Acta Borealia

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The past and the future of ethnohistory

Toby Morantz

To cite this article: Toby Morantz (1998) The past and the future of ethnohistory, Acta Borealia,
15:1, 59-77, DOI: 10.1080/08003839808580475
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 ACTA BOREALIA 1-1998 59

The Past and the Future of Ethnohistory

Toby Morantz
McGill University

With the broadening of the discipline of history to include all groups of

actors in a society, it has been suggested that ethnohistory as a separate
subfield would disappear and merge into history. This paper, addressed to
non-ethnohistorians, reviews some of the orientations and developments in
this particularly North American hybrid of anthropology and history, demon-
strating its own progression to assimilating more of the historical perspec-
tives of Native Peoples. It does so, in part, by reviewing the stages in the
author's ethnohistoric inquiries for eastern James Bay from records that
focused on Cree-white relations in the fur trade, beginning in the late 1600s.
By examining the oral tradition of the Crees and showing its distinctiveness
from Western history, this paper concludes that the two fields are incom-
mensurate and will continue along separate paths.

Ethnohistory is a specialized North American field of inquiry that has made

major contributions to the national histories of Canada and the United States.
It has drawn out the history of Indian-Euroamerican relations that has trick-
led down through school textbooks and into popular history books and
even television serials. Although many expect that ethnohistory, as a
specialty, may become merged into the larger disciplines of Canadian or
American history, I believe it will always remain distinguishable, perhaps as
'Native history', for the special problems it bears. At one time, ethnohistory
was distinctive and a maverick field, well on the fringes of the national
histories. Now that academic history is incorporating a greater degree of
relativism in themes and analyses, this marginality has diminished. However,
new theoretical problems have arisen that may continue to set ethnohistory
apart. This paper provides a synopsis of developments in the field and,
using the example of the author's own research on the Crees' 1 involvement
in the European fur trade, explains the continuing difficulties preventing a
complete merger of the histories.
Ethnohistory is an inquiry that combines principles of history with that of
anthropology in an attempt to write the history of Native Peoples in North
60 TOBY MORANTZ

America, peoples who themselves did not leave written records of events
and how they were affected by them. As such, it is really no different than
the history of women or Africa or the working class - any group which was
non-literate and has not left records of its own history. Anthropologists in
North America first took up the writing of Native Peoples' history in the
1950s. They saw it as some sort of hybrid of anthropology and history and
so called it 'ethnohistory'. It is only in North America, I believe, that history
known by this name exists, despite the fact Europeans are writing ethnohis-
tories. See for example the work of Lars Ivar Hansen on Sami-centred histor-
ical perspectives of their ecological and economic adaptation (1990;1996).
American anthropologists in the 1950s felt compelled to add 'ethno' to
history because academic history bypassed peoples other than Anglo-Ameri-
cans (Nabokov 1996:11). Furthermore, methodologically, it drew on sources
ignored or scorned by historians. Additionally, it was a history first ventured
into by anthropologists who, naturally, gave primacy to considerations of
culture. In subject matter and method, it was not history but ethnohistory.
The convention in Western history has been that the historian usually is a
member of the society about which the history is written from records left
by other members. In ethnohistory, though, it was mainly academics of
European descent, using records left by earlier Europeans, all outsiders,
interpreting and writing the history that focused on the lives of Native
Peoples as they came into contact with the Europeans. Therefore these
ethnohistories drew on the principles of anthropology to aid in interpreta-
tion of the historical data. Given the nature of the documents, it is no
wonder that the early focus of ethnohistory was change (Trigger 1986:256)
and continues to be so. The documents tend to focus on the various types
of transactions between the Native populations and the Europeans; analyz-
ing the nature of this contact was made easier with principles developed in
the acculturation studies begun in the United States in the 1930s (Washburn
and Trigger 1996:99-100). As Trigger comments, it was generally agreed that
what made ethnohistory distinctive was its use of "documentary evidence
and oral traditions to study changes in non-literate societies from about the
time of earliest European contact" (Trigger 1982:2). Ethnohistory carved out
a new field of inquiry [Indians and their responses to contact] and in doing
so spawned a new methodology distinct from anthropology and history. For
some practitioners, it is sometimes thought of as methodology only and by
others as the subject matter this methodology has produced. It is confusing
but ethnohistory has come to be seen as both a methodology and a kind of
history, much as is archaeology.
Although there were several excellent ethnohistories written in the 1930s
(see Bailey (1969 [1937]) and Keesing (1939)), ethnohistory did not develop
as a specialization until the post-World War II period when the United States
supported decolonization movements in Africa and Asia, thereby drawing
 THE PAST AND THE FUTURE OF ETHNOHISTORY 6l

