Ethnohistory: An Ethnological Point of View

Author(s): Nancy Oestreich Lurie

Source: Ethnohistory , Winter, 1961, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Winter, 1961), pp. 78-92
Published by: Duke University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/480349

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 ETHNOHISTORY: AN ETHNOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW

Nancy Oestreich Lurie

Wayne State University

We were going into the last inning of my Ph. D. oral exam

when someone pitched me a curve. The rather extensive use

of documentary sources in my thesis on the Winnebago Indians

inspired a member of the committee to ask whether it would
be possible to do an ethnohistorical study of Paris during the
French Revolution. I said, Yes. Unfortunately, that was not
the expected answer and my questioner pointed out that such a
study would merely be HISTORY. Ethnohistorical method
- he purposely eschewed the noun, ethnohistory - means re-
course to documents to help fill gaps and pin down times and
places in acculturational studies.

Perhaps it has been my own continuing sense of pique and

personal inadequacy in fluffing the question which accounts for
my subsequent interest in ethnohistory. I find that I cannot
agree with my professor but must admit his question was a good
one. It is the only one I remember. As I began to think about
it, the question raised an interesting distinction: is ethnohistory
(or ethnohistorical method) the special use of documentary
evidence, or the use of documentary evidence only for special
people ? By and large, the ethnologist leans toward the latter
definition, that is, the use of historical records in regard to
pre-literates, non-industrialized peoples, or whatever term
may be preferred for those groups who are the traditional concern
of the ethnologist.

78

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 Symposium: Ethnology 79

Actually, ethnologists have concerned themselves with

peasant and urban societies in the industrialized world, and

even with entire nations in the case of studies of character

structure. Whether termed ethnohistorical or not, these re-

searches have certainly employed documentary evidence along

with observational and interview data. Furthermore, unless

the term acculturation be expanded beyond all categorical

utility, accounts of national character structure as well as
"standard" ethnological publications have used historical evi-
dence for more than acculturational questions.
As far as that nagging question of the French Revolution
goes, we seem to be dealing with a slippery semantic distinction.
It is comparable to the old line between sociology and anthro-
pology; people who wear breech cloths, dhotis or nothing belong
to the ethnologist and ethnohistorian, while people who wear

pants belong to the sociologist, and, in the pre- zipper era,

belong to the social historian. The point is that ethnohistory
involves the special use of documents and can be applied beyond
special, "exotic" peoples although such utilization is not often
made.

Two striking facts emerge in any consideration of the state

of ethnohistory today as it is utilized by ethnologists. First, it
is not a new method or area of investigation - indeed, it is as
old as ethnology itself - but during the last fifteen years or so
ethnologists have become exceedingly self-conscious about any
work they do of this kind. Second, while the basic methods of
using documentary evidence have been learned from the historian,
the ethnohistorian has also developed techniques of his own and
uses the evidence for a variety of purposes beyond historical
concerns with acculturation and diffusion. 1

Perusal of ethnographic monographs of fifty and more years

ago reveal extensive and matter of fact references to manuscript

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 80 Ethnohistory

and other primary and original historical sources. Since the

turn of the century there have been periods of lesser utilization
of documentary evidence but never a total hiatus. The present
development of specialists in ethnohistory may be partly traced,
I believe, to changes in the fields of history and in technology
which were external to ethnology but which exerted a profound
influence on it. At the same time, developments internal to
ethnology account for new uses of historical materials which

distinguish ethnohistory today from the documentary applications

of such scholars as James M. Mooney and his contemporaries.
The fact is that the ethnologist cum ethnohistorian has not
"discovered" documentary evidence and methods of historical
research, but is discovering historiography. He is beginning
to appreciate that the historian has long since ceased to simply
chronicle events in the manner of an Otto of Freising but is
concerned with larger generalizations. The field of history is
no more static than ethnology and just as we engage in "re-visit"
researches, the historian likewise reassesses the Civil War,
the French Revolution, the Colonial Period, and the like on the
basis of newly discovered data and improved methodology. Thus,
the entire history of the frontier, or the policies and their im-
plementation during the Jackson administration are as pertinent
to the understanding of the fortunes of a specific Indian tribe as
the particular treaties which impinged directly on their history.
Likewise, British colonial administration, for example, is a
matter which must be understood as it developed throughout a
far flung empire over a period of time and not just a particular
thorn in the particular side of a particular tribe of American
Indians, horde of Australians, or village of Hindus.
We have long been in the historian's debt in using materials
edited and published for scholarly use and for bibliographic
publications. The historians have provided us with increasing

