Indigenous Persistence in the Colonized Americas: Material and Documentary Perspectives on Entanglement 0826360424, 9780826360427

Table of contents :
Book Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1. Introduction by Heather Law Pezzarossi and Russell N. Sheptak
Chapter 2. Moving Masca: Persistent Indigenous Communities in Spanish Colonial Honduras by Russell N. Sheptak
Chapter 3. Neither Contact nor Colonial: Seneca Iroquois Local Political Economies, 1670–1754 by Kurt A. Jordan and Peregrine A. Gerard-Little
Chapter 4. From Cacao to Sugar: Long-Term Maya Economic Entanglement in Colonial Guatemala by Guido Pezzarossi
Chapter 5. Brewed Time: Considering Anachronisms in the Study of Indigenous Persistence in New England by Heather Law Pezzarossi
Chapter 6. Comanche Imperialism: The Materiality of Empire by Lindsay M. Montgomery
Chapter 7. “Mission Indians” and Settler Colonialism: Rethinking Indigenous Persistence in Nineteenth-Century Central California by Lee M. Panich
Chapter 8. The Sword and the Stone: History, Identity, and Territoriality among the Mapoyo People of the Venezuelan Orinoco Region by Kay Scaramelli and Franz Scaramelli
Chapter 9. Indigneous Refusal of Settler Colonialism in Nineteenth-Century Central California: A Case from the Tolay Valley, Sonoma County by Peter A. Nelson
Chapter 10. Materialities and Practices of Persistence: Indigenous Survivance in the Face of Settler Societies by Rosemary A. Joyce
References
Index

Citation preview

Indigenous Persistence in the Colonized Americas

Indigenous Persistence in the Colonized Americas Material and Documentary Perspectives on Entanglement

EDITED BY HEATHER L AW PEZZ AROSSI AND RUSSELL N. SHEPTAK

UNIVERSIT Y OF NEW MEXICO PRESS • ALBUQUERQUE

© 2019 by the University of New Mexico Press All rights reserved. Published 2019 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress ­Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Law Pezzarossi, Heather, 1979– editor. | Sheptak, Russell N., 1955– editor. Title: Indigenous persistence in the colonized Americas: material and documentary perspectives on entanglement / edited by Heather Law Pezzarossi and Russell N. Sheptak. Description: Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018057644 (print) | LCCN 2018061328 (e-book) | ISBN 9780826360434 (e-book) | ISBN 9780826360427 (printed case : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Indians—First contact with Europeans. | Indians—Ethnic identity. | Indians, Treatment of— America—History. | Indians—Cultural assimilation. | Indians—Antiquities. | Imperialism—Social aspects— America—History. | Ethnohistory—America. | North America—History—Colonial period, ca. 1600–1775. | Spain—Colonies—America—History. Classification: LCC E59.F53 (e-book) | LCC E59.F53 I64 2019 (print) | DDC 970.004/97—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018057644

Cover illustration courtesy of Shutterstock Cover designed by Catherine Leonardo

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations vii

Chapter One Introduction 1 Heather Law Pezzarossi and Russell N. Sheptak



Chapter Two

Moving Masca: Persistent Indigenous Communities in Spanish Colonial Honduras 19 Russell N. Sheptak

Chapter Three

Neither Contact nor Colonial: Seneca Iroquois Local Political Economies, 1670–1754 39 Kurt A. Jordan and Peregrine A. ­Gerard-­Little

Chapter Four

From Cacao to Sugar: Long-­Term Maya Economic Entanglement in Colonial Guatemala 57 Guido Pezzarossi



Chapter Five



Chapter Six

Brewed Time: Considering Anachronisms in the Study of Indigenous Persistence in New England 77 Heather Law Pezzarossi Comanche Imperialism: The Materiality of Empire 99 Lindsay M. Montgomery

Chapter Seven

“Mission Indians” and Settler Colonialism: Rethinking Indigenous Persistence in ­Nineteenth-­Century Central California 121 Lee M. Panich

Chapter Eight

The Sword and the Stone: History, Identity, and Territoriality among the Mapoyo People of the Venezuelan Orinoco Region 145 Kay Scaramelli and Franz Scaramelli

Chapter Nine

Indigenous Refusal of Settler Colonialism in ­Nineteenth-­ Century Central California: A Case from the Tolay Valley, Sonoma County 169 Peter A. Nelson



Chapter Ten

Materialities and Practices of Persistence: Indigenous Survivance in the Face of Settler Societies 187 Rosemary A. Joyce References 207 Index 241 v

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures 2.1 Map showing Spanish and Indigenous towns in northern Honduras 22 3.1 Map showing Ganondagan, White Springs, and ­Townley-­Read 44 5.1 Map of the Blackstone Valley in Massachusetts and Rhode Island 80 5.2 Tractor used in the cleanup of Keith Hill orchards 86 5.3 Steatite bowl fragments found at the Burnee / ​Boston farmstead site 96 6.1 Addition to earlier petroglyphs, Lightning Arrow site, New Mexico 107 6.2 Map of Vista Verde site, New Mexico 111 6.3 Tipi encampment, Vista Verde site, New Mexico 114 7.1 Map of central California showing approximate ethnolinguistic boundaries 124 7.2 Lope Inigo, c. 1860 137 8.1 Map of the Mapoyo region, Venezuela 146 8.2 Historic lance point and sword commemorating Mapoyo collaboration with Republican forces 148 8.3 Children at the ceremony for the repatriation of the Mapoyo archaeological collection 160 8.4 Monolith marking the eastern boundary of Mapoyo territory 163 9.1 Map of Tolay Valley area from Bowers, Map of Sonoma County (1867) 176 Tables 3.1 Distribution of Selected Categories of Artifacts at Ganondagan, White Springs, and ­Townley-­Read 50 9.1 Numbers of California Indians and Chinese Immigrants Recorded in the Federal Census for Vallejo Township, Sonoma County, California 182

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CHAPTER ONE

Introduction Heather Law Pezzarossi and Russell N. Sheptak

W

hile much work has been accomplished on colonial Indigenous archaeological sites and Indigenous colonial histories, archaeological studies that focus on the prolonged (100-­, 200-­, or even 400-­year) persistence of Indigenous people in the colonized Americas become rarer as the colonial timeline creeps toward the present. For example, Indigenous archaeologies that postdate the Industrial Revolution are difficult to find in the northeastern United States (but see Gould 2010); similarly, post-­Revolutionary Haudenosaunee sites are rarely studied. In California, the archaeology of missionized Indians becomes a difficult and contested subject in the aftermath of the American gold rush (Panich, this volume); and few postconquest (1524) Highland Maya sites have been considered in archaeological contexts (Pezzarossi, this volume). Is this because these sites are, in fact, rare? Or are there institutional, disciplinary, and discursive biases that challenge the interest in and legitimacy of these contexts? This volume explores the methods and theories of the archaeological study of Indigenous persistence and long-­term colonial entanglement. The term “persistence” as used in this volume follows Panich (2013, 107), who states that persistence “acknowledges the physical and symbolic violence of colonialism but also allows for a continuum of processes that encapsulate various forms of perseverance . . . that can accommodate change—indeed, it may often require it.” The approaches detailed in this volume tackle issues of legitimacy and authenticity, which often plague the study of change in long-­term ­Indigenous-­colonial entanglement. They offer ways in which we can continue to move beyond the search for precolonial continuity in the study of prolonged Indigenous entanglement in the colonial world. They ask, how can we continue to push our thinking about objects, spaces, and practices such that we do not expect or demand criteria of our own imposition and, in the process, delegitimize Indigenous innovations, mobilities, and change for the very versatility and flexibility that make them so useful in the first place? We are not the first scholars to call attention 1

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to these issues; we add our voices to a group of mostly historical archaeologists who have tackled these issues and advanced these concerns for several decades, experimenting with diverse theoretical approaches from hybridity (Liebmann 2015; Silliman 2015) to entanglement (Martindale 2009) to creolization (Dawdy 2000) to ethnogenesis (Voss 2008) to explain, study, and celebrate the ways that subaltern communities persist, coalesce, and renew themselves in the face of colonial power, and how these processes can be studied archaeologically (see also Cipolla 2017; Cipolla and Howlett Hayes 2015; Liebmann and Murphy 2011; Oland, Hart, and Frink 2012; Rubertone 2000; Voss and Casella 2011). We feel that the authors in this volume have something substantive to add to the work that has already been done. Our vision for this volume was to find scholars who are defining an archaeology of prolonged Indigenous persistence. These researchers have found innovative ways to identify or study Indigenous sites that might have been overlooked with previous methodologies or older ideas of what might constitute Indigenous archaeology in the postcolumbian age. They are using theoretical and methodological approaches that are compatible with and appropriate for the study of the deeper past, the recent past, and contemporary indigeneity. In so doing, they create better bridges between past and present, and between archaeology and the Indigenous communities with which we collaborate. Origins While scholarship since the late twentieth century has done much to blur the boundaries between history and prehistory (Lightfoot 1995; Schmidt and Mrozowski 2014), the vast majority of work in Indigenous historical archaeology explores early instances of European and Native encounters throughout the world. Every region has an event that marks the onset of colonial influence and that initiates the study of Indigenous survival in the face of colonial power. In New England, the 1620 landing of the English at Plymouth marks a point of no return for Indigenous autonomy and “authenticity.” In most cases the date of the event marks a fundamental shift in the archaeological narrative of the Indigenous population. Before it, there is an independent historical trajectory of societal advancements and descents, punctuated and indeed celebrated through the study of changes: the rise and fall of societies, conflicts and shifts in political power, and advances in subsistence strategies and technologies. Afterward, a new set of narratives holds sway: stories of inevitable decline, struggle, and

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Introduction

a­ gainst-­the-­odds survival in the face of the unimaginable obstacles of oppression, disease, genocide, and intolerance at the hands of the colonial oppressor. These postcolonization narratives are characterized by exponentially tapering chances of survival—both cultural and biological—that normalize Indigenous marginalization and delegitimization and terminate in “cultural extinction,” “disappearance,” or “collapse” (see Panich 2013). Wilcox (2009) calls these “terminal narratives”; Vizenor (1998, 143) calls them “terminal creeds.” Ruling over both the pre-­and postcolonization narratives is a larger one that Fabian (1983) and Wolf (1982) both identified decades ago, in which precolonial and colonial Indigenous societies alike must somehow fit on a single trajectory of advancement from “savagery” toward a predetermined, modern Western European pinnacle of civilization. They are either moving toward it or moving away from it. In this model, once Western European power is introduced, the previous Indigenous historical trajectory is entirely rerouted toward an ultimately homogeneous modern Western future, making indigeneity and modernity incompatible. By this rationale, sites of “contact” are interesting because they indicate the clash of these narratives, but sites of long-­term Indigenous persistence are rare because Indigenous persistence in the face of Western modernity is, in fact, rare. These powerful narratives put undue pressure on an imagined moment of “contact” (Silliman 2001), creating a false standard by which an Indigenous culture and all its social and material trappings would never again have the sovereignty, purity, or authenticity that it did before the colonial era. The result is a discipline that has long overvalued the earliest written accounts of Native and European interaction, the oldest artifacts of colonial influence; the roots or homeland of a particular community have become a quickly occluding window on a culture and society losing alterity and thus legitimacy to the homogenizing effects of Western modernity. Yes, these spatial and material conditions at the onset of the colonial relationship are worthy of our investigation, but they should not serve as our only tangible touchstones in the study of future persistence. Methodology Given the deep embeddedness of discourses of modernity within the practice of anthropology and the consequential development of notions of “Indianness” in public policy throughout the Americas, it comes as no surprise that

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methodological constraints have hindered the study of long-­term Indigenous persistence. First, historical archaeologists, as participants in the modern Western world, are conscripted in and somewhat bound by the legal and popular definitions of indigeneity (see Martindale 2009). After all, the very concept of indigeneity draws its power from an essential firstness in a particular place of origin. This kind of indigeneity is woven into modernity, defined through and by the confines of the capitalist ­nation-­state with particular attention to the enforcement of regulations and restrictions and the granting of rights and reconciliations based on things like territory and access to resources, which matter most to modern capitalist institutions (Coulthard 2007, 440). Modern nationhood and, by extension, official Indigenous nationhood are defined by perceived homogeneity: the compatibility of language, the sharing of space, and similar experiences of the passage of time. To gain access to official legitimacy, Indigenous communities are asked to prove an unprovable and paradoxical relationship with the nation: they must engage with and conform to the nation’s expectations of “authentic” indigeneity and homogeneous nationhood while simultaneously evidencing an autonomous existence apart from it. In that sense, modern notions of indigeneity are undeniably entangled with Western geopolitics. Archaeologists, as participants in this contemporary relationship, feel pressure to comply with these expectations to get results: to aid in the understanding of Indigenous pasts and to contribute to the validation of contemporary Indigenous communities. Second and more important, contemporary Indigenous knowledges themselves often place great value on precolonial objects, origin stories, and connections with ancestral lands. These things are undeniably important to many Native communities, and as a result, these values often guide scholars in the design of Indigenous historical archaeologies, especially collaborative ones. This is, to put it mildly, a tricky subject. Yes, we should acknowledge the entanglement of contemporary indigeneity and modernity. It is unavoidable and irresponsible not to. But the acknowledgment of a contemporary indigeneity that negotiates modern values is not the same as reducing the former to the latter. The values that contemporary Indigenous communities place on continuity with a precolonial past are not simple reactions to colonialism and modernity. To explain contemporary indigeneity in that way delegitimates paths to decolonization that celebrate a life without the influence of Western settler colonialism (Mbembe 2002, 635). The deep past is an indigeneity without Western influence and thus will always be crucial in Indigenous knowledges and Indigenous

Introduction

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scholarship. Similarly, we can’t just critique all p ­ lace-­based claims to identity. To do so universalizes Western ­place-­based knowledge and identity formation and implies that there cannot be Indigenous p ­ lace-­based knowledge systems that existed before, despite and in simultaneous contradiction of Western notions of place and identity. This type of critique reduces all claims of Indigenous connection with landscapes and places to romantic reactions to the modern, Western, colonially inspired “sedentarist metaphysics” of rootedness, which Malkki (1997) criticized and is, likewise, unacceptable (Sharma and Wright 2008). Within these parameters and expectations of sameness, archaeologists have worked for many decades to broaden conceptions of what “continuity” can be. We’ve come a long way from acculturation theory; from bricolage to syncretism, hybridity to entanglement, these concepts have helped us to think about the maintenance of Native identity while also accounting for change, wherein change enables continuity or change is the outcome of persistent continuance. But these concepts can become less and less effective in cases of long-­term entanglement if we continue to rely on precolonial sameness, similarity, and connection in order to support the continuation of Native identity (Martindale 2009; Silliman 2014). These theories, if not used carefully, can still represent a residual colonial double standard that expects and celebrates change from modern Western society, yet feels the need to explain it in terms of and as a strategy for maintaining cultural continuity in Indigenous contexts, at the risk of inadvertently illustrating illegitimacy. For example, hybridity in a postcolonial sense (Bhabha 1994) has often been used as a mechanism to validate change and question the very concept of origins, yet hybridity has also been effective as a modern tool of erasure, and as such, it must be approached with caution (see Silliman 2015; Liebmann 2015). In the nineteenth century, hybridity was more of a biological concept, denoting the combination of previously pure elements. As part of the 1887 US General Allotment Act (the Dawes Act), people with one-­half or more Native blood were granted Native American status, while those who fell short of that requirement (were too hybrid?) were removed from their lands, disqualified from previous entitlements and future benefits, and denied Native American status in the eyes of the nation (Jaimes 1992, 126). While this is no longer an umbrella criterion for determining Indigenous identity for the US federal government, its negative effects on the membership of Indigenous communities of the past are exponentially felt in the present. In this case, hybridity was accounted for yet, given enough time, led to the designation of illegitimacy.

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In the ­twenty-­first century, archaeologists have begun to question whether our current use of hybridity, entanglement, and other similar concepts, often used in simplified forms (Liebmann 2015; Silliman 2015), might be inadvertently promoting a familiar logical outcome: granting legitimacy up to a point of some discernible threshold of difference or distance from the precolonial baseline, after which Indigenous legitimacy might not be archaeologically determinable. Liebmann (2015, 323) cautions that essentialized assumptions of “us” and “them” can be created and reinforced in the uncritical employment of hybridity. It’s not that hybridity is unsuited to the study of ­longer-­term persistence. The problem is the continued assumption and valuation of origins and essentialisms in its application. As Liebmann (2015, 326) observes, “hybridity is about the difference of things in relation to one another, not about purity in isolation.” By privileging precontact conditions as more valuable and more essential to Native identity, loss is inevitable, and long-­term Indigenous persistence will continue to be difficult to study archaeologically because the simple passage of time makes it more difficult to justify persistence based on fixed essentialisms. But if we remove the value placed on origins and take for granted that hybridity is an inevitable and ongoing process, we can theorize persistence indefinitely. In so doing, we acknowledge that the complicated, branching, mobile, and merging histories that make it so difficult to study Indigenous communities in the more recent past have in fact always been complicated. If other events and other influences, both before and after colonial encroachment, are considered just as transformative or just as anchoring as the contact moment, then a community constantly adjusting, transforming, and remembering (Martindale 2009 calls this “tinkering”) is not moving further and further from some imagined cultural pinnacle of how things were, but is instead constantly reassessing what it means to be Native in any particular time and place. Implicit in this strategy is a focus on Native self-­determination. The same holds true for sovereignty, which is often considered an empowering concept, something to be attained and maintained in the name of Indigenous persistence in the modern world. But if sovereignty is measured by the impermeability of borders and the isolation of Native peoples and their lifeways, it cannot survive indefinitely. Vizenor (Vizenor and Lee 2010) differentiates between “Indian” sovereignty and “Native” sovereignty. He explains: Indian sovereignty is defined by “the obscure sentiments of Western sovereignty, borders, boundaries, and rights”; it is restricted by states with the power to protect or terminate treaties and the boundaries they delimit (Vizenor and Lee 2010,

Introduction

7

168–69, 171–72). Native sovereignty, Vizenor clarifies, is not isolation; rather, it empowers through a “sense of transmotion and visionary presence. The Native sense of sovereignty is the sense of motion, mobility, not a boundary condition” (Vizenor and Lee 2010, 168–69). Deleuze and Guattari (1987) propose the discipline of “nomadology” as an alternative to the study of history, a field they understand to be flawed due to its assumption and prioritization of human sedentism (Gregory et al. 2009). They see this new discipline as an exploration of spatial practices of “becoming” and methods of creative or mobile occupation, neither reliant on ­state-­sponsored hierarchized spaces nor burdened by expectations of spatial stasis or finality. In a complementary vein, Silliman (2014) has employed the concept of “residence,” which offers a distinctly physical and spatial alternative to the concept of resistance. Residence is a spatialized act of being in which people conduct their lives, adapt, survive, and persist in the face of oppression without necessarily assigning active or reactive resistance to all of their practices. It is an example of what Vizenor (1998, 1999, 2008) calls “survivance” in which the diverse actions of Indigenous people needn’t be explained to outsiders and in which they do not have to actively reference, preserve, or celebrate the past in order to secure an Indigenous future. Again, the focus is shifted to Native self-­determination. So how do we continue to decolonize our approach to indigeneity in archaeology? By privileging precolonial continuities (both material and spatial), historical archaeologists have left the door open for other strategies and ­practices— movement, dispersal, cohabitation, intermarriage, innovation, acceptance of Western technologies and trends, adoption of modern economic motivations, and any other practice that might serve a prevailing interest in the futurity of Indigenous people—to be seen as a loss or a corruption of something previously pure (Silliman 2009). This is where, if we are not careful, we may just be perpetuating the notions of decline that we are trying so hard to combat. How can we challenge ourselves to think about the permeability of borders, the simultaneity of histories, and the movement of people without illegitimacy creeping in? How do we make these adjustments without rejecting the importance of continuity with a deeper past? The answer may lie most clearly in a simple change of perspective, in which we stop studying Native people in the past as predominantly past-­facing and begin to understand the ways in which they were f­uture-­facing as well (Goodyear-­ Ka‘ōpua 2017; Tuck and ­Gaztambide-­Fernández 2013). This seems simple, but it represents a fundamental rejection of the narratives of precolonial ascent and

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postcolonial decline described above. This approach replaces that hierarchical, linear narrative with something as yet undetermined, where any practice can aid in the continuation of Indigenous communities or simply become a part of new ways of being Indigenous. By challenging the rhetoric that isolates and preserves a predominantly past-­facing indigeneity for the sake of authenticity, we can upset the assumption of a homogeneous Western modernity defined against the “primitive” other, making room for and respecting Indigenous futures. Ways Forward An archaeology of Indigenous persistence must first recognize the physical, administrative, and discursive violence that has been used on Indigenous communities over the long term. In addition to the obvious damage caused by war, disease, displacement, and genocide on the Indigenous communities of the Americas, we must grapple with the violence of ­state-­sponsored attempts to eradicate Indigenous identity through conversion, education, institutionalization, and sterilization (Panich, this volume; Pezzarossi, this volume). We must factor in the violence done to the concept of indigeneity itself, which has suffered the cumulative effects of legal and popular definitions of “Indianness” and consequently “how ‘Indianness’ is possible” over the last few centuries (Madsen 2010, 3). We must see the deleterious effects of blood quantum standards on who could legally call themselves Native. We must acknowledge the insidious effects of the concept of allotment by which national citizenship was granted at the expense of the renunciation of Indigenous lands and identities (Law Pezzarossi, this volume). We must note the classificatory deletion through census data (Panich, this volume); the compounding of documentary bias and Indigenous erasure through the perpetuation of dominant historical narratives and Indigenous terminal narratives (Montgomery, this volume); and the effects of each of these actions and attitudes on the drafting and implementation of contemporary legal requirements for Native legitimacy throughout the Americas, which, like the historical blights described above, continue to delimit the bounds of Native identity based on essentialist attitudes of otherness. We must begin by acknowledging these injustices, but we should proceed in ways that avoid the continuance of damaging narratives of decline. The following themes have coalesced in the compilation of this volume about long-­term Indigenous persistence despite colonial encroachment.

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Introduction

Rejecting “Authenticity” The authors in this volume start by delegitimating questions of authenticity. Archaeologists should not decide what is and what is not Indigenous. Any kind of boundary placed on what is and what is not indicative of Native identity serves to control difference and constrain the possibilities of Native persistence (Sequoya Magdaleno 1993, 453). Defining Native identity through difference of any kind is an act of othering and a threat to Native people’s sovereignty, that is, the right to define themselves, which is not the same as the right to define themselves for, against, or somehow outside of the West or modernity (Sequoya Magdaleno 1995, 88). The authors in this book also recognize the diversity of the power relationships in their particular cases. We can discuss this variation using a pair of terms—strategies and tactics—outlined by the historian Michel de Certeau in The Practice of Everyday Life. De Certeau (1984, 34–38) explains these terms explicitly in relation to the power to define place and history. He describes “strategies” as the way “a subject with will to power” attempts to accomplish its goals (de Certeau 1984, 35–36). In contrast, “tactics” are used in the spaces controlled by the subject with power; “the space of a tactic is the space of an other. It must play on and with a terrain imposed on it” (de Certeau 1984, 37). Power relationships can constrain, but not eliminate, the kinds of tactics that can be used for long-­term persistence. Some Indigenous people, such as the Haudenosaunee, Mapoyo, and Comanche discussed in this volume, controlled their own territories independent of colonial powers. They had the flexibility to adopt strategies of territoriality and movement that facilitated their persistence. Other Indigenous groups adopted tactics of movement within the territorial constraints imposed by colonial powers. Archaeological knowledge leads us to question the notion of an unchanging identity from the distant past to the more recent past. Each author in this volume foregrounds the actions—the tactics and strategies—used by Indigenous agents for long-­term persistence. The contributors engage a long view of the past to show that continuity is in fact the historical product of change. Survivance This perspective of long-­term persistence aligns all of the authors in this volume, either explicitly or implicitly, with Gerald Vizenor’s (1999, 2008) concept

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of survivance. Survivance is an active process in which Indigenous people use tactics to persist while avoiding subjugation or victimry (Vizenor 1999, 2008). Vizenor discusses narrative as a key tactic of survivance, and the contributors go further, identifying an innovative set of pragmatic tactics used by Indigenous people, adding to our vocabulary of survivance tactics the concepts of movement and territorialization, refusal and refuge; the construction of Indigenous archives and historicities; and practices of emergence and entanglement. Movement and Territorialization Survivance need not be just tactical. When Native people use their “will to power” to persist, they use strategies rather than tactics. Some of the chapters in this book document movement as a tactic of survivance, while others, examining different sets of power relationships, show movement as a strategy. The Spanish state attempted to control the movement of Indigenous people in its colonies, as did other European powers that occupied North America and the Caribbean. Four of the chapters examine Indigenous persistence in Spanish colonies: three identify tactics of movement and territorialization, and one sees movement as a strategy. In contrast, two of the chapters on European claims in North America demonstrate Indigenous strategies of movement and territoriali­zation, while the others to a lesser extent identify it as a tactic. Movement as a Tactic Russell Sheptak shows how the mobility of Indigenous communities was one factor used to delegitimate them as “authentic” by the eighteenth century. He considers a long history of tactical moves through which one Indigenous community managed to persist in Spanish colonial Honduras. Sheptak also shows how the inhabitants of this community used the Spanish legal code and courts to advance their own interests, including the maintenance of their town even when they were forced to abandon its original location. He points to the exploitation of Spanish colonial structures as opportunities for survivance. Sheptak also emphasizes the role of networks extending far inland from the Caribbean coast, which allowed the continued circulation of commodities valued by Indigenous people, including obsidian and cacao, networks whose existence is invisible in Spanish colonial documents. Peter Nelson discusses the n ­ ineteenth-­century evacuation and recent revitalization of the Tolay Valley by the Coast Miwok and Pomo people of central California. In the past, Tolay Lake was used by Coast Miwok doctors as a receptacle

Introduction

11

for the charmstones used in healing, and the water was laden with sickness. Nelson argues that the Coast Miwok’s evacuation of Tolay Lake when it was drained by Euro-­American settlers in 1870 did not constitute abandonment or forgetting. Rather, the evacuation of Tolay Lake evidenced a commitment to Miwok ontology that necessitated an escape from epidemic disease. The archaeological record and oral history both trace the continued visitation to the valley after the official state removal of the Miwok people from the Tolay Valley in 1820 and the subsequent dispersal of the Miwok people after the draining of the lake in 1870, illustrating a continued refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of settler landscapes and reaffirming the salience of Coast Miwok landscapes. Lee Panich examines the historical trajectory of a group of mission Indians in California under Spanish and American colonial rule. These Indigenous people used the tactic of movement into and out of the mission setting, just as missionized Native people did everywhere in the Americas. In the missions, Indigenous people maintained a relative autonomy in their use of materials like shell beads, obsidian, and chert. Movement as a Strategy Strategies of mobility and social fluidity are an important dimension in the understanding of Native life beyond property lines, reservation borders, and territorial charts. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy maintained autonomy for 170 years after colonial encroachment, during which time its members maintained satellite colonies under their own control. As Kurt Jordan and Peregrine ­Gerard-­Little point out, “abandoned sites should not be seen as the corpses of communities.” In their study of Haudenosaunee persistence, long-­standing practices of rhythmic community movement on the landscape always presented an opportunity for frequent community reimagination and continued to do so in the period when European settler societies were colonizing neighboring lands. Local political economies, including temporally specific practices that change quickly, complicate the terminal narratives that constrain possibility for Native lives. Change is an important part of persistence. For Lindsay Montgomery, the study of Comanche persistence involves the prioritization of Comanche concerns with places and the journey between places. Her discussion respects both ideological and physical mobility as important parts of Indigenous culture, even as the Spanish colonial state attempted to control Comanche movement on the New Mexican landscape. Kay Scaramelli and Franz Scaramelli address the paradox behind the contemporary state legitimation of the Mapoyo of Venezuela. For the Mapoyo

