Research history of the Indian cultures of North America

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The research history of the Indian cultures of North America goes back to the phase of the first contacts between Indians and Europeans. Mission and exploitation interests were initially in the foreground during the research. The more scientifically oriented phase also reflects European and American concepts into which the Indian perspective, except as a historical source or ethnological informant, was rarely incorporated.

Only the consideration of the history of the ethnic groups and the political resistance to their cultural assimilation has led to greater consideration of indigenous concepts. The sciences themselves are increasingly viewed as part of colonization.

Pre-scientific observations

Up until the end of the 18th century, compilations and records of observations served primarily practical purposes. They should not only lead to better knowledge of the regional conditions, but above all serve to make the "New World" and its inhabitants useful. Conversely, the scientific prerequisites first had to be created and wanted in order to be able to develop an ethnological and historical theoretical structure.

Therefore, primarily three groups dealt with the Indians, namely missionaries , scientists and numerous people with antiquarian interests, whose main focus drew from different sources. Above all the early missionaries, especially the Jesuits , collected large amounts of material, especially about languages, because they quickly realized that missionary work was impossible without language skills. Historical interest arose from the difficulty of relating the new peoples to the text of the Bible. The question of descent from one of the Lost Tribes of Israel was thus given a certain space.

In the first historical comparisons of cultures, a point of view appears that still has an impact today: The Indians were suitable for reflecting on European cultures from a comparative perspective . In his appendix to Nouveaux Voyages of 1703 , Louis-Armand de Lahontan had a Huronian philosopher appear as a plaintiff against European double standards and the corruption of morals (“Dialogues curieux avec un sauvage”). Another comparison of a more historical nature was used by Joseph-François Lafitau in 1724 in his Moeurs des Sauvages Ameriquains, comparées aux premiers temps (“Morals of the American savages, compared with the earliest times”). In it he systematically compared the culture of the Iroquois and other American peoples with the manners and customs of the peoples of European antiquity.

The traveller's will to learn should not be underestimated. As early as 1744 Johannes Caspar Hirzel wrote that it was the ideal of the “philosophical travel writer” that he recognized that “these savages have more rights to regard the civilized guests who rob them of their goods and freedom as wild” - a reversal that only reappeared in the scientific discourse over two hundred years later.

The Codex canadiensis , created around 1700 and written by the Jesuit Louis Nicolas , is an exception . He was not concerned with moral judgment or religious goals. He tried to depict numerous plants and animals in 180 illustrations, but above all the Indians and their tools, to which he devoted 19 pages. Many of his depictions are based on François du Creux : Historiae canadensis seu Novae Franciae Libri Decem , Paris 1666, but his tattoos, pipes, of which one usually only finds the heads, hairstyles, clothes and jewelry are unique. His work found no reception because it was lost until 1930 and is still only available in a moderate edition on the Internet .

The interests that fueled the research work of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were much more established. The Lewis and Clark Expedition from 1804 to 1806 explored the American Northwest on behalf of President Thomas Jefferson . It was supposed to investigate the areas still to be conquered there. Despite this rather negative perspective, prehistoric and linguistic records were made - they even dug up a mound - and language samples were collected. Further army expeditions followed, which together with the knowledge of the fur traders developed a more precise picture of the individual groups.

Scientification

In 1787, Alexandre-César Chavannes advocated the term “ethnology” for research into the phases of human progress. The historian Arnold Heeren gave the first lecture in 1802 on “General country and ethnology or a crit. and systemat. The epitome of our current knowledge of the earth and the peoples that inhabit it ”. Georg Forster asked the question in his travels around the world:

“Who can prove that that salt of universal European knowledge could not season them (the indigenous peoples) with new humanity, even without transforming them into Europeans? The beautiful appearance of the manifold did not have to be lost in the human race. "

The questions of enrichment and assimilation, but also the feeling of cultural superiority were expressed here, as well as the hope of preserving the “diversity”.

