, 152–53; chiefs, 169–70, 172, 173
Rock-Carling, Ernest, 96 Skye, Howard, 68, 69, 124–25, 152–53, 154
Rockefeller, Mary Todd, 121 Skye, Jim, 146, 154–55, 172
Rockefeller, Nelson, 120–21, 140, 143, Skye, Peter, 170, 173
156–57 Slingerlands ny, xiii, 142–43, 172, 173
Roosevelt, Eleanor, 63–65 Smith, Ernest, 35
Royal Anthropological Institute, 97 Smith, Haxie, 142
Royal Ontario Museum, 140 Smithsonian Institute, 49, 58–60; Eleanor
Russia. See Soviet Union Roosevelt and, 63–65
Smithsonian War Committee, xi, 59, 60
Sage (Mrs.), 117 Snipe Clan (Seneca), 24–25, 27, 28, 176n2
Salamanca ny, 52, 53–54 Snow, Amos, 1–2, 10
Salt Creek Singers, 34, 37 Snow, Jonas, 10, 23–27, 28
Santa Fe Indian School, 75–78 Snow, Levi, 29
Sapir, Edward, 15, 18, 23, 36, 42, 49, 53, Snow, Linus, 24
57, 83, 101, 164 Snow, Windsor, 24
Saturday Review of Literature, 18 Snowsnake, 125
Saville Club of London, 94–95, 96 Snyder, Alexandra Lyle (Zama), 136
Schaeffer, Vincent, 120 Snyder, Franklin Bliss, 70–71
Schafer, Ann, 44 Snyder, Mayo, 173
202 | inde x
Social Science Research Council, 60 Tongan (husband of Marjorie Rau), 166
Society for Ethnohistory, xii, 172 Track team, 13–14, 18
Somerville (Dr.), 160, 161 Trager, George, 142
Soper, Dud, 163 translation and phonetics, 23
South Mall, xi, 121, 157 Trigger, Bruce, 56
Sorcerers of Dobu (Fortune), 43 True, Webster, 59
Soviet Union: delegates to the icaes, 124, Truman, Harry, 74
132–33; William Fenton in, 136–37 Turkey, Emma, 25, 27
Speck, Frank, 30, 67–68 Turkey Run va, 50, 58, 69, 75, 105, 111,
Speyer, Arthur, 127–28 146
Spier, Leslie, 30, 108 Turner, Geoffrey, 100–101, 102
Spring, Hanover, 35–36 Tuwhare, Home, 161
Stagg, 70 Tyler, E. B., 101, 172
State Ethnographical Museum of
Stockholm, 130 Uncle Will, 10
State University of New York, xi, 92, 142, University Museum (University of
144 Pennsylvania), 101, 124, 152
Steinmetz (Professor), 5–6 University of Chicago, 22
University of Michigan, 83–84
Steffens, Lincoln, 78
University of Pennsylvania, 30, 69, 124, 158
Stevens, Didi, 105
University of Zurich, 134
Stevens, S. S. “Smitty,” 91–92, 105, 107
U.S. Geological Survey, 114, 139
Steward, Julian, 48, 50, 56, 59
U.S. Indian Service, 14, 32–37
Stewart, T. Dale, 49–50
U.S. National Museum (usnm), 59. See also
Stewart, W. K., 15
American Anthropological Association
Stiles, Ezra, 21
Stirling, Matthew W., 22, 38–39, 45, 47,
Vail, R. W. G., 72, 121
48, 65
Vargas (President), 122
St. Lawrence University, 42–46
Vibbard, Harry, 37
Stone, Edward Durell, 143
Vienna, 102–5, 128, 132
Straub, Millie, 159
Viking Fund, 69, 72
Strauss, Roger, 141
Visscher map, 131
Strong, William Duncan, 22, 32, 59–60
The Study of Man (Linton), 42 Voegelin, Carl, 69, 71
suicide, Iroquois, 49
Sundown, Roland, 76 Wades-in-water, Julia, 81
suny Albany, 151–53 Wagley, Charles, 122–23
Swanton, John R., 47, 48, 50, 56, 110–11 Walden, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack
Sweden, 130 Rivers (Thoreau), 16
Switzerland, 133–35 Wallace, Anthony F. C., 84, 158–59
Wallace, Henry, 70
Tahamont, Bob, 35 Wallace, Paul, 71–72, 73
Taliafero (Postmaster), 81 wampum collections, 155–58, 169–72
Tanner, Helen Hornbeck, 83–84 War Background Studies, 60
Tannous, Afif, 43, 93–94 Warburg, Edward, 120–21
Taos Pueblo nm, 75–78 Warburg, Mrs., 128–29
Tenzor, Al, 6 Washburn, Wilcomb, 66–67
Te Rangi Hiroa (Sir Peter Buck), 23, 159, Washington Academy of Sciences, 64
168 Waugh, F. W., 52, 53
Thurnwald, Richard, 61 Weckler, Joe, 80
Tiyendanega, 117 West, Herbert Faulkner, 15, 16
Tonawanda community of Iroquois, 33–36, Western Historical Association, 172
38, 76, 101 Westport ct, 11–12
i n d e x | 203
Wetmore, Alexander, 59, 74, 100 Witherell, “Spike,” 139
Wheeler, Paul, 143 Woodbury, Hanni, 155
White, Leslie, 22, 83 World War II: Committee on Disaster
White, Reuben, 29 Studies and, 91–94; Eleanor Roosevelt
Whitehill, Walter Muir, 61 during, 63–65; the Smithsonian
The White Roots of Peace (Wallace), 72 Institute during, 58–63
Who’s Who in America, 70 Wormington, Marie, 103
Wiesner, Jerry, 67 Wormley, 13
Wilbur Cross Medal, 148, 149 Wright, Asher, 71, 79
Wilder, Beth, 83 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 70, 71
Wilderness Society, 66 writings of William Fenton, 56–57, 62–63,
Wilding, Anthony, 48 73, 83, 94, 151, 154–55, 169, 172
Williams, Paul, 169
Wilson, Commissioner, 108–9 Yale University, 21–23, 30–32, 72, 148–49
Wilson, Dermot, 95 Yseppe, Cathy, 161–63, 166
Wilson, Edmund, 141 Yuman Tribes of the Gila River (Spier), 30
Wilson, Peter, 159
Winkel, George, 151 Zahnhiser, Harold, 66
Winkel, Nina, 151 Zenner, Walter, 143
Winternitz, Dean, 92 Zimmerman, Canon, 117
Wissler, Clark, 18, 21–22, 23, 75 Zurack, Costi, 94
204 | inde x
In The Iroquoians and Their World