Montana 1911: A Professor and His Wife Among the Blackfeet (review)

One of the oft-repeated criticisms of nineteenth- and twentieth-century cultural anthropology is that it is innately ethnocentric. It has been argued by various scholars and activists that the methodologies used, and the interpretations made, by non-Native scholars studying indigenous cultures are fundamentally flawed because they are rooted in an epistemology shaped by racist, sexist, and Christian intellectual constructs. Whether one agrees or disagrees with these assessments, it is now virtually impossible to critique any anthropological work dealing with Aboriginal groups without giving serious consideration to issues of 'voice.'

Keeping this context in mind, we can now consider Mary Eggermont-Molenaar's fascinating study of the activities of a Dutch anthropologist and his wife on the northern plains prior to the First World War. During the summers of 1910 and 1911, C.C. Uhlenbeck, professor of linguistics at the University of Leiden, came to Browning, Montana to conduct research on the southern Piegan reservation. Although his graduate student, J.P.B. De Josselin de Jong, accompanied Uhlenbeck during the summer of 1910, it was Uhlenbeck's wife Wilhelmina ('Willy') who spent the summer of 1911 in Montana. Her role on the reservation was that of a devoted academic wife whose primary responsibility was keeping house for her husband. Of interest to us today, however, is the diary that she kept during their time in Montana, a private journal filled with detailed descriptions of the people she encountered and the activities she observed. Her descriptions are candid and generally free of the intellectual 'baggage' that might be found in the writings of a faculty wife. Instead, Willy discusses the mundane topics that occupy most private diaries – descriptions of people, places, and things; the weather; the routines and events that occupy the lives of reservation residents. The resulting document is a window into the culture of the reservation Blackfeet during a critical period of cultural and economic transition.

In the hands of a less astute editor, Willy Uhlenback's diary could have been reduced to a rather inconsequential piece of ephemera of interest to only a few scholars of intellectual anthropology. But Eggermont-Molenaar provides detailed background not only on the provenance of the diary itself, but on her own intellectual decision-making during the course of researching and annotating this document, a process detailed in the two essays preceding the diary transcript itself. The annotated diary transcript is followed by two scholarly essays which place the Uhlenbecks' experiences with the Montana Blackfeet in both linguistic and anthropological context. The first of these essays, by linguist Inge Genee, is a critical evaluation of C.C. Uhlenbeck's research into the Blackfoot language, demonstrating how his work was shaped by the prevailing anthropological perspectives that attribute linguistic development and diffusion to genetic and cultural factors. The second essay, by anthropologist Alice Kehoe, examines C.C. Uhlenbeck's investigation of narratives within the context of standard anthropological approaches to 'myth,' and studies of Blackfoot traditional stories in particular. These critiques are followed by the complete 1911 and 1912 Blackfoot Texts of C.C. Uhlenbeck, a 'collage' arranged by Eggermont-Molenaar based in part on the chronology and incidental notes in Willy Uhlenbeck's diary. The volume concludes with appendices on Blackfoot patronymics, social organization, and ceremony as written by C.C. Uhlenbeck and his doctoral student, De Josselin de Jong.

Some may take issue with the comparative lack of involvement by Aboriginal scholars in the preparation of this volume. However, it should be noted that Mary Eggermont-Molenaar brings to this project a long personal and scholarly association with the Peigan in southern Alberta and in Montana, many of whom were instrumental in her research for this book, as indicated in her preface.

This is a thoughtful, meticulously prepared volume that will serve to inspire and instruct researchers from a variety of fields who may wish to undertake similar annotation projects. I highly recommend it.