attention to its own colonialism within its borders. American Indian Nations
were directed to seek redress for lands taken by the American government
and people and an Indian Claims Commission was established. The scholars
invited to research the issues of land claims were anthropologists, Indians
then being the 'domain' of anthropology (Trigger 1986:257).
Until recent decades, the writing of history used a 'top down' approach,
more an imperial or political history of elites, and Indians, women, working
class, ethnics were essentially ignored (Appleby, Hunt and Jacob 1994:5).
Thus, this land claims research heralded a new approach to the study of
Native Peoples and to history, although professional historians did not them-
selves embrace such thinking for several decades (ibid: 188-89). This
approach is summed up in Stephen Hugh-Jones' comments that "tribal
peoples did not suffer history; they also made it and continue to do so"
(1989:53). Ethnohistory also added an historical dimension to the ethno-
graphic present which is so dominant in anthropological fieldwork studies.
Nevertheless, ethnohistory has always remained a minor field of study
because anthropology has always favoured the field to the archives. Perhaps
this is changing as 'natives' close fieldwork situations to anthropologists and
funding agencies make it more difficult to get to those that are still open.
Ethnohistory did not long remain the domain of anthropologists. As
professional historians began writing histories more inclusive of minorities
(Appleby et al 1994:146), they began reinstating Native Peoples in American
and Canadian narratives.

What constitutes an ethnohistory?

Until recently, I could distinguish a study in ethnohistory as to whether the
individual writing it had been trained in history or in anthropology. It was
not difficult. The orientation of the study gave it away. The historians tended
to dwell on events, on the processes occurring, paying little attention to the
contours of the society while the anthropologists generally examined such
events over one period of time and the resulting changes to the societal
structures. They tended to de-emphasize the details of the historical
processes.2
Moreover, each made mistakes as they were unfamiliar with even the
basic premises of the other's disciplines. For example, the historian E.E. Rich
commented that "within a decade of their acquiring the gun, tribe after tribe
became utterly dependent on the Hudson's Bay Company" (1967:102). He
was writing in total ignorance of the dynamics of social systems, as though
the introduction of a piece of technology could so quickly transform a
society,3 as though a society were not capable of reaching out to new ideas,
new technology and incorporating them in their own way. Or, other histo-
62 TOBY MORANTZ

rians (e.g., Martin 1978) selected ethnographic evidence from a vast area,
from Manitoba to the Maritimes without regard to cultural boundaries. What
did it matter; they were all Indians.
On the other hand, anthropologists erred in telescoping time, such as
applying an innovation of the twentieth century, the use, for example, of
store bought food, to events two hundred years earlier (see Turner and
Wertman 1977). What did it matter; it was the past. Still others failed to eval-
uate the expertise of the historians they were quoting. A widely read anthro-
pologist, Eleanor Leacock (1954:16), quoted from John Oldmixon (193D, an
historian writing in 1708 who used documents of a seaman (Gorst) who had
been in James Bay in the 1670s but Oldmixon had not. If one delves into
Oldmixon's background, we find that he wrote, within a few short years, a
number of brief histories of the colonies in the New World, each colony in
New England and the Caribbean being individually considered. Not surpris-
ingly, he had not mastered the history of Hudson Bay, nor knew about Cree
life and made errors in his interpretations about Cree practices. A historian
would have delved into the reliability of the historic source; this anthropolo-
gist did not and quoted from him uncritically (see Morantz 1992).
It is also an unacceptable practice for historians to select from the
sources only those details which fit one's interest without accounting for the
selection or the negative instances. Leacock's highly influential work offers
us another example of an anthropologist doing history badly. Her much-
quoted 1970s work on the precontact status ofwomen in Montagnais society
is derived from her reading of the 1634 journal of Father Le Jeune (Thwaites
1896:6), a Jesuit priest in New France. She extracts his comments that
support her argument that the egalitarian status of women declined dramati-
cally once the Montagnais began participating in the European fur trade
(Leacock 1978). However, in marshalling her evidence, she omits any
mention of Father Le Jeune's comments regarding the exclusion of Montag-
nais women from the feasts or the depiction of the good spirit as a male and
the evil spirit as a female (Thwaites 1896:6:44-48). Such evidence does not
necessarily prove wrong her claim of this egalitarian status for pre-seven-
teenth century Montagnais women, but this negative evidence should have
been brought forth into her text and explained. It is what is expected of
historians.
The new generation of ethnohistorians, trained in the requirements of
both history and anthropology, do not make such glaring errors. Not only
do they follow the traditional requirements of both anthropology and history
but they are now drawing on a much wider data base, a practice that was
developing in history in the 1970s (Appleby et al 1994:148). For several
decades ethnohistorians, even anthropologically trained, did not use the full
range of anthropological sources, specifically the available archaeological
analyses. Archaeological interpretations are particularly important for they
 THE PAST AND THE FUTURE OF ETHNOHISTORY 63