Scientists were always present on expeditions, such as 1820 to 1821 when exploring the headwaters of the Mississippi . The geologist Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793–1864) took part and published his six-volume work on History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States , a monumental, first overview of the cultures of the indigenous peoples of North America from 1851 to 1856 .

Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881), who is considered a co-founder of ethnology, wrote the first individual study . His League of the Ho-de-no-sau-neeor Iroquois of 1851 was the first monographic description of a North American people. It was created with the support of Seneca Ely Parker , the first indigenous Commissioner of Indian Affairs . For the first time , kinship was no longer recognized simply as a genetic descent, but as a culturally determined area. Morgan made the kinship organization the key to the history of human development ( Ancient Society , 1877). He is considered a representative of neoevolutionism and took the view of an ascending development of human culture.

Another aspect of the research emerged in the 1860s. Dr. Ploss in the foreword to Theodor Waitz ' Die Inder Nordamerica's with the words:

“ This book ... deals with one of the most important questions of human welfare, the well-being and woe of a whole great race underestimated and persecuted by the whites - and as a good advocate of this race, it addresses the understanding of all educated people. "

One of the most influential figures in American ethnology was Franz Boas . He traveled to Baffinland in 1883/84 and developed concepts of participatory observation and stationary field research, such as Heinrich Klutschak , Als Eskimo among Eskimos , used among the Inuit . This observation technique was developed at the same time by Frank Hamilton Cushing among the Zuñi . On the northwest coast, indigenous middlemen collected texts in their own language as the primary sources of their culture.

The four-field anthropology developed in which ethnology , prehistory , linguistics, and physical anthropologists were seen as a unified science of man.

Institution development

Scientific societies

In 1839 the Société d'Ethnologie was founded in Paris as a model for many scientific societies. Ethnology was initially a branch of historical research that wanted to research the state of nature and the following stages of development among the "original" (primitives) or "primitive peoples". The idea of ​​evolution from the primitive to the higher dominated. In terms of religious history, this series rose from atheism to fetishism and shamanism to monotheism .

In 1842 Albert Gallatin and John Russell Bartlett founded the American Ethnological Society (AES). Of the numerous members, including doctors, politicians, lawyers, and clergy, few were field researchers. The early debates revolved around the question of whether the research should primarily serve the purpose of proselytizing or whether the topic itself had a right to exist. This lack of field research and ideological appropriation almost led to the dissolution of society after twenty years. In 1899 the American Anthropological Association (AAA) was created, which acted more on a national level. She took on the American Anthropologist .

Only shortly before the turn of the century, when the four fields of research archeology, linguistics, physical anthropology and socio-cultural anthropology had become established, did the AES allow new structures and recover from the long decline. The professionalization was also reflected in a stronger connection to Columbia University . In 1916 she adapted her organization to the extent that the American Ethnological Society, Inc. emerged from a member society of private individuals . This allowed her to grow beyond the New York framework. In addition to Franz Boas himself, the members included numerous of his students, such as Elsie Clews Parsons , Alexander Alexandrovich Goldenweiser , Robert Lowie , Ruth Benedict , Ella C. Deloria , Ruth Bunzel and Clark Wissler . Soon, members of the AES automatically became members of the American Anthropological Association. Publication activities were again directed by Franz Boas, the first monographs appeared from 1940.

The American Ethnologist has been published since 1972, trying to break away from the four-field focus of anthropology in the title. The AES has been incorporated into the AAA since the 1980s. In 1879 John Wesley Powell established the Bureau of (American) Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution. In 1883 the Anthropological Society of Washington was founded , which from 1889 was called the American Anthropologist. Separately from this, in 1885 a separate Women's Anthropological Society of Washington was established .

An International Americanist Congress has been held every two years from 1875 (every three years since 1976), but its focus is on Latin America.

Research societies were not only established in America, but also in Europe, such as the Société des Américanistes de Paris in 1889 .

For a long time it was dominated by an ahistorical ethnography, which was also little interested in the present, and which even often described past conditions in the historical present. In contrast, ethnohistorical societies such as the American Society for Ethnohistory founded in 1954 were directed .