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people, legitimacy and authenticity in the eyes of the state have resulted in the substantiation of Mapoyo territory, yet this change also has necessitated a more active role in contemporary politics. As part of their struggle for recognition, they promoted the selective entanglement of their own history in the Venezuelan national narrative. The Mapoyo were hailed as defenders of the early republic, as collaborators of Simón Bolívar himself, and as such have been ­co-­opted in the present to defend Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution and the controversial ­state-­sponsored projects of his supporters and heirs. Territorialization Nelson, discussing Native California, draws on an analysis of settler colonialism as motivated by the desire to appropriate territory for new forms of cultivation. He argues that this imposition of a new territorialization exists in parallel with an ongoing Indigenous geography, which is maintained through what he calls “refusal”: an insistence on the continuing understanding of landscape in Indigenous terms (see the next section on refusal). When a particularly drastic action by a settler resulted in the draining of a major landscape feature, Tolay Lake, he shows that avoidance of the former lake can be seen as a change that is persistence, since it enacts an appropriate relationship with a formerly benign, now dangerous aspect of the landscape. Scaramelli and Scaramelli, discussing the Mapoyo of Venezuela, explore their ongoing claims of identity and territory. In setting up a museum, the Mapoyo people create histories using archaeologically recovered things that tell stories about their past and make claims to territory through arguments of historical control. Tacking back and forth between colonial histories and oral tradition, the Mapoyo tie these to the archaeologically collected material remains of towns, forts, and outposts to make their claims. Scaramelli and Scaramelli note, however, that even this attempt to incorporate Indigenous knowledge and oral and spatial histories into the creation of more empowering counter­narratives creates an inadvertent “petrification” of a history that has always been dynamic and dependent on the subjects involved. Refusal and Refuge Peter Nelson uses the concept of refusal developed by Audra Simpson (2007, 2014), in which Native people live instead of a colonial world rather than within or outside of a colonial world. Like resistance, refusal is a counter to

13

Introduction

colonial control. Unlike resistance, refusal turns the modern discourse surrounding legitimacy on its head, denying the claimed power of colonial and ­state-­enforced boundaries and residing on a Native landscape that is affected by yet exists regardless of colonial occupation. These places are refuges in Nelson’s argument. He says that the use of refusal is a strategy of survivance, a making of a place by a subject with a will to power and a strategic occupation of place. Indigenous Archives and Historicities Indigenous historical narratives provide important counterclaims and counterperspectives to the dominance of Western historical narratives. Montgomery suggests we pay more attention to Indigenous archives, like the records of tipi rings, stone tools, trails, and rock art left by ancestral Comanche travelers. She asserts that these records act as a counterarchive that can be read by Comanche people and others alongside and against colonial accounts. These alternative histories subvert the ­history-­prehistory divide and provide powerful counternarratives for contemporary Indigenous communities in their continued practice of writing and rewriting history. As part of the step of decolonizing archaeology, Montgomery argues that we must hand over the tools of knowledge production to Indigenous communities. We must pay attention to the ways that Indigenous societies approach histories: through oral tradition and as embodied in a landscape. Montgomery demonstrates the value of using a landscape’s scale to look at the material traces of people whose social lives were mobile—and thus were usually treated in European histories as ephemeral, marginal, or primitive. Montgomery argues for the need to incorporate oral traditions, including stories, especially those linked to spatial features through which history is marked, into archaeological understanding. In her case study, those histories are in part literally marked: they are petroglyphs whose study constitutes the recognition of an Indigenous archive. Montgomery’s discussion of Comanche circulation underlines the way that movement is almost incompatible with ideas of authenticity associated with the stability of communities at fixed points in a landscape. To continue to upend the Western dominant historical narratives, we should also consider other events and other starting points for historical narratives that don’t assign value based on imagined origins. Guido Pezzarossi, Russell ­Sheptak, and Rosemary Joyce all encourage us to decenter the precolonial-­ colonial divide, considering events in the deep past and events in the realm of

14

Law Pezzarossi and Sheptak

g­ enerational memory as potentially formative historical baselines that allow for more nuanced and more sustainable approaches to significant change and deliberate continuity. We can also resist assigning either progressive or degenerative values to the passage of time. Heather Law Pezzarossi critiques this modernist assumption by replacing traditional archaeological “stratigraphic” time with a nonlinear materialist approach to Indigenous history in which objects of particular salience in the modern world define the Native past and intrude on the archaeological identification of more nuanced historical narratives. Scaramelli and Scaramelli also challenge the ­taken-­for-­granted linear past in their approach to Mapoyo historicity. They contrast the Mapoyo conception of the past, which is based on space and the subjective performance and interpretation of past relationships, with the Western conception of chronological time marked by successive historical events and leaders. Archaeological attempts to reconcile these two narratives through spatial mapping and site identification have resulted in increased authentication from the state and tangible improvements in contemporary Mapoyo life. Law Pezzarossi introduces the concept of brewed time, a challenge to linear temporality, by considering the varying temporal schemes of assemblages. She embarks on this process to take the pressure off any one particular temporality as best, to highlight and thereby deemphasize modernity. We need to use temporal fluidity because understanding one point in time requires an understanding of everything that came before it, happened with it, and, in turn, was changed and modified by what came after it. Law Pezzarossi suggests that the artifacts at the Sarah Boston house form a vertical assemblage composed of a series of anachronisms found above and among the evidence of Sarah Boston’s occupation of the site. Pezzarossi, in contrast, adapts a different notion of time to argue that by focusing too much on temporal continuities and discontinuities as parts of “authenticity” debates, we obscure both changes in continuities and continuities in changes. He uses the material registers of chipped stone, the cultivation of cacao and sugarcane, and the local consumption of Chinautla and Remesal type majolicas to disrupt notions of continuity and change. Obsidian use appears to be continuous until we look at the sources of obsidian, which changed sometime after colonization. Chinautla polychrome use continued, but production became controlled in part by the Dominican friars. Chert for chipped stone tools has been disruptively tied to the colonial, and the sources may have been

15

Introduction

gunflints or ships’ ballast stones. Green-­glazed majolicas were popular in Indigenous communities in both Mexico and Guatemala, where they form up to 61 percent of the colonial ceramics. Emergence and Entanglement Acknowledging that survivance is an unfolding set of strategies and tactics helps to identify the complex, entangled, and emergent nature of Indigenous persistence. As Zahir Kolia (2016, 611) asks, “Is it possible for articulations of Indigenous peoplehood simultaneously to emerge prior to and outside coloniality while also emerging in opposition to it?” This challenge is addressed in the chapters by Jordan and ­Gerard-­Little, Law Pezzarossi, Nelson, Pezzarossi, and Scaramelli and Scaramelli. For each instance where modern entanglement has resulted in the erasure and exclusion of ways of being “Indian,” there is a parallel or paradoxical example where the engagement of Western values by Indigenous communities has allowed them to chart complex courses to more viable and empowering futures. There is a danger here. Pointing out the entanglement of histories can be disempowering to contemporary Native communities if it challenges the integrity and autonomy of Indigenous knowledges or affirms the universality of Western modernity. The agreements, contradictions, and negotiations between Western ideas and Indigenous knowledges do not make Indigenous knowledges less powerful or less authoritative. There should be no value judgment associated with the observations that accompany the recognition that this conversation is necessarily ongoing. From this perspective, identities are an emergent property built on the entanglement of human and nonhuman elements; they are not deconstructable into delimited parts. Jordan and ­Gerard-­Little write about the entanglement of Indigenous and settler societies, noting that the archaeological record indicates that the Haudenosaunee Confederacy remained autonomous, but its members’ differential entanglement with trade materials shows how they were able to maintain that autonomy. Nelson relies on Stephen Silliman’s discussion of “processes of cultural entanglement” that, “whether voluntary or not,” engaged Indigenous people “in a broader world economy and system of labor, religious conversion, exploitation, material value, settlement, and sometimes imperialism” (Silliman 2005, 62). Nelson argues that through the process of refusal, the Coast Miwok people

16

Law Pezzarossi and Sheptak

incorporated Tolay Lake by entangling it with Indigenous boundaries in an Indigenous world, ignoring the ­settler-­defined spaces. That kind of entanglement of people and landscape has formed a key part of Coast Miwok s­ urvivance. Pezzarossi argues that the archaeological assumption of continuity as an index for an unchanging bundle of “practices, material entanglements, motivations, and meanings” provides the illusion of continuity, when in fact the practices’ entanglement with people and specific histories gives them new emergent meanings specific to their contexts and trajectories. He highlights the paradox that seemingly continuous material practices, like the long-­established use of lithic technology or the maintenance of ceramic traditions, can actually obscure the persistence of Highland Maya communities into the colonial period in the absence of other tightly datable materials. In his discussion, he exposes the dialectic nature of continuity and change in the Highland Maya context. The presence of seemingly unchanging ceramic and lithic materials that circulated through new networks can reveal dramatic shifts in colonial period economic relationships. Likewise, seemingly drastic changes in practices, like the switch from cacao to sugar cultivation, can reveal underlying continuities in the landscape and rhythms of daily life. In a similar vein, Scaramelli and Scaramelli demonstrate the long-­term colonial entanglements of the Mapoyo people. They write, “Value became ­entangled with ideologies explicitly designed to portray and legitimize the power and rationale of the Bolivarian Venezuelan state as a multiethnic entity proclaimed in the Constitution of 1999.” To try to separate values, to determine which are authentic, is to ignore the constructive nature of the entanglements through which histories of persistence were formed. Conclusion The chapters in this volume provide a necessary corrective to the view that Indigenous histories of change are narratives of loss of identity, loss of authenticity, and loss of group cohesion. These loss narratives silence Indigenous voices and erase Indigenous actions. Archaeological narratives of “conquest,” “colonization,” and contact that are based on loss narratives assume that precontact was the last time Indigenous people were authentic. Such notions are colonialist. As Joyce notes in the final chapter, the authors included here are engaged in a dialogue with Native American studies precisely at the moment it has begun

Introduction

17

to look beyond its roots in North America to incorporate indigeneity from all of the Americas. The survivance narratives in these chapters contradict notions of loss and offer a more decolonized look at what strategies and tactics Indigenous people have used to maintain their autonomy and identity. The contributors provide historical archaeologies that work to highlight the ongoing presence of Indigenous people as they engage with European-­ introduced goods, practices, and social relations to forge continuing ways of acting as Indigenous people in the colonized Americas. The focus on prolonged Native and colonial entanglements combats the assumption of an incompatibility between Indigenous identity and modernity, exploring situations where Indigenous identities were strengthened through change during the long periods of colonization. These studies are urgent and timely contributions to questioning how Native people are seen as inauthentic for having changed and how legitimacy has been equated with a lack of change, which is fundamentally ahistorical. In the study of Indigenous historical archaeology, grounding authenticity in objects is often paralleled by the importance given to rootedness in place. Yet, like the concept of authenticity, rootedness and its ties to the legitimacy of personal and community identities is a modern fixation. Lisa Malkki (1997) calls this establishment of identity in relation to a particular bounded piece of land “sedentarist metaphysics.” She shows that this kind of problematic thinking about the legitimacy of personal identities and the importance of having land to which one belongs (rootedness) has a colonial heritage. By drawing boundaries and claiming spaces, colonists sought to anchor their own identities to the land, to build legacies for the sake of their own legitimacy. Woven seamlessly into these emerging national narratives were sentimental notions of identity with place that assumed that to know a particular landscape, to establish a prolonged and intimate connection with a piece of land, to have a “home,” is to be where one belongs (Brown 2003; Malkki 1997). Places are important to Indigenous survivance. People are related to places, to landscapes. All of the chapters in this volume touch on that relationship. But they demonstrate alternative geographies and cartographies that complicate our understanding of the modern landscape as indicative of nationalization, colonization, and loss. Rather than seeing change as a loss of authenticity, the contributors demonstrate how change allows people to continue in their historical relations with their land, their predecessors, their traditions, and their values.

18

Law Pezzarossi and Sheptak

The authors in this volume decenter the European colonial story, trace long histories of Indigenous persistence or survivance, and refuse to treat changes and innovations in practices as loss of authenticity. Archaeological research is particularly well suited to show how practices performed over long periods are transformed in light of new materials, new pressures, and new knowledges. Expectations of historical continuity and a material distinctiveness from settler societies silence the recognition of Indigenous survivance. The strategies and tactics of survivance are what join descendant Indigenous populations and their ancestors.

CHAPTER TWO

Moving Masca Persistent Indigenous Communities in Spanish Colonial Honduras Russell N. Sheptak

I

’d like to tell you a story of survivance. It describes the movement of an Indigenous town originally called Masca from a site on the Caribbean coast of Honduras, where it was located in 1536, to a series of inland locations. At each location, the residents expressed their understanding of themselves as the same community, as a continued Indigenous community, even as many of the practices they called “traditional” changed. Many other Indigenous towns in the area also moved to new locations in the late 1600s or early 1700s. The mobility of these towns, their incorporation into the Spanish administrative organization, the use of the Spanish language, the practice of Roman Catholicism, and intermarriage with people of African descent have all been used to delegitimate them as “authentic” Indigenous communities. Drawing on excavated materials and using a l­ andscape-­scale analytical framework, in this chapter I demonstrate how to rethink continuity with change as persistence—what Gerald Vizenor calls “survivance”—the reproduction of historical consciousness through sustained and changing daily practices. Vizenor’s concept of survivance was developed out of a concern with similar issues affecting Native North America. He began with an analysis of the destructive effects of using authenticity as a framework for identity. Authenticity is a concept that has served historical researchers badly. Vizenor, an Anishinabe scholar, discussed how authenticity was elaborated in the work of Johann Gottfried Herder in the eighteenth century (Vizenor 1998, 22). Herder asserted that each of us has our own way of being human, and that way of being human has a moral value. Herder extended this to the c­ ulture-­bearing people, the Volk; a Volk should be true to its own culture (Taylor 1994, 31). Authenticity construed under this model implies that a morally intact Volk is static, unchanging. Change becomes a sign of loss or a disruption of moral values. 19

20 Sheptak

Such a static view, in which a group of people share an identity only insofar as they remain the same as their predecessors, is not consistent with theoretical approaches developed in the twentieth century. In a discussion of the coherence of the identities that link groups of people, Charles Taylor (1994, 30) began with the observation that human life is fundamentally dialogical. Dialogue here refers to the shaping of understanding through responses elicited from others by statements and actions. “Thus my discovering my own identity doesn’t mean that I work it out in isolation, but that I negotiate it through dialogue, partly overt, partly internal, with others” (Taylor 1994, 34). In this view, people acquire the language necessary for self-­identification through exchanges with others. This moves us to a model where identity, rather than being inherent as in ­Herder’s view, is constantly renegotiated through dialogues with others. In his discussion of ways to replace this static concept of authenticity, Vizenor (1978) appropriated the word “survivance” from the French language. In French, survivance means simply “survival.” Vizenor imbued the word with a meaning for which he found no corresponding English term. “Survivance,” he wrote, “is an active sense of presence, the continuance of native stories. . . . Native survivance stories are renunciations of dominance, tragedy and victimry” (Vizenor 1999, vii). For Vizenor, then, survivance acknowledges not just surviving, but actively doing things that lead to survival. Vizenor’s proposal has been widely debated, and the term is used throughout Native American and Indigenous studies scholarship. Velie (2008, 147) calls survivance a “portfolio word conveying survival and endurance, survival with an attitude implying activity rather than passivity, using aggressive means to not only stay alive but flourish.” For Vizenor, the word is more than just a conflation of the two concepts of survival and endurance. It provides a way to recognize an active process through which daily life sustains and creates existence. In a sense, this is a queering of “survival,” taking a passive term for sheer physical endurance (that could be due to outside forces) and making it an act of its own. As Vizenor (2008, 11) writes, “survivance is an active resistance and repudiation of dominance, obtrusive themes of tragedy, nihilism and victimry. It creates an active presence.” Later, he adds that “survivance is a practice, not an ideology, dissimulation, or theory” (Vizenor 2008, 89). The concept of survivance has been influential in academic and nonacademic forums. When the National Museum of the American Indian opened as part of the Smithsonian Institution, the inaugural exhibitions included a display panel on survivance. In the text on this panel, curator Paul Chaat Smith, a Comanche scholar, described survivance: “By adopting the very tools that were

Moving Masca

21

used to change, control, and dispossess them, Native peoples reshaped their cultures and societies to keep them alive. This strategy has been called survivance” (in Atalay 2006b, 610). Fundamental to Vizenor’s concept of survivance, scholars argue, is an insistence that change in a culture doesn’t destroy it; it may in fact be the critical means of ensuring that the culture survives. As Malea Powell (2004, 39), an academic examining Indigenous rhetoric, writes, “Our strength was, and is, in alliance and in the ability to adapt to rapidly changing worlds. We borrowed European goods and ideas, and these became part of our cultural traditions. After all, all cultures must change if they are to survive.” From its roots in Native American and Indigenous studies, the concept of survivance has gained currency in archaeology in the t­wenty-­first century (Atalay 2006b; Handsman 2017; McGovern 2015; Panich 2016b; Silliman 2014). In previous publications, I have referred to this active process of ensuring a cultural tradition continues to exist through acts that may include change as “persistence,” drawing on the work of the French historian Michel de Certeau (Sheptak, Joyce, and ­Blaisdell-­Sloan 2011; Sheptak, B ­ laisdell-­Sloan, and Joyce 2011; Sheptak 2013). De Certeau’s focus was not on the kind of urgent project of survival created in the face of coloniality, but his examination of the everyday lives of those not in power is related. Writing about what he called the “tactics” used by people operating under conditions imposed by the powerful, de Certeau (1984) explained that tactics are the everyday practices people employ in occupying social landscapes they do not entirely control. It was in the context of thinking about this approach to everyday tactics and persistence as ways to explicate continuity and change in the lives of residents of pueblos de indios (Indigenous towns) in Spanish colonial Honduras, and about contesting the application of authenticity as delegitimating those identities, that I began to explicitly employ Vizenor’s concept. In parallel developments, other archaeologists began to pursue similar goals by relying on the concept of survivance, although not always with exactly the same reading as I employ here. There are two particularly active centers of discussion of the concept in archaeology, one in the northeastern United States, the other in California. Stephen Silliman (2014) combines survivance with a concept of residence to talk about the Eastern Pequot of Connecticut. Russell Handsman (2017) also explores survivance among the Mashantucket Pequot. Allison McGovern (2015) frames her discussion of the n ­ ineteenth-­century legal termination of the Montaukett of Long Island in relation to survivance. Survivance is also being deployed in revisiting the erasure of Native American identities in the historic archaeology of California (Panich 2016b and this volume).

22 Sheptak

Figure 2.1. Locations of colonial Spanish and Indigenous towns in the northern Ulúa Valley, Honduras. Map by Russell N. Sheptak.

The Indigenous people of Masca (figure 2.1) used a variety of tactics that enabled them to persist from the moment of colonization in the sixteenth century well into the Republican era, after 1821. These included moving the location of the town while insisting on its continued historical identity; using the Spanish legal system to lodge petitions protecting the townspeople and land from threats; maintaining connections to the past through the transmission of Indigenous family names; and reproducing a range of everyday goods using a mixture of Indigenous and introduced materials and techniques. Drawing on Vizenor’s concept of survivance, we can see that regardless of the degree to which these practices drew on newly created structures, colonial institutions, or newly available goods, these were all actively created, maintained, and transformed as part of a concerted and successful effort to maintain historical connections over time.

23

Moving Masca

Moving as Survivance Indigenous towns located near the Caribbean coast of Honduras or inland along navigable waterways led a precarious existence in the seventeenth century. English, French, and Dutch pirates regularly raided them, taking away their gold and silver church ornaments, religious images, and people. At the same time, the independent Indigenous Miskito and their I­ ndigenous-­Afro allies (called sambos in the colonial documents) living in eastern Honduras began raiding pueblos de indios to obtain slaves both for their own use and to sell to English planters in Jamaica and elsewhere. Masca and other Indigenous communities in the region moved inland from the coast to try and escape such raids. Masca was listed in a Spanish document in 1536 as an existing Indigenous town on the Caribbean coast (Sheptak 2013). It was assigned as an encomienda, or grant of the fruits of labor, to Spanish colonists living first in the nearby cities of San Pedro and Puerto de Caballos and later in more distant Trujillo and Comayagua; its last such assignment began in 1691 and ended around 1698. This was a long period for the maintenance of the Spanish system of assigning the products of Indigenous towns to Spanish individuals whose claims were based on their service in the initial consolidation of a colony. This was in part due to the practice in Honduras of a limited form of inheritance of such grants, which could only be passed down to two generations of heirs. In the earliest stages of the encomienda of Masca, tribute was described in terms of specific commodities. Theoretically, such grants required the provision of services of the Roman Catholic religion in return for tribute. Residents were not responsible for individual taxes, which were expected to be covered by the recipient of their efforts. Following the end of its last assignment as an encomienda, Masca continued to be recorded as a pueblo de indios, including in a variety of documents dealing with the payment of assessments to the church and the government, either collectively or individually (Sheptak 2013). During the eighteenth century, the colonial authorities occasionally produced records of all the residents by name for these purposes and in a few cases described the relationships among them. It seems from these records of economic demands that after dropping sharply in the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth (with half the number of ­tribute-­paying residents in 1627 compared to 1582), Masca maintained a fairly steady size of 10–12 t­ ribute-­paying households until 1809, the last record I have located, when the total population was recorded as 56 people. The active tactics of survivance that enabled the persistence of the community, as indicated by

24 Sheptak

these numbers, can be brought into focus through a series of narrative petitions that span the late 1600s and early 1700s. After the death of Alonso de Oseguera in 1682, his son, Antonio Oseguera, applied to take over the encomienda in 1683. His encomienda grant was not confirmed until 1692 but was backdated to 1690 (1690 AGCA, A3.16). During the period when it was not under the direct control of a Spanish encomendero, the town moved from its coastal location, where it had existed since before the Spanish arrived, to unclaimed lands along the Río Bijao, just north of the Spanish city of San Pedro Sula, about 40 km inland from the coast (1714 AGCA, A1.45.6). Because pueblo can be glossed as “town,” we may think of “pueblos de indios” as fixed locations on the landscape, but in northern Honduras during this time, they were not. Instead, it is better to think of a pueblo de indios as a community, a people (using the second meaning of pueblo), who made their own place wherever they were through a series of practices. It is in this sense that a petition from 1714 is best understood (all translations are mine). It begins: Our pueblo was in ancient times on the beach of the sea halfway between Puerto Caballos and Manabique, where the pirate enemy sacked and robbed it various times mistreating the sacred images and carrying off some families because of which and because we lacked spiritual care and our priest only makes one visit each year it would be about 25 [years ago?] that, with a license from the Royal Justice we left to populate a place that they call Río Bijao, eight leagues from Puerto Caballos, inland. (1714 AGCA, A1.45.6, 15) (Nuestro pueblo fue antiguamente en la playa del mar en la mediania entre Puerto de Caballos y Manabique, donde el enemigo pirata les saqueo y robo diferentes veces maltratando las imagenes sagradas y se llevo algunas familias por lo qual y por que careciamos del pasto espiritual y sola una visita nos hacia nuestro cura cada año habra como veinte y cinco que con licencia de la Real Justicia salimos a poblar un parage que llaman Río Bijao, ocho leguas del Puerto Caballos, tierra adentro.) Since this quotation comes from a document dated 1714, ­twenty-­five years previous would make the move around 1689. I propose that it was slightly

Moving Masca

25

e­ arlier, since a 1684–1685 document listing payments for towns in the colonial jurisdiction of Guatemala says: That of Masca, if it is distinct from that of San Pedro Masca of the administrative district of Amatique, has to pay three reales; and if it is the same it need not pay anything of these. (1685 AGI Guatemala, 29) (El de Masca, si es distinto del de San Pedro Masca del Corregimiento de Amatique, ha de pagar tres reales; y de ser el mismo no ha de pagar cosa de condenaciones.) This suggests there were two Mascas at this time, one in its original location on the coast (San Pedro de Masca in the administrative district of Amatique, a jurisdiction under direct military administration) and presumably the one newly located on the Río Bijao. This may shed light on the way a town was moved—not all at once, not overnight. It is important to note that the lands to which the residents of Masca moved on the Río Bijao were unclaimed, although at the time there were several Spanish ranches in the area. The new location was along the road that went from Puerto de Caballos, the vacant Spanish port city on the Caribbean coast, to the Spanish town of San Pedro Sula. Explicit in this move to a new location was the idea that the Indigenous town of Masca would continue a long-­established role in the coastal watch, an early warning system of pirates’ presence for the residents of San Pedro. At the same time as Masca moved, the people changed its name from San Pedro Masca to Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria de Masca. In its new location it preserved what were, to the Indigenous residents, the things that made Masca an Indigenous town: houses, cornfields, cacao trees, and the Roman Catholic church. These are the things the townspeople cited as foundational and complained were destroyed: And being populated with houses, church, and having formed some gardens and planted fields, the enemy entered by the Río Ulúa, and by night through the pass that is called Bardales entered into our pueblo and robbed us and carried off some of the ­tribute-­paying residents. (1714 AGCA, A1.45.6, 15)

26 Sheptak

(Y estando poblado con casas, yglesia, y formadas unas guertas y sembrados, entro el enemigo por el Río Ulúa, y de noche por el paso que se llaman de Bardales entro en nuestro pueblo y nos robo y llevo algunas tributarios.) This was a community in the process of forming on the landscape. It was incomplete, as a later document shows, but it had features significant in the view of the townspeople: houses, a church, and some crops planted. This was how, they indicated, they re-­created their Indigenous community. They were still in the process of establishing the community when pirates raided it yet again, carrying off some residents. Because of this raid, Masca moved again about 1697 or 1698 to a location even closer to San Pedro Sula. The new site was in a place called Boca del Monte, which I have situated as likely near the modern El Boqueron, just north of San Pedro. Simon Cuculí, the town mayor, described that settlement in 1713, citing the same features that defined the community previously: Sixteen years we are settled here with our houses, church, cacao groves, plantain groves, cornfields and other sown things and plantings. (1714 AGCA, A1.45.6, 16). (Dies y seis añ[os] estamos poblados con casas Yglesia Cacaguatales plantanales milpas y otros sembrados y plantios.) This description was echoed by the town’s lawyer, Salvador Cano, in his petition to the government authorities in Guatemala on their behalf: For sixteen years, my clients have been settled in the said place with houses and church, cacao groves and plantain groves, cornfields and other plantings which by the force of much toil and work they have acquired. (1714 AGCA, A1.45.6, 2) (A diez y seis años que mis partes. estan Poblados en el dho. parage con Casas y Yglesia Cacaguatales Platanales Milpas y otros senbrados que a fuerza de mucho afan y trabajo an conseguido.) These passages describe the people’s sense of Masca (Candelaria) as situated in a landscape that was the product of their actions: an assemblage of houses, a

27

Moving Masca

church, and specific agricultural areas. The creation of these features and their re-­creation each time the community moved were acts of survivance. Nor were they the only such practices. Naming as Survivance Re-­creating the use of space ensured the survivance of the pueblo as a town; re-­creating their personal identity over generations ensured the survivance of the pueblo as a people. This is evident in Honduras in the use of Indigenous names by at least some families, usually those providing community leadership. I have documented the continued use of Indigenous surnames in at least five Indigenous communities in the region (Sheptak 2007, 2013). Masca has one of the most sustained histories, which has allowed me to explore who the people are who carried on these Indigenous names centuries after the town’s incorporation into the Spanish colony. The Cuculí family of Masca can be traced over multiple generations. Members served as alcalde (mayor) and regidor (town councilman). In 1662 Miguel Cuculí, then mayor of Masca, participated in a ceremony transferring Masca as an encomienda to Alonso de Oseguera, a resident of the colonial capital city, Comayagua (1669 AGI Guatemala, 104). In 1704, Simon Cuculí, acting as mayor, signed a legal document assuming the debt of a Spanish citizen of the colony on behalf of the town in exchange for the acceptance of the community’s land rights (1714 AGCA, A1.45.6). Cuculí family members also filed petitions in Guatemala on behalf of the community multiple times. In 1675 Blás Cuculí, describing himself as a vecino (citizen) of Masca, presented such a petition (1675 AGCA, A3.12). Also notable in Masca was the Chi family. Roque Chi, a town councilman, participated in the transfer of the encomienda of Masca to Alonso de Oseguera in 1662. In 1711, both Diego and Guillermo Chi, councilmen for Masca, were involved in petitions over the protection of the land granted to Masca by the colonial government, stemming from the debt assumed by Simon Cuculí in 1704. Decades later, a woman named Juana Chi was listed as living in the town in 1781, the last person with an Indigenous surname recorded there (1781 AGCA, A3.1). People with a third Indigenous surname, Chabacan, were present in both Masca and a neighboring town, Ticamaya, in 1781 (1781 AGCA, A3.1). In 1711, when the town was involved in its land dispute, Agusto Chabacan was the