often can provide a cultural base line to know what 'was' before the contact
period. Adroit use of archaeological findings is to be found in Trigger (1976)
but several others also called on this data to establish the earlier cultural
context (see Morantz 1983; Ronda 1984).
With the greater availability of archaeological data, ethnohistorians can
no longer make undocumented claims about precontact society, as has been
done. For example, in her 1969 paper on political organization in the
Quebec-Labrador Peninsula, Leacock (1969.10) presupposed that the size of
a precontact winter group numbered 200 individuals for the James Bay
Crees. The documents suggested winter group sizes of thirty for the post-
contact period. This discrepancy led Leacock to the conclusion that the fur
trade had created dramatic changes in Cree social organization. However,
when the archaeological record is brought to bear, one finds that the
precontact group size was, in fact, thirty not 200 (see Laliberté 1978:96)
There were no dramatic changes in social organization resulting from the
Crees' involvement in the fur trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centu-
ries. Archaeology, aside from the invaluable data it provides, also serves to
curb the wild speculations of ethnohistorians.
Without access to ethnographic studies and an understanding of how the
societies function, it would be difficult for ethnohistorians to make sense of
the Indian customs and practices found in narratives left, for example, by
seventeenth century Jesuits (see for e.g. Lahontan in Thwaites (1905:2:457)
or LeClercq in W. Ganong (1910:104). They wrote that on marriage, the men
go to live with the wife's family. Matrilocal residence, though, was not the
norm in subarctic hunting societies and we know from the fieldwork studies
that practices such as bride service would readily explain such observations.
With anthropological training, and the knowledge generated in that disci-
pline, one need not take the historic documents at face value.
Other sources of historic knowledge also came to be drawn upon to
round out the record. Cartography became an important source of establish-
ing dates for contact and the progression of European exploration and
settlement across the continent of America, along with the location of Indian
societies. As well, photographs are important to document the changes in
the material culture of the native society, although one learned quickly from
the written documents that people might 'dress up' for a photograph but
prefer their own clothing for daily living. So a photograph of Indian people
in European clothing should never be a call for assuming that traditional
skills of women or men were lost. Museum collections, properly catalogued,
of clothing, tools, etc. also provide important supporting evidence of conti-
nuity and change in a society.
The new trends in the discipline of history that were evolving in the
1960s and 1970s were providing new interests and issues that also alerted
ethnohistorians to the kinds of interpretations they were making. Relativism,
64 TOBY MORANTZ

one of these theoretical concerns, was challenging the traditional goal of

objectivity in history and suggesting that the truth of a statement is relative to
the position of the person making the statement (Appleby et al 1994:4).
Accordingly, ethnohistorians came to understand better that the biases of
writers had to be known and stated. Through what lens was the European
seeing the Indian society and through what biases was he formulating his
understanding of their motives and behaviour? Roy Harvey Pearce (1965)
began this inquiry in the 1960s with subsequent writers refining the
ethnohistorians' awareness of how Europeans were judging the people of
the New World. In Canada, historians Cornelius Jaenen (1976) and Olive
Dickason (1984) and anthropologist Bruce Trigger (1985) analyzed the Euro-
pean mind (French) and ideologies at the time of contact, thereby revealing
the biases, ethnocentrism and stereotypes that shaped their judgements of
Native Peoples. For example, Father LeClercq, in Micmac territory in the
1670s, wrote of the Micmacs having no religion, only superstitions, and were
without government or laws (Ganong 1910:110). By understanding the
French view of themselves as superior, as possessing the only true religion
and a society that was Christian and civilized, ethnohistorians could under-
stand why earlier French writers would not have recognized the institutions
of religion and government amongst the peoples of the New World.
These analyses of European thinking have provided other insights into
the European frames of reference and alerted us to the questionable objec-
tivity in the writings. Accordingly, ethnohistorians became aware that Euro-
pean writers used their narratives of Indian societies as mirrors to hold up to
their own [degenerate] society, praising the Indian acts of generosity and
lack of poverty. French writers, from Montaigne on, used sensational, ideal-
ized accounts of les sauvages as criticisms of French society in order to
attempt to stir the French into improving their values and behaviour (Jaenen
1976:3O;147).
Language is another component to which the ethnohistorian must be
sensitive for he/she must know the connotations of words used at the time
of the writings rather than today's understanding of them. The word sauvage
is a good example. Today it is a highly derogatory expression, implying
notions of blood-thirstiness. Then, it had a more subdued connotation, that
of "forest-dwelling" though also "primitive" (Axtell 1988:42) and marked
more an absence of qualities such as civility than negative connotations
(Jaenen 1976:28-29).
Ethnohistory flourished throughout the 1970s and 1980s. It was aided by
a clear idea of how to apply the different methodologies, drawing on
archaeology, history and ethnology. Moreover, it was fueled by the broaden-
ing in history of the "voices" one heard in historical narratives, of the desire
to draw into the story all the players. Accordingly, ethnohistory incorporated
more oral tradition (for example, see De Mallie 1993), thereby improving its
 THE PAST AND THE FUTURE OF ETHNOHISTORY 65

