5. J. N. B. Hewitt

At the beginning of an article published in 1913 in the first issue of The Quarterly Journal of the Society of American Indians, J. N. B. Hewitt posed this rhetorical question: "Should the ethnology of the American Indian be taught in the schools provided for the American Indian student?" He went on to answer it by stating that he believed "that anthropology, or at least, the elements of American Indian ethnology should be taught in such [Indian] schools and institutions. It has been his business for more than twenty years to collect and record information regarding the ethnology of the American Indian from the members of many American Indian tribes in North America, and it has been his experience, as it has been that of other investigators, that only a few persons in every tribe knew what the characteristic culture of his tribe was and is" (Hewitt 1913:30).

This knowledge of Indian culture and history, Hewitt asserted, should not be lost, for "there is no proof that the mental and the physical capacity of the American Indian race, as expressed in terms of past achievement and present ideals of accomplishment, is inferior to that of any other race of mankind. And the great body of brilliant facts to support this statement should be made the common heritage and property of every American Indian through judicious and effective instruction in schools which are devoted to his or her education" (Hewitt 1913:30–31).

Hewitt himself had been one of those Indians who learned little of his tribe's traditional history and culture while growing up on the Tuscarora reservation in western New York State. Both his parents were Christian, and on May 11, 1873, he himself joined the Tuscarora Presbyterian church, a church that until 1860 had been a Congregational mission church of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Accepting Western culture as superior in many ways, Hewitt remained an active church communicant throughout his life.

But Hewitt was also of "mixed blood." His father, although raised in a Tuscarora family, was of "white" descent. Hewitt, then, was conscious not only of his Indian "racial" heritage, but also his white one. As he wrote to Arthur C. Parker, at the time Secretary-Treasurer of the Society of American Indians, on September 6, 1912,

1.

J. N. B. Hewitt, ethnologist and linguist. Not dated. Early 1900s. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Insitution (#39).

In defining the status of the American Indian we should not overlook the fact that those of mixed blood inherit something from their white forebears; in other words, that the American Indian has a legal status and a blood status. In appreciating the attainments of an individual he must receive the credit for his accomplishments; but if he is of mixed blood, the American Indian is not, in my view, entitled to all the honor: a square deal makes it incumbent on us to recognize this fact in defining the status of the individuals of the American Indian race. . . . We must not confound the status created by law with that established by blood.

(Hewitt 1912)

These themes are evident in Hewitt's life: his pride in both his Indian and white heritage and his desire to learn more about both. A member of the staff of the Bureau of American Ethnology for over a half century, he spent virtually his entire adult life studying the languages, culture, and history of the Iroquois and other Indians. At the time of his death in 1937, he was the leading anthropological authority on the Iroquois and had to his credit a number of monographs and articles, among the more significant of which are translations of texts. His most important legacy, however, is perhaps the unpublished manuscripts, many of them Iroquois texts transcribed in the native language, now in the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC.

These texts are something more than examples of discourse useful in the analysis of language or accounts by Indians in their native language of their culture. To the extent that "civilizations...