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 Symposium: Ethnology 81

amounts of such information and have stimulated ethnologists to

seek out and prepare manuscripts for publication. The augmenting
and increasingly effective organization of archival collections
have benefited the ethnologist as well as the historian and have

inspired such specifically ethnohistorical archives as those of

the Great Lakes-Ohio Valley Research Project at Bloomington,
Indiana. In short, some of the interest in ethnohistory at the
present time relates to the fact that we are acquiring more
data to work with. It should be noted that even at the turn of

the century there were ethnologists such as David I. Bushnell

who sought out manuscript materials and edited them for publi-
cation, but until fairly recently most of the standard references
used by ethnologists were edited by historians. We shall doubt-
less continue to leave much of the task to historians, concentrat-

ing our efforts on seeking out manuscripts which contain a wea

of ethnological data but often hold little of interest to historians.
Of great significance in the new impetus given historical
studies is the development of inexpensive photo-copy techniques
for the use of scholars. Ethnologists have been hampered in
terms of time and money in making the fullest use possible of
existing documentary evidence. The ethnologist's main task is
usually field research and often he could not afford to travel
widely to study a single journal or set of letters of which he had
heard and which might possibly contain information of use to
him. Perhaps it is crass and unscholarly to dwell on the economic
advantages of microfilms,. photostats, and the like, but the fact
is that the increasing use of documentary materials stems in part
from their greater availability through photo-copy devices. Like-
wise, if the scholar must travel to make proper use of certain
resources, this has become more feasible with the development
of air travel since the second World War. Thus, thanks to the

assiduous work of historians and the inspiration they ha

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 82 Ethnohistory

vided as well as to technological developments over the last

twenty years, quantities of new data have been provided the

ethnologist.

Turning to developments in ethnology we see further rea-

sons for the intensification of interest in ethnohistory. The plea
for trained, impartial and purposeful observers voiced in the
early days of the scientific study of culture reflected dissatis-
faction with the need to rely on the casual and fortuitous cultural
data available in accounts of travelers, missionaries, and the

like. Historical materials continued to be used but became

largely a helpful adjunct giving some time depth to the expand-

ing body of ethnographic literature. Ethnology became increas-

ingly scientific and the desire for observational data collected
according to fairly standardized procedures and providing
comparative information on critical topics grew out of the re-
quirement of any science to recognize and exercise some control
over variables. Likewise, the fear that ethnographic data were
in imminent danger of being lost resulted in concentration on
reconstructions of "aboriginal" culture on the basis of the recol-
lections of the remaining elderly people in any group studied.
After all, any documentary evidence could be allowed to gather
dust, but old informants were dying off.
Further disregard for documentary, that is, historical,
materials resulted from the impact of the early and highly
ahistorical premises of functionalism. As we all know, even
the recollections of old informants were disparaged. Although
functionalism became reconstructed and modified, the attitude

it engendered in the first dedicated followers helps to explain,

for example, why Felix M. Keesing in 1939 implied in the in-
troduction to his monograph on the Menomini Indians that he
was doing unique and pioneering work in his extensive use of
documentary sources. Z

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 Symposium: Ethnology 83

The growing refinements in ethnographic research and

ethnological theory gave rise to a new appreciation of cultural
data contained in old records. Continuing to recognize that
such information is not always reliable, the ethnologist became
gradually adept at gleaning such sources more thoroughly. I
believe that the current fascination with ethnohistory stems from
the exciting discoveries in the historical literature made pos-
sible by our greater understanding of social processes. The
increasing availability of documentary resources permit more
corroborative and qualifying testimony on given points. Further-
more, we have learned to evaluate the reliability of documentary
"informants" for our own purposes and beyond the methods of
ordinary historical assessments. The ethnologist seeking rather
special types of data has been able to bring to bear social insights
which enable him to recognize the difference between special
pleading and accurate argument, a poor observer and a good one,
and the social status, conditions for observation, and even per-
sonal quirks reflected in some writings which can be expected
to produce reliable facts or recognizable skewing of information.
As far as I know, no one has set down guides for this type
of analysis of documentary accounts, 3 but when ethnohistorians
get together and talk about their work, it is obvious that they
operate along similar lines in testing the reliability of historical
information. It would probably be no easier to instruct students
in these techniques than it is in trying to impart such methods of
dealing with informants in the field as establishing rapport,
achieving empathy, avoiding the pitfalls of certain types of
emotional involvements, and discerning the personality and
social roles of informants as tests of their qualifications in
providing given information. However, just as the ethnographer
must always depart from the rules or use them in his special

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 84 Ethnohistory

fashion, so the ethnohistorian must learn to play it "by eye"

if not "by ear" a's in field work.