inter-cultural representations and deepened its understanding of the dynam-

ics of social process and change. Not only did ethnohistory flourish but so
did the writing of biographies and autobiographies of Indian men and
women. It is another way of drawing out their story, of providing a sense of
how the Native Peoples fared in the contact situation, a subject that most
earlier European writers ignored or of which they were ignorant.

History catches up
With the reforms to history, with its 'democratization' (Appleby et al
1994:11), and the same in anthropology via postmodern theory with its
production of new models of thought, writing and subjectivity (Best and
Kellner 1996:25), the subfield of ethnohistory no longer has a maverick
quality about it. Its subject matter and methodologies have both become a
part of standard, mainstream history and anthropology. Ought the label '-
ethnohistory' disappear, as Trigger (1982:11) suggested sixteen years ago, for
it differentiates ethnohistory and Indians as subjects apart from history rather
than within the main currents of historical writing. Writing from a 1990s
perspective, though, I question whether ethnohistory will so dissolve or fade
away. I see an insurmountable obstacle to writing a Cree or other Native
history. With the recognition of 'multiculturalism' in history (Appleby et al
1994:72), it should be possible for me to write a history that combines the
historical consciousness of BOTH the Eurocanadians and Indians, a single
history that speaks to both societies. I contend such a history is not attain-
able; the explanation will be demonstrated in a discussion of my research
on the fur trade in eastern James Bay.

The fur trade

Ethnohistoric writing in Canada owes its existence to only a few collections,
though each in its own way is vast and rich in detail. For New France, there
are several explorers' journals such as Champlain's (Biggar 1922-36) but
moreso the Jesuit Relations (Thwaites 1896-1901). For the northern regions
of Canada, there are the Hudson's Bay Company records, a collection that
required eight cargo containers when it was moved from London to Winni-
peg in the 1970s.
The Hudson's Bay Company, established in 1670, was really a company
of English financial backers, with an administrative office in London. To
keep track of the daily business of each of the posts, starting in the early
1700s, each post manager was required to maintain daily a journal that
summarized the activities of the post. In addition, the post managers
66 TOBY MORANTZ

exchanged letters with other posts and they corresponded with the head-
quarters staff in London. Other documents they maintained were account
books, inventories and occasionally district reports. Some of the post manag-
ers were highly knowledgeable about Cree life; they married Cree women
and remained in the country, more or less integrated, into Cree society.
Nevertheless, these were still narrowly constructed records of an economic
enterprise detailing who came to the post, what they brought and took in
trade, although over the centuries enough extraneous details did creep into
their journals and correspondence to expand this view of Cree life (see
Morantz 1983). All these journals, correspondence books and ledgers were
duly sent to London once a year, and from 1749 they were kept under lock
and key. This detailed form of correspondence was maintained until 1941.
For eastern James Bay, my area of research, I have had access to records of
the fur trade that span 200 years, with daily accounts for most of those years
for six posts of the dozen or so posts once located in the region. Hence, I
refer to these archives as a gold mine, a veritable national treasure.
What brought the Hudson's Bay Company to Canada was, of course, the
beaver. It was the raison d'etre of the fur trade for its first 200 years. Why
beaver? Beaver pelts consist of two types of hair, a long coarse hair, called
guard hairs and a short barbed underfur, called 'beaver wool'. It was these
barbed short hairs that were needed to make felt, mixed with wool. The felt
was used to make men's beaver hats, a prestige item throughout Europe
until the 1830s when silk hats came into fashion (The Canadian Encyclope-
dia). The fur trade went into decline about that time, with a minor resur-
gence in the 1920s when fur coats for men and women became fashionable
and, as is well known, has subsequently suffered a decline several times but
most recently, since the 1970s, when animal activists began hammering
away at the fur industry.
Thus, the Cree hunters who had for centuries before relied on beaver
meat as one of their principal foods began turning over the pelts from their
harvest to support the fashion industry in Europe in the l600s and, when
you think about it, continue today to support those of us who have taken
up the fashion of ethnohistory.
Using these rich archives for eastern James Bay I wrote, with a colleague,
Daniel Francis, an historical account primarily of the relations between the
Company and the Crees between 1670 and 1870 (Francis and Morantz 1983).
Never did I believe I was writing a Cree history but rather a history of what
transpired in their territory and which I hoped would be used by Crees, as a
spring board from which to examine these events from their own perspec-
tives. I had entered the study convinced that the Cree and other Indian
hunters were thoroughly dominated by the Europeans and I was prepared
to employ a Marxist framework but the writings in the Company records
indicated otherwise, that the hunters enjoyed for much of the fur trade, a
 THE PAST AND THE FUTURE OF ETHNOHISTORY 67