28 Sheptak

mayor and Marcos Chabacan was a councilman of Masca. Members of this family had long been prominent participants in the coastal watch, a form of service that became part of the self-­expressed identity of the town, used in petitions to justify requests for colonial administrative interventions. Martin Cha­ bacan appears in a list of those paid to stand coastal watch in 1610 (1610 AGCA, A3.13). In 1712, Marcos Chabacan, the former councilman, relocated to Puerto de Caballos as part of the coastal watch (1714 AGCA, A1.45.6). In the colonial pueblos where families used Indigenous surnames, individuals with these names were prominent in the town government and could be denoted indios principales (Indigenous leaders). They were even occasionally described with a distinctive N ­ ahuatl-­derived term, tlatoque. Tlatoque is the plural of the Nahuatl word tlatoani, which literally means “speaker,” used by the Mexicas as a title for a ruler. Even more than the term “indio principal,” the use of the word “tlatoque implies the existence of a group distinguished in social rank as recognized by the community, a distinction still acknowledged in the eighteenth century. Maintaining Indigenous family names ensured the persistence of social differences in pueblos de indios, which, from the perspective of colonial authorities, had no such differences, contributing to survivance. Moving the town, reestablishing agricultural fields that mixed long-­established and new plants, and building houses and a church, where the Roman Catholicism central to the survivance of the community was practiced, were actions in part enabled by the efforts of families that maintained their connections to the past through their names and occupied central leadership roles that the Spanish authorities thought of as elective. Inside the houses that made up the town, the everyday practices employed also are evidence of the tactics through which survivance was promoted. The Role of Technologies of Everyday Life in Survivance There are many ways to see persistence or survivance in the material remains of an Indigenous community. Colonization presented opportunities to adopt new technologies, but this was not simply a matter of economics or efficiency. The acceptance or rejection of new technologies is closely related to the reproduction of communities of practice, understood as groups of people who learn to do things in a particular way and reproduce that pattern over time (Lave and Wenger 1991). An example is the reproduction of one community of practice in the formation and decoration of Indigenous traditional ceramics used in

Moving Masca

29

­ ueblos de indios, which lasted well into the eighteenth century, when a new p community of practice formed that maintained some critical aspects of the products using new techniques (Sheptak 2013). Understanding how the continuity of the first community of practice and the emergence of a new community of practice both contributed to survivance is useful in moving away from an emphasis on unchanging material practices as signatures of authentic identities. Researchers have not excavated any of the sites of Masca, but we do have excavated material from towns that were related socially, politically, and economically. Excavations carried out at Ticamaya, the closest pueblo de indios to Masca in its final two locations, demonstrate a long tradition of similar pottery being used beginning before the establishment of the Spanish colony (Blaisdell-­ Sloan 2006). Similar pottery was noted in excavations at Omoa on the Caribbean coast, where people from Ticamaya and Masca served as forced laborers at Fort Omoa in the eighteenth century. Samples of pottery come from Indigenous households at Ticamaya and from the area housing Indigenous laborers at Omoa. Kira ­Blaisdell-­Sloan analyzed the ceramics from Ticamaya, and Rosemary Joyce and I carried out a comparative analysis of those from Omoa. All of this pottery was hand-­built, low-­fired earthenware, plain or with a red slip. Vessel forms at the two sites overlap. Both sites report the use of a sharply demarcated lip described as “crisply formed” at Ticamaya. The red slip used is matte and tends to be ­orange-­red. Much of the pottery is blackened. Both the slipped and plain varieties have a brushed surface, and a few sherds have shallow incised lines. While visually the vessels are similar in form and surface colors, this is not to say the ceramic techniques remained unchanged in the midst of substantial historical transformations. I have argued that in the early colonial period, Ticamaya participated in a community of practice that may have extended into the Lenca area of central Honduras (Sheptak 2013). That changed in the late eighteenth century, when at both Omoa and Ticamaya there was evidence of innovative practices in the formation of pots, not noted in other late colonial period excavations. In the Omoa assemblage, on some brushed and plain vessels there are traces of a distinctive forming technique that leaves the vessel wall patterned in thinner and thicker facets. At Omoa, a central impact zone was often noted in the thinner parts of the sherd, consistent with use of a paddle and anvil technique. ­Blaisdell-­Sloan (2006, 205–6) made similar observations for Ticamaya sherds. At both sites, slabs of clay were assembled into pots. The late colonial assemblages from both sites continued to employ the same surface

30 Sheptak

treatments as earlier ceramics, and the same forms and sizes of vessels were produced. What this implies is the production of vessels intended to look right when judged by continuing community standards, but created by people not immersed in the local traditions of ceramic production reproduced previously in communities of practice. Spanish colonial documents provide clues that might explain the change in technology to produce things of the same usefulness and appearance. At least eight men from Ticamaya and Masca (now referred to as Candelaria) were reported as living in Omoa in 1781 providing labor, perhaps in the coastal watch (1781 AGCA, A3.1). Shortly thereafter, Afro-­descendant women, identifiable as former Omoa residents, were listed as the wives of Indigenous men living in Ticamaya and Candelaria. New people came into the community, and new ways of making ceramics were introduced, used to create the kinds of objects on which the continuity of everyday life depended. Excavated materials from late ­eighteenth-­century Ticamaya suggest that in this pueblo de indios, in addition to people using new techniques to produce ­traditional-­looking goods needed to continue practices of everyday life, the people consumed distinctive goods that came into the community from European sources. Excavations of one household yielded the only evidence of European domesticated animals, both cow and pig (Wonderley 1984). Majolica sherds from the same household are identical in composition to sherds from Spanish households excavated at Omoa dating between 1780 and 1810 CE. Glass and lead shot were present in three late colonial households. Residents of Ticamaya might have had access to majolicas and other European traditional goods through the mobility of the men required to live at Omoa for labor. Nor was this the only way outside goods made it into the town. A document records the storage of wine and vinegar from a boat seized at Ticamaya in 1744 (1744 AGCA, A1.60). Hand-­built, low-­fired ceramics provided the main domestic storage, cooking, and serving utensils in the pueblo de indios, and the methods of manufacture changed as membership in the community became more diverse. The community of practice of production changed, but it did so in order to contribute to continuity, to survivance. The second common material from Ticamaya, obsidian, offers a similar picture. The continued use of obsidian, however, also implies that the pueblo’s survivance included the reproduction of a community of practice for exchange in commodities only of value to Indigenous communities. At Ticamaya, four late colonial household assemblages include worked obsidian (Blaisdell-­Sloan

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2006). Early colonial households have a wide range of obsidian artifacts: bifaces, prismatic blades, flakes, and cores. Late colonial households have only yielded sections of prismatic blades. None of the recorded colonial blade segments show evidence of retouch. B ­ laisdell-­Sloan (2006) adopted the conservative position that obsidian was present in colonial Ticamaya through the reuse of prehispanic materials. Excavations at Omoa place this conclusion in question. At Omoa, there is no history of a long precolonial settlement. Excavations in the area of the town adjacent to the fort produced evidence of an assemblage of Indigenous traditional pottery, obsidian blades, and a ceramic net weight, all deposited before the building of the first houses occupied by residents using S­ panish-­style commodities. This area likely was used by people from pueblos de indios, including Ticamaya, temporarily living there to work on the construction of the fort. It is more difficult to argue that the large number of prismatic blades in this assemblage are the result of the reuse of obsidian because of the lack of preceding occupation. There is evidence of the continued exploitation and trade of obsidian during the colonial period and the provisioning of other Indigenous communities in Central America. Gomez (2010, 128–29) demonstrates that the Lenca community of Conchagua Vieja in the Gulf of Fonseca, occupied into the 1600s, continued to use “a wide range of obsidian sources at a time when social networks were greatly altered during the colonial period.” He further notes that there is no evidence that the arrival of the Spanish in this region interrupted the supply of obsidian. Indigenous people continued to procure and use obsidian in the colonial period, even though this material was not included in Spanish market exchanges, similar to practices Silliman (2001) has demonstrated for ­eighteenth-­to ­nineteenth-­century Spanish colonial California. There is evidence for the use of metal tools at Conchagua Vieja, something largely lacking for Ticamaya and the Indigenous village at Omoa. This implies either a greater pragmatic need for continued stone tool technology or a cultural preference for stone tools in the Ulúa Valley. Unfortunately, political unrest in Honduras following a coup in 2009 has made it impossible to borrow the obsidian from Omoa for detailed analysis of manufacture and chemical sourcing. It certainly is appropriate to note at least a preference for the use of obsidian as part of the cultural repertoire of Ticamaya. Further, it would be premature to rule out continued access to obsidian obtained through Indigenous networks during the colonial period. Blaisdell-­ Sloan (2006, 241) notes that the only obsidian exhibiting a patina (suggesting

32 Sheptak

it had been curated before use) came from the prehispanic assemblage. The majority of obsidian reported from Ticamaya matches a source located on the border of Guatemala and El Salvador, Ixtepeque, and thus would have been products of long-­distance exchange (Blaisdell-­Sloan 2006, 240–41). About 10 percent of the obsidian from Ticamaya comes from sources located closer to the settlement, where it could have been directly collected by residents of the site. Both ways of procuring obsidian in response to its pragmatic and cultural values could have contributed to the survivance of knowledge and ties between people at Ticamaya, Masca, and Omoa and those elsewhere in the region. That the continued exchange of commodities significant for Indigenous persistence was tactically important is also clear in respect to another good: cacao. Using Cacao as a Tactic of Survivance The repeated mention of the establishment of cacao groves at each new site of settlement in the petitions created by the people of Masca has already been noted. This emphasis was echoed in petitions from another Indigenous community, Jetegua, which also moved its location in the late seventeenth century. Jetegua, like Masca, suffered from pirate raids, which carried off inhabitants of the community along with church artifacts. The community leaders asked for permission to move the town farther from danger. The place they suggested was described as appropriate specifically because it would allow them to continue producing cacao: Let your [officials?] give us another place called Yojoa which is good for growing cacao groves and as well, to plant gardens for our foods; sir, the cause of this request that we make for the transfer is that we are very afflicted and disconsolate from the invasions of the enemy privateers every day robbing us, sir. Now the Miskito sambos are not lacking at the mouth of the river and who took to Lemoa all the people, men and women on which occasion [they were] disconsolate; and every day afraid fleeing into the brush with the saints’ images; and our women and children dying from the fright the sambos give us every day. (1710 AGCA, A1.12) (Deje las ce nos conceda otro paraxe que se llama lloxoa que es propio para cembrar cacaguatales y demás cembraduras para nuestros alimentos señor las causas deste pedimento de que pedimos el traslado es que nos bemos

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y muy afligidos y desconsolados por las invasiones del enemigo corsario cada día robándonos señor casas oy y los sambos de le mosquitos que no faltan de la boca del Rio y que llevaron a lemoa todo el pueblo ombres y mugeres por culla ocasion desconsolados y cada día ocultamos hullen por los montes con los santos y muriendo nos nuestros ihos y mugeres con los sustos que nos dan los sambos cada día.) As was the case for Masca, one of the arguments that justified the relocation of Jetegua was the impact of the uncertain living conditions on their production of cacao. When Masca and Jetegua cited the destruction of their cacao groves or gardens, they were doing more than making an economic argument: they were advancing a claim that has to be understood from an Indigenous perspective— about the role of cacao in community life. Cacao was grown for cultural and social purposes. Its exchange perpetuated a regional network of Indigenous producers and consumers. But by the time Jetegua and Masca were complaining about the destruction of their cacao fields, it was no longer a central commodity for the Spanish colony. Historian Linda Newson (1986, 147n144) refers to the continuity of cacao production in this area in the seventeenth century as unusual. The continued growing and use of cacao was one of the tactics of survivance used by the Indigenous people of the lower Ulúa River valley. Cacao had been grown and consumed in the lower Ulúa River valley for a long time. It is first recorded in Honduras in the northern part of the valley about the time the first settled villages were being developed, probably consumed as a fermented alcoholic beverage (Joyce and Henderson 2007). When the Spanish arrived in the sixteenth century, they described the Ulúa Valley as one of the major c­ acao-­producing areas of Central America. The s­ ixteenth-­century bishop of Yucatan, Diego de Landa, mentioned that a member of the Maya Cocom lineage was spared being killed by the rival Xiu lineage because he was away, ­trading on the Ulúa River (Landa 1941, 39). Landa also said of the Maya of Yucatan that they liked “taking salt, clothing, and slaves to the land of the Ulúa and Tabasco trading everything for cacao and stone beads that were their money.” Many early Spanish records for Honduras mention abundant cacao along the Ulúa River. A ­Chontal-­language manuscript from the town of ­Acalan-­Tichel attributes a speech mentioning the region to Martin Cortés, the son of Hernán Cortés, who sought guidance to Honduras from these Mexican Maya traders:

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Ruler Paxbolon, I have come here to your lands, for I am sent by the lord of the world, the emperor who is on his throne in Castile, who sends me to see the land and the people with whom it is populated. I do not come for wars. I only ask you to facilitate my journey to Ulúa, which is Mexico, and the land where the silver and feathers and cacao are obtained, for that is what I wish to go see. (Scholes and Roys 1948, 372, 391) Another early Spanish participant in the colonization of Mexico, Alonso de Ávila, wrote in 1533 that “from the pueblo de Campeche and the provinces of Guayamil and Tutuxio and Cochuah all trade in cacao and other merchandise [is] in the said Ulúa river” (Scholes and Roys 1948, 130n15). According to Diego Garcia de Celis, the treasurer of the first Honduran colonial administration, Çocamba, an Indigenous leader of the town of Ticamaya, was a great merchant in cacao. De Celis described Ticamaya as a “great enterprise for the abundant cacao which they collect, that is the Guadalcana of the Indians” (1535 AGI Guatemala, 49). Guadalcana was a city outside of Seville, Spain, known for its commerce. Under the early colonial administration of Honduras, pueblos de indios along the Ulúa River and the pueblo de indios Naco in the Naco Valley were required to pay cacao in tribute. By 1588, cacao tribute was limited to towns along the lower Ulúa River (Despoloncal, Santiago Çocamba, Ticamaya, and Tibombo). Cacao continued to be paid in tribute throughout the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from towns along the river, including Despoloncal (1591), Masca (1627, 1662), Timohol (1627, 1662), Quelequele (1627), Lemoa (1662), and Santiago (1662). The late payment of tribute in cacao, noted as unusual by Newson (1986), might simply be seen as a reflection of a local peculiarity of the Spanish economy in Honduras. Petitions in 1711 and 1714 from Masca / C ​ andelaria, however, give insight into the importance of the continued cultivation of cacao in this region to the Indigenous people themselves. The leaders of Jetegua had made the critical role of cacao explicit in 1679 when they petitioned for protection of their cacao groves: Since we are vassals of your Majesty, with the fruits of the cacao that god gave us we give comfort to all the land and since we moved away to the uncultivated areas, so we are with the other towns fearing the second invasion, in this time the harvest of cacao that god gave us was lost. . . . We ask aid in the name of your Majesty (that god grant many years) because in any other way we would be forced to go away and seek a place to settle[;] if we

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are not aided our haciendas of cacao would remain lost and the land would remain lacking in the fruits that god gave us. (1679 AGCA, A1.60, 4) (Pues somos basallos de su magestad y con los frutos de cacao que dios nos da se tocorre toda la tierra que como pueblos temiendonos e la segunda embestida en este tiempo se perdio la cosecha de cacao que dios nos da. . . . Pedimos amparo en nombre de su Magestad que dios guarde muchos años porque de otra manera nos deje fuersa todo los del partido irnos fuera y buscando poblarnos desamparar de nuestras hasiendas de cacao que temenos y con que dara la tierra Perdida y caresiendo de los frutos que nos da.) What did the people of Jetegua mean when they said “we give comfort to all the land”? Understanding this claim requires an exploration of how cacao was used in Indigenous practices. The persistence of cacao production in northern Honduras puzzled Newson (1986). She expected it to have died out by the end of the seventeenth century, as it did almost everywhere else in Latin America in response to a collapse in the Spanish market in Mexico and a turn by European consumers toward plantations located closer to hand in Africa. Production of smaller quantities of cacao was not seen by the Spanish as commercially viable. But in the Ulúa Valley, a major prehispanic ­cacao-­growing area, pueblos de indios never abandoned its cultivation. Cacao continued to be an important part of the landscape of the lower Ulúa River valley until the turn of the nineteenth century. Honduran bishop Fernando Candinaños in 1791 (1791 AGI Guatemala, 578) and Governor Ramon Anguiano in 1804 (1804 AGI Guatemala, 501) both commented on the abundant “wild” cacao in the Ulúa Valley and the fact that the local people used it every day. What appeared to these Spanish observers as “wild” may well have been managed groves of cacao trees. Given the lack of a Spanish market, when Jetegua’s leaders said that they comforted all the land, it most likely meant they supplied cacao to Indigenous people for their use and consumption. Cacao is still important today in Indigenous practices. Lenca-­speaking people use cacao in rituals, called composturas in Spanish, for the health of their agricultural fields (Chapman 1985). The modern Lenca towns that practice compostura are in central and southern Honduras, outside the zone in which cacao grows, so they must obtain cacao for these ceremonies from producers in low-­lying areas along the north coast of Honduras. Today, this is a m ­ arket-­based mode of acquisition. During the colonial period, in addition to market exchange, it is likely that informal exchanges

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linked to the social relations between families and towns allowed cacao to move through the countryside in the same way obsidian did. As late as the turn of the nineteenth century, pueblos de indios in the Ulúa River valley were cultivating cacao both for their own use and for the use of others, potentially supplying towns far from the north coast. The authorities of Jetegua who petitioned to move their community to ensure continued access to cacao described it as a gift of God. Lenca storyteller Julio Sanchez told the ethnographer Anne Chapman (1985, 15–20) the story of the gift of cacao from God and the performance of the first compostura, when Adam and Eve were banished from the garden of Eden. Once they were out of paradise, God gave Adam and Eve nine grains of corn and nine of beans and said that one of each a day would be enough for them to eat. As Adam cleared the land to plant these seeds, the trees he cut screamed and bled, then grew back overnight. God told Adam to build a ritual altar and that nine angels would arrive: I am going to give you nine grains of dead maize and nine cups and one large jar will appear; throw one grain into each . . . then go seek a wild turkey and two doves. . . . look for a palm frond and throw a drop of palm juice into each cup and jar. . . . In returning to where you have to go, you will find some pods. Cut them open right there. In the pods, you will find some seeds. These are cacao. (Chapman 1986, 17) The angels were served a meal that included chilate, a corn and cacao drink. Adam invited the angels to sacrifice the birds, and they did so. A tenth angel then drank up the alcoholic chicha in the cups of the other nine angels. Everyone got drunk, and then the angels fought and went off at three in the morning. Adam went back to work clearing the field the next day, and the vegetation didn’t cry or bleed or grow back. The spirits responsible had been compensated, Sanchez told Chapman. This was the first compostura, literally a thing made up of many parts: it is a way of repairing something that has been mistreated or broken, and it is an agreement between parties. This first ritual became the template for the compostura executed today when the Lenca of central Honduras clear a new field for agriculture. It guarantees the plants won’t regrow overnight, using the gift of God, cacao, in a ritual to both commemorate and ensure success. This is what Jetegua’s leaders alluded to when they said they gave “comfort to all the land”:

37

Moving Masca

they provided the cacao for the equivalent of composturas, ceremonies that maintained the natural order without which agriculture would fail and harm would come to the community. The residents of Masca and Jetegua linked their cultivated fields to freedom from harm, “living in peace and the town growing” (1714 AGCA, A1.45.6, 15). Without the cacao and the ceremonies in which it was used, there could be no peace and no agriculture. In the process of moving the pueblo from the Río Bijao to their final location, Masca’s mayor, Simon Cuculí, said that the people of Masca established new cacao plantations, a process that takes years. Their investment in replanting cacao, in particular, demonstrates their values, rooted in a tradition of supplying cacao to the other people of Honduras. Cacao from the mountains behind Omoa and around Choloma is still used today for agricultural rituals in central Honduran Lenca communities (Chapman 1985, 77). The archaeological record suggests that cacao has been part of Indigenous life in Honduras from at least the earliest settled villages to the present. Its use and reuse through Lenca composturas today is an act of survivance. Conclusion Survivance as a concept takes us beyond victimization, Vizenor’s “victimry,” and beyond questions of authenticity to acknowledge that everything changes, including the core concepts of what we think of as “culture.” By drawing on de Certeau’s concept of tactics, practices through which those without power do things not foreseen by the powerful, the specific ways that people accomplish survivance are made visible. These are not limited to repeating practices with local roots. Tactics can appropriate things that are part of the strategies of the powerful. In the colonial setting of Spanish Honduras, the community of Masca / ​ ­Candelaria used a variety of tactics to persist as an Indigenous place and people. Candelaria persisted as a historically continuous descendant population that shaped the colonial context and perpetuated their own community through countless small acts. These numerous daily practices are survivance. The use of Indigenous surnames by the town leaders, for example, served to continue to mark their distinction within the community and helped to identify those from other communities with similar names as likewise of a similar status. Their names also helped mark them as distinct from the S­ panish-­derived population in colonial Honduras. It is no accident that people with these Indigenous

38 Sheptak

s­ urnames continued to occupy the new elected leadership roles that the Spanish colonists imagined as replacing traditional leadership. If the residents of Candelaria / ​Masca were anything like the residents of Ticamaya, they also continued to use ­Indigenous-­made pottery and obsidian cutting tools in their basic daily toolkit. Again, this is not to say that continued practices were unchanging. In the late eighteenth century, for example, the inhabitants of Ticamaya and the consumers of Indigenous traditional ceramics and obsidian tools at Omoa began making what outwardly looked like the same pottery, but they used a series of new techniques. A new forming technique, paddle and anvil construction, came into use at the same time that African-­ descended people in Omoa began marrying the Indigenous people of Ticamaya. This is not to claim that there is a direct connection between a technique and a specific cultural group. Rather, it is an indication that no matter whether the people making pottery learned how to do it from childhood in a pueblo de indios or adapted techniques learned elsewhere, they worked to produce pots that served the purposes of the Indigenous community and that presented the expected visual appearance that was traditional there. Candelaria / ​Masca moved its location, twice, as an act of physical survival to protect its residents from coastal pirates. When they rebuilt their town in each location, they indicated the importance of certain features of the landscape being integrated into the community. This included a central role for the church. Embracing Roman Catholicism as a core part of their identity was not a loss of Indigenous belief and does not undermine the authenticity of the continuation of identity, as they expressed in their petitions. Remaking the town also involved houses being co-­located with house gardens and the town being surrounded by fields of crops. Some of these were long established in the region, others (e.g., plantains) were of more recent introduction. Among the important crops whose cultivation was reestablished at each community site was cacao. Petitions submitted through Spanish administrative processes show that cacao was needed to feed the earth, an idea that survives to this day in Lenca composturas. These countless small acts and the narratives of survivance embodied in the petitions created by members of these communities give a glimpse into how the Indigenous people of Candelaria / M ​ asca managed the work of survivance. They used all the tools at their disposal, ensuring continuity as much through change as through what stayed the same.

CHAPTER THREE

Neither Contact nor Colonial Seneca Iroquois Local Political Economies, 1670–1754 Kurt A. Jordan and Peregrine A. ­Gerard-­L ittle

T

his chapter concentrates on the ­seventeenth-­and e­ ighteenth-­century social dynamics of the Seneca Nation, one of the constituent groups in the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy, whose traditional territories lie within what is now New York state. 1 European trade goods began to be introduced into this part of northeastern North America in the 1520s, and direct European incursions into Haudenosaunee territory started in 1609 (Engelbrecht 2003; Parmenter 2010). From a comparative perspective, the Haudenosaunee case is particularly interesting because these nations were able to maintain a high degree of social and political autonomy until the American Revolution, some 250 years after exposure to and initial use of European goods and 170 years after direct engagement with European settlers. With the exception of the Mohawks (Jordan 2009), before 1783 other Haudenosaunee nations prevented large European populations from moving into their territories, incorporated significant numbers of outsiders to maintain demographic viability, and exercised a great deal of spatial mobility. This example of interior autonomy contrasts with what was happening at the same time on the northeastern coasts, where invading ­settler populations and institutions had more immediate and catastrophic effects on colonized Indigenous groups (Cronon 1983). Since Haudenosaunee communities occupied individual locations for only 15–40 years before planned settlement moves, examining a sequence of consecutively occupied sites provides an excellent way to look at change over time. Haudenosaunee sites occupied after 1600 generally can be tightly dated using a combination of historical documents and diagnostic artifacts; then, evidence for the contours of daily life can be gathered and site-­by-­site assemblages compared. It is useful to conceive of the temporally specific mixes of practices and institutions present at individual sites as “local political economies” (Jordan 2008a). A focus on assembling a record of changes over narrow slices of time 39

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Jordan and ­Gerard-­Little

quickly complicates settler metanarratives of Indigenous decline, illegitimacy, and cultural loss. These narratives are part of what Indigenous studies scholar Mark Rifkin (2013, 323) terms “settler common sense,” defined as the “unmarked, generic conditions of possibility for occupancy, association, history, and personhood” that are imposed on Indigenous lives. While these sorts of common (and ideological) metanarratives might predict that autonomous groups would feature a lesser degree of social change over time than directly colonized populations, we show in this chapter that this is very much not the case. The Haudenosaunee nations maintained autonomy through a complex mix of changing strategies of subsistence, trade, mobility, military engagement, incorporation of outsiders, and colonization of new territories (Jordan 2013; Parmenter 2010). Their decisions appear to have been made based on a supple understanding of the social context, accessing community memories about what had succeeded and failed in the past, coupled with aspirations for the future. The Seneca situation was, as expressed in the title of this chapter, neither “contact” nor “colonial” over a sustained period.2 Beyond the serious problems associated with the use of contact as a metaphor, as outlined by archaeologist Stephen Silliman (2005), it is nonsensical to view the 170 years of direct engagements between Senecas and European intruders as “contact”: their interactions were sustained and predictable over many generations. It is also improper to view the Seneca situation during 1500–1783 as “colonial,” since the European presence in Seneca territory during this period was slight and intermittent. Senecas instead lived beyond the orbit of colonial settlement and control, where they remained predominantly autonomous even as they were entangled in colonial trade networks, exchanges of ideas and technology, and responses to colonial aggressions and diplomacy. This type of situation was not uncommon in the postcolumbian world, and these settings merit greater consideration in comparative studies and the development of theories of intercultural ­engagement. Three Consecutively Occupied Sites: Contexts and Data To examine fine-­grained changes in Seneca local political economies, we outline evidence from three consecutively occupied eastern Seneca sites: Ganondagan (c. 1670–1687), 3 White Springs (c. 1688–1715), and T ­ ownley-­Read (c. 1715–1754). It is important to note that the regional p ­ olitical-­economic situation was quite different during each of these occupations (Jordan 2008a; Parmenter 2010).