I think it is this implicit awareness of technique which ac-

counts to some extent for the insistence that ethnohistorians

are a special breed of ethnologists and for the rejection of the

idea expressed in some quarters that all ethnologists can or
do employ ethnohistorical method as the need arises. One

does acquire a sense of confidence in the use of documentary

materials and a nose for sniffing out historical sources as a
result of long and varied practice. However, it is unfortunate
if we lose sight of the fact that we are ethnologists first and
cannot be effective ethnohistorians or apply ethnohistorical
method effectively without a sound ethnological foundation
for research. My personal feeling is that ethnohistory ought
not become an end in itself but a source of enrichment of the
ethnological literature and that those of us who would concentrate

on this type of research should recognize that there are types

of ethnological studies in which it has limited utility or none
at all.

There is a final point in regard to the expanding use of

documentary materials which I believe is pertinent in reference
to our increasing skill in distilling more pure cultural essence
from such data. The old criticism still holds that information
contained in historical sources was usually recorded by untrained
outsiders whose ways were alien to the group described. We
can use these sources, but must allow for distortions in them.
Furthermore, the unevenness of spatial and temporal coverage
by historical documentation in regard to pre-literate peoples
results in limitations on data to be used for comparative purposes.
We cannot send people back in time with Dr. Wonmug's wonder-
ful machine they way we can send ethnographers into unreported
societies. Although ethnographers are faced with rapid cultural

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 Symposium: Ethnology 85

change and must ruefully admit that certain types of field data
are lost forever, ethnography is still amenable to more pur-
poseful collections of data than is obtainable through merely
seeking into historical records.

However, ethnologists who utilize documentary materials

make the assumption that we use the work of untrained observers
as effectively as we can because in the past there were no
trained ethnographers. As documentary data stemming from
other than ethnographic sources become more recent, we tend
to disregard them. For some reason the word ETHNOHISTORY

like the word HISTORY evokes a notion of respectability based

on antiquity. Although the ethnologist often uses contemporary
statistical records in his work, he frequently ignores the fact
that a great deal of other ethnographic information is currently
collected by non-anthropologists whose training in other fields
often validates their observations, or that the observations can

be used qualifiedly after being submitted to the same tests ap-

plied to older documents. I am indebted to my colleague Dr.
Arnold Pilling, for example, who has pointed out the wealth of
cultural data he has acquired through his subscription to a news
clipping service in Australia which sends him any items con-
cerning the area and peoples of interest to him. - Furthermore,
for a minimum of cost and a great saving of time to the scholar
one has, in effect, a full-time research assistant keeping
constant track of a particular source of information.
This resource, again a reflection of improvements in com-
munication, would have particular value for people working
outside the North American field, far from non-literate informants
with whom they cannot exchange correspondence about current
events in the group. On the other hand, often incidents are not
reported in big city dailies even in this country and in this con-
nection Pilling has been alerted to chance archaeological

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 86 Ethnohistory

discoveries and local events concerning Indians in Michigan

through a news service which clips all items from even the
small town dailies and weeklies in the state.

This is but one source of ethnological materials collected

by non-anthropologists which the specialist in ethnohistory is

particularly qualified to use because of his familiarity with the
precautions and techniques developed as a result of using older
documentary resources. Maps, for example, do not have to
be old to be useful when one considers the socio-economic data

available in maps of urban and semi-urban areas prepared by

insurance companies.
Likewise, relatively recent pictorial records can sometimes
be as valuable for acculturational study as the depictions by
John White are in setting forth material culture of aboriginal
Virginia in the 17th century. Again I would like to advert to
Pilling's work in acquiring old collections of picture postcards
from many parts of the world. Granting that there is a good
deal of chaff in such collections, there are also chance pictorial
records of items of material culture preserved in no other
sources. Another little appreciated source of data lies in the
negative files of photographers who have worked in a given area
over a long period of years. Recently I had occasion to go
through a collection of several hundred portraits of Winnebago
Indians covering the period of about 1890 to 1930.4 The earliest
"Sunday best" outfits for picture taking looked like the costumes
depicted by George Catlin and other artists of the early 19th
century, but by 1910 most men were photographed in White styles
of clothing while women retained modified versions of the older
fashion. During the 1920's women began appearing in "flapper"
styles, but by the 1930's pan-Indian influences were documented
in pictures showing white buckskin pow-wow costumes. In
addition to taking portraits, the first photographers at Black

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 Symposium: Ethnology 87

River Falls, Wisconsin, were interested enough in the local

Indians to record group scenes at the time of treaty payments,
the ravages of a small pox epidemic in 1900-1901, and examples
of wigwams ranging from those covered with elm bark to those

covered with tarpaper.