considerable degree of economic and political autonomy. Most eighteenth

and nineteenth century Cree hunters visited the post only for three to four
days a year and moreover, and most significantly, they provided their own
subsistence, hence their autonomy. Consequently, I could demonstrate that
the Crees' social and cultural life were not destroyed by their involvement in
the fur trade and, in fact, showed there was a great deal of continuity from
1670 to the mid-1900s (Morantz 1983). The assessment of the fur trade as
some sort of partnership (see Francis and Morantz 1983) emerged from
recorded oral tradition of the 1930s and 1940s in which Cree hunters
portrayed themselves as vital in all aspects of the fur trade.
I found other information in researching the archives which proved to
be useful to my own academic interests. There had been a number of histor-
ical claims in the anthropological literature on Algonquian speaking peoples
of the subarctic regions and I realized I could test these using the much
richer Hudson's Bay Company sources. These claims had to do with changes
to the composition of the winter hunting groups, whether or not Algonquian
hunters held individual hunting territories and when these came into exis-
tence, pre- or post-contact, the nature of leadership, etc., all questions of
great interest to social anthropologists in the 1960s and 1970s.

Cree history vs. Western history

I return to my previous comment that never did I consider I was writing a
history of the Cree people per se. Why? Most significantly, I was aware of
my own deficiencies in knowledge. I do not speak the language which is
still their mother tongue and from which I might have learned more
profoundly how the Crees categorize events in the world. Then, I recog-
nized that in using fur trade records I was drawing out what was important
to the English but not necessarily the Crees or what was important to me
and not them. For example, the question of individual ownership of hunting
territories fits into a debate in the anthropological literature that goes back
about seventy years and centres around Marxist interpretations (Bishop and
Morantz 1986). This is important, perhaps, to the advancement of Western
scholarship and to the development of my professional career but need it be
important to the Crees? Yet, a good portion of the ethnohistoric writing is
devoted to this subject. Overall the ethnohistoric literature for the Quebec-
Labrador Peninsula (and elsewhere in Canada) revolves around contact, the
coming of the Europeans and the effects on Indian society. Was this the
emphasis the Crees would give to their perception of their history?
Sylvie Vincent, researching Montagnais4 history, discovered a Montag-
nais emphasis. She learned that the Montagnais divided up historic time, not
according to the coming of the white man, perse, but rather the introduction
68 TOBY MORANTZ

of flour as an item of trade. An event was described to her as occurring in

the 'pre-flour' or 'post-flour' eras (Vincent 1976). Such a division indicates
the importance for the hunters of having on hand emergency supplies of
food. Once they began trading for flour, only in the early 1900s, were they
relatively freer to pursue trapping animals for exchange rather than pursuing
animals for food. If they were trapping minks or weasels, not food animals,
a ration of flour ensured them some food security and they did not always
have to cease trapping to look for food. On a continuum between hunting
for food and trapping for exchange, they could move closer to being trap-
pers. The scarce heed accorded the presence of whites in Cree territory is
epitomized in the life history, dating back to the 1880s, of Ellen Smallboy. It
was recorded by Regina Flannery (1995) in 1938 at Moose Factory on the
west coast of James Bay. Though asked about her life in the bush, never
once did Ellen Smallboy refer to the post at Moose Factory or to the trade. It
is probably accurate to say that our academic concerns do not loom large in
the Crees' understanding of their past.
Additionally, the Crees are a very religious people, even today as Chris-
tians. Their historical consciousness is permeated with supernatural occur-
rences and experiences. Yet the archival records are silent on this dimension
of their lives, a dimension which is sorely lacking in the ethnohistories I
have written. So is the Crees' perception of the land and its contents, obvi-
ously fundamental to their conceptions of themselves and the world. For
English and Scotsmen who hugged the shoreline and feared the bush, we
cannot expect they would have recorded such views. Similarly, and with
great regret, my writings expose little of the life of Cree women for rarely
did women come to the post unaccompanied by their fathers or husbands.
For this reason, they are scarcely mentioned in the archival records. These
western perspectives that dictated what was recorded in the 1700s, mainly
economic activities and aspects of contact, also tended to be the focus of the
interests of much later generations of ethnohistorians. Consequently, I was
well aware I was writing my history of the fur trade, my history of Cree-
Eurocanadian relations, not the Crees'.
Oral history was one of the sources that Trigger (1982:2) used to distin-
guish ethnohistory as a separate field of inquiry.5 I considered myself fortu-
nate that I had access to a collection from Waskaganish, developed for use
in the schools. Over the years, I have tried using these stories but found it
difficult to incorporate them. The themes are different than ones of interest
to Western historians and often at odds, in dramatic ways, with the versions
of Western history. For example, the Jesuit Relations written in the 1650s,
tells us that bands of Iroquois invaded the Crees' territory and were victori-
ous, taking captives (Thwaites 1896:47:151-53). Yet, the Cree accounts of
such events portray individual elderly Cree women or men, singlehandedly
tricking the Iroquois into falling over cliffs or rapids. This is a narrative
 THE PAST AND THE FUTURE OF ETHNOHISTORY 69

