Module 24: Archaeology and Ethnic Politics:
Archaeology in the Nineteenth Century

Reading: Thomas, Chapters 1-10

Central question of Thomas’ book: Why does tension exist between Native Americans and anthropologists? To answer, we must look first at the wider context of ideas about Indians in White culture and then the role of anthropology in legitimating or challenging those ideas.

How did Whites justify brutal treatment of Native Americans?

(1) Indians and/or Indian culture doomed to extinction: not through any fault of Whites—just destiny, natural law. A lower culture will be superceded by progress. White culture is superior and is destined to replace Indian culture and assimilate Indian people. This is a social Darwinist ideology, “survival of the fittest.” It naturalizes the usurpation of Indian resources and the displacement of Indian people. This view was sometimes taken even by Whites who thought of Indians as good and noble. Indians were noble, but they and their cultures were degraded by contact with Whites.

(2) Negative stereotypes: Indians are bloodthirsty savages, enemies of “civilized “ people. What message did the Boston Tea Party send about Indians? They are unruly; they have no respect for law; they are passionate, unable to rein in their emotions. They need the supervision and help of superior peoples.

(3) Indians are an inferior race.

(4) Indians were not really the first inhabitants of the land, they are recent immigrants: the Myth of the Mound Builders. Indians are invaders just like Europeans and a threat to civilization, a security risk.

How did anthropologists and archaeologists legitimize their ideologies?

(1) Scientific racism: Throughout nineteenth century, biological anthropologists were devoted to the scientific classification and ranking of races—making racial difference incontrovertible fact. These “proofs” undermined the possibility of treating everyone the same. Some of the skulls for these studies were retrieved from battlefields and robbed from graves, adding insult to injury.

But a physical anthropology study by Franz Boas did undermine idea of the race; his study of the skull shapes of Eastern European immigrants and their children in 1911. His study concluded that human biology was not genetically fixed, it was mutable; it was deeply influenced by environmental conditions, and races were not fixed groups.

(2) Cultural evolutionism: an approach in anthropology that explained differences between cultures as resulting from different groups representing different stages in Human Progress. This was somewhat more liberal than scientific racism. It was based on a postulate of “psychic unity” among all humans, and it could be used to suggest that all humans had the same potential for civilization. However, cultural evolutionism involved a ranking of native cultures. Depending on their customs (agriculture, pottery, metallurgy, marriage practices, religious beliefs, etc.), cultures would be classified as representing Savagery (Lower, Middle, or Upper), Barbarism (Lower, Middle, or Upper), or Civilization.

(3) The impression of a lack of progress by Indian cultures was reinforced by archaeologist’s constant use of ethnographic analogy to interpret archaeological remains (especially Frank Cushing). The present was depicted as identical to the ancient past, conveying the notion that contemporary Indian cultures had persisted from time immemorial. And the idea that Indian culture was doomed to inevitable extinction was reinforced by the “assimilationist” models used to study Indian sites from the historic period. Indian cultures were judged as more or less assimilated, depending on the percentage of trade goods appearing in archaeological collections from historic sites. And the unexamined assumption was that Indians accepted European culture because of its uniform superiority to Indian culture. (Now, archaeologists look at European trade goods in historic Indian sites and see them as evidence of Indians’ capacity to change and to adapt to new circumstances. Historical archaeologists ask how Indians were selecting goods that were most useful to them, how they adapted these goods to their purposes, and how they are expressions of creolization).

But archaeologists did disprove the Myth of Mound Builders: Cyrus Thomas, 1894. And archaeology did establish the antiquity of native settlement. George McJunkin discovered the Folsom site, and Schwochheim excavated it. The Folsom site revealed an extinct bison with a stone spear point lodged in its ribs. It supplied proof that Native Americans had occupied North America for 12,000 years. And finally, cultural anthropologists under Boas developed the idea of cultural relativism, that cultures were different, not to be judged better or worse. But even the Boasians did keep the distinction between traditional and modern societies, and between the traditional knowledge of non-Western societies vs. modern science!

Lastly, both cultural anthropologists and archaeologists assumed the role of professional experts. Professionalization is an exclusive ploy. Anthropologists advised the government on Indian policy and the Indian past. And this (1) strengthened the implicit assumption that Indians should not guide their own destiny; and (2) excluded native interpretations/ understanding of their own present and past.

So much harm was done to Indians in the name of science. Although science was thought to be an objective, unbiased search for truth, it perpetuated White myths of superiority and legitimated White expansionism. Are there steps we can take to avoid science being used this way in the future? Particularly anthropology, which is supposed to benefit the people it studies?