This edited volume of selected writings from William Fenton’s long, illustrious career is presented in this slim volume—a scant 375 pages. The editors could have easily filled another 300 pages. For those who don’t know the name, William Fenton was one of greatest anthropologists/folklorists/Iroquoianists who came on the scene a generation after Boas. Fenton carried forth the Boasian torch of historical particularism, and he also expanded the fields of folklore and anthropology. He did his part to keep social science viable in its maturing and formative years. Fenton routinely published articles from 1938 to his death in 2005.
This volume contains twenty-seven selections from his numerous publications. These selections, for the most part, span his career. There are articles on the construction of ethnohistory, historiography, anthropology, oral history, theory, material cultural repatriation, Iroquois history, as well as obituaries, book reviews, conference notes, and other miscellanies. Based on my previous exposure to Fenton, I feel that other contributions could have been included to make this book more pertinent for our generation. Also, out of all the articles in this compilation, his earlier selections are, in my opinion, much more useful than his later ones. I could have done without some of the obituaries and the conference notes, though I can see why Campisi and Starna included some of these selections. Nonetheless, the obituaries and conference notes do not diminish the value of this compendium, but afford a larger picture of Fenton.
The book is an opportunity for many of the younger generation of social scientists to become acquainted with Fenton and his numerous contributions because this edited volume does have a little of everything. Here are a few highlights: his contribution to, maybe even his creation of, ethnohistory; assisting in the repatriation of eleven long-lost Iroquois wampum belts (two full years before the Native American Protection and Graves Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, was enacted into law) while serving as curator at the New York State Museum; and his extensive lifelong quest to connect social science with its subjects, which every researcher hopes to accomplish.
Due to the high number of entries, I will briefly cite four that should be read by every anthropologist, folklorist, ethnohistorian, and Iroquoianist. First I will mention his 1947 paper, “Iroquois Indian Folklore.” In this paper he discusses the importance of employing folklore as a tool to gain insight into a culture. Fenton recommends classifying folklore genres as a useful tactic in Iroquois research. A second entry is his 1952 paper, “The Training of Historical Ethnologists in America,” in which he practically invents ethnohistory as a discipline. For Fenton, the creation of ethnohistory was practical because the social sciences needed to close the chasm between history and ethnology. Fenton proposed teaching classes on First Nations peoples in historical perspective, something we all take for granted today. The third entry I will mention, “This Island, the World on the Turtle’s Back” (1962), is especially good because Fenton employs myth as a way to describe what it means to be Iroquois. Likewise, Fenton discusses how Iroquois mythology provides the foundation of contemporary society without overstepping the stories’ purposes. The last entry I will mention is his paper, “Return of Eleven Wampum Belts to the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy on Grand River, Canada” (1989). Fenton discusses his part in the rediscovery of the belts and also tells the history of the belts from the split of the Confederacy after the American Revolution to their reclamation in the 1980s. He desires that anthropology strengthen its relationship with North America’s aboriginal peoples. His argument is based on ethical and legal considerations, as mentioned above, but the important detail is that the museum acted on its own accord before the enactment of NAGPRA in 1990.
Lastly, there is a final point I would like to bring up and it deals with the last article summarized above. Elizabeth Tooker states that the wampum belts that Fenton helped repatriate may not be the intended belts, the ones featured in the Hewitt photograph [1]. There appear to be some inconsistencies regarding the true nature of the wampum belts discussed in the Fenton and Tooker articles. If this is true, then the editors should have acknowledged this error at some point in the book. Social scientists need to be careful of this type of social science activism, especially when accuracy in their work is essential.
I feel the editors should have been more selective in the papers collected for this volume and should have clarified any issues relating to their selections. This is a lesson in authentication that folklorists and anthropologists must learn. When attempting to assist indigenous communities, they may not actually be helping them. If Fenton was wrong about the belts, then he did a disservice to the Six Nations people by repatriating the wrong belts, while an unknown number of the correct belts continue to exist in some private collection or in a museum storage box. Despite my concerns regarding the last article, I believe that Fenton’s point about the museum’s role in our modern world is made, and made eloquently. We all should listen to his wisdom, but we should also listen to Tooker as well.
Overall, the edited volume serves as a fitting encomium to a scholar who spent nearly sixty years revealing the world of past and present Iroquois as well as providing insight into the fields of anthropology and folklore.
WORKS CITED
[1] Tooker, Elizabeth. “A Note on the Return of Eleven Wampum Belts to the Six Nations
Iroquois Confederacy on Grand River, Canada.”
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[Review length: 928 words • Review posted on March 23, 2010]