Skull Wars Kennewick Man, Archaeology, And The Battle For Native American Identity

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ISBN: 9780465092253 | 046509225X
Cover: Paperback
Copyright: 4/5/2001

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The 1996 discovery, near Kennewick, Washington, of a 9,000-year-old Caucasoid skeleton brought more to the surface than bones. The explosive controversy and resulting lawsuit also raised a far more fundamental question: Who owns history? Many Indians see archeologists as desecrators of tribal rites and traditions; archeologists see their livelihoods and science threatened by the 1990 Federal reparation law, which gives tribes control over remains in their traditional territories.In this new work, Thomas charts the riveting story of this lawsuit, the archeologists' deteriorating relations with American Indians, and the rise of scientific archeology. His telling of the tale gains extra credence from his own reputation as a leader in building cooperation between the two sides.

Foreword

xiii

Vine Deloria, Jr.

Prologue: A History Written in Bone

xvii

Part I Names and Images

Columbus Arawaks, and Caribs: The Power To Name

(8)

Columbus exercises his colonial prerogative to name his discoveries and defines Indian stereotypes that will survive for centuries

A Vanishing American Icon

(18)

The American Revolution fosters an image of the Indian as an American icon that helps define the New Republic as distinct from Mother England. But the flesh-and-blood Indian is not welcome in nineteenth-century America and must either assimilate or be exterminated

Part II Nineteenth Century Scientists

The First American Archaeologist

(7)

Thomas Jefferson defends the American virtue against European attacks and digs to establish Indian origins, in the process, Indians are defined as natural history specimens not unlike mastodons and glaciers

A Short History of Scientific Racism In America

(8)

Nineteenth-century skull scientists articulate a theory of biological determinism that ranks the races of mankind, distills racial essences, confuses cultural with biological variability, and by extension, spells racial doom for Native Americans

Darwin and The Disappearing American Indian

(8)

Nineteenth-century anthropology assigns itself the work of salvaging ethnographic detail from the Vanishing Americans. Anthropologists define a synthetic ``ethnographic present'' to separate-living Indian informants from the rest of nineteenth-century America. Because Indians are seen as prototypes of humanity's earliest condition, social Darwinists predict that they must fall victim to more evolved forms of humanity

The Great, American Skull Wars

(12)

Nineteenth-century natural historians define the most important scientific task at hand as collecting, describing, and classifying the species of the natural world---including man. Army surgeons and curators at natural history museums scramble across post-Civil War America to stockpile Indian skulls

The Anthropology of Assimilation

(7)

Drawing upon Lewis Henry Morgan's scheme of social evolution, late nineteenth-century anthropologists believe that long-term selective pressures targeted the Indians for extinction---unless they give up their tribal ways and join civilized America once and for all. American anthropologists convert scientific principle into disastrous federal Indian policy

The Anthropologists As Hero

(6)

Frank Cushing pioneers the ``participant observation'' method of ethnographic research and draws upon rich Native American oral traditions to help interpret archaeological materials from the American Southwest. Although an effective cultural broker between the Zuni and non-Zuni, Cushing also irritates Indian people by making their most private rituals public

Collecting Your Fossils A Live

(14)

Six Polar Eskimos find themselves stranded on New York's fashionable Central Park West in 1897, an anthropological experiment gone awry. The myth of the Noble Redman comes alive when Ishi---the world's ``most uncivilized; uncontaminated man''---wanders out of the California chaparral to become a living museum exhibition in San Francisco. But his death in 1916 triggers a certain regret in mainstream America that the Indian has indeed vanished

Is ``Real History''. Embedded In Oral Tradition?

(11)

Despite considerable personal risk, a number of Indian people rush to record their vanishing traditions and preserve their disappearing customs. But early twentieth-century anthropology declares that ``aboriginal logic'' and oral tradition are incompatible with the new objective framework of the ``science of manking.'' Robert Lowie admits that he ``cannot attach to oral traditions any historical value whatsoever under any conditions whatsoever,'' in the process declaring American Indians to be irrelevant to their own history

The Perilous Idea of Race

102

(21)

Franz Boas, one of America's most avid skull collectors, initiates a research program that soundly disproves earlier theories of racial determinism. Although mainstream anthropology eventually rejects the concept of enduring racial types and race vestiges of such thinking resurface to complicate the Kennewick Man controvery

