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A NEW ARCHAEOLOGICAL TRADITION
A New Archaeological
Tradition
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Both archaeological evidence and oral tradition were used to locate the site of the Sand Creek Massacre, which is depicted in this painting.
BY LEORA BROYDO VESTEL
On November 29, 1864, American troops raided a Native American village on the banks of Colorado’s Sand Creek. Approximately 200 Cheyenne and Arapaho, two-thirds of whom were women and children, were killed and mutilated. The attack took them by surprise—they had been offered amnesty, and both white and American flags flew above the encampment.
That the Sand Creek Massacre occurred is undisputed historical fact. But the precise location of the village remains the subject of debate. In 1998, Congress passed legislation mandating the National Park Service (NPS), in consultation with tribes, identify the location and extent of the massacre area, and also propose ways to turn it into a national monument. The investigation that followed was multidisciplinary and involved experts in archaeology, history, and ethnography. In addition to an extensive archaeological study, oral histories were collected from 35 Cheyenne and Arapaho descendants. Investigators agreed these “oral histories represent a direct link to the events of November 29, 1864.”
And so Sand Creek, symbolic of the hatred between Europeans and Native Americans, came to represent a new cooperation between the groups. Descendents overcame
Joe Big Medicine (left), Luke Brady (standing), and Mildred Red Cherries work at the Sand Creek Massacre site. These Cheyenne Indians served as consultants to the archaeologists searching for the battle site. As their interest in the project grew, they eventually took part in the excavation.
their distrust and fears to tell their stories. Investigators listened carefully, hoping to find clues within their stories that would illuminate the past.
Things got interesting when the oral histories didn’t quite jibe with the physical evidence. One particular point of contention was the location of the village. Archaeologists determined it was about a half mile north of where many Cheyenne believe it is, which is at the south bend of Sand Creek, an area that has long been sacred to them. The tribe’s determination of the village’s location is based on more than the maps drawn by a massacre survivor. Cheyenne Chief Laird Cometsevah put it this way: “White men call it a sixth sense; maybe the Cheyennes have an extra sense where they can feel or see spirits or areas where spirits are present. Sometimes they see their ancestors, in daylight or night; they have this extra gift that was given to them by the Almighty.”
The archaeologists relied on metal detectors, visual survey methods, piece-plot recording techniques, and geophysical remote sensing. One area in particular yielded a large concentration of artifacts consistent with 19thcentury Native American campsites: brass, tin, and cast iron kettles; pots and pans; knives, forks, spoons, plates, and bowls; ornaments; hide preparation tools. Ammunition recovered at the site, including 12-pound mountain howitzer case fragments, was deemed consistent with those used by American troops in 1864. The configuration of bullets suggested a massive, one-sided attack.
Archaeologists confidently mapped this area as the location of the village. The south bend was discounted, as it yielded few artifacts. Nonetheless, the Cheyenne held fast to their own version of history.
“A number of people within the tribe rejected the archaeological record,” says Doug Scott, who oversaw the field archaeology for the NPS site location study. Despite this discrepancy, Scott maintains the oral histories and archaeology went hand-in-hand, creating a richer record overall.
“We’re not really disagreeing about big issues—it’s a minor difference of precision and placement,” says Scott. “The point is there are two cultural views of the world.”
ARCHAEOLOGISTS ARE CONSIDERING VIEWS OF THE WORLD expressed in
Native American oral tradition. Sometimes they do so by choice, sometimes because the law compels them. Either way, the increasing use of oral tradition in archaeological investigations is fueling controversy.
Archaeology and oral tradition seem strange bedfellows. Archaeology seeks to understand the past scientifically, largely through empirical evidence. Oral tradition, passed in verbal form from generation to generation, explains the past in a highly metaphorical way. The stories are primarily a vehicle for moral instruction or spiritual guidance, and give reason for a tribe’s customs and structure.
Yet some say oral tradition can also provide a window to the past. In the same way archaeologists and historians find historical content embedded in the Bible, oral tradition, it’s argued, may contain historical references that elucidate how tribes evolved, lived, and, in some cases, disappeared.
