John Reade and Ethnographic Authority
In considering this text, I draw from Simpson’s framework in her chapter on “Writing of the Iroquis Confederacy”: Simpson argues, “When desire and fetishized authenticity set the research agenda … it places the analyst in a position of cultural appraisal (and ownership) rather than analysis.”[3] Simpson’s framework is useful when applied to the question of how Indigenous authorial presence and authority feature in a settler-produced ethnographic text such as Reade’s. Although Reade’s text is ostensibly dedicated to transmitting examples of the creative output of the Wabanaki people, he subordinates Indigenous authorial and authoritative presence to the authority of settler ethnographers and the supremacy of settler history.
At the outset of the chapter, Reade ascribes “the greatest historical importance” to “the Algonquin” people because they “presented to the first comers along the whole Atlantic coast those earliest specimens of the red man which have become typical in modern history and romance.”[4] Reade thus positions himself and all of North American settler society in a posture of domination and “ownership”[5] over Indigenous cultures. The importance of Indigenous groups and traditions depends to Reade on how they figure in settler histories and imaginations. His use of the word “specimen” further dehumanizes Native peoples as objects rather than subjects within cultural history. Reade goes on to appraise the historical value of the “north-eastern branch of the far-spreading Algonquin family” based on the extent to which their “legends and traditions” hold “traces of intercourse with the Northmen who came to the New World” before Columbus.[6]
In addition to presenting Indigenous traditions as of peripheral interest within Anglo- and Euro-centric frameworks of cultural value, Reade positions settler ethnographers as authorities over the Indigenous people whose cultures they study. Settler terminology and naming practices are granted supremacy over the naming practices of Indigenous peoples, for example: “‘I call the tribe of which the Passamaquoddies are a division Wabanaki,’ writes Mrs. W. Wallace Brown, ‘though the name is not accepted by all ethnologists, most of them preferring the term Abenaki.’”[7] When Indigenous figures’ contributions are cited in the text, settlers still retain authority: "In his list of authorities we find … 'a manuscript collection of Passomaquoddy legends and folklore, by Mrs. W. Wallace Brown, all given with the greatest accuracy as narrated by Indians, some in broken Indian-English.' Under the head of 'persons' consulted in the preparation for the book we find the name of ‘Sapiel Selmo, keeper of the Wampum Record, formerly read every four years at the kindling of the great fire at Canawagha.'"[8]
Settler ethnologists are thus “authorities,” Indigenous people merely “persons consulted.” When Reade discusses the “poetic facult[ies]” of different Indigenous groups, he does not describe the poetry of Indigenous people in terms of authorship, but again subordinates the creative traditions of Native peoples to the appraising power of ethnologists: “To all the Wabanaki, Mr. Leland ascribes a large share of the poetic nature. Mrs. Brown thinks that her protegés, the Passamaquoddies, surpass all their kindred tribes in the strength and development of their poetic faculty.”[9] Rather than position the Passamaquoddies as authorities over their own poetic works, Reade represents them as “protegés” under the guidance of a settler ethnographer, Mrs. Brown. Mr. Leland and Mrs. Brown adopt clear positions of “appraisal” and “ownership” of the communities they study.
Despite the mediating hands of the ethnographers who brought the featured songs and stories to print, as well as their efforts to diminish the authority of Indigenous people as representatives of their own cultures and traditions, Reade’s text is indebted to the collective authorship of Indigenous communities. Versions of collective Indigenous authorial presence persist through a text that seeks to undermine Indigenous sovereignty. The songs and stories featured in this text also attest to modes of storytelling circulated within Indigenous communities independently of their transmission through settler print culture.
[1] Kelly Wisecup, in conversation, November 23, 2022.
[2] Audra Simpson, “Chapter Three: Constructing Kahnawà:ke as an ‘Out-of-the-Way’ Place,” in Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States (Duke University Press, 2014), 78.
[3] Ibid., 76.
[4] John Reade, I. Some Wabanaki Songs II. Aboriginal American Poetry, from the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada Volume V, Section II, 1887 (Dawson Brothers, Montreal, 1888), 1.
[5] Audra Simpson, “Chapter Three: Constructing Kahnawà:ke as an ‘Out-of-the-Way’ Place,” 76.
[6] John Reade, I. Some Wabanaki Songs II. Aboriginal American Poetry, 2.
[7] Ibid., 1.
[8] Ibid., 2.
[9] Ibid., 4.