In line with the scientific currents of the 1970s, the more interdisciplinary American Indian Workshop was created in 1980 , with a focus on North America.

Museums

The museums were also distinct centers of research until the beginning of the 20th century. However, they were more closely linked to the natural sciences. The US National Museum of Natural History in Washington , which is run by the Smithsonian Institution , the American Museum of Natural History, pointed the way . Franz Boas led the Jesup North Pacific Expedition from 1897 to 1902, examining the cultural relationships between northwestern North America and North Asia.

The factory owner Guntram Hämmerle (1862–1923) in an "Indian" costume, which he had probably acquired from the famous Indian scout Curly in 1893 at the world exhibition in Chicago
Portrait of Absarokee - then called Crow - Curley (around 1856-1923)

One of the oldest museums, however, is the Peabody Museum at Harvard University in Cambridge, founded in 1866 . Its director Frederic Ward Putnam was commissioned in 1890 to prepare an anthropological department for the 1893 World's Fair , which was to take place in Chicago . Putnam explicitly wanted to use it to advance research. He hired Franz Boas and George Amos Dorsey for the viewing and collection. The 50,000 exhibits procured by around 100 employees formed the basis for the exhibition, which was titled Anthropology: Man and His Work. ( Anthropology : Man and his work) received. As early as 1891 Putnam suggested the establishment of a museum for the period after the exhibition.

The Field Museum was a natural history museum that emerged from the collection of exhibits brought together on the occasion of the 1893 World's Fair. Initially, as the Columbian Museum of Chicago, it had a very broad, also artistic collection mandate, but when it was renamed in 1905 - the first President Edward E. Ayer had persuaded Marshall Field to set up a large foundation - it concentrated on natural sciences and ethnology. Ayer himself contributed a more natural science library.

Photo from the Pan American Exhibition in Buffalo, 1901

From around 1920 the ethnological collecting and research activities of the museums declined.

The National Museum of the American Indian in New York, which emerged from the George Heye collection , has been part of the Smithsonian Institution since 1989. In 2004 it became the largest museum for Indian culture, with around 800,000 exhibits and 125,000 photos.

Universities

The Columbia University was connected with the name of Franz Boas, who until his death dominated. His students also initially mastered teaching. But new lines and directions were developed. Julian Steward turned his attention to cultural ecology and followed a multilinear evolution.

At the University of California , Berkeley , the scientists Alfred Kroeber and Robert Lowie exerted influence, at the University of Chicago it was Fred Eggan (1906–1991) who was more committed to British functionalism and historical particularism (see also: cultural relativism ) was.

The University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), however, was discredited by Leslie White . It was not so much his anti-racist and anti-evolutionary theses that were decisive, but his membership in the Socialist Labor Party of America . He was also in opposition to Franz Boas. The historical process, however, was not the object of the contradiction: Leslie White tried, using the diachronic approach of Alfred Radcliffe-Brown and Bronisław Malinowski, to show the formal structure of a society and the functional relationships of its elements much more strongly.

Development of schools

The pronounced retrospective interest of early American ethnology, thus in written sources and memory ethnography, led many researchers to use the “ethnographic present” analogously to the historical one . A belief in the immutability of traditional cultures emerged. Their aim turned out to be increasingly unproductive. The parallelists believed in the same developmental facilities everywhere, which were represented in different cultures at different stages of development; the diffusionists, on the other hand, of historical dissemination and adoption of cultural elements .

In the 1930s, however, an examination of acculturation and the processes of cultural contact began, which was interested in the regularity of historical processes. These issues led to the question of whether these processes of cultural contact had ever been completed.

Bronislaw Malinowski ( Argonauts of the Western Pacific ) emphasized that a cultural phenomenon can only be properly understood if its impact on the other phenomena within the researched culture is taken into account. These interactions, which are based on underlying functional structures , behave like particles in a magnetic field (hence “field research”).

