Obscured by the invasive expansion of an aggressive Iroquois confederacy, there exists today a remnant population of eastern Siouan peoples known as Tutelos amid the Six Nations Reserve at Grand River, Ontario. While there is a general dearth of source materials for the Tutelo Indians of Virginia, there is an interesting correspondence between a Native elder at Grand River and Dr. Frank G. Speck that took place during the years 1934 and 1935. These letters, composed for Chief Samuel Johns, reveal insight concerning the enduring complexity of American Indian identity. In noting this ethnohistorical puzzle, it is the purpose of this article to explore and examine the Tutelo initiative and voice in asserting a unique ethnic identity amid the Hodenosaunee, or Great League of the Iroquois. For far too long, the collaborative and self-motivated participation of Native Americans in anthropological fieldwork has been ignored because their role has usually been characterized simply as “informants.” In his correspondence with the noted University of Pennsylvania anthropologist Frank Gouldsmith Speck, Chief Johns reveals his Tutelo ancestry and makes an inquiry concerning that ethnic heritage. By this standard, the Johns letters stand out as an inquiry of scholarly interest in Native ethnohistorical criticism and research. Chief Johns initially writes Speck from Middlemass, Ontario on 4 September 1934. In his first letter, Johns reveals his Tutelo ancestry and requests historical information regarding the tribe. On 31 December 1934, Johns again writes Speck informing him of historical findings that report the Tutelo country along the east branch of the Susquehanna River

Throughout the many years I have taught Native American traditions, I have encountered a plethora of colleagues who have been all too willing to dismiss a Native precontact intellectual tradition. Recently a colleague told me that, in spite of Native luminaries such as Black Elk and Tecumseh, there was no historic tradition of philosophy among American Indians. Qualifying his remarks, he quickly added that there was nothing similar to the philosophical discourse characteristic of the ancient Greeks present among precontact American Indians. Given that this arrogance is beyond reason, I was disposed to restraint in my reply. It is simply wrong to conclude that philosophy, the love of wisdom, is not intrinsic to all human intellectual traditions. So I suggested to my colleague that he was putting the cart before the horse, championing method over substance. The failure of Native elders to cast their wisdom within the genre of Platonic dialogue does not lessen the importance and value of their intelligence. Form is no substitute for value. This denial of Native American intellectual traditions is nothing new among Westerners and their repeated failure to acknowledge alternative, non-Western epistemologies and wisdom-centered traditions. What is disturbing, however, is the presence of this mentality among American intellectuals after thirty-plus years of embracing American Indian Studies within the academy. Although Native American philosophies are not ensconced in dialogues characteristic of Plato and his intellectual associates from ancient Greece, wisdom is highly evident and manifest in American Indian oral narrative traditions. In part, this disregard of Native wisdom is centered at the origin of Western philosophy and Plato’s response to the spoken word.

An award-winning film, The Mission presents an allegorical treatment of colonial drama in the Americas. Although the opening credits to the film state that “the historical events, represented in this story are true, and occurred around the borderlands of Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil in the year 1750,” there is considerable evidence that the scope of this film is greater than the year 1750. Depicting the fabled “Jesuit Republic,” The Mission dramatizes historical events that span a period of more than 150 years, from 1610 to 1768. In scope and deed these events bear much that is relevant to the invasion and conquest of the Americas. Minding this premise, there is reason to suspect that The Mission dramatically conveys an allegory of the Conquest. In doing so, it frames the narrative in an allegorical sense of “brother care” or “neighbor love” that constitutes the agape doctrine of the synoptic Gospels. In approaching The Mission I propose to turn our attention to what I will call the archaeology of the film. By archaeology I am suggesting the foundations, both historical and imagined, in the filmmaker’s craft. As Father Daniel Berrigan, S.J., adviser on the film, has pointed out, a “two hour film attempts the impossible in summary of two hundred fifty years of achievement.” Film cannot be judged against the complexities that govern traditional historical analysis and presentation. Minding this consideration, I present, first, a historical sketch of the Jesuit Republic and, second, a critical analysis of the film. HISTORY OF THE CONQUEST In order to appreciate The Mission, it is helpful to review the historical themes that engendered the Conquest and, subsequently, the Jesuit Republic. Following landfall in the Americas and his initial observations of the Natives, Columbus wrote: “They should be good and intelligent servants, for I see that they say very quickly everything that is said to them; and I believe that they would become Christians very easily, for it seemed to me that they had no religion.”