"formula" that is widespread and found amongst Algonquian speaking

peoples as far away as the Atlantic coast (see Smith 1983; Erikson 1983).
According to Cruikshank (1990:ix-x, 344), such formulae or narrative
conventions, themselves, contain encoded messages, perhaps on how to
behave or other cultural models. Such stories also reminded me that for the
Crees the supernatural and the natural world are not compartmentalized.
Unlike the archival records, the supernatural pervades the oral tradition but I
was perplexed as to how to draw such perspectives into the Western histori-
cal narratives without destroying the integrity of the Cree narratives. I knew
these perspectives had to be incorporated but how? I left it to a later date -
and in fact am still grappling with the problem.
Others before me had questioned the quality of the ethnohistories we
were writing. In his 1988 presidential address to the American Society for
Ethnohistory, Raymond Fogelson drew attention to the nature of Western
historical consciousness that entails "recovery, reconstruction and revivifica-
tion of the past" (1989:134) made possible through written documents.
Certain that non-literate societies did not share the Western view of historical
consciousness, he enjoined the ethnohistorians to expand their understand-
ing of what constitutes documents and to make a determined effort "to try to
comprehend alien forms of historical consciousness and discourse" (ibid).
To this end, in 1974, he had suggested that the ethnohistorical approach be
revised to become an 'ethno-ethnohistory' whereby scholars would seriously
consider "native theories of history as embedded in cosmology, in narra-
tives, in rituals and ceremonies and more generally in native philosophies
and worldviews" (ibid). Fogelson further added that "events may be recog-
nized, defined, evaluated and endowed with meaning differentially in differ-
ent cultural traditions" (ibid). He raised the question of non-events, what is
considered an event may for ethnohistorians be a non-event and for Natives,
vice versa.
With the broadening of history's areas of inquiry, ethnohistory has bene-
fitted; it is no longer a marginalized historical subfield. The debates in
history and above all the critiques of ethnohistory contributed to my reas-
sessment of how an ethnohistory should be structured and what it should
encompass. Feminist historians were at the forefront in broadening the field
of history but they argued it was not merely a matter of putting women back
into history but reconstituting the cultural understanding to include these
additional insights (de Leonardo 1991:30), a position with which I concur.
Theoretically armed, I returned to the relatively large collection of oral
tradition that has been recorded for the Crees of James Bay by anthropolo-
gists, much of it in the 1970s and 1980s under the auspices of the Urgent
Ethnology Program of the Canadian Museum of Man. Most of these accounts
refer to twentieth century occurrences; if asked to tell of their history, the
Crees usually call on the narrative form they call tipachiman stories, eye-
70 TOBY MORANTZ

