To See Ourselves as the Other’s Other: Nlaka’pamux Contact Narratives

To See Ourselves as the Other's Other: Nlaka'pamux Contact Narratives WENDY C. WICKWIRE THEQUINCENTENARY OFTHE'DISCOVERY' of theAmericas by Christopher Columbus hasstimulated widedebateon thehistoryof European contact.In December1991 a charteredtrawler carryingtwelve Nativepeoplefrom BritishColumbia sailedout to meetthe Spanish government-sponsored replicas of the Nina, Pinta,and SantaMaria, boundfor SanJuan,PuertoRico,to commemorate Columbus's initial landing. The Natives' objectivewas to persuade the excursion's leader,SantiagoBolivar,a directdescendant of Columbus,to makea publicapologyon behalfof the Spanish government for the wrongs committed againstthem.The protesters estimated that 100millionor more deathswere inflictedon Native peoplesfrom diseases introducedby Columbus and subsequent explorers?In thisencounter, something verybasic wasat stake: thehistoryof colonial encounters from the point-of-view of FirstNations'peoples. This articleexamines accounts of thefirstmeetings betweenNlaka- 'pamux 2andEuropean explorers intheFraser Rivercanyon ofsouthThispaperisdedicated toAnnieYorkandLouisPhillips, twoNlaka'pamux elders whowerebothextremely knowledgeable localhistorians. Anniediedon 19August 1991andLouisdiedon 2June 1993. 1 ScottSimpson,Vancouver Sun,10 Dec.1991 2 'Nlaka'pamux' isthegeneral termofidentification usedbytheNativepeopleof south-central BritishColumbia whospeaka common language andwholivein communities alongtheFraserandThompson riversbetween YaleandLillooet, between LyttonandAshcroft, alongtheNicolaValleybetween Spence's Bridge andMerritt,in theNicolaValleytoQuilchena, andin thelowerreaches of the Coldwater Valley.Outsiders havecalledthembya varietyof names, andit is these,morethantheirowntermsof identification, bywhichtheyhavebecome known.SimonFraser,in 1808,calledthemthe 'Hacamangh'Indians.The Hudson'sBaytraderscalledthem'Coutean'or Knife Indians.Later,in written Canadian HistoricalReview, LXXV, 1, 1994 0008-3755/94/0300-0001 $01.25/0¸ University ofTorontoPress Incorporated 2 THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW centralBritish Columbiain June 1808. SimonFraserwasthe first non-Nativeto explorethe area alongthe river that now bearshis name.The leaderof a North WestCompanycrewconsisting of nineteenvoyageurs , twoIndians,andtwoclerks,Fraserkeptajournal to recordhisjourney- to survey, asit were,thepeoplehe metandthe terrainalongthe way.Fraser's journalhasbecome the primarylens throughwhichto viewthe initialinteraction betweenthe Nlaka'pamux and the firstwhiteexplorers. While Fraserrecordedin writing his impressions of the 'Hacamaugh '(Nlaka'pamux) at 'Camchin's (present-day Lytton)on 19and 20June,the Nlaka'pamuxrecordedtheir impressions of him. Unlike Fraser, however, the Nlaka'pamux transmitted their impressions orally,and the stories passed from one generationto the next.Anthropologist JamesTeit recordedsomeof theseaccounts almosta centuryago.Still otherssurviveaslivingoral accounts amongcontemporaryNativeelders .Thisarticleexamines theseearlyand more recentaccounts in lightof whattheyrevealaboutthe Nativeoral/historicalviewpoint . THE PROBLEM OF 'HISTORY' In the earlyyearsof thiscentury,BritishColumbiawasa havenfor ethnographic research. Manyof the namesof thosewhoworkedhere are well known - Franz Boas,Edward Sapir, Thomas McIlwraith, John Swanton, Marius Barbeau, Diamond Jenness,Charles HillTout , James Teit. This was the era of 'total ethnography'- the assembling of completedescriptions of other societies or cultures. 4 Anthropologists believedthatby recordingeverythingand anything imaginable, from religious wordviewto pictography, theycouldreconstruct an imageof the pure and untarnishedtraditionalculture. One of the essenrials was 'folklore.' Hundreds of traditional stories were collectedfor publicationin the early editionsof theJournalof American Folk-Lore and theJesup Expedition monographs. records,they were referred to as the ThompsonRiver Indians, after the major river in their territory.This latter term waseventually shortened to 'the Thompsons,' eventhoughmanyof thepeopleknownassuchlivednowhere near the ThompsonRiver.Today,bothwithinand outsidethe community, there is a revivalof 'Nlaka'pamux,'their originalterm of self-identification. 3 W. Kaye Lamb, ed., TheLetters andJournals of Simon Fraaer,1806-1808 (Toronto 1960), 87-8 4 GeorgeE. Marcusand Dick Cushman,'Ethnographies asTexts,'AnnualReview ofAnthropology 1982, 35 TO SEE OURSELVES AS THE OTHER'S OTHER Until recently,many readershave acceptedtheseearly textsat facevalue.Today,however, manyarereadingthemwithserious concernsabout translationand representation. Critical theoristDavid Murray,in a recentstudyof speech, writing,and representation in North AmericanIndian texts, 5for example,askswhat wasrecorded and why?Whatlanguage wasusedin therecording? Whowerethe 'informants'? Why did they tell what they told?Most importantto Murrayistheposition of the'mediator' or 'interpreter.' He suggests that we look to this individual in order to better understand the 'stories' collected. Theseare key questions in BritishColumbiawhere Franz Boas playeda majorrole.Not onlydid Boascollect a mass of Nativetexts in BritishColumbiahimself,but he alsosupervised the collectionof hundredsof textsby others,amongthemJamesTeit. Between1898 and 1917 Teit recorded oral narratives in south-central British Columbia.He senttheseto Boas, whoeditedthemin preparationfor publication. Boas highlighted those thathebelieved tobetheancient ancestralstoriesand he downplayedstoriesabout current events, personal experiences, and nineteenth-century epidemics, explorers, technology, and religious ideas.This biasin the early published ethnographic record is strikingwhen one listensto Nlaka'pamux storytellers todayand learnsthat stories aboutnineteenth-century events are well known. Althoughthislivinghistoryhasbeenrelatively ignoredin British Columbia, it hasbeen the focusof attention in other areas.In South and CentralAmerica,for example,anthropologists havebeenstudying the historyof contact asarticulated by indigenous peoples with verypositive results. Jonathon...