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Ganondagan was inhabited during a peak period in Haudenosaunee power when the confederacy was engaged in an aggressive series of wars against its Indigenous neighbors. The tide of war turned against the Haudenosaunee toward the end of Ganondagan’s occupation, and the site’s residents burned it in 1687 in advance of an invading French and allied Indigenous army led by the Marquis de Denonville. This forced the eastern Senecas to relocate to White Springs, where the early years of occupation continued to be violent, but the situation improved somewhat after 1701. The ­Townley-­Read site was constructed and occupied during a period of relative peace in the region. Although these ­large-­scale dynamics colored choices and activities at the sites considerably, the archaeological assemblages have revealed surprising patterns that cannot be explained solely by regional conditions. This portion of the Seneca sequence is particularly appropriate for emphasis because substantial controlled d ­ omestic-­context excavation has taken place at each of these sites, making them roughly comparable. This opportunity is unique in Seneca archaeology. Our concern with these sites started with Jordan’s project at ­Townley-­Read, which sought to collect ­domestic-­context data to assess disparate scholarly interpretations of e­ ighteenth-­century Haudenosaunee political, economic, and cultural conditions (see Jordan 2008a). While this project was instigated by Jordan, Seneca cultural leader G. Peter Jemison reviewed and commented on the project’s field practices, which collaboratively were altered to meet his concerns.4 Based on Seneca interest, a second excavation project was started at the White Springs site in 2007 under Jordan’s direction; ­Gerard-­Little has participated in the project since 2009, codirected excavations in 2014 and 2015, and used data from the project for her doctoral dissertation (Gerard-­Little 2017). Cornell University’s American Indian Program (now the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program) provided full-­tuition scholar­ships for Native students to attend the White Springs excavations with the goal of building archaeological capacity among Indigenous communities. To date, nine undergraduate and nine postgraduate students have received support. The collaborative nature of the project will extend beyond fieldwork to analysis and writing. Results from the White Springs project will be published as a multiauthor, multivocal book that will include the perspectives of Indigenous academics, Seneca community authorities, and archaeological specialists. The artifact assemblages from both ­Townley-­Read and White Springs will be transferred to the S­ eneca-­Iroquois National Museum in Salamanca, New York, for permanent curation.

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We expand our temporal coverage beyond T ­ ownley-­Read and White Springs by reexamining materials previously excavated from the Ganondagan site, 5 also with encouragement from the descendant community. Ganondagan currently serves as the only(!) official New York state historic site devoted to Indigenous history, and at present it is run and staffed largely by Indigenous people; it is used as a venue for a variety of ­Native-­focused cultural and historical events. Despite the centrality of Ganondagan to ­present-­day descendant community and public ideas about the Indigenous past, the archaeology done at the site in the past has never been fully written up. We volunteer some tentative comparisons even though some of our data remain in preliminary form. Excavated materials from the T ­ ownley-­Read site have been thoroughly cataloged and interpreted (Jordan 2008a, 2014; Watson and Thomas 2013). Cornell University excavations took place at White Springs from 2007 to 2015; some results have been presented (Gerard-­Little 2017; G ­ erard-­Little et al. 2016; ­Gerard-­Little, Rogers, and Jordan 2012; Jordan 2018; Krohn 2010), but cataloging and analysis are ongoing. Ganondagan has been impacted by decades of activity by avocational archaeologists and looters. Artifacts and field notes from Ganondagan reside in a number of institutions, including the Rochester (New York) Museum and Science Center and the New York State Division for Historic Preservation in Waterford. Formal ­domestic-­context excavations took place at Ganondagan in the 1970s and 1980s to enhance public interpretation at the site, but reports on this work have been largely at the descriptive level, and no integrated analysis has taken place (Dean 1984; Hayes, Barber, and Hamell 1978). The New York State Division for Historic Preservation generously provided us with an inventory of its preliminary artifact catalog from the Ganondagan ­domestic-­context excavations. Information from White Springs and Ganondagan is in very comparable form. Cataloging of many parts of these assemblages is at a general level: we know how many glass beads, pipestems, faunal remains, and the like were recovered and from what contexts, but we do not have detailed information about bead types, pipe bore measurements, genus or species identifications, and so on for much of the assemblage. While it would be preferable to wait to draw conclusions until detailed cataloging of the entirety of both assemblages takes place, this will be a multiyear effort involving a fleet of specialists. As it stands, the grain of existing information is quite satisfactory to illustrate the thoroughgoing nature of change in Seneca local political economies over time. Thus we offer interpretation with the caveat that our conclusions here are subject to some (likely limited) revision when detailed cataloging takes place.

Neither Contact nor Colonial

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Our principal points for comparison are the ­domestic-­context assemblages that were collected using formal, modern methods at each site. In particular, we emphasize the portion of those assemblages from Ganondagan and White Springs that came from plow-­zone contexts. Both sites were densely occupied, nucleated settlements. At each site, agricultural activity plowed most of the topsoil, destroying any stratigraphy that may have been present and mixing Seneca and more recent deposits.6 However, the amount of plow-­zone soil removed and screened by archaeologists was recorded; this allows us to calculate and compare standardized density figures for the artifact classes recovered at each site.7 At White Springs, plowed soil was consistently about 30 cm deep. At Ganondagan, the average plow-­zone depth was 39.5 cm across the site, but the plow-­zone depth ranged more widely than that at White Springs, with a minimum of 20.3 cm and a maximum recorded depth of 65.5 cm. T ­ ownley-­Read was a fully dispersed community with significantly lower residential and activity density, meaning that the plow-­zone artifact density figures from that site will not be directly comparable to those from Ganondagan and White Springs; as a consequence, we represent T ­ ownley-­Read using raw counts for all recovered ­domestic-­context artifacts. In certain instances, we refer to the entire assemblage of artifacts from certain classes recovered from individual sites, including materials from ­shovel-­test pits, test units, mechanically stripped excavation trenches, surface collections, and / or previous excavations of uncertain or nondomestic provenience housed in museum collections. Regional and Extraregional Settlement Patterns Haudenosaunee groups routinely relocated their settlements, primarily due to local resource depletion (especially of firewood), changes in ­political-­economic conditions, or destruction during wartime. These abandonments, relocations, and rebuildings can be viewed along the lines proposed by archaeologist Michael Wilcox (2009, 96) for the American Southwest: abandoned sites should not be seen as the corpses of communities, but rather metaphorically as the abandoned shells of a hermit crab, where “the living thing inside, the people who inhabited the site, move[d] on to new locations.” Haudenosaunee communities took the opportunities periodically provided by relocation to reimagine themselves, tailoring the arrangement of houses, fields, and fortifications to reflect their understanding of upcoming conditions. Years of successive relocations produced what Birch and Williamson (2015) have called “ancestral landscapes” of formerly occupied sites and mortuary populations, to which living

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Figure 3.1. Locations of Ganondagan, White Springs, and the ­Townley-­Read component of the New Ganechstage Site Complex. Arrows indicate community relocation. Map by Peregrine ­Gerard-­Little.

c­ ommunities maintained economic, political, and spiritual connections. Figure 3.1 illustrates the movement of the eastern Seneca principal community among the three sites discussed in this chapter. The Seneca use of space can be examined at a number of scales; we start with the regional distribution of sites. Since the pioneering efforts of avocational archaeologists Charles Wray and Harry Schoff (1953), it has been recognized that starting in the mid-­1500s Senecas arranged themselves in a pair of principal communities (eastern and western) of 2–4 ha in size, which at times were surrounded by smaller, subsidiary sites termed “satellites” (Jordan 2010, 2013). While the principal communities contained the bulk of the Seneca p ­ opulation— frequently housing 1,000–2,000 people each—the satellites served a variety of functions, including facilitating the incorporation of semiautonomous populations of outsiders and colonizing new territories (Jordan 2013). To understand some of the historical dynamics in the Seneca use of space, categories based on ease of access can be deployed. Jordan (2008a, 2013) presents

Neither Contact nor Colonial

45

a ­three-­part rough typology that assumes that foot travel was the predominant mode of transportation. “Local” spaces were within a 20 km radius of the starting point; such zones could be accessed by foot on a daily basis, and observations and information readily could be shared. “Regional” spaces were those within an 80 km radius; one-­way pedestrian travel times between the starting point and the edges would have been two days or less. “Extraregional” spaces were those beyond 80 km from the starting point; such distance would have impeded (but not eliminated) regular communication. The paired principal Seneca towns tended to be in the same locality; between circa 1550 and 1742, the Seneca principal towns were set 2.6–20.3 km apart (Jordan 2010, table 5.1). Satellite communities were used variably, but initially all were within areas local to a principal settlement. This started to change no later than the 1660s, when the Senecas and other Haudenosaunee nations established extraregional satellites—which Jordan (2013, 37) terms “colonies”—in distant locations. By 1687, textual records suggest that there were three Seneca extraregional satellites on the north shore of Lake Ontario and another near the Niagara portage, in addition to local satellites at Beal and Kirkwood; Senecas also made up a portion of multinational Indigenous satellites in the St. Lawrence and Susquehanna Valleys (Jordan 2013, 37, fig. 1). The more distant satellites appear to have been established to stake claims to territories, facilitate hunting, and keep watch over important transportation corridors and the activities of European and Indigenous allies and foes. The founding of extraregional satellites likely is related to the expansion of Haudenosaunee power in the second half of the seventeenth century. Then, starting in 1680, a series of ­Haudenosaunee-­led wars against F ­ rench-­allied western Indigenous groups had increasingly unfavorable results for the Haudenosaunee nations. These military efforts irritated the French enough to spur a series of invasions of the Haudenosaunee homelands in the 1680s and 1690s, including an abortive French expedition into Seneca territory in 1684 and the destructive 1687 Denonville expedition. As a result of the Denonville invasion, Seneca communities moved far to the south and east (figure 3.1), likely to be farther away from other possible French incursions originating from Lake Ontario and to be closer to their Cayuga allies to the east. Many extraregional satellites also were abandoned at this time. In the Seneca case, people from satellites at Niagara and north of Lake Ontario appear to have consolidated with the homeland Seneca communities, and there is no trace of any Seneca satellite whatsoever from 1688 to 1704.

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Starting in about 1704, local, regional, and extraregional satellites began to reappear. Documents suggest that a Seneca regional satellite was founded at Kendaia by 1704, and Seneca efforts expanded in the Susquehanna and Ohio Valleys (Jordan 2008a, 181–82; 2013). In the 1740s, the western Seneca principal community moved from Huntoon to the Fall Brook site in the Genesee Valley, placing the eastern and western communities an unprecedented 70 km apart (Jordan 2010). By 1750, Senecas further diversified their settlement pattern by founding smaller communities between the eastern and western communities at locations like Canandaigua and Honeoye (Jordan 2008a, fig. 6.7). While these changes in the regional distribution of settlements appear to relate very closely to the overall level of Haudenosaunee power—with expansion taking place during fortuitous circumstances and contraction in adverse conditions—it is difficult to fit this evidence to any sort of normative or linear model. Community Structure and Local Environment We next zoom in to focus on the internal structure of individual Seneca communities and their relationship to their surrounding environments. Much like the preceding principal Seneca towns, Ganondagan was a nucleated and densely settled community of about 3.7 ha in size, based on ­shovel-­test survey results (Hayes, Barber, and Hamell 1978). Using models derived from fully excavated Haudenosaunee sites, Ganondagan’s population is estimated to have been approximately 1,850 people (based on the ratio of one person per 20 m2 of site size, derived from Snow and Starna 1989), who were housed in 75–120 dwellings (Jordan 2004, 46). The site was placed within the local distance (as defined above) of several previous principal town locations, providing easy access to the rich ecotones created by the interface of woods and areas formerly cleared for agriculture, as well as to the remains of ancestors buried at these sites. These areas provided nearby, reliable access to edge-­growing species such as black­berries, raspberries, and hawthorn; attracted deer looking for understory browse; and were potentially a source of smaller saplings and tree regrowth, which were important building materials (Engelbrecht 2003; Heidenreich 1971). Ganondagan likely was built in the early 1670s during what was arguably the peak of Haudenosaunee p ­ olitical-­economic power; it was not fortified. On hearing rumors of a possible French attack in 1684, Senecas began to fortify a nearby location known as Fort Hill, enclosing 3.2–4.0 ha;8 this area appears to have never been used for Seneca residences. The 1684 French force

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never reached the Seneca homeland, but a second invasion led by the Marquis de Denonville in 1687 did; this invasion resulted in the burning of Ganondagan, Fort Hill, and all other Seneca settlements in the vicinity. Denonville’s force immediately left Seneca lands after the attack, leaving only a small, newly built fort near the Niagara River, which the Haudenosaunee captured one year later. Following the 1687 destruction, Ganondagan’s residents relocated to White Springs, about 35 km to the southeast (figure 3.1). There, Senecas built a smaller, probably palisaded community far from any recently inhabited settlements. The relocated people left behind a significantly modified anthropogenic landscape surrounding Ganondagan and effectively had to start over at White Springs. In addition to the likely loss of seed stock and material possessions when the community was forced to leave Ganondagan, Seneca people lost local access to approximately 100 years of previously occupied site locations and the attendant benefits. The accumulated excavation and ­surface-­collection data from the White Springs project suggest that the domestic area at the site was approximately 3.4 ha in size. Using standard population density estimates, this site could have held 1,700 people, a slight decrease from the 1,850 estimated to have lived at Ganondagan. A site of this area could not have provided room for people from abandoned satellites to consolidate at White Springs at standard population density levels. However, due to the wartime conditions of White Springs’ founding, the site may have been more densely populated. Archaeologist Eric Jones (2010, 7) suggests that a ­population-­to-­site-­area ratio of 1 person per 12 m2 may be more appropriate for “more compact settlements” built as “a defensive measure.” Using this standard, White Springs could have housed 2,833 people. 9 We feel this figure is too high, since our excavations revealed that some areas inside the White Springs palisade did not contain dense residential features. Our best estimate is that White Springs’ population was 1,700–2,000 people. In one portion of the site, we excavated an array of posts that we believe may represent a segment of a palisade. This area does not match known palisade forms at other Haudenosaunee sites: the post density is lower, and the posts are smaller in size. We assert, however, that this may be a palisade segment because (a) it is at the point where domestic refuse drops off precipitously; (b) the post array, contents, and sizes do not match known residential construction at White Springs or elsewhere; and (c) just inside the hypothesized palisade there is a 3 m wide area devoid of archaeological features that looks to be an access corridor running inside the palisade. In contrast to the ­European-­style square palisades and bastions featured at other Haudenosaunee towns erected in the war-­torn

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last quarter of the 1600s (Snow 1995, 431–43; Sohrweide 2001), the best fit for the White Springs data is a palisade irregular in shape and in some places ovoid. The smaller posts we recovered from the possible palisade segment suggest that different construction techniques were used that may have emphasized more substantial crosspieces than earlier fortifications. It is also possible that these features represent a less formal windbreak or snow fence, since this is the part of the site that receives the impact of the prevailing winds from the west. Although European destruction could have prompted Senecas to fortify White Springs, their primary foes during the occupation of the site were other Indigenous groups (Jordan 2008a, 52–63). Primary sources suggest that the Senecas’ adversaries never besieged the settlement but were known to have attacked and killed people in close proximity to the town (Jordan 2008a, 54). In about 1715, the eastern Senecas relocated a short distance south from White Springs and dramatically altered their settlement form (figure 3.1). In the place of a single, nucleated town, Senecas constructed a segmented community broken up into at least six discrete neighborhoods, termed the New Ganechstage Site Complex (Jordan 2008a). Even the largest of these neighbor­ hoods likely contained only 150–200 people (Jordan 2008a, 178), a significant difference from preceding nucleated sites like Ganondagan and White Springs. Based on evidence from excavations at the T ­ ownley-­Read neighborhood, houses were built in a line along watercourses and spaced 60–80 m apart. This novel spatial configuration—unprecedented in the Seneca archaeological record—­coincided with a sustained period of regional peace. Jordan’s (2008a) interpretation of the dispersal shows it to have been advantageous in various ways. It lessened the labor demands on both women and men versus what was needed in a nucleated town, principally by decreasing the amount of required daily foot travel. Houses were set close to fields and water sources, and outdoor spaces were used as work areas and infields. This new arrangement also began to re-­create the sort of landscape Senecas had been forced away from at G ­ anondagan—a mosaic of woods, disused fields, and previous settlement locations produced by agriculture, wood procurement, and other everyday practices of Seneca people. House Forms House forms at these sites are known from ­European-­penned documents and the archaeological recovery of full or partial houses from each site. In 1677, the

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visiting New York official Wentworth Greenhalgh noted that the predominant Seneca house forms were 15–18 m longhouses, with some houses over 40 m in length (Snow, Gehring, and Starna 1996, 191). The floor plan of an 11 m by 6 m “short longhouse” with a single sleeping bench was excavated by Dean and Barbour Associates at Ganondagan in 1983–1984 (Dean 1984), 10 further demonstrating the variation present. Handwrought iron nail density in the excavation area around the short longhouse structure was 0.14–0.18 / m ​ 2, indicating some use of architectural nails in its construction (Jordan 2008a, table 8.2). At White Springs, 2014–2015 excavations recovered approximately 38 m2 of a vestibule (or storage area) from the end of a Seneca structure, defined by an arc of posts that diverges into parallel lines 6 m apart. Several factors suggest that this vestibule was attached to a substantial multihearth longhouse: (a) the possibility of residential crowding at White Springs; (b) the area of this vestibule is roughly the same as the area enclosed in the short longhouse at T ­ ownley-­Read (described below); and (c) there is no documentary or archaeological evidence of vestibules of this size attached to short longhouses. House posts at White Springs were larger and less frequent than earlier examples, implying that this vestibule was built to last. Handwrought iron nail densities from this area are not yet available, although one handwrought iron nail was recovered from an excavated Seneca post mold (PM 49). This suggests that architectural nails were present in the area when this post rotted and materials from the vicinity fell into the resulting cavity.11 At ­Townley-­Read, the full floor plan of a 7.5 m by 5.3 m short longhouse with two sleeping benches was excavated in 1999 (Jordan 2008a, fig. 9.6). Documentary sources indicate that two-­family short longhouses were the majority house form across the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in the early to mid-­1700s (Jordan 2008a, 261–71). Handwrought iron nail densities in the area of this structure were 0.85–1.36 / m2, indicating a greater reliance on iron nails in construction techniques than at previous sites (Jordan 2008a, table 8.2). The smaller modal house size at ­Townley-­Read is consistent with the ­community-­level dispersal of the population along stream courses to facilitate access to water and farmland. Smoking Pipes Although final numbers are not yet available, preliminary data suggest dramatic changes in certain dimensions of the use of material culture across the three sites (table 3.1). As mentioned above, comparable density figures for various

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Table 3.1. Distribution of Selected Categories of Artifacts at Ganondagan, White Springs, and ­Townley-­Read

Site

Native-­ made smoking pipes

European-­ made smoking pipes

Total smoking pipes

Glass beads

Marine shell artifacts

Red stone artifacts

Ganondagan

6.31 / ​m3

1.39 / ​m3

7.70 / ​m3

3.82 / ​m3

0.48 / ​m3

0.15 / ​m3

White Springs

1.51 / ​m3

6.54 / ​m3

8.05 / ​m3

9.01 / ​m3

1.38 / ​m3

2.70 / ​m3

Townley-­Read

13

146

159

73

5

9

artifact types based on plow-­zone occurrence in domestic areas can be calculated for Ganondagan and White Springs since both were nucleated settlements investigated using similar excavation techniques. Because ­Townley-­Read was a dispersed settlement, density figures are significantly lower and are not directly comparable; table 3.1 shows artifact counts for ­Townley-­Read instead. All density calculations were performed based on the total volume of plow-­ zone soil excavated within the domestic areas of the sites and the numbers of artifacts in various classes recovered from plow-­zone soil. Soil volume and artifacts recovered from sub-­plow-­zone features were not included. For Ganondagan, the data come from the 1983–1984 Dean and Barbour Associates excavations and do not include shovel tests, other years of excavation, or other collections. For White Springs, test unit and block excavations for which there are soil volumes from the Cornell University excavations were included in the calculations; no shovel tests, surface survey artifacts, or other collections are included. 12 The ­Townley-­Read numbers all derive from Jordan’s 1996–2000 excavation project. Density figures from ­domestic-­context excavations indicate a significant change in ceramic smoking pipe use between Ganondagan and White Springs (table 3.1). It is possible that our preliminary data overstate the number of ­European-­made white ball clay pipe fragments that date to the Seneca era since some pipe fragments may have been introduced by later occupants of the sites. However, we currently have little evidence—in terms of characteristic decoration, bore size, or bowl shape—that indicates that the white ball clay smoking pipes recovered at these sites postdate the Seneca occupation. There may also be differences in fracture patterns between N ­ ative-­made and ­European-­made pipes that need to be taken into account. However, the magnitude of the change

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is large enough that slight variations in the overall pipe numbers in each category will not alter the picture we present. Overall pipe density increased 4.5 percent at White Springs compared to Ganondagan, but the proportion of ­Native-­made versus ­European-­made pipes reversed completely. ­Native-­made pipes represent 81.9 percent of the assemblage at Ganondagan but only 18.8 percent at White Springs. At ­Townley-­Read, 91.8 percent of the ceramic smoking pipe fragments recovered by Jordan’s project were made in Europe. This suggests a substantial increase in Senecas’ use of ­European-­made smoking pipes at White Springs and T ­ ownley-­Read. Despite this, there are specific areas within the later sites where ­Native-­made pipes were in the majority, including Domestic Refuse Cluster 3 at ­Townley-­Read (Jordan 2014, 81). Jordan (2014) suggests that there may have been gendered differences in pipe use at ­Townley-­Read, with women possibly more likely to have smoked ­European-­made pipes. Glass Beads More than 2.3 times as many glass beads were recovered per cubic meter from ­domestic-­context excavations at White Springs than at Ganondagan (table 3.1). Based on cataloged beads from excavations at the three sites, as well as examination of additional artifacts gathered over the years by collectors and other projects, there is also a major difference in bead size. Considerable numbers of small “seed” beads suitable for embroidery were found at Ganondagan: Dean (1984, table 23) reports that 15.6 percent of the ­domestic-­context glass beads there are 5 mm or smaller in size; using a much larger sample of beads from a variety of context types (including burials), Wray and Graham (1985, 23–24) find 53.5 percent to be of seed bead size. In contrast, few small beads were recovered at White Springs (Herlich 2008, 60). At ­Townley-­Read, the number of seed beads increased to by far the greatest level among these three sites; Jessica Herlich’s (2008, 8) analysis of almost 23,000 beads found that 93.5 percent of beads from all contexts at the site were 4 mm in diameter or smaller. It is possible that this pattern reflects changes in the demands on women’s labor; the stressful, ­conflict-­laden times in the newly established settlement at White Springs may have crowded out women’s ability to do beadwork. The predominant bead color also changed dramatically across the sequence. Various bead assemblages from Ganondagan and White Springs are dominated by dark red beads, sometimes termed “redwood” or “barn red” in color. George

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Hamell (1983, 7) writes that in Iroquoian culture redness connotes the “animate and emotive aspects of Life” and is associated with blood, berries, and other natural phenomena. Red beads make up 48–59 percent of samples of beads from Ganondagan (Dean 1984, table 23; Wray and Graham 1985, 23–24) and 43.4 percent of the 235 glass beads from White Springs analyzed by Nandini Sinha (2011).13 In contrast, at T ­ ownley-­Read less than 2 percent of the assemblage from all contexts is composed of red beads (Herlich 2008, table 4.1). It is unclear whether the reasons for this dramatic change lie with Seneca demand, European supply, or a combination of both. Hamell (1992, 465) offers that red artifacts, in conjunction with white ones, manifest positive and socially constructive states of being, but red is also “closely identified with antisocial ­states-­of-­being, such as warfare.” The relatively peaceful times that Seneca people experienced at ­Townley-­Read may have impacted their bead color preference. Compositional analysis of s­ eventeenth-­century red glass beads from the Seneca area has also demonstrated that the likely origin of red glass beads shifted from Dutch to French sources during the occupation of Ganondagan as colonial territorial and trade dominance fluctuated (Sempowski et al. 2001), and source and supplier variations may have continued into the eighteenth century. Marine Shell Artifacts Interesting trends occurred over time in Seneca use of marine shell artifacts at the three sites. Marine shell forms include short wampum, long “hairpipe,” and massive tubular beads; runtees; and a variety of pendants in naturalistic and abstract forms. Archaeologist Duane Esarey (2013) has asserted that many of these forms were of “standardized” manufacture and most likely were produced by European craftspeople based on the Atlantic coast. However, since no ­large-­scale production sites have been found to date, in our estimation the possibility for Native manufacture or a mix of sources remains quite open. Shell is found quite frequently in a wide variety of forms at both Ganondagan and White Springs (Dean 1984, table 30; Jordan 2008b; Wray and Graham 1985, 24), but the density of marine shell artifacts in plow-­zone contexts was more than twice as high at White Springs than at Ganondagan (table 3.1). Although comparison is difficult, the overall T ­ ownley-­Read shell assemblage appears to have been lower in relative frequency and represents a narrower range of forms (Jordan 2008b). Discoidal beads, long tubulars, and pendant forms declined markedly, and only five marine shell items were found during

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Jordan’s d ­ omestic-­context fieldwork at T ­ ownley-­Read. The western Seneca Huntoon site, founded between 1710 and 1715 and occupied until 1740–1745, is notable for yielding absolutely no wampum beads (Jordan 2008b). This suggests that the distribution system for wampum broke down during the first half of the eighteenth century, which strongly implies that Europeans did not dominate the wampum trade at this time since they would have made sure to supply the powerful Senecas. Red Stone Artifacts The three Seneca sites have yielded red-­colored stone beads, pendants, and smoking pipes that were manufactured from fine-­grained, easily worked red pipestone (including true catlinite sourced to Pipestone National Monument) and coarser, platy red slate. The vast majority of these red stone artifacts likely were acquired from Indigenous trade partners or by direct quarrying expeditions. Despite their similar color, pipestone and slate had very different acquisition histories. Red pipestone sources are far to the west of Seneca territory, particularly in what is now Minnesota and Wisconsin, and their presence on Seneca sites presumably reflects engagement with western Indigenous groups. The likely source for red slate is on the ­present-­day New York–Vermont border, and procurement would have involved either direct quarrying by Senecas or acquisition from Mohawks living near the source (Jordan 2008a, 303–9; Jordan, Pearson, and Stephens 2016). Red stone is quite scarce at Ganondagan, and the assemblage from all contexts is composed overwhelmingly of finished items of red pipestone (table 3.1; see Dean 1984, 71; Wray and Graham 1985, 24, 33, 61). At White Springs, red stone is vastly more frequent in domestic contexts, and more than 87 percent of the overall red stone assemblage is red slate. Red stone was found in almost two-­ thirds of excavated d ­ omestic-­context test units at White Springs. Notably, all known collections from the site contain significant amounts of red slate manufacturing debris—the sole site of the three where red stone manufacturing debris is found in any quantity. In contrast, red pipestone returned to predominance at T ­ ownley-­Read, where it makes up 81 percent of the assemblage. This shows that Seneca color preferences did not move monolithically: as discussed above, Seneca use of red-­colored glass beads plummeted at ­Townley-­Read, but at the same time their red pipestone use went up dramatically. Red stone manufacturing debris (of any type) is scarce at ­Townley-­Read.

