Ethnohistory at Sixty

For the 2014 meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory in Indianapolis, I was asked to organize a roundtable celebrating sixty years of publication of this journal. Participants were asked to select a favorite article from the journal’s archive, and to discuss its significance. Participants were selected mostly from senior members of the society, many of whom had been involved in governance or editorial roles, and who constitute an “institutional memory” of sorts. Nancy Lurie, a pioneer in our field, was invited, but was not well enough to travel. Raymond DeMallie, who selected Wilcomb E. Washburn’s 1961 article, “Ethnohistory: History ‘In the Round,’” delivered a typically eloquent presentation, but was unable to complete a written version.The flagship journal, Ethnohistory, published its first issue in 1954. It began with programmatic statements about our emerging discipline, as well as substantive research that expanded our knowledge of indigenous people and their interaction with the state. This was in the wake of the Indian Claims Commission Act and subsequent litigation. At the same time, new theories and methods were introduced, leveraging the fertile interdisciplinary space between history and cultural anthropology and, later, fields such as art history, indigenous studies, linguistics, and demographics.As is to be expected in an exercise such as this, the selections reflect the biases (generational, professional, regional) of the panelists. Through the bulk of the journal’s “golden age,” a strong North Americanist orientation prevailed. It was not until the 1960s that the first article not dealing with North American Indians was published. It would not be until much later still—the 1980s—that Latin America and the Caribbean would be important areas for the society and the journal. (Of course, ethnohistory was maturing as well in South America, with the work of pioneering scholars such as John V. Murra and his students, but the convergence of this tradition with the northern one occurred only gradually).Another bias inherent in this sort of activity is toward pure scholarship—often that which makes theoretical contributions. This is only natural. A main purpose of this exercise is to locate oneself, constructing an intellectual genealogy. As Ray Fogelson said in his presentation, ethnohistorical scholarship in its early days could seem rather jejune, and it only appealed to him as it developed sophisticated theories and models. However, what this leaves out is ethnohistory as practice: an applied and politically engaged enterprise. Figures such as Sol Tax, Nancy Lurie, Robert Thomas, and Clyde Warrior regularly operated between the worlds of national and tribal politics and academia. As the Indian Claims Commission process of the 1940s–60s gave way to the recognition politics in the 1970s and after, anthropologists and historians continued to offer focused scholarship and testimony in various venues, from Congress and Parliament to the courts, which did not make it into the pages of the journal (although often the pages of national newspapers).The article-length piece in this special section is the product of graduate students in an ethnohistory seminar at the University of Georgia. In addition to being delighted to see talented young scholars continuing to show a keen interest in our field and journal, it is good to have empirical, quantitative data that roughly aligns with what we have thought we knew about the field. Pieces by Shepard Krech (1991) and me (Harkin 2010) examined similar questions from a qualitative perspective. Certainly, the shift from North America to Latin America, already remarked on, is clear. The students also tracked regional emphasis within North America, finding that the focus shifted in the 1960s away from the northern United States and Canada toward the Southeast. (This is no doubt due in large part to the generation and a half of great southeastern ethnohistorians: William Sturtevant, Charles Hudson, Ray Fogelson, Mike Greene, and Theda Perdue). They find, not surprisingly, that male authors predominate in the early decades. Still, as I argued, the prominence of female figures among the early leadership of the society, as well as being important scholars and activists (Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin, Eleanor Leacock, Nancy Lurie, and Alice Kehoe), was unusual for any scholarly society at the time.Let’s reflect on Shepard Krech’s prodding question from 1991: What is the state of ethnohistory (and Ethnohistory) today? It is certainly much more internationally oriented (as our recent back-to-back meetings outside the United States attest). The tenure as editor of Neil Whitehead solidified the international orientation of the journal and its visibility abroad, a process advanced under subsequent editors. It is safe to say that we are now net exporters rather than importers of theory. The society and the journal continue the long-term trend of welcoming indigenous scholars and engaging with political activism. Finally, they have remained extremely welcoming to younger scholars. I found an intellectual home when I attended my first meeting in the early 1980s and subsequently published my first article in the journal—an experience repeated by many young scholars since.The challenges facing the journal in the era of e-publication are very real, including declining individual subscriptions and far more publication options for authors, to name the two major ones. And yet, as the journal reaches traditional retirement age, I feel that we are far from being ready to retire.The 2014 roundtable participants were (in order of presentations) Raymond DeMallie, Robbie Ethridge, Raymond Fogelson, Cailin Murray, Sergei Kan, Alice Kehoe, and Kevin Terraciano.

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