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Practicing Ethnohistory: Mining Archives, Hearing Testimony, Constructing Narrative
Practicing Ethnohistory is a compendium of twenty-one essays on ethnohistorical historiography. The essays, preceded by a contextualizing introduction, are organized under four topical textual historiography, positive analytic methods using nontextual physical evidence, ethnohistorical synthesis, and the ethical-contextual issues of ethnohistory. Part 1 focuses on issues such as concerns over the editing of ethnohistorical materials, the limitations of direct historical analogy in archaeology, and the use of archaeological evidence to deconstruct colonialist history when real events are obscured by the bias of historical accounts. Part 2 explores relations across space and time, covering such topics as interpreting change in Choctaw settlement patterns through analysis of narrative evidence for the early French period, GIS applications to historical maps, and the reflection of sociopolitical structure in Choctaw personal names and their historical contexts. Part 3 focuses on communication between Native peoples and European colonists and includes essays on the Mobilian lingua franca in colonial Louisiana, British negotiations with the Choctaw Confederacy in 1765, and eighteenth-century French commissions to Native chiefs. The final part discusses the ethics of ethnohistorical research. Drawing on years of ethnohistorical research in the southeastern United States, Patricia Galloway has produced an essential reader on the practice of ethnohistory.
456 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2006
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July 25, 2007
Excerpt from my review for Southeastern Archaeology:
Researchers who bridge disciplines are likely to produce a corpus of works scattered across multiple fields of discourse. Recognizing the assembled whole of such a career is greater than its individual parts, Patricia Galloway as produced this collection of twenty-one essays that illustrate her multifaceted approach to the practice of ethnohistory. The presented works, with the exception of the introductory chapter, are edited versions of articles, book chapters, and conference papers produced by the author between 1981 and 2003. Organized as a reader in ethnohistoric methods, this book contains case studies in the critical analysis of historic documents, the application of archaeological and linguistic data to ethnohistoric queries, and the construction of precisely delimited narratives that interpret the actions and words of Native individuals as recorded in colonial documents. In Galloway’s research, these individuals are most frequently members of the Choctaw Confederacy as seen through the eyes of French colonial officials. This book thus serves not only as an in-depth study of ethnohistoric practice, but also as an introduction to the source materials and significant events of eighteenth century Choctaw history.
The chapters compiled in this volume are organized into four parts. The first two sections, entitled “Historiography: Deconstructing the Text” and “Positive Methods: Constructing Space, Time, and Relationships,” contain chapters that investigate the limits and potential of ethnohistory’s raw materials, which, as Galloway demonstrates, range from memoir accounts to place names and from governmental papers to pottery. In the third part of the book, “Essays in Ethnohistory: Making Arguments in Time,” Galloway presents a series of chapters that focus on the context, significant personages and events, and aftermath of the Choctaw Civil War. Part four, “Ethnohistory and Ethics: Defining the Situation,” consists of two essays, one a case study of consultation between the staff of the Mississippi state historical museum and local community members during the process of updating the museum’s colonial period exhibits, and the other an overview of European treatment of American Indian burials from the colonial period to the present. Although the selections compiled in this volume originally were written for a diverse assemblage of audiences and presentational contexts, the organizational framework of the book creates a sense of purposeful unity despite differences between chapters in tone and scope.
The introductory chapter is particularly interesting, for in addition to familiarizing the reader with the layout of the book, Galloway also provides a condensed intellectual autobiography. She describes the circumstances surrounding the initiation of her research into colonial Louisiana and Choctaw history, and identifies teachers and theoretical approaches influential to her treatment of these subjects. While acknowledging the significance of postmodern historiographical critique, Galloway reaffirms the utility of French Annales methods, in combination with the analytical tools of comparative literature, for writing ethnohistory. The chapter ends with a section entitled “Time and Memory,” in which Galloway compares the characteristics of histories produced by nonliterate, literate, and digital “postliterate” societies. Stressing the similarities between them, she observes that modern archival practices tend to result in histories that are “telescoped” in much the same way as those preserved by oral transmission; both situations produce “a revered and perfect past of glorious Founders, little detail of practice over time, and a gracious plenty of information about the immediate past” (p.26).
Researchers who bridge disciplines are likely to produce a corpus of works scattered across multiple fields of discourse. Recognizing the assembled whole of such a career is greater than its individual parts, Patricia Galloway as produced this collection of twenty-one essays that illustrate her multifaceted approach to the practice of ethnohistory. The presented works, with the exception of the introductory chapter, are edited versions of articles, book chapters, and conference papers produced by the author between 1981 and 2003. Organized as a reader in ethnohistoric methods, this book contains case studies in the critical analysis of historic documents, the application of archaeological and linguistic data to ethnohistoric queries, and the construction of precisely delimited narratives that interpret the actions and words of Native individuals as recorded in colonial documents. In Galloway’s research, these individuals are most frequently members of the Choctaw Confederacy as seen through the eyes of French colonial officials. This book thus serves not only as an in-depth study of ethnohistoric practice, but also as an introduction to the source materials and significant events of eighteenth century Choctaw history.
The chapters compiled in this volume are organized into four parts. The first two sections, entitled “Historiography: Deconstructing the Text” and “Positive Methods: Constructing Space, Time, and Relationships,” contain chapters that investigate the limits and potential of ethnohistory’s raw materials, which, as Galloway demonstrates, range from memoir accounts to place names and from governmental papers to pottery. In the third part of the book, “Essays in Ethnohistory: Making Arguments in Time,” Galloway presents a series of chapters that focus on the context, significant personages and events, and aftermath of the Choctaw Civil War. Part four, “Ethnohistory and Ethics: Defining the Situation,” consists of two essays, one a case study of consultation between the staff of the Mississippi state historical museum and local community members during the process of updating the museum’s colonial period exhibits, and the other an overview of European treatment of American Indian burials from the colonial period to the present. Although the selections compiled in this volume originally were written for a diverse assemblage of audiences and presentational contexts, the organizational framework of the book creates a sense of purposeful unity despite differences between chapters in tone and scope.
The introductory chapter is particularly interesting, for in addition to familiarizing the reader with the layout of the book, Galloway also provides a condensed intellectual autobiography. She describes the circumstances surrounding the initiation of her research into colonial Louisiana and Choctaw history, and identifies teachers and theoretical approaches influential to her treatment of these subjects. While acknowledging the significance of postmodern historiographical critique, Galloway reaffirms the utility of French Annales methods, in combination with the analytical tools of comparative literature, for writing ethnohistory. The chapter ends with a section entitled “Time and Memory,” in which Galloway compares the characteristics of histories produced by nonliterate, literate, and digital “postliterate” societies. Stressing the similarities between them, she observes that modern archival practices tend to result in histories that are “telescoped” in much the same way as those preserved by oral transmission; both situations produce “a revered and perfect past of glorious Founders, little detail of practice over time, and a gracious plenty of information about the immediate past” (p.26).
May 25, 2011
Very solid methodological guide to cutting edge ethnohistorical research methods.
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