As well as recognizing the increase in historical materials
made available in recent years, the purposes to which documentary

materials are put by ethnohistorians are worthy of consideration.

Although ethnologists usually do not confine themselves to a single
approach, several distinct types of utilization may be discerned.
First, there is the simple matter of history itself. Important

dates, persons, and events are marshalled, usually in chrono-

logical order and the heretofore unwritten history of a group is
set forth. The ethnologist usually brings to bear special knowledge
of the group, linguistic insights, and understanding of cultural
phenomena which allow him to utilize the data more fully than
would the average historian. Such reconstructions may be
substantiated and enlarged on the basis of the oral traditions
of the group, or the documents may suggest new or more precise
interpretations of oral history. In this and in other types of
documentary utilization, I believe the most productive technique
rests in the opportunity to go back and forth from field to library.
This is not always possible, but frequently documents studied
before field work take on new meaning and should be reviewed in

the light of ethnographic information. Moreover, field data some-

times suggest looking in sources previously ignored as probably
not useful.

In many cases such studies are actually attempts to pinpoint

sources and dates of innovations and identify influential individuals

figuring in the acculturational experiences of a group. This, of

course, is a common definition of ethnohistory. However, by
combining historical method and cultural considerations it has

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 88 Ethnohistory

been possible on occasion to write entire ethnographies about

a people now extinct or socially identifiable but culturally in-
distinguishable from their neighbors who stem from other
ancestry. Studies of the Powhatan Confederacy begun by Mooney,
Bushnell, Frank G. Speck, and their contemporaries, and fully
developed by Maurice Mook have resulted in almost as complete
an ethnographic and acculturational description of the Virginia
Indians of 1607-1687 as a field worker could wish for.5
Usually such work entails a scouring of the literature and
comparison of bits and pieces provided by a variety of writers.
However, on occasion the ethnologist is blessed with a particular
chronicler whose impartiality and thoroughness would have
virtually qualified him as a student of Franz Boas. The ethnol-

ogist's job consists in identifying equivocal terms, noting lacunae,

qualifying questionable generalizations, and the like.
Finally, there are those studies, most of them fairly recent,
which transcend simple history, acculturational documentation,
or assessment and scientific categorization of old descriptive
accounts. These investigations grapple with theoretical questions
and are an outgrowth and refinement of earlier types of studies

rather than differing from them in kind. I have in mind A. Ir

Hallowell's work on personality structure of Indians of the north-
east, particularly the Ojibwa, 6 and Ernestine Friedl's brief b
succinct review of the work of Hallowell and others in terms of the

historical forces accounting for the persistence of Ojibwa person-

ality structure in the face of tremendous cultural change. Friedl
concludes that the historical experiences of the Ojibwa which
necessitated great cultural adjustments and alterations neverthe-
less served to justify and perpetuate a personality orientation
which accepts uncertainty as the nature of the universe and bases

survival on avoidance of long range planning, abstract goals,

and permanent personal commitments. 7 Anthony F. C. Wallace's

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 Symposium: Ethnology 89

work on the meaning of

study of the growth of a
studies published within the last ten years reflect a real inte-
gration of historical and ethnological method and theory to deal
with entire theoretical premises. Where adequate documentation
exists, this approach is gradually supplanting the simple specify-

ing of acculturational occurrences or the use of documents in the

brief introductory statement or chapter, usually entitled "historic
background," preceding the main business at hand of ethnological
description and theory based exclusively on field work.
In conclusion, I think the following generalizations may be
made concerning the use of ethnohistory by ethnologists. First,
ethnohistory is an old technique and has become an intensified

type of endeavor rather than a newly discovered or even revived

field. It has certain limitations; there is a finite number of

useful documents, and although some still remain to be discovered,

they are not an endless resource. We cannot organize field trips
into the past or increase amount of information set down. In

recent years we have benefitted by the increasing availability

and quantitative increase in source materials and by the de-
velopment of special skills utilizing these sources. However,
there remain two notes of warning.
We must beware lest we develop an antiquarian bias and
neglect using our skills on contemporary documents which do
not happen to be labeled "ethnology." As a matter of fact, we
should be warned by the fact that even yesterday's ethnography
sometimes becomes today's historical document requiring
special assessments and tests of validity.
Finally, and perhaps this is heresy, I believe the ethnologist
specializing in ethnohistory should not lose sight of his discipli-
narian origins. The ethnologist using historical documents
should control not only the methods of historical research, but

