Christopher L. Bennett
Eastern Native American History
Evaluating Calvin Martin=s Methodology by Richard White=s Parameters
It is difficult to be wholly objective about Native American history. As with the history of any long-oppressed ethnic group, deep emotions, long-seated stereotypes and myths, and political advocacy all influence the perceptions and attitudes of those who study the field. Therefore it is essential to question the historians themselves, by critically examining their methodology.
Environmental historian Richard White examines methodology in his essay AIndian Peoples and the Natural World: Asking the Right Questions.@[1] Rather than examining Native American cultures as the title suggests, this essay makes historians its subjects, questioning the methods they use and the assumptions they make. In particular, he questions their questions. AA methodology,@ he writes, Astipulates not only how to answer questions, but also how to ask them.@[2] He demonstrates that historians= questions are often based on assumptions which ultimately dictate the answers. AUnless a statement is posed so that it is refutable,@ he concludes, Ait is not a meaningful historical question.@[3]
Though White casts his essay as an objective evaluation of methodology, he singles out historian Calvin Martin for specific criticism. In fact, much of his essay seems geared toward refuting Martin=s premises. White=s examples of Abad questions@ are predicated on two assumptions: one, that Indians in the past had consistent identities and value systems over time; and two, that they understood Anature@ in the sense we define it and were perhaps even environmentalists. Though White does not tie these points specifically to Martin, they are relevant to Martin=s essay AThe European Impact on the Culture of a Northeastern Algonquian Tribe: An Ecological Interpretation.@[4]
Martin seeks to explain why the Mi=kmaq and other Algonquian peoples accelerated their limited beaver-hunting to the point of extermination after European contact. He begins by citing Peter Farb=s explanation that new firearms and new markets for fur accelerated the hunting, and dismissing it because it ignores the spiritual component. He casts the issue in different terms: AWhy did the traditional safeguards of the northeastern Algonquian economic system offer such weak resistance to its replacement by the exploitive, European-induced regime?@ Here we see an example of a question containing assumptions which affect the answer: that the economic system contained Asafeguards,@ that it was replaced by an exploitive European system, that it would naturally resist such exploitiveness, and so on. The very points he is trying to prove are stipulated in his initial question. Martin continues: AWhen the problem is posed in these more comprehensive terms, the usual economic explanation seems misdirected....@[5] Here he is almost admitting White=s point: that his rephrasing of the question compels a different answer.
Martin spells out these Atraditional safeguards@ in terms of the spiritual beliefs and taboos of Mi=kmaq society, a network of religious sanctions regulating hunting behavior. His evidence comes from the reports of the Europeans who traded with and observed the Mi=kmaq. He describes the Mi=kmaq=s reverence for their prey, their insistence on following the proper rituals for hunting, preparing, consuming and disposing of meat so as not to offend or alienate the animals. He cites an observation that AThe Indian felt that >both he and his victim understood the roles which they played in the hunt....=@[6] Martin uses this evidence to support the claim that the Mi=kmaq had an intrinsic understanding of the ecosystem and the need to keep it in balance. However, he fails to prove this. He demonstrates that the hunters understood the balance of the hunt, but it does not automatically follow that they understood the balance of the larger ecosystem or the concept of extinction. As White points out, these environmental attitudes are modern constructs; but Martin unhesitatingly assumes that the Mi=kmaq thought in the same terms. And although he documents their taboos and rituals, nothing Martin describes supports his claim that A[i]n the Micmac cosmology, the overkill of wildlife would have been resented by the animal kingdom as an act comparable to genocide....@[7] The taboos described are responses to improper treatment of an individual animal or its remains; the issue of overhunting is not even hinted at. Martin=s conclusion is a complete non sequitur.
Martin attempts to show the Mi=kmaq=s shame at the overhunting of beaver by citing a ritual Awhich compelled them to tear out the eyes of all slain animals.... the spirits of surviving animals... were thereby blinded to the irreverent treatment accorded to the victim; otherwise... the living would no longer have allowed themselves to be taken by the Indians.@[8] Since this was hitherto unreported, Martin assumes it emerged as a response to the Aguilt@ the Mi=kmaq felt at overhunting. But here he seems to be forgetting another custom he cited earlier, forbidding the disposal of beaver bones in rivers, A>lest the spirit of the bones... would promptly carry the news to other beavers, which would desert the country in order to avoid the same misfortune.=@[9] This indicates that the animals= distaste at being hunted was not a new concept to the Mi=kmaq, but was indeed part of their pre-existing belief system as Martin describes it. He seems to be interpreting similar data differently in different contexts as suits the needs of his premise.
Martin=s data are flawed in other ways, which White discusses in general terms. White reminds us that the sources for this information were Europeans. AA large chunk of our early documents, then, are conversations between people who do not completely understand each other.@[10] Martin bases his conclusions about Mi=kmaq beliefs on the secondhand reports of Europeans. If the reporters did not fully understand the people they reported on, can we assume Martin fully understands them based on these reports?
Martin=s other mistake is assuming that the customs and taboos observed by these chroniclers were the original, natural state of the Mi=kmaq, not changing until Europeans came along to Areplace@ them with their Aexploitive@ ways. But as White states emphatically, AThis embracing of an unchanging tradition is... so extreme that it virtually negates history itself. It brackets off part of a culture so as to make it immune from the changes affecting everything around it.@[11] It ignores the question of how these beliefs evolved and may have changed over time. White further points out that, without documentation, we have no way of establishing that the tribes extant at the time of contact had even existed in the same form in prior generations. By blaming the Mi=kmaq=s change of subsistence wholly on European contact, Martin is defining their culture as something intrinsically unchanging, pure and complete -- a Platonic ideal rather than a real human population.
Historians are only human, and can never be wholly objective. Martin=s agenda is plain: an idealization of Indians as a model of environmental wisdom, a modern take on the Anoble savage@ myth. White=s agenda is more subtle, but seems mainly directed against Calvin Martin. But perhaps in a broader sense his is an agenda against agendas, and against scholars like Martin who overtly embrace them. In exploring what questions to ask, White acknowledges that the most important questions researchers can ask are about the researchers themselves. White shows a willingness to question his own methodology, citing an example where it failed him. Ultimately, White offers no answers, only questions. But that is a good thing, for wisdom lies more in understanding the questions than in understanding the answers.
[1]In Fixico, Donald, ed., Rethinking American Indian History (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1997), 87-100.
[2]Ibid., 87.
[3]Ibid., 91.
[4]William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser. 31 (1974), 3-26.
[5]Ibid., 5.
[6]Ibid., 13.
[7]Ibid., 16.
[8]Ibid., 24.
[9]Ibid., 13.
[10]White, 93.
[11]Ibid., 91.