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Conclusions The historical and archaeological records demonstrate that Senecas remained largely autonomous in political, economic, and cultural terms from the onset of their engagements with Europeans through the American Revolution. Their interactions with European diplomats, traders, missionaries, and colonists were frequent, intense, and sustained—not some form of incidental “contact.” At the same time, this was not a colonial setting: Europeans did not have the upper hand, controlled little Seneca territory, and had a low physical presence in the area. The common sense of mainstream settler populations, a key component of the “ongoing remaking” of p ­ resent-­day colonial domination (Rifkin 2013, 327), is that Indigenous traditions—conceived in essentialist terms as homogeneous and unchanging—should be the most stable and enduring in settings outside colonial control, like Seneca territory during the period we examine. Our data refute this contention—and we hope conclusively so. Significant samples of artifacts and spatial data from three consecutively occupied Seneca sites demonstrate major changes in regional settlement patterns, community structures and local environments, defensive architecture, house forms, and smoking pipe, glass bead, marine shell, and red stone usage over an ­eighty-­year period. The ongoing investigation of the assemblages from these sites—particularly the emerging work on the faunal and botanical remains—is highly likely to reveal other dramatic contrasts over time. This variation can be explained only in part by overriding regional conditions, and it reflects changing patterns of engagement with both Indigenous and settler interlocutors as well as local choices. While some of the patterns are linear—the decrease in use of ­Native-­made pipes and red glass beads—others are not, such as the use of satellite communities, the level of red pipestone and seed bead usage, and the attention to defense at individual sites. The volume of traded material is also surprisingly high at White Springs given the uncertainty and violence during much of the site’s occupation span. In sum, the array of changes is complex and shows considerable Seneca flexibility. While the archaeological and documentary records suggest that Senecas remained autonomous, the intricate record of spatial and material changes seen in these three local political economies shows how they were able to do so. We feel that charting these sorts of changes and trying to explain them is one of the primary attractions to studying the long-­term entanglement between Indigenous and settler groups. We do not present them as unusual or as anomalies

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to be explained and reincorporated into settler common sense, but rather as a counter to this type of seemingly self-­evident interpretation of the past, which continues to damage Indigenous lives (Rifkin 2013). Demonstrating and providing deeply contextualized explanations for the thoroughgoing changes that took place at all sorts of sites—precolumbian, autonomous, and colonized—will best diffuse erroneous and ideological perspectives about “timeless traditionalism,” which see all forms of change as cultural losses for Indigenous peoples. The myriad changes in the material conditions of Indigenous daily lives over time are utterly incapable of being explained by such linear metanarratives. Jettisoning these overriding frameworks will allow us to get down to the vital— and intriguing—work of understanding the choices of past Indigenous peoples. Acknowledgments We thank the editors of this volume plus Dusti Bridges, Andrew Crocker, Andrew Farry, George Hamell, Jessica Herlich, Kathryn Murano, Liam Murphy, Mike Roets, Samantha Sanft, Nandini Sinha, Urszula P ­ iasta-­Mansfield, and an anonymous reviewer for their generous assistance in the genesis of this chapter. Notes 1. The five original members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy were (from west to east) the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk Nations. The Tuscarora Nation joined as the sixth member in the 1720s. 2. Jordan (2008a, 352–56) uses the phrase “neither contact nor colonial” to describe the era during which the circa 1715–1754 ­Townley-­Read site was occupied. Here, we make a similar point about a broader temporal period. 3. There is some scholarly disagreement over the date when Ganondagan was constructed. Historical documents (see Hamell 1980 for a summary) indicate that the eastern Seneca community was palisaded in 1669, but unfortified in 1677 and 1687. We feel that the most parsimonious interpretation is that the community moved from a palisaded location (probably the Marsh site) to Ganondagan in the very early 1670s. 4. At the time, Jemison served as chair of the Haudenosaunee Standing Committee on Burial Rules and Regulations, the organization set up by the confederacy to deal with repatriation and archaeology on ancestral sites. Hill (2006) provides a history of the early years of the standing committee. Jemison currently serves as site manager for the Ganondagan State Historic Site.

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5. The Ganondagan site also is known as Gannagaro and Boughton Hill, which is reflected in the titles of some of the references cited in this chapter. 6. Plowing did not destroy deeper Seneca era deposits, such as the bases of pits and posts, nor did it disrupt any Seneca deposits that were buried by later processes, such as slopewash or filling. The in situ deposits unaffected by plowing are key to Haudenosaunee archaeology and in particular to the interpretations of house and palisade forms presented in this chapter. 7. We recognize that the density figures are affected by the length of occupation at each site, as well as the fact that Ganondagan was abandoned precipitously due to invasion while White Springs was a planned removal that was executed gradually. These factors do not have a significant effect on the interpretations we offer here. 8. Fort Hill was surveyed by Ephraim G. Squier in 1848. However, the resulting map (Squier 1849, plate XLV, no. 1) erroneously states that the area enclosed was “20 acres” (8.1 ha) in size, a figure that has been repeated by some subsequent scholars (e.g., Jordan 2008a, 170). Cornell graduate student Andrew Crocker (pers. comm., 2016) superimposed Squier’s map on a modern topographic map and found that the enclosed area could not have been more than 3.2–4.0 ha in size, with the lower figure being most likely. 9. Eric Jones’s (2010, table 3) estimate for the White Springs population is 3,125 people. This figure is based on an estimated site area of 62,500 m2 (done prior to the Cornell White Springs project) and the 1 person:20 m2 ratio. We assert that this figure is far too high and feel that our 1,700–2,000 population estimate for the site has more evidential backing. 10. A short longhouse is defined as an ­Iroquoian-­style residential structure with a ­length-­to-­width ratio between 1.26:1 and 1.99:1, while a longhouse (sometimes termed a “true” longhouse) has a ratio of 2:1 or more (Jordan 2008a, table 6.2; Kapches 1984, 64). 11. The single handwrought nail found in PM 30, an interior support post in the short longhouse at the ­Townley-­Read site (Jordan 2008a, 136), also can be interpreted as confirmation for the use of architectural nails. 12. Units at White Springs used to calculate the site-­wide plow-­zone density were TUs 1–73, 77, and 81–116 and Trench 1. Test units 74–76 and 78–80 were excluded due to their location outside the Seneca domestic area of the site; they were placed to investigate a geophysical anomaly that seems to derive from the ­twentieth-­century Euro-­American occupation of the site. 13. Sinha’s (2011) analysis covers 56 percent of the 423 glass beads recovered from White Springs to date by the Cornell University excavation project.

CHAPTER FOUR

From Cacao to Sugar Long-­Term Maya Economic Entanglement in Colonial Guatemala Guido Pezzarossi

I

n this chapter, I critically engage with macroperspective archaeological interpretations of Maya colonial history in Highland Guatemala in which certain cultural and material practices—such as lithic technology, foodways, and ceramic technology and styles—that span precolonial and colonial periods and appear to be slow-­moving, continuous, and unchanging are in fact anything but. At the same time, I explore introduced practices, changes, and ways of being in the world that belie easy ascription as new due to their embeddedness in and emergence from longer and shorter histories spanning the colonial period. I draw explicitly on the work of Fernand Braudel (1980) to consider the ways that different temporal scales allow a view of change and continuity as intertwined, rather than opposed. Sameness or continuity with a precolonial past, a common baseline for evaluating colonial transformations, remains a critical target for much archaeological work, including much ethically and politically informed archaeology that highlights observed continuities as moments of agency and resistance to the overbearing force of Western colonial “modernity” and its practices. The modern political salience of stressing continuity as timeless connection or as evidence of unadulterated sameness with an “authentic” precolonial past is clear when set in the context of ­present-­day North American Native communities’ struggles and the limiting frameworks of federal recognition. As Gosden (2005, 242) has argued, the “legal basis for [Indigenous] claims is some form of cultural integrity and continuity with the prehistoric cultures which produced the remains . . . [to] prove that they are not creolized or hybrid cultures.” In Meskell’s (2009, 7) words, Native communities find they have to “succumb to oppressive legal frameworks in order to gain recognition or to even claim their heritage” (see also ­Gonzalez-­Ruibal 2009, 124). 57

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Outside of North America, similar discourses of continuity swirl around Indigenous claims to heritage and identity. In Guatemala, conceptions of cultural continuity and authenticity have framed both the emergence and criticism of the Maya movement, an Indigenous political and cultural movement that has sought to revitalize present identities by rooting them in the cosmologies and practices of the precolonial Maya past, informed in part by archaeological knowledge (Normark 2004; Pezzarossi n.d.; Warren 1998). Some of this criticism has emerged as a strange hybrid critique of the Maya movement, wherein the appropriation of postcolonial theories of cultural hybridity in colonial contexts (such as Bhabha 1994) has been used to allege the inauthenticity of modern Maya communities’ identities due to their “hybridizing” with (read: corruption by) Western cultural and material practices at the expense of continuing precolonial practices deemed to be the only “true” expression of a Maya identity (Fischer 1999; Warren 1998). Due consideration must be given to the issues surrounding Native communities’ engagements with essentializing discourses of timeless continuity, such as those used by the Maya movement, and with legal frameworks like federal recognition and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) in the United States, as strategies to establish a political foothold within the nation to which these communities find themselves sub­ alterned (Liebmann 2008, 78). For a variety of reasons, it is difficult to criticize this strategic engagement of bodies of law and discourses that reify notions of “timeless” Native cultural continuity. This type of engagement is an example of Spivak’s (1987, 1990) notion of “strategic essentialism,” and such strategies may yield important and much-­needed ­short-­term benefits or indeed provide an avenue for reorienting stereotypes and conceptions of “Indianness” by performing legible ideas of Native identity (Liebmann 2008, 78–79). My intention is not to advocate for a critique of such strategic or tactical deployments of imposed notions of continuity (and evidence for it), since such a critique of Indigenous communities’ uses of self-­essentialization and advocacy for identifying cultural continuity would do violence to Indigenous knowledges that have explicitly emerged in relation to broader discourses, structural inequalities, and expectations of indigeneity. Rather, my goal is to work toward a more robust and inclusive conception of persisting Indigenous cultural and community practices as a palimpsest of materials, meanings, and practices of older and more recent ­histories, diverse origins, and influences—without the specter of ­inauthenticity.

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However, Indigenous material continuity and its indexing of cultural continuity, resistance, and / or essentialized authenticity unfortunately has a large and enduring sphere of influence in archaeology. The conceptual underpinnings of legal frameworks, rooted in popular conceptions and expectations of static, “cold” Native cultures—an enduring legacy of colonialism and the “colonial culture of archaeology” (McNiven and Russell 2005, 2; Trigger 1984)—have become doxic in archaeology (Silliman 2009, 214). These latent ideas manifest in an archaeological fetish for evidence of unbroken Indigenous continuity through the identification of material continuities with precolonial practices in lithics, foodways, ceramics, house construction, cosmology, and so on. Contributing to the adoption and deployment of such notions of cultural continuity is the seductive nature of its construction, wherein the materiality of archaeological finds, as things literally persisting from the past (Joyce 2017), lend themselves to “scientific” and positivist interpretation vis-­à-­vis their potential for empirical observation and identification of “sameness” with a precolonial past. This materiality of the “antique” (Baudrillard 2005, 75–90) provides a crucial anchoring of the present in space and time, offering a foundation from which the relational instability and ephemeral performativity of identity and meaning can be, at least discursively, fixed. Material continuity provides tangible support for a connection to (in this case) Indigenous pasts within the bevy of changes constitutive of Indigenous presents. A related point has been made by Law Pezzarossi (2015) in her discussion of how Native baskets in the possession of settler families in New England helped anchor their identities and origin claims through association with the “timeless” original occupants of the land they had expropriated. Working from the long term need not limit analyses to identifying unchanging continuities, however. Braudel (1980) proposes the use of distinct scales of analysis: longue durée, moyenne durée, and histoire événementielle (macro-­, meso-­, and microscales of time glossed as the long term, the historical conjunction, and the event). Scholars have further refined this approach by stressing the interconnected nature of these scales, which are locked in a continuous interplay, putting greater emphasis on the potential of agency in events to affect change at the other levels (Hodder and Hutson 2003, 141; Ladurie 1980; LeGoff 1985). In many cases the illusory quality of material continuity is the result of a matter of scale or, rather, of the particular analytical “apparatus” (Barad 2003) that is deployed, which conflates material continuity with performative sameness. What appears on broader temporal scales to be static and continuous

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structures, practices, and things are in fact the emergent effects of diverse and changing “social strategies and individual events” (Hodder and Hutson 2003, 141) and / or spatiotemporal “itinerations” (Joyce and Gillespie 2015), whose dynamisms are less easily observed. In a sense, material continuities can blind us to the various changes that came to be more meaningful and / or constitutive of Indigenous lives, communities, and experiences in the past and present. This chapter takes the archaeology of colonial Maya communities in Highland Guatemala as a focus. I present a case study that experiments with an approach to dealing with long-­term colonial entanglement and the changes and continuities in meaning and materiality (at multiple scales) based on my excavations at San Pedro Aguacatepeque, a multicomponent Kaqchikel Maya site located in the hot and humid Pacific piedmont region of southern Guatemala (Pezzarossi 2014b). In particular, I explore shifts in community labor and the agricultural production of prized crops in the colonial period—from cacao (a ritually and politically important good in the Maya region and the dominant export in early colonial Guatemala) to sugarcane (a lucrative cash crop in colonial Guatemala used for producing both sugar and illicit / i​llegal alcoholic drinks)—as an example of the problem of reading continuity and change as binary opposites. I include discussions of Chinautla polychrome ceramics, introduced majolica ceramics, and lithic artifacts to further expand the assemblage of things and practices continuing and changing at different tempos and with unique histories of entanglement beyond the precolonial baseline. My method is to problematize dichotomies of continuity and change in reference to precolonial practices and materialities by playing with the analytical apparatus deployed to highlight changes in continuities and continuities in changes in material practices at San Pedro. Refocusing the analytical optics allows a view of Old World sugarcane cultivation as a “continuity” with the precolonial past and chert lithic use as a “change” compelled by colonization. In the process, the importance of using different temporal baselines to better understand the heterogeneous palimpsest or temporal “brew” (Law Pezzarossi, this volume) of the knowledges, practices, and materialities that constitute diverse Indigenous communities and identities emerges more clearly. San Pedro Aguacatepeque’s known history spans almost 1,000 years of occupation of a single location on the southeastern flank of the active Volcán de Fuego in Highland Guatemala (Pezzarossi 2014b). Classic period deposits at the site, dated via accelerator mass spectrometry to the sixth century and in line with extant regional ceramic chronologies, were encountered underneath

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­ inimal Late Postclassic deposits from the early sixteenth century (identified m on the basis of ceramic chronologies). Deposits with Spanish colonial material culture intruded into these. While ­sixteenth-­century Spanish documentary sources indicate that the community was present in the same spot prior to colonization (supported by Postclassic deposits at the site), unfortunately the colonial material culture, mostly local majolicas made in the Spanish capital from 1541 to 1773, Santiago, Guatemala, had very long production runs with minimal temporally sensitive diagnostic elements to help with chronology between 1580 and the twentieth century (Rodríguez Girón 2008). The only chronologically diagnostic material culture present in the colonial deposits are a few fragments of blue-­on-­white Chinese porcelain and Puebla polychrome majolica from Mexico. These set a date of 1650 for the earliest assuredly colonial deposits at the site. Finding Continuity, Erasing Persistence Doing the archaeology of colonial Maya communities in Guatemala presents a rather different set of problems than a search for material and cultural continuities. Archaeologically, many early colonial period Maya sites show little in the way of “change” from precolonial Postclassic era practices and material traditions (Joyce and Sheptak 2014). In Guatemala, our search is not for continuities, but for changes nested within telling continuities: for example, continuities that identify clearly colonial Maya sites in Highland Guatemala, such as obsidian blades alongside majolica vessels, or continuities in uses of plaza spaces from Postclassic to colonial occupation of a site, albeit with the colonial plazas paved with bricks. This leads to a problem opposite but related to the one Law Pezzarossi (this volume) discusses for New England, as colonial Maya sites are written off as Postclassic sites in the absence of S­ panish-­origin or traditional material culture and architecture (but see Robinson 1997). This may lead to the elision of Maya communities that continued Postclassic material practices from the archaeologically investigated colonial landscape (although exceptions exist; see Pendergast, Jones, and Graham 1993; ­Blaisdell-­Sloan 2006). Strange as it might seem, in Guatemala continuity serves as a force of archaeological erasure and as a steamroller flattening regional and temporal variations and contextual specificity by using uncritical ethnographic and archaeological analogies afforded by material continuities (Joyce 2004, 2005b). I argue that archaeological interpretations of material continuity as an index

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for an unchanged bundle of practices, material entanglements, motivations, and meanings foment a scalar elision of the complexity and change active at other spatiotemporal scales (see also Silliman 2012). This is the crux of the illusion of continuity in the archaeological record, wherein the persistence of archaeological residues of material practice over the longue durée implies the continuation of the historically contingent assemblages that those residues were part of or emerged from, when in fact the reproduction of similar forms and use of the same material is part of something different in the changed circumstances of the colonial period. The issue can be compared to the way that Silliman (2001, 2009) highlights how interrogating the “continuity” of lithic technology at Native California rancho contexts and colonial period Eastern Pequot sites yields evidence of the radically different contextual and politicized meaning of lithics over time, which is obfuscated by the apparent continuity of the material and form. The necessity of identifying colonial Maya sites by searching for changes in the form of Spanish material culture, however, serves to focus on breaks from the precolonial baseline. In turn, the dependence on finding Spanish material culture in order to locate most colonial Maya sites helps reify and reproduce discourses of Maya communities’ colonial acculturation via changing material practices, in essence the inevitable processes of the “hispanicization” (see Komisaruk 2010) and disappearance of Native individuals and communities via cultural and / or biological mestizaje. Beyond the obvious problems, rooted in the influence of simplistic acculturation frameworks (Silliman 2005; Voss 2005), of linking the presence of Spanish material culture to an erosion of Maya community, practices, and subjectivities, there is the issue of what to do with transformation in practice, within the already transformed practices and innovative traditions spurred by colonization, which may or may not remain tied to precolonial practices, memories, and knowledges, albeit in changed form. Each generation of Native families did not adopt Spanish material culture for the first time all over again (Silliman 2012). Rather, at some point, previously novel, introduced Spanish colonial ceramics or cultivars transitioned from heterodox to doxic and simply became one of many quotidian elements of how Native families and individuals dwelled in the world. Such foreign elements became additions to the material palette Native people drew on to construct and be in the world in new and not-­so-­new ways. In some cases, previously novel or non-­native things became inalienable material culture central in individual, family, and community memories, social ties, traditions, and ritual practices,

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and thus became critical to community and cultural persistence and reproduction (Pezzarossi 2014b; Pezzarossi, Kennedy, and Law 2012; Pugh 2009). To paraphrase Silliman (2012), while our baselines at contact are useful for identifying immediate impacts and transformations, how useful is the precontact baseline to making sense of changes and continuities, differences and similarities in Native practice 50, 100, or 200 years after initial encounters? Adding to this, ebbs and flows in demography, shifting labor policies, transformations in broader economic practices, and changes in regimes of meaning must be accounted for in reconstructions of the specific context of practices observed archaeologically and described in archival sources both within and between communities differently entangled with similar or different colonial practices, people, landscapes, and ecologies. Perhaps, in remaining attuned to this contextual dynamism of the partial, referential, itinerating performance of meaning and materiality, we need to keep our comparative baselines for identifying colonial transformations in Native life and practice fluid and mobile, rather than frozen at the moment of “contact” (Lightfoot 1995; Silliman 2005, 2012) or other imposed epochal transitions (like collapse or independence; see Dawdy 2010). Moving toward considerations of emergent practices in contexts of long-­term entanglements, analyses might be freed from referencing a flattened, generalized “authentic” precolonial way of life and instead be focused on identifying unique genealogies of persistence and change in practice, meaning, and experience in the specific histories of households, communities, and regions at a variety of scales, from centuries to generations to even ­shorter-­term continuities, as Lightfoot (1995) has pushed us to do. Moreover, baselines can remain mobile and more easily adapted to events and processes that really were critical to defining Native experiences and transformation in life and practice, rather than assuming a priori that the initial colonization defined all Native experiences equally and that nothing thereafter had a similar effect, or that precolonial practices, traditions, and materialities were always more meaningful and more important than those emerging more recently. Cacao and Sugar The first Spanish colonial incursions into the Highland Maya region of Guatemala in 1524 encountered dense, albeit dispersed settlements associated with numerous ethnolinguistic groups tied to one another through varied social,

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political, historical, and economic binds. The first concrete mention linked to San Pedro in the colonial archive is in a 1549 document that identifies the area in which the site is located, along with adjacent areas, as having been “annexes” and cacaotales (cacao-­growing outposts) of the Iximche Kaqchikel, whose capital was at the site of Iximche about 65 km to the northwest in a much cooler tierra fría climate area (Vázquez and Lamadrid 1944, 111). Highland groups, such as the Kaqchikel and the K’iche, controlled various communities in cacao-­ suitable regions on the coast and piedmont to ensure a steady supply of cacao, which was provided as tribute to the Highland polities (Orellana 1995; Pezzarossi 2014b). In the colonial period cacao became one of the most important tribute and export goods for colonial populations in Pacific coastal Guatemala and El Salvador, due in large part to its prehispanic importance in the region and to its developing value as a food / d ​ rink in the Spanish colonies and Europe. At colonization, some ­cacao-­growing communities in Chiapas, Mexico (Gasco 1996), in El Salvador (Sampeck 2007), and in the vicinity of San Pedro found themselves partially insulated from direct colonial control in large part due to the biological affordances of the cacao tree. The cacao tree is rather delicate and particular about its growing conditions, requiring ample precipitation coupled with well-­ drained soils, high minimum temperatures, abundant shade, wind protection, and continual maintenance and clearing of weeds and other competing flora (McNeil 2006). The knowledge and labor required to tend a productive cacao grove and its emerging profitability created a dependence on experienced cacao growers, which resulted in some protections, greater autonomy, and in some cases prosperity for Native communities with abundant cacao (Gasco 1996; Pineda 1925, 358; Sampeck 2007), particularly as cacao boomed and became critical to the local and regional economies. San Pedro may have been in this group where precolonial practice was recontextualized into a new colonial practice, replete with opportunities and impositions both old and new. Based on available documents, San Pedro was never directly asked to provide cacao as tribute despite being in a c­ acao-­suitable region. However, a 1593 petition by community officials from San Pedro mentions that the community was producing cacao and paying “high tribute” in it (Sherman 1979, 203–4), likely a continuation of precolonial practice. Yet this apparent continuity took place under much different circumstances, considering the impacts of disease and violence on Maya labor regimes and the regional and global markets in which this cacao now circulated.

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In other cases, colonial cacao production catalyzed new rhythms and temporalities, as Native cacao producers found themselves pushed to produce more cacao as quickly as possible. Colonists noted (and Native growers already knew) that cutting back shade trees and allowing more sun to reach cacao plants had the fortunate effect of increasing the yield of cacao pods and seeds (Piñero 1994, 16). However, this increased yield came at the expense of a shortened life for the trees, accelerating the labor and time needed to replace and replant trees. Nevertheless, this practice became quite popular among c­ acao-­growing populations in the sixteenth century after Spanish colonization out of necessity to meet the increasing tribute demands made of c­ acao-­growing communities with dwindling populations and labor pools (Piñero 1994, 16). These shortsighted cultivation practices reduced the potential longevity and productivity of the cacao groves, especially considering the dearth of labor, knowledge, and skill available to grow and replant the more quickly exhausted trees. Almost a century after the 1593 petition by community officials from San Pedro recorded their engagement in cacao tribute, a 1688–1689 document (Váz­ quez and Lamadrid 1944, 57–58) portrayed what can be interpreted as a rupture in practice at San Pedro since the inhabitants were described as farmers and laborers growing sugarcane. Sugarcane was processed into unrefined sugar loaves known as rapaduras, which were made explicitly for sale at the various local, district, and regional markets that dotted the landscape as a means of generating currency with which to pay tributes and taxes (see Feldman 1985). Thus it seems that by the late seventeenth century, introduced Old World sugarcane, rather than cacao, had become the main focus of agricultural production at San Pedro. How do we interpret this change, coming more than 150 years after first contact? Of what use is our precolonial baseline to help understand and make sense of the meaning and consequence of this shift in practice? I argue that the precolonial baseline provides some insight, yet it must be heavily tempered with consideration of all the intervening events and processes that transformed San Pedro and created new and different baselines against which this change must be interpreted and compared. The shift to sugarcane at San Pedro can alternatively be read as a continuity, succeeding the community’s precolonial and early colonial specialization in another high-­value crop (cacao). We can’t understand the adoption of sugarcane without proper consideration of the community’s history as a specialized agricultural locale and of the knowledges, memories, dispositions, and ­subjectivities

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that such labor coproduced, all of which allowed the switch to sugarcane as a continuation in changed form of a similar way of ­being-­in-­the-­world agriculturally. However, the events, practices, and material affordances affecting and affected by the community at a variety of scales and the consequences of these historical ­intra-­actions provide insight into associated shifts in market engagement and consumption, which constitute important changes within the seeming continuity of precolonial agricultural specialization in high-­value crops at San Pedro. Spanish colonial policies made shortly after contact played an important role in San Pedro’s adoption of sugarcane cultivation in the seventeenth century. Initially, the tribute requirements were in kind, later supplemented by taxes and tribute demanded in currency. The cacao “industry” in colonial Guatemala began to decline in the sixteenth century, a fall set in motion by the rise of ­cacao-­growing competitors in Guayaquil and their more robust, high-­yield cacao, even though it was alleged to be of inferior or even “poisonous” quality (Pezzarossi 2017). Also contributing to the decline of cacao cultivation was disease, violence, and migration, which caused a depopulation of c­ acao-­growing regions in the Pacific coast of Guatemala and left the labor needed for the intensive care of cacao orchards in short supply (MacLeod 1973; Orellana 1995). Sugarcane cultivation was introduced to Guatemala in the sixteenth century with the hope that it would become an export crop to replace the lost revenue from cacao, a plan that never came to fruition until the present, although sugar­cane cultivation did supply local and possibly regional sugar needs (Orellana 1995, 82). The shift to sugarcane production from cacao production at Aguacatepeque was likely afforded, in part, by the different cultivation needs of the two crops in light of pressing tribute requirements. Sugarcane does not require years to be productive. Sugar-­laden cane can be harvested in its first year, providing an immediate and lasting return on the investment of time, material, and labor spent setting up cultivation and the m ­ aterial-­intensive sugar production equipment. Thus, the people at Aguacatepeque may have seized the opportunity to focus on the production of this new, introduced crop as a way of persisting as a community producing agricultural exchange crops in light of the changes in demography, labor, and power that had made cacao cultivation on a scale sufficient for the community to persist and thrive difficult at best in the changing landscape of colonial Guatemala. San Pedro experienced a population decline in the late seventeenth century, perhaps due to various epidemics that hit the community (Pezzarossi 2014b).

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It would seem that the community responded to the bust in cacao markets and this labor shortfall by substituting sugarcane, allowing much continuity in life despite what might seem like a substantial change. The move toward sugar was additionally affected by Spanish colonial repartimiento labor drafts and the abuse of these drafts by colonists, who saw San Pedro residents assigned to work on sugar plantations in the region. In 1603, the president of the Audiencia de Guatemala passed an ordinance banning Native laborers from being let out to sugar plantations as part of repartimiento, in response to regional Spanish officials assigning repartimiento laborers to sugar plantations (Sherman 1979, 251). However, Sherman (1979, 251) states that the ordinance was not effective since it was repeatedly ignored. A 1680 inspection and accounting of sugar plantations and mills in the region, eight years prior to the first mention of sugarcane cultivation at San Pedro, noted that the community contributed laborers to a local sugar plantation where they were assigned a variety of tasks to supplement the production of sugar since actual sugar making was deemed too dangerous and damaging to Native bodies (1681 AGI Guatemala, 27, 91). This forced and potentially illegal exposure to new techniques, technologies, and cultivars for an important cash crop, coupled with a disposition toward high-­value crop production rooted in San Pedro’s history, may have been an additional defining and meaningful moment in the community’s switch to sugar cultivation, and thus it can serve as an alternative baseline to compare life at San Pedro pre-­and post-­exposure to sugarcane cultivation and sugar production. At the very least, it was not a novel adoption by the later 1680s since community members may have been in continual contact with sugarcane as a part of daily life as a result of their forced labor in local sugar plantations. The community did more than just grow cane: the people processed rapaduras and molasses, and they also may have produced illicit, illegal alcohol. This alcohol would have been distributed clandestinely, potentially by women excluded from repartimiento labor gangs yet in need of generating additional income to make ends meet after the disruptions of ­community-­and kin-­based agricultural and craft labor due to repartimiento and tribute demands (see Eber 2000 for documentary and ethnographic examples from colonial Chiapas). Once more, this situation marks an apparent continuity as a significant change when compared to the distinct affordances of cacao production and tribute in colonial and especially precolonial Guatemala. No documentary sources speak to alcohol production at San Pedro, which is not unexpected if it was a clandestine activity. However, sugar producers

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frequently also fermented chicha and distilled aguardiente. Excavations in 2011 recovered two vessel types unique to and abundant in colonial deposits that I argue are likely l­arge-­volume boiling vats, made in the highlands with “traditional” technologies and clay sources in volumes not seen in precolonial occupations at San Pedro. Lead-­glazed fermentation vessels, mass-­produced ­wheel-­thrown vessels with introduced paste recipes made in local clays, likely by Native potters, compare favorably to ethnoarchaeologically identified Peruvian maize chicha production vessels (Pezzarossi 2015b, 2017). Intensifying the time-­demanding sugarcane cultivation and production of ­sugar-­derived products appears to have in turn catalyzed other effects, namely a growing dependence on markets both as an outlet for cash crops and as a source of the craft goods needed for day-­to-­day life. Cacao production had been predominantly for tribute payment in precolonial and early colonial contexts. Sugarcane and the alcohol and sugar derived from it were never demanded in tribute, but rather were produced for immediate sale at market as a way of acquiring currency for tribute payments. The greater the volume of sugar and alcohol produced, the more cash could be acquired, incentivizing a greater investment and specialization in sugar over other cultivars and crafts, such as pottery making for community use (Pezzarossi 2014b). This cash then allowed the continuity of daily practices, even though through entirely new colonial economic means. A discussion of the use of stone tools and pottery by the community of San Pedro illustrates this point. Lithic Persistence The lithic assemblage from Aguacatepeque is small, composed of only 61 obsidian artifacts, 6 chert artifacts, and 2 g­ round-­stone manos. No cores of any kind were recovered in the excavated contexts at Aguacatepeque. The chipped stone was composed of prismatic blades, flake tools, and debitage. Prismatic blades accounted for more than 60 percent of both the precolonial (64 percent, n = 7) and colonial (66 percent, n = 33) assemblages. Flake tools were present at similar abundance, 14 percent for the colonial assemblage and 18.2 percent for the precolonial assemblage. Debitage accounted for only 20 percent of the colonial assemblage (n = 10) and only 9 percent of the precolonial assemblage (n = 1). The debitage is mainly shatter or large flakes removed in the production of expedient flake tools. Finally, a single projectile point was recovered in the precolonial assemblage.