Still, modern archaeologists, for the most part, have been reluctant to use oral tradition as a resource. This apprehension was less evident at the turn of the century, when the science was still in its infancy. Back then it was common practice, particularly in the Southwest, to work closely with tribes and use their stories to help interpret the archaeological record.
In 1900, archaeologist Jesse Walter Fewkes wrote, “This work...can best be done under the guidance of the Indians by an ethno-archaeologist, who can bring as a preparation for his work an intimate knowledge of the present life of the Hopi villagers.”
But as archaeology became more scientific in approach, oral tradition was rejected as mythology and nothing more. “I cannot attach to oral traditions any historical value under any conditions whatsoever,” wrote influential anthropologist Robert Lowie in 1915.
Scathing denunciations by Lowie and others had a lasting impact. “As American archaeology as a profession developed and became professionalized, interests in oral tradition dropped out of the picture,” says Roger EchoHawk, an historian with the Denver Museum of Art and a citizen of the Pawnee nation. “Between 1920 and 1980, one can find only a handful of professional publications that give any attention to oral tradition.”
Of course, during that time there was general disconnect
between archaeologists and Native Americans. The exhuming of human remains and other breaches of sacred ground by archaeologists created deep wounds in tribal communities. Lack of understanding by Native Americans of the scientific mission of archaeologists has caused the latter great frustration. As a result, consultation between the groups has been wanting.
“The interface has been very thin and not very thoughtfully constructed,” says Echo-Hawk. “Archaeologists pursuing research have not engaged in dialogue, and Indians historically have not been very thoughtful [about archaeology].”
That is changing, at least in part due to federal and state antiquities laws that stipulate that archaeologists consult with Native Americans. The best known of these is the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990, which requires that Native American human remains and funerary objects found on federal or tribal land be returned to culturally-affiliated tribes. According to the law, cultural affiliation is determined through a preponderance of evidence based upon kinship, geographical, biological, archaeological, anthropological, historical, linguistic, folkloric, oral traditional, or other relevant information or expert opinion.
Many archaeologists take great exception to the notion of oral tradition being given evidentiary status alongside archaeology. Ronald Mason, professor emeritus at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, believes that evidence derived from oral tradition should rarely be given the same weight as archaeological evidence.
“Notwithstanding the proper need to be friendly, kind, and respectful of other people, one should avoid the democratic fallacy that regards all knowledge claims as being equally valid,” Mason says. “Just as we don’t intrude scientific criteria into religious ceremonies, so politics and other irrelevant considerations should not be welcomed into the scientific arena.”
There are also those at the other extreme, such as Native American scholar Vine Deloria, who advocate for the uncritical acceptance of oral tradition as fact. But the majority of archaeologists who have studied oral tradition fall somewhere in the ideological midstream. Archaeologist Steve Holen of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science finds there can be a strong correlation between oral tradition and the archaeological record. After excavating Pawnee earthlodges at a 700 to 900-year-old site in central Nebraska, for example, he was able to find in published Pawnee oral histories (those told to an interviewer and written down) an explanation for a puzzling feature.
“Some of [the prehistoric earthlodges] have entrances facing west, which is unusual,” says Holen. “I found in oral accounts that one specific band of Pawnees had westfacing entrances.”
Holen points out that the Pawnee were very religious, and symbolism permeated every aspect of their lives. This is reflected in the layout and placement of features in earthlodges, which are symbolically divided into male and female halves. A mortar post for grinding corn found on the front side of the house designates the female half, as corn is a female symbol to the Pawnee. This mortar post, found in the same location in 700 to 900-year-old prehistoric earthlodges, indicates these are probably ancestral Pawnee structures.
“The symbolism of earthlodges is derived from oral accounts,” says Holen. Still, he adds, many of his colleagues don’t view oral tradition as important. “A lot of archaeologists are only cultural materialists and don’t deal with symbolism,” he says. “They would notice changes in architecture over time, but wouldn’t notice the religious symbolism.”
