American Indian Culture and Research Journal

I. INTRODUCTION Contact between Native Americans and Europeans first began in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Since then, societies dominated by transplanted Europeans have had complex effects on Native American groups, sometimes trying to displace or annihilate them, more often trying to include them in one way or another (with varying results), into their respective states. These processes and their results have been highly variable. Native groups that were once major threats to European invaders have all but disappeared, while other groups that were once on the verge of annihilation are now among the most prosperous of contemporary tribes. Still others have managed to survive and preserve much of their cultures. How might the myriad patterns of interaction be analyzed? One solution is to employ a frame of reference that facilitates comparisons of these processes across time and space, and yet respects the unique characteristics of each case. This paper suggests one such possible frame of reference. It is important to note at the beginning that what follows is not definitive and complete, but suggestive and inchoate. Nevertheless, the examples presented illustrate the utility of this approach for re-analyzing familiar events, for suggesting new research questions, and for indicating directions for further theoretical development. How long this particular frame of reference survives is less important than that it serves as a stimulus to developing more refined models of European-Native American interactions.

We are all prisoners of culture. Marston Bates noted: ”The outstanding peculiarity of man is the great control of custom, of culture, over behavior.”’ Small wonder that we are forced to judge people from other cultures by our own cultural standards. Western Civilization, in its twentieth-century form, prides itself on toleration. It has become, in effect, intolerant of intolerance. How then, can we accept the observations of sixteenth-century Europeans as they met, interacted with, and sometimes conquered the Indian peoples of North America? Western Civilization, in its sixteenth-century form, did not pride itself on toleration. Sectarian violence typified the century as Protestant battled Catholic and all Christians on the Continent were forced to confront a mighty invasion by the Islamic Turks. Historians had tended to be critical of sixteenth-century Europeans because they did not accept or fully appreciate North American cultures. William Graves reported that, “Ethnocentric European pride prejudiced his perceptions of other people. The ’uncivilized’ Red man . . . was a ‘barbarian’ and a ‘savage‘ both terms implying a moral judgment of culture and cultural status.” Gary B. Nash and James Axtell believe that European reaction to Indian cultures was somewhat more complex. Nash put forth the notion that Europeans quickly developed ”a split image of the natives of North America.” One stereotype portrayed Indians as noble and ”gentle people.’’ The other image “cast him as a savage, hostile, beastlike animal.” In the case of the English, James Axtell has implied that practical matters dictated which image would triumph. The Indians ”were noble as well as ignoble, depending on English needs and circumstance." Robert F. Berkhofer urges students of history to reject all European evaluations of Native Americans. ”Whether evaluated as noble or ignoble, whether seen as exotic or degraded, the Indian as an image was always alien to the white.”

In the northeastern corner of Winston County, Mississippi rises an oval mound that covers about an acre and is approximately 40 feet in height. Its name is Nanih Waiya, the sacred mound of the Choctaws. Various origin traditions of the tribe center around the mound. According to one story, the great spirit, Hushtahli, created the Choctaw in the center of the mound, and they emerged into the light from its top. Old Hopankitubbe (Hopakitobi), . . . was wont to say that after coming forth from the mound, the freshly-made Choctaws were very wet and moist, and that the Great Spirit stacked them along on the rampart, as on a clothes line, so that the sun could dry them. As if the great spirit had indeed made the Choctaw out of wet earth, the missionaries who first came into their territory to Christianize them felt that they were like malleable clay, ready to be shaped into the likeness of the Christian god and to become good Christians and Americans. However, it soon became obvious that the Choctaws were not ready to be molded to the will of the missionaries. Indeed, the missionaries often found themselves being bent to the will of tribal leaders even as they tried to bring the Choctaws to spiritual salvation. They were drawn into the secular and political concerns of the tribe as much as they were able to bring Christian conversion to tribal members.

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF NATIVE STUDIES: An Assessment The Canadian Journal of Native Studies, Vol. IV, Number 2, 1984, Society for the Advancement of Native Studies, Brandon University, Brandon, Manitoba, Canada. Pp. 179-388. Subscriptions: Individuals, $20.00, others $30.00. (Canadian funds inside Canada, US funds outside.) Richard T. Price The Canadian Journal of Native Studies presents readers with a microcosm of Native Studies scholarship in Canada. Much solid, scholarly work has been done in the fields of history and anthropology, and to a lesser degree in such fields as law, political science, and education. Academics have been very tentative, however, in moving beyond the comfortable niches of their own disciplines into interdisciplinary native studies research encompassing a broader scope of sources and a wider variety of methodologies. Fortunately, some scholars recently have pointed in new directions, including interdisciplinary, international, holistic and community-based ways of handling native studies research. This review of the Canadian Journal of Native Studies represents, at least symbolically, a desire for greater interaction and cooperation among American and Canadian Native Indian Studies scholars and scholarly publications. The American Indian Culture and Research Journal is to be commended for this initiative. It bodes well for the future of research in the United States, Canada and beyond. This review will describe, and critically analyze, a particular recent volume (Vol. 4, No. 2) of the Canadian Journal of Native Studies (CJNS),which contains a wide-ranging group of articles. Three main topics characterize these articles: history (Indian treaties and Indian policy administration); resource development impacts (reserve land flooding, native health and fishing); and native education (case studies using new methods). Before examining this specific edition of the CJNS, I will present a brief sketch of the journal’s history and make a status report, so that readers have a broader context for the review which follows.