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Rodríguez-­Alegría (2008) has provided a model for determining the ratios of ­market-­acquired versus locally produced lithic tools on the basis of the absence or minimal quantities of debitage and / or prismatic blade cores. Using a similar approach, it is likely that Aguacatepeque relied on m ­ arket-­acquired rather than locally produced lithic tools, given the absence of cores or core fragments at the site and the low amount of debitage. The abundance of prismatic blades across all stratigraphic units excavated, both precolonial and colonial, is of note. Such consistency points to the persistence of obsidian tool supply and distribution networks and continued lithic tool use for Aguacatepeque during the colonial period. Similar lithic network resilience in the colonial period has been documented for Honduras and the central Maya lowlands (Joyce and Sheptak 2014, 176; Pugh, Sanchez, and Shiratori 2012). In the southern Highland Maya region of Guatemala, obsidian was one of the most important trade goods circulating regionally and beyond. Two high-­ quality obsidian sources, El Chayal and San Martín Jilotepeque, are within 50 km of Aguacatepeque. A third source, Ixtepeque on the eastern border of Guatemala (near El Salvador and Honduras), was similarly important in the highlands and the more eastern portions of the Maya region. Material from these three critical sources of obsidian are found throughout the Maya region and Mesoamerica during the precolonial period and well into the colonial period (Golitko et al. 2012; Nazaroff, Prufer, and Drake 2010). All lithics excavated at San Pedro were subjected to portable XRF provenience analysis carried out with a Bruker Tracer IV instrument. The determined provenience of the lithic artifacts speaks to the persistence of established precolonial lithic exchange networks, albeit with some changes (Pezzarossi 2014b, 307–8). The obsidian data show a surprising persistence of obsidian exchange networks prior to and during the colonial periods. The same obsidian sources are represented in precolonial and colonial contexts at the site except for the addition of a new, p ­ oorer-­quality obsidian from nearby sources in the later period. There was no sudden disruption of existing exchange networks, although there were other changes that perhaps speak to the precarity of Aguacatepeque’s residents, likely due to the onerous tribute coerced from the community. The appearance of San Bartolomé Milpas Altas obsidian in the colonial occupation of Aguacatepeque is of particular interest. While it is the closest source to Aguacatepeque, its obsidian is of much lesser quality than that from the other sources, especially for the production of prismatic blades. Thus, its use for

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e­ xpedient flake tools may speak to Aguacatepeque’s attempt to seek out some of the necessities of day-­to-­day life from locally available and accessible sources that were useful, albeit previously unused. Milpas Altas obsidian may have been a quick, easy, and inexpensive (in terms of energy and resources to acquire at market) solution to mitigate the increased strain on the community’s time and resources caused by Spanish demands for colonial labor and tribute (Pezzarossi 2015b). Furthermore, the presence of chert in the colonial context of Aguacatepeque may indicate a related attempt at making do with ­lower-­quality lithic materials rather than investing in the acquisition of the more traditional and functional high-­quality obsidian the region had in abundance. On the other hand, perhaps the longue durée use of lithic tools as cutting instruments is blinding us to another use of chert lithics, which is discontinuous: as a gunflint (see Rice 2002, 344). In this case, gunflints would represent an introduced, ­Spanish-­derived lithic technology potentially adopted by Aguacatepeque’s residents. The recovery of a single lead shot fragment in the colonial deposits provide additional support for the presence of firearms at the site in some capacity. Whether the chert is from a local source, salvaged from gunflints, or even from ship ballast, its presence, coupled with the new use of Milpas Altas obsidian, signals an expansion in the sources of material for lithic tools in the colonial period, possibly related to new activities requiring new kinds of tools or perhaps due to expediency, need, and / or declining access and purchasing power. Tucked within the narratives and material evidence of continuities in lithic tool production, distribution, and use in Highland Guatemala and at Aguacatepeque are subtle changes in materials, sources, and motivations for the acquisition of particular lithic materials and tools. Close diachronic analyses of these continuities dissolve the apparent sameness with precolonial practice and provide insight into differences that tell of novel adoptions and innovations with shorter histories, arising out of need, opportunity, or desire within and through “established” traditions with long histories. The same complexity is evident when a second form of ­market-­acquired good, pottery, is considered. Polychromes and Majolicas A variety of ceramic vessel types was recovered during excavations at San Pedro with much continuity on display between precolonial and colonial ceramic paste types, vessel forms, and decorative techniques (Pezzarossi 2014b). In the

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absence of diagnostic Spanish colonial ceramics (such as majolica), the precolonial and colonial assemblages would be very difficult to distinguish from one another due to clear continuities in the bulk of ceramic types. Some Native ceramic types appear for the first time in colonial contexts at the site (Pezzarossi 2014b). These ceramics provide an additional layer of interpretive obstacle since they may represent innovations in Native potting practices unique to the colonial period, in essence a change despite apparent continuities in technologies and materials (Pezzarossi n.d.). On the other hand, these ceramic types are very similar to some described as present in the region prior to colonization (Sharer, Ashmore, and Hill 1970), and their presence at the site may speak to new links to previously disconnected potting communities or markets and distribution networks. Two other ceramic types provide greater insight into these ephemeral continuities and the distinct histories of emergence they represent: Chinautla polychromes and Guatemalan majolicas. Chinautla polychrome ceramics have a deep history in the Highland Maya region, appearing widely throughout the area (Wauchope 1970, 214) and on the Pacific coast (Kosakowsky, Belli, and Pettitt 2000) from the Postclassic through the late colonial period and to the present (Sharer, Ashmore, and Hill 1970, A10–A12). Ceramic analyses using INAA (instrumental neutron activation analysis) of polychrome sherds recovered at San Pedro indicate that they were likely made by multiple workshops, potters, and communities of practice using a variety of paste recipes made from ­granodiorite-­derived Chinautla, Sacojito, and Durazno clays of the kind historically described as sold or exchanged by Native potters to “Guatemala and the towns about” (Gage 1958, 200). The apparent continuity of use of Chinautla ceramics clouds some critical differences in the contexts of production and stylistic elements of these vessels. Sometime after the mid-­sixteenth century, the Dominican order came to control some of the production and distribution of Maya-­style and Maya-­produced ceramic types. Chinautla polychrome ceramic vessels, made by Native potters using precolonial Native technologies and aesthetics, are known to have been produced within the confines of the Convent of Santo Domingo in Santiago, Guatemala. Paredes and Romero (2008, 85–86) argue that Dominican missionaries may actually have served as intermediaries between Native potters near Chinautla and Mixco and far-­flung markets in eastern Guatemala. While Aguacatepeque was ministered to by the Franciscan order and not the Dominicans (Ruz 2002, 188), the community appears to have maintained ample access to ceramic types made by Maya and non-­Maya potters alike, which were

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produced, peddled, and likely made available at market by individuals of the Dominican order and by itinerant ceramic traders. Noting the continuity of Chinautla polychrome as evidence of sameness elides as much as it illuminates since new contexts of power and commercial processes transformed both producer and consumer engagements with such “unchanging” ceramic vessels. Spanish-­origin ceramics, particularly majolica, serve as an inverted example of this history of Chinautla wares, embedding continuities within changes. Luján Muñoz (1975, 23) argues that prior to 1780, majolica production in Guatemala would have been limited to non-­Native people, criollos, mestizos, and poor peninsulares living in Santiago, and its consumption would have been concentrated in the urban centers. However, majolica is clearly found in more rural Native communities, such as San Pedro, a fact Luján Muñoz concedes. He argues that the use of majolica among Native populations may have had significance as a vajilla de lujo (luxury ware) used for special occasions (Luján Muñoz 1975, 23). This newfound value could possibly be due to its association with Spanishness and otherness, an argument Pugh (2009) has convincingly offered to explain the presence of ­European-­origin goods in a Lowland Maya settlement independent of Spanish control during the same period. It is of interest that a full 52 percent of the recovered majolica from San Pedro is of the Green-­on-­white Guatemalan Remesal type. This frequency is similar to Johnston’s (2001, 116) report of 61 percent Green-­on-­white Remesal type at the convent in the Cotzumalguapa region. This ceramic type appears to have been the most abundant, popular, and potentially inexpensive in colonial Guatemala in part due to the lack of need for cobalt for blue decoration (Luján Muñoz 1975, 15) and the abundance of copper for green decoration, readily available from the Huehuetenango region. Beyond strictly economic reasons for the ubiquity of the g­ reen-­decorated Remesal majolicas, R ­ odríguez-­Alegría (2011) has noted a similar color preference in Native colonial sites outside of Mexico City and has argued that the precolonial importance and value of the color green in Mesoamerica may help explain Native Mesoamerican desire for and greater consumption of ­green-­decorated majolicas. Indeed, as Spanish and other European colonial merchants, traders, and shop owners regularly stocked wares in demand among the majority Maya populations in colonial Guatemala (Herrera 2003, 40), the desire for ­green-­painted wares in tandem with the easy access to copper for green colorants may have spurred the increased production and consumption of ­Remesal-­type ceramics among these Maya populations. We cannot rule out the possibility that Native consumption of majolicas was

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driven by the fashionable use of majolicas in colonial homes across Guatemala and the Spanish empire and the desire to participate in such material practices. At a minimum, the consumption of these ceramics speaks to the inhabitants’ knowledge of emerging colonial aesthetics, material culture, and the food and eating practices associated with these ceramic vessels, potentially to positive effect in their relations with Spanish and Mexican colonists and with Pipil and other Maya communities and populations. ­Rodríguez-­Alegría (2011) provides an example of how the consumption and use of Native material culture by Spanish colonists may have served to mediate relations and mitigate difference across caste / ​class lines in colonial Mexico. Rather than simply identifying a precolonial motivation for the consumption of these ceramics, focusing on the importance, values, and meanings of these vessels in the colonial era tells us more about new practices with shorter histories emerging in the colonial milieu. Rethinking Spanish Colonial Heritage as Maya Heritage The Guatemalan highlands offer a particularly salient context for challenging ideas of continuity rooted in precolonial baselines, through a material culture and heritage seen as disconnected from Maya pasts. Given the cultural and economic importance of Spanish colonial heritage in the region, drawing links between Maya and Spanish colonial architectural and archaeological heritage can provide ways of tying modern Maya descendant communities to colonial heritage sites frequently purged of a Maya presence on the basis of Spanish origin or influence. As Voss (2011, 301) argues, a rethinking of Spanish colonial heritage “with respect to the [Native] labor relations that were deployed to produce colonial buildings provides one tangible, material link that can be used to establish a heritage relationship between contemporary indigenous populations and the physical remains of S­ panish-­colonial settlements” (see also Dean and Leibsohn 2003; Voss 2008). Such a perspective could be especially productive in providing alternative historical narratives of Maya contributions to the emerging colonial world outside of “traditional” Maya influences, including contributions to the much-­ celebrated colonial period UNESCO World Heritage City of Antigua, which was built by enslaved and coerced Native, African, and African descendant laborers (Hill 1992). Moreover, such a move could generate new sites to claim in Maya cultural revitalization and refashioning practices that are not exclusively rooted in the Maya precolonial past. Frühsorge (2007, 49) has argued that

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the spiritual, economic, and political overtones of Maya rituals at archaeological sites in the region, especially at ­tourist-­friendly Iximche (a Late Postclassic Kaqchikel Maya center), are a manifestation of a “claim on the places,” which produces “strong images of unbroken tradition . . . from prehispanic times to the present” that are more fully fleshed out by the use of “period” materials identified by archaeological research. Reframing Spanish colonial heritage as Maya colonial heritage provides a means for a similar claim to “unbroken” tradition or connection, albeit more recently in time, through colonial period sites and heritage, creating a material bridge between modern, colonial, and pre­ colonial Maya communities. Conclusion I’ve used this case study as a way of highlighting the issues raised by keeping to the precolonial baseline as the defining comparative for identifying changes and continuities in practice and experience for Indigenous communities. “Contact” may well not have been the defining moment for Native communities. Rather, their defining moments likely were multiple and may have spanned generations from the deeper precolonial past and centuries into colonial entanglements. Examining the details of the history specific to San Pedro and considering the types and influence of defining moments due to its unique positioning in an expansive assemblage of ­intra-­acting heterogeneous participants provides a more nuanced consideration of the complex longer and shorter entanglements that influenced and transformed continuities and changes in material practice in new, different, yet always already historically connected ways. For archaeologists as much as Indigenous communities, the inability to escape hegemonic discourses of continuity and the structural conditions forcing engagement with it may have catalyzed the valorization of cultural continuity with a deep past as indispensable to the process by which Native communities in the present construct notions of the past and by extension establish modern subjectivities in relation to that past. The dynamics of power that constrain and coerce Native self-­determination is of obvious influence in this process. However, origins in coercion do not preclude the possibility of continuity and essentialism emerging as genuine facets of modern Native ontologies that deploy the past in the present as part of self-­determined projections of desired Native futures.

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Explicitly, my critique serves to underscore the crucial role of context in constructing ethically conscious archaeological interpretations and, in turn, critiques of continuity discourse and fetishization in archaeology (Meskell 2009). The point is not to dismantle entirely any argument for archaeology speaking to continuity, particularly when continuity is of importance to engaged and descendant communities. Rather, in this chapter I have sought to expand a consideration of how continuities can be more than sameness with past practices and how researchers can expand beyond considerations of change and continuity always already in relation to precolonial practices and material traditions. As a result, I mirror the other contributions in this volume and its broader theme by emphasizing that greater temporal inclusivity in what counts as continuity with Native pasts and a better consideration of changes within continuities can provide a way forward.

CHAPTER FIVE

Brewed Time Considering Anachronisms in the Study of Indigenous Persistence in New England Heather Law Pezzarossi

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ndigenous historical archaeology is still a small subdiscipline of historical archaeology and an even smaller concern of archaeology itself. Scholars interested in the archaeological traces of the persistence of Indigenous communities, landscapes, identities, materialities, temporalities, and knowledges through the colonial era and beyond have approached this topic as archaeologists first. Our profession in its contemporary form insists on both scientific accuracy and political sensitivity in its approaches to the chaotic, messy, simultaneous, and paradoxical business of history, which is often locked within a matrix of further chaos and mess—that is, ruin, decay, and postdepositional transformational processes that can puzzle even the best field technicians. Ordering these messes, categorizing soil colors and textures, discerning and carefully etching out stratigraphic variations; mapping, washing, and cataloging the objects of our painstaking labor; and then ascribing meaning to this detritus is the substance of our work. These behaviors and practices rely on an underlying network of modern logic that values comprehensive understanding, results, and answers. If the pieces are ordered most meticulously, we trust that these puzzles can be put back together: stories can be told correctly. If stratigraphy is carefully analyzed and mapped, it will reward us by revealing properly temporalized narratives that fit within epochs of known climatic shift or reflect the satisfying punctuation of natural disasters, the ruptures of ideological changes, and the revolutions that truncate historical trajectories. Necessary in this pursuit is the modern idea that we as researchers are somehow fundamentally separate from this narrative that we are reconstructing, that meters of soil, hundreds of years, and a laundry list of irreversible historical advancements and progress give us the distance that we need to find truth. In these ways, archaeology is a fundamentally modernist pursuit. 77

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Yet another assumption that archaeologists must acknowledge is this: our work is helpful, revealing, and, in the case of archaeologists working on Indigenous persistence, subversive. We work to illuminate the counternarratives that colonialism, modernity, and capitalism have overwritten in their construction of dominant narratives of Indigenous collapse, marginalization, disappearance, and delegitimization (Atalay 2006a). The paradox is that the underlying logic of modernity, the same logic that dictates our archaeological compulsion toward accuracy, has also dictated the way in which we are to think of the past and the Indigenous “other,” and the two are frustratingly difficult to untangle. Latour (1993, 68) critiques our hierarchical structure of time, claiming: “the moderns have a peculiar propensity for understanding time that passes as if it were really abolishing the past behind it.” Moderns set apart the present “by a series of radical breaks, revolutions, which constitute so many irreversible ratchets that prevent us from ever going backward” (Latour 1993, 72). This linear, progressive, and problematic concept of time underlies the West’s understanding of the concept of indigeneity. In his seminal text Orientalism (1978), Said reveals the colonial discursive engine that normalized the binary opposition between East and West and ultimately justified colonial campaigns of domination and expansion. The ideological and physical boundaries built between “us” and “them” relied on an essentialized difference and distance between the European Western self and the Indigenous “other.” This binary logic anchored a hierarchical understanding of humankind that reduced the simultaneous existence of multiple, spatially distributed historical trajectories to a single unilinear narrative of cultural evolution oriented toward one global modern (Western) future (Fabian 1983; McClintock 1995). These ideas were the foundation of the American conception of an essential “Indianness,” which defined indigeneity against Western modernity, legitimating Native identity based on evidence of cultural stasis, racial / ​genetic purity, geographic rootedness, and the past. As the antiquated foundations on which modern anthropology and human geography are built, these essentialisms continue to support the opposition of the “Native” and the “modern” and persist in masking the mutual interdependence of colonial and metropolitan identities (Said 1993, 3–61). In Shannon Dawdy’s words (2010, 763), historical archaeology “is an extreme case of a disciplinary practice entrapped by its object [modernity].” So how do we, as archaeologists studying Indigenous persistence, reconcile our dependence on modernity with our intended strike against it? We have struggled to wriggle out from under the modernist discursive logic. We still rely on the

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fundamentals of similarity and difference, searching for otherness and a precolonial connection to help us assert Indigenous legitimacy somehow outside of the still t­aken-­for-­granted inevitability of Western modernity. Legal and popular culture understandings of “Indianness” (built on the modernist logic) force our hand in this regard; they push us to find those references and connections to a precolonial ancestry. And yes, this weighs especially heavily on Native communities still burdened with legitimacy issues in the legal realm. Those standards by which we are constrained are the product of modern anthropology and modernity at large, which have created a double standard that expects and celebrates change from the dominant Western society, yet feels the need to explain change and put it in the context of continuity when it involves Indigenous communities. The Nipmuc People and the Industrial Era The case that I discuss here involves a Nipmuc family making their way in the troublesome times of the early nineteenth century in the newly industrialized Blackstone River valley of Massachusetts (figure 5.1). It is a poignant story that spans one of the “watershed” moments in American history that modernists love to imagine as so fundamentally groundbreaking that it changes everything forever: the Industrial Revolution. And indeed, it is difficult to set the stage of the Industrial Revolution in New England without emphasizing the huge ideological and physical shifts in the economy; the changes in temporal and corporeal rhythms; the use and valuation of space; and the reimagining of the domestic sphere (Mrozowski 2006; McClintock 1995; Shackel 1996). In modernist thinking, this is a historical moment, much like those that came before (the 1620 moment of ­English-­Native contact or the 1676 loss of King Philip’s War) that had the potential to delegitimize Native communities because of the shocking transformations that took place. Surely, Native communities that held fast during the onslaught of English settlers and survived the colonial siege of power and subsequent marginalization in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries might have been exposed to an even greater risk of losing themselves in the hustle and bustle of the industrial age? The modernist / ​ colonist thinking described above, in which indigeneity and modernity are fundamentally at odds, was saturating public consciousness just as the mills were filling New England’s valleys, constructing perhaps the greatest ideological hurdle for the survival of New England’s Native communities. This was

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Figure 5.1. Boundaries of the towns that make up the Blackstone Valley from Worcester, Massachusetts, to Providence, Rhode Island. Map by Heather Law Pezzarossi.

an ideology of erasure that unabashedly stated that those who survived and thrived in an industrialized society were in fact modern, and those who were modern necessarily disavowed their ancientness because the two could not coexist (O’Brien 2010). There have been several archaeological and historical studies that speak to the resilience of this particular Nipmuc family and its maternal heads, Sarah Burnee and Sarah Boston (Mrozowski and Law Pezzarossi 2015). Made possible by ten years of fieldwork and collaborative research with the Nipmuc Nation, the town of Grafton, Massachusetts, and the Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, this work, known as the Hassanamesit Woods Project, has produced important scholarship that explores the continued practices of Nipmuc identity in this particular household from 1727, when the family was allotted land by the Massachusetts colony, to 1837, when the last occupant, Sarah Boston, died. All members of the project have been strong proponents of defining and ­showcasing

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Nipmuc c­ ontinuity in our work, predominantly because it supports the legitimization and recognition of the Nipmuc Nation in the present. In fact, much of our research is based on strong evidence of the continued occupation by the Nipmuc community on this particular landscape in central Massachusetts for centuries prior to European encroachment (Bagley et al. 2015). We have researched, discussed, and theorized the ways in which this Nipmuc household over the course of four documented generations staked its claim to land based on family members’ historical leadership of the community (Gould 2010; Law 2008; Wurst and Mrozowski 2014); how their home served as an important meeting place for the surrounding Nipmuc community in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (Allard 2015; Law 2008; Pezzarossi 2014a); how their foodways reflected both their commitment to their heritage and a belonging in the surrounding Euro-­American community (Allard 2015; Pezzarossi, Kennedy, and Law 2012); and how Sarah Boston’s involvement in the development of the Native basketmaking industry allowed them to overcome the burdens of their shrinking landholdings and struggling agricultural enterprise in the early nineteenth century (Law 2014; Law Pezzarossi 2014). Yet we reach what seems to be the limits of our research in 1837, when Sarah Boston died and her daughter, Sarah Mary, employed in the nearby city of Worcester, Massachusetts, sold the last remaining acres of the family land to a neighboring farmer, who incorporated the land into his orchard (Mrozowski and Law Pezzarossi 2015). For us, the era of the Industrial Revolution in the Blackstone Valley seems to be the end of the story that we can tell with archaeological data. The industrial era and its accompanying modernist attitude has had an enormous impact on the Nipmuc people. It has resulted in what one Nipmuc researcher termed the “lost century,” the period between 1820 and 1920 in which evidence of Nipmuc lifeways and community is relatively scarce (Handsman 1999; but see Gould 2010). In 2001 the Bureau of Indian Affairs reviewed the compiled historical evidence from this crucial time and found insufficient evidence for the maintenance of the Nipmuc community (US Department of the Interior 2001). As a result, the contemporary Nipmuc community was denied federal acknowledgment. Yet the difficulties in demonstrating the persistence of the community during this time have everything to do with the application of a modernist theoretical approach to the changes brought about by the onslaught of modernity. In 1869, Massachusetts passed the Indian Enfranchisement Act, which declared that “Indians and people of color” (who were formerly wards of the

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state) would henceforth be citizens of the commonwealth. This law allowed for the simple sale of Native lands and required a relinquishing of official Native identity and the disavowal of tribal belonging in return for US citizenship (Plane and Button 1993). As Indigenous families sold their farmland and moved, often to the urban centers of New England to find work, they became harder to trace archivally and archaeologically (Baron, Hood, and Izard 1996). Like Sarah Boston’s family, many Nipmuc no longer had legal connections with the particular plots of land with which they were associated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and they often married Anglo-­American and African American neighbors, adopting complicated interracial identities and taking on urban labor roles and lifestyles. In colonial terms, these changes rendered them both “uprooted” and “unpure.” Only the censuses give some idea of the whereabouts of Nipmuc people and the ways in which they self-­identified during this time. However, the US Census is notoriously problematic in documenting marginalized, mobile, and multiethnic communities (Starna 1992; Thee 2006). The nineteenth century was undoubtedly an era of upheaval for Nipmuc people, as it was for many others in New England. It was a time of movement and change and, more important, a time to renegotiate one’s role in a future that was yet to be decided (Prude 1983). In these moments it is admittedly easy to get “lost,” but the Nipmuc were not. They found many pathways of persistence into the contemporary world, and today they are a vibrant community with a strong shared identity—yet they remain unacknowledged by the US government. It’s time to stop thinking of this as a Nipmuc problem. The problem here is not a loss of indigeneity; it is our rigid conception of it. This is not a rupture of history, but a modern failure to acknowledge the fluidity and constant renegotiation of time. In this chapter, I adjust the burden of proof, focusing not on exhibiting Native continuities but instead on exhibiting the accumulation of this modern mind-­set and its accompanying entrapments, which have made it so difficult to legitimize Native change, especially in the nineteenth century. This can and should be approached as an archaeological inquiry. Stratigraphic Time When we are taught the fundamentals of excavation, we learn that the earth is like a layer cake. The changing textures and colors of the soil encourage us to understand the passage of time as cumulative. Simplistically speaking, each layer represents a period of time, which was built on an earlier period of time,

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much like our modernist understanding of history (see Dawdy 2010 for a fuller discussion of modernity and archaeological time). We demonstrate to our students that changes in the environment, catastrophic events, and human activity can all be seen and understood on a timeline through the analysis of a carefully excavated profile. But sometimes it isn’t that simple. Sometimes, one surface intrudes into another in a frustratingly undrawable chaos; sometimes, soil has been taken away. Sometimes, an artifact from the profile wall falls down into a lower layer and is bagged with the wrong stratum, creating an illusion of collapsed time. These stratigraphic and material frustrations are hell to draw and harder still to decipher, yet they illustrate the very tactile and material way in which time is not as linear or simplistic as our modernist mind-­sets have conditioned us to believe. When we excavate, we begin at the top. We excavate from the known to the unknown, removing every trace of one layer and carefully collecting its significant contents before breaching the surfaces that lie beneath. And yet, when we write about our work, we usually invert this process. We begin with the first evidence of human occupation and work our way forward (up?), reconstructing the timeline from an imagined origin of human occupation in that place. These origin stories establish rootedness and spatial continuity, which are so important to modern narratives of Indigenous identity. Here, instead of introducing you to my subjects by tracing their historical trajectory in place from “contact” forward, enumerating the struggles and turmoil that this Nipmuc family survived in order to make it to one moment or another, I am going to upset the modernist linear construction of time that stratigraphy is always trying to problematize for us by focusing on the post-­, peri-­, and preoccupation depositions, disruptions, and deletions that have complicated the archaeological reconstruction of this Native history. This approach helps to implicate the present in the interpretation of the past, and it troubles a simplistic model of overlain episodes and events. As ­Gonzalez-­Ruibal (2013, 613) asserts, “The discipline has to denounce the impossible temporality of modernist fantasies—a messianic time that intends to abolish the past—and, likewise, to show how the ruins of the past disrupt and haunt [and construct] the modernist present.” To see beyond the modern illusion that we have any separation from our past, we need only look around and see the material traces of earlier times brought forward into the present or, indeed, the ideologies and materialities of the present drawn into our understandings of the past, to see that the past