Archaeologists like Andrew Duff of Washington State University believe those who snub oral tradition outright may miss the bigger picture. “There are many things we cannot know when we use the archaeological record as our sole source of information,” says Duff. “To not consider that there might be important information potentially useful in better understanding or interpreting the archaeological record encoded in oral history seems to me to unnecessarily exclude a potential data source.”
Duff has worked with the Hopi and Zuni tribes while
Lyman Lake State Park in east-central Arizona presents both archaeological and Native American interpretations of its petroglyphs. Hopi clan histories describe the migration of various clans through the area's Little Colorado River Valley. Hopi consultants identified this petroglyph as evidence of the Eagle clan's presence in the area.
investigating petroglyphs and the remains of prehistoric pueblo villages along the upper Little Colorado River in east-central Arizona. Hopi and Zuni migration stories, he says, offer insight on the social processes that led clans to the area, how they interacted with each other, and why they left.
One question these stories helped Duff answer relates to how tribes in this area adopted aspects of Katsina (Kachina) religion. “The question we’ve always had is: Are new institutions developed internally or brought in from the outside? Oral history talks about migrating groups bringing some of these traditions with them, and these traditions came to be central to Puebloan identity,” he explains. “The link between a new sense of identity, and migrants was a light bulb moment in terms of archaeological investigation.”
STORIES ABOUT RECENT EVENTS, SUCH AS THOSE TOLD by the sand creek Massacre descendants, are much more straightfor-
ward than the metaphor-rich stories that go back centuries and millennia. Mason seems to wonder if it’s even worth the trouble. “Quite apart from the niggardliness or even absence of anything identifiable as chronology, anyone having any familiarity with the genre at all is not surprised by the large tracts of oral tradition populated by fabulous beings involved in fantastic happenings,” he wrote in American Antiquity. Indeed, oral tradition is filled with such goings-on as children transforming into frogs and people traveling on the backs of cranes. There’s also the natural tendency of storytellers to exaggerate and embellish to make the story more interesting. “Oral tradition evolves to serve the contemporary political and religious purposes of the bearers of the culture,” reminds archaeologist Dean Snow, head of the anthropology department at Penn State University. “Oral tradition does not exist to serve the needs of archaeologists.” But exaggerations, not to mention biases, are found in the historical record as well. And often even the most fantastical story has grains of truth. Archaeologist Bill Lipe, professor emeritus at Washington State University, points out that extracting chronological linear histories from any record, whether archaeological, linguistic, genetic, or environmental, is always tough. “You just have to work at it, using appropriate methods to figure out if these records have any information you can use in the particular historical study you are doing,” he says. “The vision of a seamless perfect historical reconstruction, where the archaeology, the documents, the oral traditions, the linguistic relationships, etc. all agree is a naive one,” Lipe adds. “That doesn’t mean that we can’t make a lot of progress in constructing accounts of the past that have increasing empirical validity.” Some archaeologists see oral tradition as a good starting point. “I don’t think you can take oral tradition and just use it as an interpretive framework,” says Snow, who spent 13 years in upstate New York studying 16th- and 17th-century Mohawk demographic trends. But, he adds, “you can generate hypotheses out of oral tradition as easily as you can any other source.” That oral tradition is considered a source at all is progress to those who study them. Echo-Hawk recalls it wasn’t too long ago that he was the proverbial outsider. “Now I publish, I go to conferences,” he says. This is a new area for most archaeologists and research methods are still in the incubation stage. “The scholarship needs time to develop,” Echo-Hawk says. Tom King, the University of Nevada’s Oral History Program director, consults with He adds in reference to NAGPRA, “It doesn’t happen Winona James, the oldest living member of the Washoe tribe. The two participated just because it’s mandated by Congress,” in an archaeology project that employed oral tradition to discover historic and prehistoric sites in the Carson Valley, just south of Reno. Some of these sites were not LEORA BROYDO VESTEL’s work has appeared in the New York Times detected by a prior archaeological survey that did not incorporate oral tradition. Magazine, Mother Jones, and Salon.