Part III Deep American History

Origin Myths From Mainstream America

123

(10)

Seeking national history on an epic scale, mainstream Euroamerica explores a range of creation stories to explain the First American. Dreams of lost prehistoric races surface across nineteenth-century America---from ancient white Moundbuilders to the Red Sons of Israel to the Arizona Aztecs---looking to archaeology to define a heroic (non-Indian) past

The Smithsonian Takes on All Comers

133

(6)

New waves of professionally trained archaeologists demolish the mythical Moundbuilders, protect America from a Paleolithic invasion, and attempt to purge amateurs from the business of American archaeology

Where Are All The Native American Archaeologists?

139

(6)

Although American Indians had been written out of mainstream American history a residual Indianness helped make the concept of America actually work. Congress passed the 1906 Antiquities Act to protect America's archaeological heritage and in the process, establish professional archaeologists as the sole proprietors of the remote Indian past---now defined as part of the greater public trust, like Yellowstone and the American bison

Break through At Folsom

145

(12)

A catastrophic flash flood exposes bison bones and antifacts near Folsom. New Mexico and forces professional archaeology, virtually overnight, to award Indian people Ice-Age tenure in America

Busting The Clovis Barrier

157

(10)

Despite his, ``spaghetti budget'' at Monte Verde, Chile, Toni Dillebay surmounts a solid wall of skepticism to establish apparently, the presence of pre-Clovis people in the Americas

What Modern Archaeologists Think About The Earliest Americans

167

(10)

The Kennewick and Monte Verde finds have turned the conservative world of First American archaeology upside down. Archaeologists; physical anthropologists, linguists; and molecular biologists scramble to frame new and largely untested theories to explain the first human presence in the Americas

Part IV The Indians Refuse To Vanish

Be An Indian and Keep Cool

177

(9)

Indians in the early twentieth century announce that they have not vanished. They are here to stay and intend to use Indian imagery for their own benefit. Several prominent Indians take on roles as cultural mediators, seeking to span the social and racial gulfs between early-twentieth-century Indians and non-Indians

An Indian New Deal From Absolute Deprivation To Mere Poverty

186

(12)

During the Great Depression, John Collier brings a different perspective to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 reverses previous assimilation policies and reaffirms the importance of the tribal concept in restoring Indian sovereignty

The Red Power of Vine Deloria Jr.

198

(11)

In 1969, Deloria publisher Custer Died for Your Sins. An Indian Manifesto, heavily critizing anthropology's mandate to study Indians as ``pure research'' Scoffing at their self-proclaimed ``objectivity,'' he brands archaeologists as exploiters of Indian people and asks them to stop digging up the dead

Legislating The Skull Wars

209

(16)

Congress passes the NAGPRA bill of 1990 that shifts the national narrative by inviting Native Americans to assign their own spiritual and historical meanings to archaeological sites and their contents. Repatriation and reburial become the law of the land, with predictably mixed results as the bones go home

Part V Bridging The Chasm

Tribal Affiliation and Sovereignty

225

(14)

NAGPRA directs America's museums to establish the modern tribal affiliation, if any of ancient human remains and sacred objects in their collections. But previous federal legislation defines modern American Indians tribes in mostly political terms; and scientists have difficulty in tracing tribal ancestry in the archaeological record: Indians deeply resent the fact that archaeologists still control the dialogue linking modern tribes to their ancestors

Speaking of Oral Tradition

239

(15)

Which many archaeologists rethink their role as hardcore, ``objective'' scientists, anthropology at the millennium is revisiting its humanistic roots. Having rejected oral tradition for decades, a number of archaeologists are now exploring traditional knowledge as another key to learning about America's ancient past. Some Indian people welcome the inquiry others fear that science is once again trying to pry into sacred territory

An Archaeology Without Alienation

254

(11)

Putting aside stale stereotypes, several tribes are actively working with archaeologists to explore their own past. Within this new spriti of cooperation, an increasing number of Native Americans are deciding to pursue careers in professional archueology

Epilogue

265

(12)

Acknowledgements

277

(2)

Endnotes

279

(18)

Literature Cited

297

(51)

Index

348

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Skull Wars Kennewick Man, Archaeology, And The Battle For Native American Identity

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

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