witness accounts. The stories of long ago are called atiukan stories and are
thought of as stories of a time when men and beasts were one (Preston
1975:292). However, there is not always a clear distinction between the two
(ibid: 1986) as tipachiman stories can incorporate iconographic encoding
usually found in atiukan stories or myths.
The narrative style in any society's oral tradition is composed of recurring
motifs or metaphors which convey a deeper meaning to insiders of the
culture hearing the story than it would to outsiders (Cruikshank 1990:342-
46). For example, in our European folk-tales there is often the motif of the
wicked step-mother, but it is only after hearing repeated references to the
mistreatment of her step-children that children expect and know the step-
mother is evil. They do not have to be forewarned nor do the Crees have to
be told how to view human relations with the Bear or the Caribou spirits6.
So also does the structure of the story convey meaning that conforms to
cultural models (see Tonkin 1995:50-55). Without a verbal cue, a Cree
listener knows to expect a different set of meanings conveyed in the formu-
laic stories of vanquishing the Iroquois versus the tipachiman stories of the
Hannah Bay Massacre in 1832. Furthermore, stories were originally designed
around performances that in their telling communicated lessons in accepted
views and behaviour, as well as providing a highly important form of enter-
tainment (ibid).
Both types of Cree oral tradition carry coded meanings via the oral text,
in the metaphors and the formulae used in the storytelling. Often, they refer
to what in Western history might be considered the 'non-events' of which
Fogelson wrote. Even if the cultural messages are decipherable, how are
they to be combined with Western histories that have their own agendas,
their own subjects, their own rules of evidence? The two types of historical
consciousness are radically different. In the most simple distinction, one is
linear and progressive, the other more cyclical in form (Preston 1986). Who
were the victors in the story of the elderly Cree woman encountering a
raiding party of Iroquois? In the Western historical tradition it matters who
'won' but this may not be the important message in the Cree version.
Perhaps the behaviour towards strangers is the message, as Vincent (1996)
suggests.
I am a product of Western history not Cree history or Cree epistemolo-
gies, yet I was determined to include Cree insights and versions of Western
events. I would like to write a Cree 'ethno-ethnohistory' but I am foiled in
my attempts to fulfill this ambition because I do not know how to decode
the cultural, symbolic motifs and messages in the oral tradition or what is
important to select from them. If I could, how would I then relate this in a
language and structure meaningful to all of us schooled in the Western tradi-
tion? Accordingly, in a more detailed exposition than is possible to develop
here (Morantz in press) I have examined the distinctive features found in
 THE PAST AND THE FUTURE OF ETHNOHISTORY 71

oral tradition and concluded that I cannot write a Cree-centred history, a

history that harmonizes the Cree and Western historical traditions. I do not
see how the two traditions can be aligned, without distorting the structure
and messages of the other (Ibid). The differences between oralcy and liter-
acy are quite pronounced (see Goody 1987:5-6). Perhaps parallel histories
will best represent what is important to remember in each tradition's history.
Undoubtedly the ethno-ethnohistory will, on its own, provide very rich and
illuminating histories and will accomplish much in documenting and inter-
preting oral traditions and other non-literate expressions of history.
Having considered all these theoretical predicaments and decided there
is no impasse, I intend to lower considerably my sights and merely plunder
the oral histories, taking from them those notions and details that fit into my
Western views of history, my views of events, not theirs. I have come to
look at oral tradition not as narrative but as evidence.
I am confronted, delightedly so, with some excellent examples of anthro-
pological writings very ably (so it seems) translating the encoded messages
of other cultures into ours. Robin Ridington (1988:71) demonstrates, for
example, the great chasm that exists between Western notions of objectivity
and the Dunne-Za's [Beaver Indians, Dene speaking] understanding. The
anthropologists able to achieve this degree of decoding (and they are
anthropologists, not historians) are those very few who have lived within
the Native communities for a considerable time and have learned well the
language and culture, something not possible in the standard year of field-
work. This immersion in the culture, of long duration, enables them to trans-
late for us the cultural forms and metaphors much as a translator does with
language. Julie Cruikshank (1992), writing of the Dene and Richard Price
(1983), writing of the Saramakas, former slaves in Guyana, are two excellent
examples of cultural brokers who have brought forth ethno-ethnohistories.
However, these are not 'merged' or 'blended' histories. Where the European
view is stated, it is done so sequentially as Price has done in the Saramaka
history. Moreover, in both writings, the focus is on very specific events that
lend themselves to being paired with archival records. I hope these brokers
(Cruikshank and Price, for example) will go beyond specific event histories
to write an integrated narrative that represents the mingling of the Natives
and Europeans, a multi-cultural history in its true sense.
I am suggesting that for now a representative integration of the two
historical traditions is not generally possible unless carried out by bicultural
and bilingual researchers (presumably Native). However, in attempting to
merge the histories, one also runs the risk, I fear, of distorting the native
historical consciousness to fit the more dominant, literate Western historical
tradition. As other elements of the Native culture have succumbed to assimi-
lation, the indigenous perspectives and messages of history, too, would
capitulate to the supremacy of Western history. Despite incorporating the
72 TOBY MORANTZ