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 90 Ethnohistory

should also have a sound training in ethnology and all it implies.

This includes concern for the development of valid cultural
and social generalizations, 'laws" if you will, and adequate
experience in field work. One does not necessarily have to do
field work on the group studied in terms of documents - as
noted above, some groups can be studied only from documents.
However, I am of the strong opinion that the intellectual dis-

cipline of making observations from life are a pre-requisite in

deriving the special kinds of data sought in historical sources
by the ethnologist and in making the necessary assessments of
chroniclers one may cite.

Notes

1. Fenton, The Training of Historical Ethnologists in

America. This excellent paper traces the use of historical
materials by anthropologists and points out new directions for
such research.

2. Keesing, The Menomini Indians of Wisconsin. The sub-

title of the monograph is "a study of three centuries of cultural
change, " reflecting the interest in historical precision and
processes of acculturation which began to come into prominence
during the 1930's.

3. Fenton, The Training of Historical Ethnologists in Amer-

ica, pp. 336-337, stresses the need to train ethnologists in
historical methods and suggests techniques of working back in
time. He notes that the good field worker is capable of making
very special assessments of historical materials but does not
grapple with the problem of actual technique.

4. Photographic Collection, Public Library, Black River

Falls, Wisconsin. Although the value of photographic materials
has been long recognized, collections of the type cited are nota-
ble insofar as the Indian portraits were neither taken nor as-
sembled for anthropological purposes such as the extensive

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 Symposium: Ethnology 91

photograph collection of the Bureau of American Ethnology.

The pictures represent Indians as they wished themselves to
be remembered by their families and require the usual caution
of distinguishing ideal from real behavior in dealing with ethno-
graphic data. However, such protraits also have a special
value as personal documents in contrast to pictures resulting
from the interests of the photographer, whether an anthropologist
or an interested tourist.

5. Lurie, Indian Cultural Adjustment to European Civili-

zation, reviews the rich historical documentation of the period
1607-1687 regarding the Indians of Virginia as well as the
increasingly intensive and theoretically refined ethnohistorical
utilization of these sources between 1907 and 1957.

6. Hallowell, Some Psychological Characteristics of the

Northeastern Indians.

7. Friedl, Persistence of Chippewa Culture and Personality.

8. Wallace, Dreams and the Wishes of the Soul; A Type of

Psychoanalytic Theory among the Seventeenth Century Iroquois.

9. Hickerson, The Genesis of a Trading Post Band: The

Pembina Chippewa.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fenton, William N., The Training of Historical Ethnologists

in America (American Anthropologist, n. s., vol. 54,
pp. 328-339, 1952)

Friedl, Ernestine, Persistence of Chippewa Culture and Per-

sonality (American Anthropologist, n. s., vol. 58, pp.
814-825, 1956)

Hallowell, A. Irving, Some Psychological Characteristics of

the Northeastern Indians (in Frederick Johnson, ed., Papers
of the Robert S. Peabody Foundation for Archeology, vol.
3, pp. 195-225, Andover, Massachusetts, 1946)

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 92 Ethnohisto ry

Hickerson, Harold, The Genesis of a Trading Post Band: The

Pembina Chippewa (ETHNOHISTORY, vol. 3, pp. 289-345,
1956)

Keesing, Felix M., The Menomini Indians of Wisconsin (Mem-

oirs of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 11, Phila-
delphia, 1939)

Lurie, Nancy O., Indian Cultural Adjustment to European

Civilization (in James M. Smith, ed., Seventeenth Century
Virginia, pp. 33-60, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1959)

Wallace, Anthony F. C., Dreams and the Wishes of the Soul;

A Type of Psychoanalytic Theory among the Seventeenth
Century Iroquois (American Anthropologist, n. s. , vol. 60,
pp. 234-248, 1958)

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