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never leaves us, that there are no original essences from which humans derive hybrids (see Latour 1993; Law Pezzarossi 2014). This involves rejecting the binaries of modernity altogether and resisting the urge to equate newness necessarily with betterness (in the case of modernity) or worseness (in the case of Native authenticity or some ideal essential past). Rather than think of time as some kind of progressive apex or degenerative slide or as some kind of inevitable ascension to a sophistication modeled from our own perceptions of the West’s civility (or the antithesis thereof ), perhaps we should consider this study a demonstration of the notion that “we are exchangers and brewers of time” (Serres and Latour 1992). Sometimes a bit of chaos can help solidify the vertical associations between things and events, that is, how the past intrudes into the future and how the future interrupts the present and past. The remainder of this chapter is an example of how we might “brew time” methodologically with our own historical narratives and how we might witness “brewed time” in the archaeological record. My aim is to achieve three things. First, I hope that this approach will take pressure off the researcher to privilege any one period in Native history as better, as more authentic, or as more important than any other. That is, we needn’t always establish histories of rootedness, resistance, and cultural isolation from precolonial baselines to preface our work; sometimes the present is enough. Second, I hope that it will highlight the effect modernity itself has had on the way we recognize and study Indigenous persistence. As Dawdy suggests (2010, 772), “Studying why and how ruins are not only made but also erased, commemorated, lived in, commodified, and recycled can tell us at least as much about society as the processes that created the original edifices.” Finally, I hope that this example highlights the importance of a fluid temporal approach: the understanding of any one period requires an understanding of not just that which went before, but also that which came after and that which was simultaneous. In these ways, archaeology is quite well suited to undoing some of the work of purification and separation that modernity has done; it can be useful in illustrating that “everything happens in the middle, everything passes between . . . , everything happens by way of mediation, translation and networks” (Latour 1993, 37). A Vertical Assemblage In a previous publication (Law Pezzarossi 2014), I discussed the importance of DeLanda’s (2006) assemblage theory in reconceptualizing Sarah Boston’s

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basketmaking toolkit. Here, I discuss a different kind of assemblage, a “vertical assemblage,” composed of a number of anachronisms that were recovered above and among the evidence of Sarah Boston’s occupation. Not unlike Latour’s (2005) “networks,” assemblage theory relishes the interdependence and entanglement of heterogeneous human and nonhuman elements in an emergent entity. Unlike the traditional assemblages that archaeologists are most familiar with, DeLanda’s assemblages are composed of more than just objects. They incorporate many other forces and their capacities as well, including the material properties of things and the ideological, political, and environmental conditions in which they are situated. Proponents of assemblage theory are often encouraged to think of assemblages as ephemeral and temporally contingent: emerging, coalescing, and dissipating with the passage of time. But there is much to gain from assembling things that seem never to have shared a moment. This exercise forces us to question the simplicity of linear time and instead consider the current of accumulated things and ideas that contribute to our understanding the past in the present. This is nothing new or revolutionary. Despite our desire to create linear historical trajectories, we are always, as Dawdy (2010, 766) puts it, “folding time,” engaging “future possibilities by jumbling anachronis[ms].” I present this vertical assemblage as an attempt to begin a discussion not about whether or how Sarah Boston and her family maintained their Nipmuc identities, but rather about how and why Nipmuc legitimacy was ever questioned in the first place. This assemblage illustrates the material intrusions of the past and future on Sarah Boston’s story; it accesses the intersections of the tactile and the ideological, including the local and the not-­so-­local interruptions, revisions, and erasures of this particular Nipmuc history. The goal is to begin to understand how an entire community, one with a vibrant contemporary presence and a well-­documented past, could possibly have ever been considered “lost.” The Tractor On September 21, 1938, only a few weeks after the Nipmuc community gathered at the reservation for their annual picnic (Handsman 1999), the town of Grafton, Massachusetts, suffered a catastrophic hurricane. This storm decimated the New England coast, destroying homes, uprooting trees, flooding cities, and ruining fall harvests. ­Gonzalez-­Ruibal (2014, 372) might call this a “time of agony” in which there was “little room for failures, ruins, and the debris of history.” The remains of Sarah Boston’s home, which had been slowly sinking

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into an orchard hillside for the previous 100 years, presented itself as a recep­ tacle for the detritus of the storm. The farmer who owned the land in 1938 rented a Cater­pillar tractor (figure 5.2) and in one autumn afternoon pushed what remained of the house into its own dry-­laid stone foundation and cellar hole, collapsing the ruin and piling soil, rocks, and debris on top, making the entire feature invisible on the landscape (Gary 2005). The cleanup from the hurricane and the tractor most specifically did irreparable damage to the Sarah Boston site. The large stones and boulders that were pushed into the cellar hole were never able to be removed safely, despite years of engineering efforts by archaeologists. The careful excavation to remove and make sense of the results of the bulldozing event took several field seasons. How ruins are treated in the aftermath of disaster are a telling indication of how people believe the past fits into the future (Dawdy 2010, 773). The bulldozing event of 1938 created a rupture with the past, imposing a violent, irreversible, and largely indecipherable chaos on an otherwise slow transformation;

Figure 5.2. The tractor used in the cleanup of the Keith Hill orchards following the hurricane of 1938. Courtesy of the Grafton Historical Society.

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this resulted in the immediate erasure of the Sarah Boston dwelling from the landscape. It also homogenized the landscape, erasing the anachronism of her homesite. In this case, the tools of modernity contributed to the modern sense of ruptured time, speeding up the process of waste and ruin, destroying the bridges to the past, and introducing an element of violent mechanization to the act of the colonization of the present through the destruction of the past. Shells and Shells As its former residents forged new pathways for themselves in the urban landscape of Worcester, Massachusetts, and beyond, the Burnee / ​Boston house sat unoccupied and decaying on Keith Hill from 1837 to 1938. Of course, this process probably began slowly, with floorboards rotting and holes developing in the roof. After the home’s occupation and before the tractor destroyed what was left of the ruin, the roof, floor, and possibly the upper parts of the chimney slumped and eventually fell inward, creating a deep layer of debris in the cellar cavity, while leaving some standing exterior walls on the surface (Mrozowski and Law Pezzarossi 2015). In the summer of 2009, the archaeological team was carefully removing the layer of tractor rubble from inside the cellar hole when they came upon a stratum just as laden with rocks and boulders, yet characterized by darker soils and more densely packed debris. In and among these layers, they found little that represented the time of Sarah Boston’s occupation, but they did find late ­nineteenth-­century and early ­twentieth-­century shotgun shells with some frequency (Mrozowski and Law Pezzarossi 2015). It seems that the ruin of the Sarah Boston home was a popular hunting blind around the turn of the twentieth century. In the autumn, as the leaves fell in the orchard, hunters crouched in the depression to shoot at their targets, leaving their shells behind to tumble down among the rocks and leaves, deep into the rubble. This is an important period for Sarah Boston and her legacy because it marks a time when the ruins of her home were still visible and useful, serving a contemporary purpose while acting as a mnemonic for the remembrance of its occupants, although there was an element of temporal distance and material decay that allowed for a great deal of adjustment to the narrative. In this time, collective memories were still active and stories took on lives of their own. To some, the decay of the structure may have represented the supposed ­dwindling of the Nipmuc community and the Nipmuc way of life as a whole (Yablon 2010). But what happened during this time period was far more dynamic

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and far more destructive than a simple narrative of cultural decline. The evidence of hunting from within the ruins of Sarah Boston’s homesite brings up an important question, one worth considering in an investigation of the delegitimization of postcolonial Indigenous persistence. What happens to Native historical structures that remain visible on the landscape? How has Anglo-­ American history dealt with these reminders of Native persistence? Many historical Native dwellings were very visible on the landscape during the “lost century.” Those that stood out as different from the normative Euro-­ American dwelling structure were especially vulnerable to the transformative processes of collective memory. Turn-­of-­the-­century historian Harriet Forbes (1889, 173) remembered Simon Gigger, who lived in Westborough “first in a swamp towards Shrewsbury, in a hut built of stones, the walls being two feet thick at the base, and gradually growing narrower at the top. It sloped from the bottom to the ­ridge-­pole; the stones were covered with sods and branches of trees. In the top was a hole to let out the smoke from the wood-­fire blazing underneath.” She described a similar site with alternative stone architecture: “there was a family of Indians living on John Belknap’s old place at Rocklawn, in a kind of dug-­out in the side of the hill. It was enclosed by stone walls, covered by sods, with grass growing on the roof. The door was about four feet square” (Forbes 1889, 175). Stone structures like those can be found throughout central Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Some are small lean-­to stone dwellings; others, like those found in neighboring Upton, Massachusetts, and Groton, Connecticut, are subterranean man-­made caverns sometimes referred to as “beehives.” While it is clear that the social memory of a century ago still associated similar structures with Native occupation in the historical period, more recent scholarship surrounding these dwellings aptly illustrates the institutional forgetting of Native American residence on the New England historical landscape. Various ­twentieth-­century scholars attributed them to ancient Native sweat lodges, the Norsemen of the eleventh century, or historic period root cellars and pig sties. Most notably Goodwin (1946), a Harvard scholar, ascribed the stone structures to ancient Celtic monks (Culdees), who traveled to New England and built a network of shelters in the eighth century (see also Barron, Mason, and Tiede 1998; Hitt 2012). Since that time, these sites have been largely relegated to the realm of pseudoscientific curiosities, considered out of reach and frankly unsuitable for serious archaeological inquiry. Local historians and amateur archaeologists have made

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claims that some of these sites have portals or entryways that align with the sun on the summer solstice; others have drawn celestial connections between them and other “mysterious” stone cairns that dot the New England countryside (commonly used as boundary markers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when trees were scarce). I do not insist that these structures were built by historic period Native stoneworkers (although that seems more plausible than the Celts), but instead I raise questions about the capacity of Anglo-­American histories to accommodate the memory of Native coexistence. With no land of their own and no money to buy lumber, the simplest building material at the disposal of Indigenous people may well have been the bounty of stones found around them. The erasure that has resulted from pseudoscientific sensationalism is substantial and has effectively made future investigation by academic archaeologists untenable. Relegating these sites to the realm of fantasy trivializes Native innovation and makes these structures into irrelevant “no places,” associated only with an imagined past. The Railroad Spikes In 1847 the Providence and Worcester Railroad constructed its main line through Grafton. The track wound around the base of Keith Hill, passing Sarah Boston’s recently vacated home by not more than 100 yards. In the years after Sarah Boston’s death in 1837, the unoccupied, unmaintained house began to slump and warp, giving way to various taphonomic processes. The northern and southern fieldstone walls slumped inward and eventually fell into the empty cellar cavity. The gaps in the western retaining wall permitted a substantial amount of mainly sterile silt and debris to gather at the interior base of the western wall and wash downward and inward toward the center of the foundation (Mrozowski and Law Pezzarossi 2015). The archaeological team found railroad spikes wedged in among the rubble, underneath the bulldozer debris and the shotgun shells, and thought little of their presence. Yet they provide an important trace in tracking the continued development of this Indigenous history. Trains are powerful symbols of modernity. An engine propels an iron vessel down a fixed iron track, which enforces an exact trajectory toward a predetermined destiny / d ​ estination on a strict timetable. Trains transport people and goods quickly from place to place, encouraging movement from rural towns and small villages to centers of industry and global import. The railroad spikes in the rubble of Sarah Boston’s home are more than a mere symbol of the encroachment of modern mobility; they are indices of a landscape transformed

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by conscripted labor and steel tracks. They evidence a new dominant perspective on the Grafton landscape: experienced at thirty miles per hour and viewed from the ­steel-­framed window of a passenger coach. In the industrial era, Native people, Native dwellings, and Native mobility were all set in direct contrast to this idealized, industrialized, homogenized, and cosmopolitan future, and the effects of that mind-­set still haunt us today. Early t­ wentieth-­century local historians took great pains to describe and situate eroding or “abandoned” Native dwellings—barely visible beside the fields, streets, and railroads—within an emerging Euro-­American historical landscape (O’Brien 2010). They often went to great lengths to layer modern agricultural and industrial landscapes over the top of known Native landmarks, creating a historical discourse that took ownership of both the past and the present. Local historian Harriet Merrifield Forbes took great care to describe the positions of Native ruins, in some cases even giving measurements to help the remnants of these dwellings be found. In the following, Forbes describes the whereabouts of Simon Gigger’s home in Westborough, Massachusetts, in relation and contrast to the railroad, an index of modernity in late ­nineteenth-­century New England: The remains of his old shanty can still be found near the arch bridge and the Boston & Albany railroad. It is on the north side of the railroad, about twenty rods east of the western intersection of the old and new road-­ beds, a half-­dozen rods north of the new embankment. There is now left merely a collection of loosely ­piled-­up stones, half hidden by the dense brush, but indicated as once having been a human habitation by the bright little faces of the ladies’ delights, which, in the struggle for existence, have outlasted the Indian family which planted them in the wilderness. (Forbes 1889, ­173–74) Embedded in this and other descriptions of Native historical ruins is the idea that the Native people who inhabited the New England landscape in the past are incompatible with the landscape of the future and with modernity (O’Brien 2010). This approach sets up a paradox in which Native people dwelling on a modern landscape no longer enjoy the legitimacy of those who remain in the past. As the network of railroads expanded in New England, Anglo-­Americans were eager to differentiate their own newfound mobility from the kind of aimless mobility they had spent the last century rebuking in their Native ­neighbors.

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They built up their own movement as a product of modernity, a result of the burgeoning industrialism and cosmopolitanism in the region, aided by the arrival of local rail systems and justified by the inevitable expansion of the US frontier. Native mobility, however, was cast as primitive, directionless, and hopeless. O’Brien (2010, 84) points out the ironic contrast between Native and Euro-­ American mobility: “English notions about fixity and place figured centrally in dispossessing Indian peoples. While scheduled Indian mobility rooted in a seasonal economy offered a justification for English colonialism in the seven­ teenth and eighteenth centuries, in the nineteenth century New Englanders cast Anglo-­Saxon mobility as normative.” Further judgment was passed on Native travelers who chose mobile livelihoods. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Indigenous people found work as soldiers, whalers, and stoneworkers; many others made and sold baskets, brooms, or herbal remedies through the countryside. Still others worked as teamsters or even took jobs with the railroad, laying the tracks that crisscrossed New England’s newly industrialized landscape. These, however, were not considered part of the mobility made possible through the advancements of modernity. Native mobility became linked with traits of “laziness,” “shiftlessness,” or “desperation” as racism escalated in the nineteenth century. These characteristics were considered to be the antithesis or the absence of the values that came from owning property and “improving” it through industry. When Native people sold their land and moved westward or into New England’s cities, they were considered “uprooted” or even “vanished” and, by extension, baseless in their claims to Native persistence. Historians and archaeologists aren’t without blame either. We have attempted to carve up the New England landscape in our own way, to delineate the spatial parameters of Indigenous communities, and to assign boundaries to Indigenous identity (see Johnson 1999; Chilton 1999; Stein 2008; Law Pezzarossi 2015). We do this because, as Malkki (1997) points out, Western discourse has internalized the sedentarist, agricultural mind-­set in which places of “origin” represent the core of legitimate identity. But these mobile livelihoods provided a way forward for Native families. They were the alternatives to an agrarian subsistence that was becoming more and more untenable as Native landholdings dwindled (Prude 1983), but perhaps just as importantly, they provided a mechanism for the maintenance of widely dispersed social networks (Law Pezzarossi 2015). In comparison to the disparaged “wandering” mentioned above, these professions provided a relatively safe

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outlet for regular travel in and around New England; they gave both men and women a visible and understandable task associated with their movement, one that fit within the Euro-­American realm of acceptable reasons for moving about the landscape. These jobs not only allowed more spatial fluidity, but opened up social channels as well, creating links between members of dispersed communities and connecting Native people to their Euro-­American neighbors through labor, industry, and the social relationships associated therewith. The Slipper In our first few days on the Sarah Boston site, as we labored with our machetes and rakes to clear the tangled vines and dense overgrowth from the forest floor, we came across a shoe. It is an early t­wentieth-­century girl’s slipper with a worn rubber sole. It was buried under layers of leaf litter and matted into the ­hummus-­like pseudo surface where the worms begin their work and the rotting leaves become dirt. We collected it but neglected to assign further provenience because we hadn’t even established our grid yet. We placed it in the lab in a low-­humidity cabinet and forgot about it for ten years. But indeed, this shoe can be a helpful member of our ongoing and anachronistic assemblage. It reminds us of the material and ideological impacts that industry and manufacturing had on the local populace in the nineteenth century. In Grafton, Massachusetts, manufacturing provided thousands of jobs for displaced agriculturalists in the early nineteenth century and continued to bring relative prosperity to the region for more than 150 years. The shoe industry in Grafton began as early as 1795, when Royal Keith began making “coarse sewn brogans” that were popular with “the laboring class and for the Negroes of Virginia and the Carolinas” (Warren n.d., 1). The industry grew with the advent of the shoe peg in 1818, the m ­ achine-­turned last in 1820, the ­leather-­splitting machine in 1837, the pegging machine in 1840, and the sewing machine in 1850 (Warren n.d., 1). With each new invention, manufactories could produce more shoes with greater speed and expect ever more reliable results. The town of Grafton still celebrates these advancements today with photographs and exhibits in the town’s historical society. This was and is considered modern progress. Compare this slipper and the progress it represents to the Native wood-­splint basket, produced by Native people like Sarah Boston all over New England beginning in the late eighteenth century for sale to their Euro-­American neighbors. Just like the area’s shoe manufacturers, Native basketmakers of the early and mid-­nineteenth century looked for ways to improve their basketmaking

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practices, to make the baskets faster and more appealing to their clientele. The industry grew throughout the nineteenth century with the addition of the shaping block, the gauge, and the splitter to the basketmaker’s toolkit (McMullen and Handsman 1987). They gained popularity when basketmakers began drawing from popular aesthetic motifs to decorate their goods (Phillips 1998). They found bigger markets and more willing consumers when they brought their goods to popular vacation destinations in the latter half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yet historically, these steps are not thought to represent progress, nor are they celebrated as innovations. Instead each change has drawn criticism from anthropologists, collectors, historians, and museum researchers as a shift away from the “original” Native basket. These changes are used as damning evidence of an Indigenous community informed and incorporated into modern mind-­sets and capitalist enterprises and self-­aware of the marketable value of their “Indianness” (Phillips 1998; McMullen 1987), all seen as detriments to Native legitimacy and Indigenous material authenticity. Despite the fact that this industry was born of the very specific economic and social conditions of the industrial era, museums and ethnologists have long looked for ways to privilege a Native past and a Native materiality untainted by modernity or, at the very least, Indigenous objects that push back against it. They’ve worked out axes of difference between authentically Native baskets and modern, illegitimate specimens. Some scholars argue that baskets made for Euro-­American consumption cannot, by definition, be authentic (Willoughby 1905). Others have conditioned a basket’s authenticity on evidence of its manufacturing technique, claiming that “genuine aboriginal specimens” were made of splints “obtained by pounding off the years’ growth rather than manufactured by instruments of our civilization (the drawshave)” (Curtis 1904, 8). Some attempt to draw the line between Indigenous significance and pure commercialism along the axis of decoration, claiming that some decorations have Indigenous meaning while others only parrot emerging American folk art motifs. The common thread in all of these criteria is that the more modern something is, the less authentically Native it can be (O’Brien 2010). Since the nineteenth century, the concept of authenticity has had a tremendous impact on the value and meaning of objects generally and Indigenous objects more specifically. The term communicates simultaneously an aesthetic preference for singularity and a modern longing for the familiar, a nostalgia for the traditional past (Benjamin [1936] 1968; Eco 1985). Native baskets were

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valued for their rarity and transmission of historical meaning, but also for their predictably repetitive attributes, their potential in vast collections to evidence unchanging patterns of sameness and tradition. On one hand, scholars have seen innovative material culture as evidence of Native assimilation; on the other hand, they have collected objects that conform to essentialist notions of the timeless Native, supporting theories of Natives’ extinction. In short, “progress” for the Native basketry industry is equivalent to cultural decline. Creamware / ​Pearlware We recovered 45,039 refined ceramic artifacts from the layers associated with this Nipmuc family’s homesite (Mrozowski and Law Pezzarossi 2015, 154). Most of these were small pieces of creamware and pearlware with a variety of rims, edged with green and blue. Some were embossed, some impressed in scalloped patterns. Historically these tiny objects have huge historical implications. They communicate a material investment in and the global spread of the regimented individualism of a capitalist society (Leone 1999); a participation in a mass consumer culture fueled by the material preferences of elites (Miller 1991); and the sweeping influence of the cultural phenomenon of symmetry, harmony, and uniformity that James Deetz labeled the “Georgian Order” (Mrozowski 2006, 7). Scholars of Indigenous historical archaeology have only a few choices in our analysis of these things. At their worst, these tiny ceramic fragments communicate globalization, a force bent on steamrolling Indigenous autonomy and homogenizing the unique materialities that for so long have legitimized Indigenous persistence. In a more optimistic approach, perhaps they are (cream and pearl) noise. They present a challenge to work around, to define indigeneity in spite of. Perhaps they can stress the potentials for resistance, agency, and / or unique expressions of consumption in this particular case study. Pezza­ rossi (2014a) has put forth a particularly well-­constructed version of the latter argument in which he posits that Sarah Boston and her family compiled their own mismatched yet passably coordinated set of creamware and pearlware ceramic dinnerware for a number of reasons. The first and likely foremost purpose was to effectively serve and entertain large numbers of Nipmuc in the home of one of the community’s most respected elders: Sarah Boston’s mother, Sarah Burnee. But they might also have had these ceramics to fit in with their Anglo-­American neighbors, to persist through the practice of social camouflage, and / or to create social connections outside of the Nipmuc community,

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which afforded them certain liberties and possibilities. Pezzarossi argues that Sarah Boston and her family were not passive consumers of globalization, nor were they outside or somehow separate from it. They were indeed engaging the global in a local expression. With Tsing’s (2005, 5) inspiration, we can take this argument even one step further, acknowledging that the “global” hadn’t been (and still isn’t) decided or inevitable. That is, “new forms of empire [don’t] spring fully formed and armed from the heads of Euro-­American fathers.” They are decided and propelled (not necessarily “forward” but moved nonetheless) in the friction of local encounters. Friction here is key. It acknowledges the crucial encounter of “heterogeneous and unequal” elements in the creation of energy and, indeed, power (Tsing 2005, 5). In this sense, we see that rather than rejecting it, Sarah Boston and her family did their own part in driving globalization and deciding the nature of the collective future, which Tsing (2005, 5) calls “the global stream of humanity,” by creating a particular type of friction. This approach avoids the pitting of the local against the global and rejects the notion that the more global (modern) something is, the less local it can be. It denies a modernity defined only by Western ideas and empowers Native people by acknowledging how their expressions and iterations shaped and continue to shape the global future. The Steatite Bowl In and among the layers of creamware and pearlware, glass and pipestems, lying in a sheet midden outside the doorway to the household, archaeologists found two pieces of a 3,000-­year-­old steatite bowl (figure 5.3). It was once a crucial part of Indigenous daily life; it was likely used to prepare food, medicines, and pigments. Was this bowl somehow curated for 3,000 years? Unlikely. Perhaps though, Sarah Boston or one of her family members recovered it while plowing their fields or while digging their cellar hole. The bowl itself communicates a longevity of Native residence in the hills of central Massachusetts. Its presence represents a recognition by the occupants of the household of that longevity and their own conscious connection to an enduring Indigenous heritage. In the past, I and other archaeologists at the Fiske Center have leaned heavily on the steatite bowl as a clear expression of the continuation of Native identity in the colonial period. It is a seductive object because it reinforces a romantic and politically powerful idea in the present, one that seems to resonate well with the general public, that the Nipmuc community has a connection to a very deep past, rooted in place. But I fear that its presence overshadows other objects in the

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Figure 5.3. Two adjoining steatite bowl fragments (dated to approximately 3,000 years ago) found in the excavation of the ­eighteenth-­and ­nineteenth-­century Burnee / ​ Boston farmstead in Grafton, Massachusetts. Photo by Melody Henkel, with permission from the Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research, University of Massachusetts, Boston.

collection that might indicate the maintenance of more nuanced connections with people, places, and things that are part of a more immediate past within the realm of memory. Silliman (2009, 222) has discussed this phenomenon in the study of the colonial era materiality of the Eastern Pequot, calling for more attention to the intimate “intergenerational” scales of cultural persistence. Also found in the Nipmuc household were buttons from a Revolutionary War coat, tin-­glazed ceramics and a s­ ilver-­coated spoon from the seventeenth century, and many well-­worn pots and kettles (Mrozowski and Law Pezzarossi 2015). These objects reference the family’s role in the founding of the US republic, Sarah Boston’s grandmother’s history as a maid in Providence, Rhode Island, and long-­standing and shared practices of food preparation and consumption. To recognize these objects as things that also legitimize Native persistence is to recognize the multiple, sometimes paradoxical, and simultaneous identities that everyone inhabits (Warren and Jackson 2003). These objects show the attachment of personal memories and meanings and the maintenance of an

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intimate heritage with links to the Nipmuc community, but they also recognize and celebrate links to other communities and historical narratives inclusive of the conflicting relationships they may represent. Conclusions A tractor, a few shotgun shells, railroad spikes, a kid’s shoe, some refined earthen­ware, and a 3,000-­year-­old stone bowl: this is a motley crowd, but an important collection of things to consider if we are to continue to improve the study of Indigenous survival through periods of prolonged colonial entanglement. While this is an obviously important pursuit for our field, these objects do not bear witness to Native continuity, however nuanced. Instead, this approach shifts the assumed burden of proof regarding Native legitimacy off Native shoulders, through an assemblage of objects that challenge us to think about how the modern mind-­set has been complicit in the bounding of Native legitimacy and about how and when those standards became institutionalized. These objects are implicated or perhaps have been drawn into the development of the o ­ ften-­rigid ways we have come to think about (or forget about) Native presence and persistence. While their assembly might seem merely symbolic, the historical effects of the more recent past on sites of Native persistence are real, tangible, and traceable. These objects’ deposition testifies to their material presence; they are signs of action that can be read as traces of the formation of important relationships between humans and nonhumans (Joyce 2008). Yet they have not simply been laid on top of the Nipmuc occupations or, in the case of the steatite bowl, undergirded them. They have shaped and reshaped the landscape and the narrative, intruding into buried strata, and pushing through overlain deposits, affecting the moment in question both physically and ideologically in complex ways. This chapter is an attempt to draw these things into our understanding of Native persistence, to encourage us to find and assign them their due significance, and in so doing, to promote the further study of Native self-­determination and disciplinary self-­reflexivity.