The proponents of structuralism ( Claude Lévi-Strauss : Les structures élémentaires de la parenté , 1949) looked for structures hidden under the visible surface of such structures. Some hoped to be able to trace all cultural manifestations back to mathematical rules. Her focus was on the myths and kinship systems.

Towards the end of the 20th century, the responsibility of ethnology itself moved more into focus. B. to what extent it can become the mouthpiece of an ethnic group, or a proponent of preserving ethnic diversity, and thus a basis for mutual cultural stimulation.

Criticism of the researched

When the Indian Claims Commission went public with its demands in 1946 , and the Indians reappeared as the active subjects of history, science reacted to external impulses. It developed, now dominant, new concepts of ethnohistory .

For a long time, concepts of indigenous ethnology and historiography, as developed by the end of the 19th century at the latest, had been largely ignored. The Osage Francis La Flesche (1857–1932), John Napoleon Brinton Hewitt (1859–1937) as Tuscarora , the Seneca Arthur C. Parker (1881–1955), but also Ella Cara Deloria ( Nakota ), Edward Dozier (1916–1971 ) ( Santa Clara Pueblo ) or Alfonso Ortiz (1939–1997) (San Juan Pueblo) should be mentioned here.

Despite their own research, the Indians increasingly understood the sciences as colonizing techniques of assimilation. Skepticism spread among them, but works were created from the perspective of the respective ethnic group, such as Vine Deloria junior : Custer Died for Your Sins (1969). Increasingly, the researchers asked for better control of the research results and asked about the benefits for them. At the same time it became increasingly clear that without the interpretation of the indigenous people themselves, large parts of the culture would remain incomprehensible.

In addition, since the 1980s, sacred and other objects, and above all human remains, have been reclaimed. These resulted in the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which created a legal right to return. For example, the deceased known as Buhl Woman was solemnly buried after the examination had been completed.

Indian research programs now often reject the Euro-American model of science. This tradition of science and the preoccupation with indigenous cultures rooted in it is itself seen as part of the process-based interethnic relationships. This makes it the subject of research itself and also the focus of a discourse on culturally different forms and functions of knowledge.

literature

Older literature

  • Georg Kohler: The artificial deformation of the skull. Diss. Erlangen 1901 (online)

Research history

  • Christian F. Feest , Karl-Heinz Kohl (ed.): Main works of ethnology (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 380). Kröner, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-520-38001-3 .
  • Karl-Heinz Kohl: Defense and Desire. On the history of ethnology. Frankfurt 1987.
  • Werner Petermann : The history of ethnology. Wuppertal 2004.
  • Harvey Russell Bernard: Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology. 3rd edition AltaMira Press, 1998.
  • Christian W. McMillen: Making Indian Law. The Hualapai Land Case and the Birth of Ethnohistory. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut 2007.

Web links

See also

Remarks

  1. ^ English edition, London 1703 at Early Canadiana Online.
  2. ↑ Codex canadiensis on the website v. Library and Archives Canada and Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
  3. ^ Theodor Waitz: The Indians of North America. Fleischer, Leipzig p. IV.
  4. ↑ A brief history of the company on the AES website ( Memento of the original from July 19, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . The society publishes the journal American Ethnologist .  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.aesonline.org
  5. ^ S. Department of Anthropology ( Memento of the original from March 17, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.fieldmuseum.org
  6. ↑ The text accompanying this photo read: “A Glimpse at the Indian Congress - There are forty-two tribes of North American Indians represented in the Indian Congress. Three of the most noted chiefs are seen in this group. To the extreme left is Chief Lone Elk, Sioux, and in the center is Chief Red Cloud, the fierce was chief of the Sioux, fiery orator and bitter enemy of the whites. To the right is Chief Hard Heart, another noted Sioux warrior. "
  7. ↑ The latter goes back considerably further, as the work of the Inca Titu Cusi Yupanqui from 1570 Relación de la conquista del Perú proves.
  8. ↑ See Alfonso Ortiz, biography on the Minnesota State University website. Archived from the original on June 3, 2010 ; accessed on January 23, 2014 .