Cree oral tradition, it would still be a history dominated by our own Western
view of history, not theirs (Hugh-Jones 1989:53).7
Yet, another challenge in writing fur trade history is to avoid the univer-
sal assumptions and ideal-type models (Strong 1996:690) that are so much a
part of our postmodern discourse. Without dismissing valuable insights that
are certainly acquired in such enquiries, I question how much ethnohisto-
rians will contribute to outlining the history of native peoples if these
universal issues and models become the template for discussion, as is the
current trend in academia. For example, the discourse of colonialism
produces a colourful, compelling vision of contact history or early relations
between indigenous peoples and English emissaries. This discourse,
anchored as it is in concepts of 'power', 'appropriation', 'territorialization'
and 'coercion' creates, a powerful appropriation of this early history, leaving
little scope for the representations of less violent, dynamic and competitive
encounters. The fur trade encounters in James Bay do not fit this model and
yet the language is so compelling that I have no doubt some years hence
such a portrayal will become the perceived universal portrayal for all of the
fur trade history (see for example Harris 1995; Brealey 1995). If ever Native
People are to make use of the western based histories to help inform theirs,
surely this history must be phrased in a more particularistic manner that is
more recognizable to them and their historians. In the old ethnohistories,
agency (or voice) was given to the Indian men and women but in these new
styles of historic narrative they are once again being relegated to the back-
ground, with titles such as 'Mapping Them Out: Euro-Canadian Cartography
and the Appropriation of the Nuxalk and Ts'ilhqotin First Nations' Territories'
(Brealey 1995) and 'Towards a Geography of White Power in the Cordilleran
Fur Trade' (Harris 1995). In other words, this kind of interpretation, symbolic
and appealing in the type of language employed, does not speak to Native
Peoples about the particular circumstances of their own history but
submerges it into a more universal style of rhetoric.

Conclusion
Ethnohistory, having begun formally in the 1950s as a separate field of
inquiry, distinct from the methodological and theoretical interests of both
history and anthropology, seemed to be heading towards a convergence
with history. As history became more open and inclusive, it appeared as
though ethnohistory no longer had carved out for itself a distinctive niche;
the history of Indians was now being welcomed in both American and
Canadian national histories and it was acceptable to use whatever reliable
sources were available. It appeared as though the distinctive appellation of
ethnohistory would disappear. However, as I have argued here, ethnohistory
 THE PAST AND THE FUTURE OF ETHNOHISTORY 73

cannot be merged into the discipline of history because it seems near-impos-

sible for most of us to write a combined history that reflects the historical
consciousness of both Indian and Euroamerican societies. Unable to achieve
this blending of the two histories, I would argue that ethnohistory, the
history of Native Canadians and Americans, in whatever form it takes, will
always stand apart from these national histories. Consequently, I contend
there will always be a subfield of ethnohistory. This is not to be lamented.
Perhaps, it will encourage Native historians and leave scope for them to
write their own histories in their own fashion - not leaving their past only to
the plunder of Euroamerican historians.

Notes
1. The Crees of eastern James Bay, today, live in nine villages, five along the coast
and four in the interior of their territory that is now politically situated in the
Province of Quebec, Canada.
2. To this end, see the differences in the ethnohistories written by historians Arthur
Ray (1974) or Robin Fisher (1977), vs. anthropologists Bishop (1974) or Morantz
(1983).
3. Although guns are often said to have been the cause of rendering Indian
societies' 'dependent', in fact the muzzle-loading muskets were not very reliable
instruments of hunting (Given 1987). The Indian hunters found more useful,
items such as twine, clothing, kettles and, in fact, traded a much higher percent-
age of their furs for these manufactured goods rather than guns and steel traps
(Morantz 1984).
4. The Montagnais, today often referred to as Innu share the Quebec-Labrador
Peninsula with the Crees and Naskapis. The languages of all three Peoples are
closely related dialects and there is great similarity in their cultural practices.
5. A survey my graduate seminar of 1997 made of the articles in the journal, Ethno-
history reveals that although recognized as an important source, very few writers
until the late 1980s actually incorporated oral history in their research.
6. Those knowledgeable about Sami mythology might view the point I am trying
to make about the integrity of the myth by looking at the Sami bear myth
(Hansen 1990:274).
7. Hugh-Jones was writing this in reference to Eric Wolfs People Without a History
in which Hugh-Jones (1989:53) comments that Wolf "aims to give back history
to those who have been denied it but the history he provides is doubly our
own".

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Acknowledgements
This paper is a substantially rewritten version of a lecture, entitled "The Fur
Trade as an Ethnohistorical Problem", presented in the Department of
History, University of Tromsø on April 24, 1997. I wish to thank very much
Professors Henry Minde and Terje Brantenberg for inviting me to the Univer-
sity and organizing a series of lectures in the Departments of History,
Anthropology and at the Sami Studies Institute. I also thank the faculty and
students at the University of Tromsø for the enjoyable and informative
discussions from which I benefitted greatly and for their very warm and
generous hospitality. Two anonymous reviewers of this paper have helped
me focus and convey more clearly my thinking. I am most grateful but, as
always I, alone, am responsible for the orientation of this paper.

Author's address:
Toby Morantz
Department of Anthropology
McGill University
855 Sherbrooke St.W.
Montréal
Canada H3A 2T7
e-mail: C3BK@musica.mcgill.ca