CHAPTER SIX

Comanche Imperialism The Materiality of Empire Lindsay M. Montgomery

I

n Pekka Hämäläinen’s transformative manuscript The Comanche Empire, he concludes that the “Comanches had ruled the Southwest for well over a century, but they left behind no marks of their dominance. There were no deserted fortresses or decaying monuments to remind the newcomers of the complex imperial history they were displacing” (Hämäläinen 2008, 342). This statement is striking. Hämäläinen makes the novel argument that equestrian nomads directed a uniquely Indigenous form of imperialism in North America during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Following this line of argumentation, I refer to the Comanche as imperial conquerers throughout this chapter and seek to provide material evidence for this unique form of imperialism. The contention that the Comanche created and sustained an Indigenous empire draws on Carla Sinopoli’s work on the archaeology of empires. In her Annual Review of Anthropology article on the subject, Sinopoli (1994, 160) suggests that an empire e “involv[es] relationshps in which one state exercises control over other sociopolitical entities (e.g., states, chiefdoms, non-­stratified societies).” While Comanche society certainly lacked the sort of centralized bureaucracy typically identified with Western “states,” it did operate as a coherent socio­ political entity and exercised control over other Indigenous and non-­Indigenous societies. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the Comanche were an internally fluid but externally coherent sociopolitical entity that expanded its territorial control from a central base in the Arkansas River valley north into Montana and Alberta and south into Texas and Louisiana. Comanche imperialism utilized a series of strategic political alliances with a range of tribal communities, including Pueblo communities in New Mexico and Ute, Kiowa, Wichita, Tonkawa, Iowa, and Kansas peoples (Hämäläinen 2008). These formal political agreements were made possible by the Comanche’s control over the exchange of key economic resources, specifically captives, horses, and bison products. 99

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As highly mobile intermediaries, the Comanche maintained their political and economic dominance by possessing a monopoly on force. Unlike the centralized armies of bureaucratic states, Comanche violence largely took the form of ­lightning-­fast raids executed by individuals or activity groups temporarily convened for that purpose. In addition to raiding, the Comanche flexed their ­muscle through less frequent and more formal military engagements undertaken by bands or warrior societies. These violent campaigns successfully incentivized compliance and cooperation with the Comanche regime. The potent combination of political alliances, economic dominance, and military monopoly allowed the Comanche to maintain imperial control over New Mexico and its borderlands from approximately 1740 to 1840 CE. Building on this basic definition of empire, Sinopoli puts forward the argument that communities living under imperial regimes typically remain culturally autonomous and maintain a degree of independence in terms of political and economic ­decision-­making (Sinopoli 1994, 160). Accordingly, the argument that the Comanche were imperial does not rely on making the dubious claim that Pueblo communities lost their sovereignty under Comanche control or that Hispano communities were no longer beholden to the Spanish Crown. Furthermore,the Comanche were not culturally hegemonic but rather engaged in a significant degree of intermarriage and cultural exchange—similar to other nomadic conquerors, like the Mongols. For example, most Rio Grande Pueblo people perform a version of a Comanche dance as part of their feast day celebrations, during which community members dress up in ­Plains-­style clothing and sing songs with Comanche words in them. Similarly, many small Hispano villages in the northern Rio Grande continue to dress in Plains regalia and perform their own versions of Comanche dances and songs (LaMadrid 2003). While Indigenous and non-­Indigenous communities remained culturally  autonomous, there was a significant degree of resistance to Comanche imperialism. This resistance took many forms, including organized battles, retaliatory raids, and formal legislation prohibiting trade with the Comanche. Like most Western empires, the Comanche imperial project was never total or complete. Rather, Comanche control was constantly negotiated in both overt and hidden ways. In addition to suggesting that Indigenous nomads constructed an empire, Hämäläinen’s statement points to a perplexing dilemma, which confounds scholarly discussions of Comanche history. Specifically, what material evidence, if any, documents the vibrancy and scope of the Comanche’s economic and

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political activities during the height of their power? Hämäläinen’s conclusion that there are no material remnants of Comanche imperialism reflects the long-­ held belief among anthropologists that the high levels of mobility practiced by nomadic groups created a functional imperative to travel light. The implication of this premise is that Comanche and other equestrian nomads left little behind for archaeologists to record. Underlying the archaeological preoccupation with material absence is the deeply engrained conviction that Indigenous people, especially mobile ones, are “barbarians.” The trope of the barbarian emerged during the age of exploration as European conquerors encountered a variety of Indigenous peoples. While it is certainly true that Westerners had knowledge of non-­Western peoples before this time, the trope of the barbarian that emerged during the sixteenth century was a direct result of the widespread entrenchment of Christianity. For the Spanish state, Christianity became a central tenet of its imperial mission following its victory over the Muslim Moors during the Crusades (Weber 2006). According to the colonial logic of the time, the barbarian was heathen (i.e., non-­Christian), deviant, violent, and destructive. In ­eighteenth-­century New Mexico, a rotating cast of equestrian nomads, including the Ute, Comanche, Apache, and Navajo, played the role of the barbarian. The most persistent and mythologized of these yndios bárbaros were the Comanche. Official accounts from the period portray the Comanche as feckless, untrustworthy savages who undermined imperial authority and ravaged New Mexico’s settlements. Because the Comanche barbarians were inherently destructive, the only material traces they left in their wake were smoldering ruins. The parallel constructions of ­Comanche-­as-­nomad and ­Comanche-­as-­barbarian have perpetuated the notion that the Comanche left nothing behind. A growing body of archaeological evidence from New Mexico is beginning to challenge those assumptions about the invisibility of the Comanche empire. Tipi rings, lodgepole trails, marker trees, and petroglyphs indicate that the Comanche actively engaged in archiving their dominance. This chapter draws on archaeological evidence derived from fieldwork I conducted in collaboration with Severin Fowles (Barnard College) as part of the Rio Grande Gorge Project in northern New Mexico (Fowles et al. 2017). This fieldwork has produced a rich material record, including hundreds of petroglyphs, which document the presence of Comanche people in northern New Mexico during the eighteenth century. Scratched into basalt boulders by individual Comanche, the Rio Grande Gorge petroglyphs provide material evidence of a Comanche empire and offer insights into the logistics of Comanche imperialism.

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An Indigenous Archive Anthropologist T. R. Fehrenback (1974, xiv) identifies an important limitation in the reconstruction of Comanche history: “A history of the People, no matter who writes it must suffer from the fact that the records were kept only by the people’s enemies.” Fehrenback’s critique is still relevant to many scholarly interpretations of Comanche history, which draw largely on the accounts of Spanish, Mexican, and American administrators, missionaries, and soldiers. While the ethnohistoric approach employed by Western historians like Hämäläinen, Ned Blackhawk (2008), Elizabeth John (1996), and James Brooks (2001) has gone a long way toward challenging teleological narratives of Western colonization, it is hard to shake the fact that the historical record was largely composed by outsiders and enemies. New methodologies and theoretical frameworks are necessary in order to develop more complete and complex accounts of Indigenous history, particularly in colonial contexts. The archaeological record provides one such alternative source. The artifacts and images created by ancestral Comanche constitute an Indigenous archive, which archaeologists can interpret. Comanche petroglyph panels play a particularly important role as primary sources in this archive. The significance of rock art in documenting Indigenous history is reflected in a statement by Blackfeet tribal historian Curly Bear Wagner. In reference to the ­Writing-­on-­Stone petroglyph site in Alberta, Canada, Wagner states, “These writings tell our history. They are our national archive” (Newhouse and White 1998). The Comanche petroglyphs identified in the Rio Grande Gorge share many formal similarities with the rock art Wagner references, in which highly animated narrative scenes document specific historical events and actors. The narrative images identified in the gorge provide a counterarchive that can be read alongside and against the written accounts of Euro-­American administrators and settlers to produce a more multifaceted understanding of Comanche history. The development and interpretation of an Indigenous archive in New Mexico is part of a broader movement in academia to decolonize Indigenous history. Part of this movement has included an effort to deconstruct the division between prehistory and history (Hart, Oland, and Frink 2012). Following the well-­known scholarly intervention of Eric Wolf (1982), many archaeologists have abandoned the notion of prehistory—a concept that has disconnected

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contemporary Indigenous people from their more “authentic” and “primitive” ancestors (Fredericksen 2000; Lightfoot 1995; Rubertone 2000). As many of the contributions to this volume attest, scholars now employ frameworks that emphasize the agency of Indigenous groups and elucidate instances of negotiation, resistance, and persistence over time in the archaeological record (Panich 2013; Preucel 2002; Scheiber and Mitchell 2010; Silliman 2009; Wilcox 2009). Accompanying this new focus on long-­term transitions has been an effort to implement decolonizing methodologies. These methods entail a political and cognitive handing over of the tools of knowledge production to Indigenous communities (Atalay 2006a; Hart, Oland, and Frink 2012; Preucel and Cipolla 2008). The emergence of Indigenous archaeology in the t­wenty-­first century has levied an important critique against US archaeology—a discipline that has historically facilitated the expansion of the Western state, the eradication of Indigenous identities, and the disarticulation of Native people from their past. Accompanying this self-­reflexive turn in anthropology is a commitment to empowering Indigenous communities through the incorporation of Indigenous voices, concerns, and ontologies into archaeology (Nicholas 2008; Smith and Wobst 2005; Watkins 2000; Wilson and Yellow Bird 2005). Decolonization also requires archaeologists to pay particular attention to the ways in which Indigenous societies approach history. Accordingly, the interpretation of Comanche rock art presented in this chapter draws largely on consultations conducted between 2010 and 2015 with the Comanche Tribal Historic Preservation Office as part of the Rio Grande Gorge Project and conversations I have had with Comanche tribal members. Material Traces of Comanche Imperialism In 1706, Governor Juan de Ulibarri composed a letter to the viceroy of New Spain, recounting how residents from Taos Pueblo had informed him of a planned Ute and Comanche attack on the pueblo (Thomas 1935, 61). Although the Comanche—with the help of their Ute allies—had most certainly made contact with the northern Rio Grande Pueblo people before this time, Uli­ barri’s account marks the first recorded instance of their presence in the region. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Comanche regularly visited and inhabited New Mexico, raiding and trading with the Rio Grande Pueblo people as well as the many Hispano and genízaro settlements that dotted

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the Spanish frontier. Although Spanish documents indicate that the Comanche’s arrival in the Southwest was a comparatively recent occurrence, the Comanche assert a very different narrative. According to the Comanche, they have occupied the lands of Nueva España and Texas since time immemorial. The Comanche leader Mopechucope (Old Owl) articulated this longevity. In 1844, during treaty negotiations with the president of the Republic of Texas, Sam Houston, Mopechucope stated that central and western Texas was “Comanche land and ever has been” (Winfrey and Day 1995, 8). This declaration of the Comanche’s prolonged existence in the region presents a counternarrative to Spanish documentation of a more recent arrival in the Southwest. Mopechucope’s statement also contradicts traditional archaeological explanations of Comanche migration and ethnogenesis. Drawing on ceramic evidence, paleoclimatic data, and faunal remains from northern bison kill sites, scholars have argued that the Comanche emerged as a distinct group sometime during the seventeenth century, after splitting from their Shoshone relatives and migrating south in order to access the expanding bison population of the eastern Front Range (Newton 2011, 63). According to the material evidence, the Comanche made their final push onto the southern Plains after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, during which time the Comanche incorporated horses into their ­bison-­hunting socioeconomic system. The Comanche version of history, as articulated by Mopechucope, challenges orthodox narratives proffered by academic historians and archaeologists. According to the Comanche, their history is not a story of migration; it is a story of conquest and reterritorialization. Comanche history contains a series of revisionist narratives intended to legitimize their presence in the region by asserting a temporally deep occupation. This discursive reterritorialization was part of a colonial logic linked to the Comanche’s rise to power over the course of the eighteenth century. With the help of Spanish horses and Ute allies, the Comanche proceeded to drive the semi-­sedentary Apache living on the Plains into New Mexico (Hämäläinen 2008, 35). After establishing a central trading base in the southern Plains in the early 1700s, the Comanche gradually extended their political and economic control. At the zenith of Comanche power at the end of the nineteenth century, the Comanche empire stretched from the Arkansas River valley in the north to the Balcones Escarpment in Texas (Hämäläinen 1998). As with other imperial conquerors, the Comanche sought to impose their own version of history onto a previously occupied landscape. This process of

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reterritorialization was accomplished through oral histories that repopulated the region with Comanche characters, stories, and places. Unlike Western empires that used fences, bureaucratic borders, and maps to conquer territories and reterritorialize the landscape, movement facilitated Comanche imperialism. This mode of conquest reflects a deeply rooted emphasis on geography, landscape, and movement through space in Comanche culture. The emphasis on trails, waterways, mountains, and campsites in Comanche culture is a rational outgrowth of their mobile ­hunting-­gathering lifestyle. A host of cultural heroes and stories based on land reflect this mobile ontology. Heroes such as Sokeweki (Land Searcher) give shape and meaning to the Comanche world, establishing a cultural ethos guided by movement from place to place (Gelo 2000, 274; Snead 2009). Contextualized within the tradition of Sokeweki, the Comanche assertions of occupation of lands already inhabited by Pueblo peoples, Apache, and Tonkawa for centuries are a logical extension of their deeply embedded quest for new territories. In this sense, Comanche history is a history of occupying foreign territories. Accompanying the reterritorialization of lands occupied by other Indigenous groups through orally transmitted stories about particular places and cultural heroes were corporeal acts of domination centered on raiding. These physical acts of domination entailed battles and raids, which were documented and publicized through rock art. Throughout the Rio Grande Gorge are basalt boulders marked with thinly incised scratched lines, which offer material evidence for the activities of Comanche groups moving through the region during the eighteenth century. These panels document a variety of events, including bison hunting, camping, horse capture, raiding, and battles. They are part of a documentary tradition linked to the acquisition of horses and the expansion of a graded war honor system among equestrian nomad communities occupying the southern and northern Plains (Keyser 2004; Keyser and Klassen 2001; Keyser and Mitchell 2001; Keyser, Tanner, and Vlcek 2012; Loendorf and Olson 2003; Mitchell 2002). While it is clear that these narrative panels archived the activities of various bands and individuals for other community members, it is less certain whether these images were also intended for external consumption. Indeed, many of the petroglyphs documented in the gorge are so lightly incised as to appear almost invisible during most times of the day (Fowles and Arterberry 2013). The elusiveness of these images suggests that they were intended to remain hidden from the wider public and may have served as a private archive, recording

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Comanche history for the Comanche. Although the intended audience may have varied across panels or locations, there is a growing body of evidence that suggests that many Comanche petroglyphs were deliberately inscribed over previously existing imagery. In adding to and overwriting previously created rock art in the Rio Grande Gorge, the Comanche symbolically incorporated the region into their territory. This process resembles in many ways Deleuze and Guattari’s model of nomad­ ology. In Nomadology: The War Machine (1986), Deleuze and Guattari argue that nomadism represents an alternative mode of ontological and physical existence that is diametrically opposed to the Western state. Using this framework, one could say that during the eighteenth century the Spanish colonial state imposed bounded, governable territories through the land grant system and by attempting to restrict the social and physical movement of Indigenous communities. The Comanche challenged and successfully undermined the creation of striated spaces by colonial administrators in New Mexico through ferocious battles and persistent raiding. As part of the Comanche war machine, rock art asserted their presence and contested Spanish control of the northern frontier. In contrast to the striated spaces of the colonizer, the Comanche sought to create a smooth space in which movement was dynamic and free. A process of alternating territorialization and deterritorialization created these smooth spaces. Territorialization included occupation through the creation of encampments and through marking boundaries using rock art. Following this process of territorialization were acts of deterritorialization, in which the Comanche abandoned these places for short periods as families and individuals moved elsewhere. The occupation, abandonment, and reoccupation of spaces was a fundamentally creative process. Habitual acts of departing and returning generated new places and inscribed Comanche history onto spaces like the Rio Grande Gorge. Figure 6.1 exemplifies the Comanche practice of reterritorializing the Taos area through writings on stone. This panel is located on the slope of a grassy basin on the west side of the gorge. It depicts two pecked anthropomorphs with one figure holding a shield and wearing a horned mask. The deeply pecked technique used to create these figures contrasts with the thin scratched lines that characterize Comanche panels identified in New Mexico and on the Plains (Loendorf 2008; Mitchell 2004). These pecked figures are further differentiated from Comanche rock art by their composition and iconography. Unlike Comanche figures, which are typically depicted in active positions and often

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Figure 6.1. Scratched addition to earlier pecked petroglyphs, Lightning Arrow site, New Mexico. Panel 2008-­102, Rio Grande Gorge Project.

in profile, the anthropomorphs in figure 6.1 are depicted in full view in static positions. They are stylistically distinguished by their large hands and by the distinctive horned mask depicted on the left figure. These images are likely associated with the Jicarilla Apache, who have inhabited the northern Rio Grande since the sixteenth century and likely much earlier. The presence of two Ocate Micaceous (1650–1750 CE) pot drops in the adjacent basin, located approximately 20 m to the east, further supports a Jicarilla affiliation for this imagery. These pecked figures may be Jicarilla depictions of the t’sà nà t’ ȉ, a group of shamans who were given great power by hà ct’ cín (personifications of natural objects) during the Jicarilla emergence and who play an important role in Jicarilla rites as human mediators of power (Opler 1936).

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Overlaying these pecked images is a series of scratched lines. A bow and arrow was added to the figure on the left, and a long spear was drawn alongside the figure on the right. Armed with these new weapons, the figures resemble photographs from the early twentieth century that show Comanche men wearing horned headdresses made from buffalo heads (Southwell and Lovett 2014). By annotating the previously pecked basalt boulder, the Comanche artists transformed the images from Jicarilla spiritual beings into Comanche warriors. Writing over Jicarilla rock art was a form of narrative conquest that paralleled the Comanche’s physical domination of the Apache, who had taken permanent refuge in the Taos region by 1730. This act of inscription was a subtle means of marking Comanche occupation in the northern Rio Grande and asserting dominance over its inhabitants. Overwriting is a common feature of rock art produced by other Numic-­ speaking groups (Ute, Shoshone, Paiute), which use scratched imagery to mark occupation and reterritorialize sites. Similar examples of incorporation or overwriting have been identified elsewhere in the desert West and suggest that scratched rock art was also used by Numic-­speaking groups to neutralize and purify the power associated with earlier designs (Ritter 1994, 81). This practice of reinscription was not restricted to the imagery of the Comanche’s traditional enemy, the Apache. There are several instances of Comanche artists drawing over pecked abstract depictions attributed to the archaic inhabitants of the northern Rio Grande. For example, in one panel, scratched tipis accompanied by a tripod and staff were inscribed over a series of ambiguously pecked lines that follow natural cracks in the basalt rock face. These images suggest that overwriting was a common practice widely applied to a variety of preexisting glyphs. The Comanche also incorporated archaic imagery into their imperial narrative. One such panel depicts a battle scene between a large Comanche warrior, armed with a recurved bow and wearing a distinctive form of Catholic missionary hood, and a comparatively small enemy—potentially an Apache or Pueblo man—armed with a simple D-­shaped bow (see Fowles and Arterberry 2013). In this scene, a shield, which comprises the Comanche figure’s body, overlays two deeply pecked lines. One line creates a phallic image, perhaps used to assert the male potency of the warrior. The second line extends into the middle of the shield, creating a distinctive design. In addition to serving as a form of geometric decoration, the wavy line likely served to signify Comanche authorship. In Plains sign language, a backward sideways gesture with the hand meant “snakes” and represented the Comanche. Captured as a wavy motion

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of the archaic glyph, the line may have been used as an iconographic signifier intended to convey the Comanche identity of the central warrior (Tomkins 1926, 17). Sign language and the depiction of signs in images were nonvocal forms of communication that allowed different Indigenous communities to transfer important information to one another. The universal nature of certain signs would have been particularly important in the northern Rio Grande region, which was occupied by a diversity of ethnic groups, including Tewa, Tiwa, Keres, Ute, Comanche, Apache, Navajo, Kiowa, and Spanish people. The use of widely recognizable symbols in the gorge rock art helped to communicate cultural affiliation and to mark occupation. However, some Comanche rock art appears to be less explicitly imperial. The Comanche seem to have occasionally chosen to make their images alongside previously inscribed petroglyphs. For example, in a panel located on a basalt outcrop along the Vista Verde trail, a small scratched and abraded figure and a horse sit to the right of a deeply pecked ­Pueblo-­style anthropomorph. Instances of sharing iconographic space form a counterpoint to the revisionist images discussed above and reflect the complexity of Comanche culture, which was both expansionistic and culturally inclusive. These less hegemonic panels can be interpreted as proxies for the fluid nature of Comanche imperialism, which was defined by the comingling of territories, materials, and ideas. Comanche hegemony was maintained through political alliances with a diverse group of Indigenous and Euro-­American powers. In this system, peaceful, mutually beneficial arrangements were as important to Comanche political and economic success as violent conquest. In addition to physically marking the Rio Grande as Comanche territory, rock art served to historicize the landscape, effectively adding the Comanche into the larger history of occupation in the region. The process of historicizing conquered territories is a central component of imperialism. For example, in Rome, a standard practice during the Principate (27 BCE–284 CE) was to erect triumphal arches dedicated to the emperor. These arches often commemorated imperial visits to subject territories, and the facades were typically ornamented with images depicting the achievements of the general or emperor being honored. While a significant number of triumphal arches were built in Rome itself, those built outside of the capital served important purposes. First, the construction of monumental architecture was a performative act of conquest. By marshaling the raw materials and labor necessary for the arches’ construction, the Roman Empire demonstrated its economic and political power. Second,

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triumphal arches marked the boundaries of the empire and served to remind foreign populations of their status as conquered citizens. Finally, the elaborate narrative scenes and dedicatory inscriptions on the triumphal arches outside Rome incorporated the new places, events, and people into the larger historical narrative of the Roman Empire. While less ostentatious than Rome’s monumental architecture, Comanche rock art performed several similar functions. Petroglyphs depicting specific battles or horse raids permanently documented the power and success of individual warriors. Furthermore, Comanche rock art—particularly battle imagery—served to mark the extent of the Comanche influence and their domination over Indigenous and non-­Indigenous groups in the region. Oral recitations of deeds likely accompanied these physical acts of inscription. The intimate connection between rock art and oral history is articulated by Comanche tribal member Kathryn Tejerina, who describes the Rio Grande petroglyphs as “not really art as much as it was descriptive, it was a way of storytelling” (pers. comm., 2016). Each scratched panel served as a material form of storytelling intended to convey to culturally literate visitors who had been there and what had happened. The creation of a material archive reinforced through personal narratives effectively incorporated New Mexico’s foreign landscape into the Comanche empire and its collective history. The material and performative elements of rock art production create a communal sense of history linked to place. Drawing on Susanne Küchler’s (1993) notion of “landscapes as memory,” the scratched Comanche rock art preserves essential traditions, practices, events, and identities and transmits them from the past into the present. In contrast to the flat maps and accounts of Euro-­American colonizers, the Comanche panels reflect a dynamic approach to history—an approach in which knowledge about the past is preserved and disseminated through active rituals, dances, and storytelling (Lewis 1998, 63; Nobokov 1998). As Ferguson and C ­ olwell-­Chanthaphonh (2006, 30) suggest, for Indigenous people the value of cultural places, such as rock art sites, is based on their role as enduring physical evidence that links sites of ancestral occupation to contemporary people. In this sense, Comanche rock art creates a tangible and persistent link between ancestral Comanche and contemporary descendants. Comanche efforts to historicize the Rio Grande landscape took a variety of forms, including the depiction of material culture, specifically tipis. The Rio Grande Gorge Project has identified almost 200 tipi petroglyph panels throughout the gorge. The majority of these images are associated with the Vista Verde

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Figure 6.2. Map of Vista Verde site, New Mexico. Rio Grande Gorge Project.

site, which is located at the confluence of the Rio Grande and Rio Pueblo. As of 2016, there were 139 panels identified as depicting tipis within the Vista Verde site (figure 6.2). Distributed among basalt boulders, these panels surround a large sage-­filled basin containing evidence of 27 tipi rings. The tipi panels are highly patterned and are concentrated on three basalt outcroppings; two of

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these clusters are located on the east side of the site, and one is at the northwestern edge of the site. These panels can be broadly divided into iconic (n = 132) and narrative (n = 7) compositions. In the iconic compositions, tipis are drawn as isolated or grouped images; in the narrative scenes, tipis are depicted alongside humans and horses or other quadrupeds. The absence of movement and actors in the vast majority of tipi panels suggests that these images largely served a symbolic function. As icons, the tipis documented the presence of Comanche individuals, families, and bands as they moved through the gorge. More than 50 percent of the tipi panels at Vista Verde depict a single tipi icon, with the remaining panels ranging from 2 to 24 tipis. The high frequency of single tipi icons reflects the social construction of Comanche society, in which nuclear families, typically residing in a single tipi, were the primary socioeconomic unit. The large quantity of single tipis at Vista Verde suggests that individuals or nuclear families moving through the region on horseback primarily visited the site. Within each panel, various stylistic details distinguish tipis from one another. For example, many tipi panels (about 65 percent) include the depiction of tipi flaps in side profile. Design elements such as vertical and diagonal lines, full and partial fill, central poles, and circles further distinguish each tipi. The most common style of tipi is an expedient empty form (n = 72 tipi images), followed in frequency by those with interior vertical lines (n = 56 tipi images). In Indigenous art traditions, material culture often goes beyond simple functionality. While differences in tipi glyphs would have reflected the preferences of the artist, they may have also been used as a way of distinguishing between different families, clans, and nations (Carter et al. 2008). The fact that more than 50 percent of the ­multi-­tipi panels include more than one style strengthens this argument. In addition to distinguishing between different families or bands, the stylistic variations noted across tipi imagery may have also communicated the status of individuals. In the self-­aggrandizing culture that emerged on the Plains during the eighteenth century, tipi covers and liners were among the many mediums used to record the accomplishments of individual warriors in battle or their personal visionary experiences (Brownstone 2015). The narrative biographical scenes painted on tipis served as a public record, which was intended to conjure up stories of battles, raids, strategies, escapes, and coups (Wade 1986). As part of this tradition, differences in tipi cover designs in the gorge’s rock art may have communicated personal details about an individual’s life and status. Compared to other mediums, such as bison hides, rock panels, and ledger books, there are

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comparatively few examples of painted tipi covers. The relative infrequency of decorated tipi covers heightens the significance of decorated tipis depicted in rock art. Of particular note at the Vista Verde site are two panels that depict tipis decorated with circles. These circles resemble the small beaded rosettes used by many Plains tribes to adorn the exteriors of tipis. Decorative ornaments, like tipi painting, embellished and distinguished the tipis of well-­respected men. The production of these ornaments was undertaken by women and controlled by strict social regulations (Santina 2004, 935), part of a gendered division of labor in which women produced and owned the material components of camp life. Although it is unclear whether women drew the tipi rock art, what is evident is that these images represent a complementary artistic tradition to the dynamic narrative style used to illustrate battles, raids, and bison hunts. The depiction of tipi imagery alongside other products of women’s artisanship, including parfleches, shields, and ornaments, captures the labor and skill of Comanche women while simultaneously conveying the status of associated male warriors. In addition to depicting stylized tipis, Comanche artists used various compositional forms to distinguish households and to convey status. Within the current sample of tipi glyphs, only a small proportion (approximately 18 percent) of panels include either a staff, parfleche, or tally. These details are almost exclusively associated with m ­ ulti-­tipi panels, adding credence to the argument that these features identify particular individuals or families. In Comanche society, documenting accomplishments in battle—generally referred to as counting coup—directly contributed to an individual’s status. In the Plains biographic tradition, counting coup took the form of dynamic narrative depictions as well as symbolic material icons, such as weapons, scalps, feathers, and tallies. These material items conveyed important details about the individuals and events that were crucial components of the narrative being presented (Keyser and Klassen 2003, 7). Figure 6.3 provides one example of coup counting at the Vista Verde site. The panel depicts 13 tipis of various sizes, differentiated through abrading and scratching. In the panel, three loose groupings emerge, a top group composed of seven tipis, a middle group composed of five tipis, and a bottom group with a single tipi. This panel most likely depicts a ­multi-­band aggregation, in which related nuclear families were camping in linear arrangements. These l­ arge-­scale gatherings typically occurred during ceremonial events convened at particular times of the year or in preparation for war (Banks and Snortland 1995). The

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Figure 6.3. Rock art showing tipi encampment, Vista Verde site, New Mexico. Panel 2008-­384A, Rio Grande Gorge Project.

three bands or warrior societies in the panel are further distinguished through the depiction of tripods adorned with shields and lances. Among the Comanche, a small leather shield decorated with geometric designs, objects, or ideograms publicly signified the identity and status of the owner to culturally aware onlookers. Although no such details are visible in the rock art, ideograms and objects such as bear teeth or scalps were often attached to shields and were used to convey the owners’ hunting prowess or their military might, respectively (Wallace and Hoebel 1986, 107). In addition to its functional utility in battle, a decorated shield had power, which protected the owner in combat and connected him with the larger spiritual universe of animate beings. As depicted in figure 6.3, spears adorned with feathers were typically placed on tripods outside of their owner’s tipi. These spears were often decorated with scalps acquired during a raid or with feathers that denoted success in combat. Similar to shields, lances had power and were used by warriors to signal their status in society (Wallace and Hoebel 1986, 111). A report written in 1786 by Governor Juan Bautista de Anza after a joint C ­ omanche-­Spanish campaign against the Western Apache documents the Comanche practice of using ­decorated

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lances to mark rank. De Anza’s “tally sheet” notes the presence of five bands, the number of families or tents under their command, and the names of each division leader, who carried a lance representing the status of his group (Thomas 1929). As part of the coup-­counting tradition, the lines that extend from each staff in figure 6.3 likely convey the status and power of each group. The significant size of one of the upper tipis in the panel suggests that it belonged to a key figure in the narrative, who was perhaps the author of the panel. The large number of tallies on the associated staff visually signify the important rank of this particular family or individual. Tallies like that one, in addition to the use of lances and shields, signaled the status and identity of different bands or warrior societies. Like narrative panels, static tallies of weapons, horses, or defeated enemies were intended to publicly document a warrior’s success in combat (Keyser 2004, 98). In figure 6.3, several tipis are depicted with lines extending from the bottom or side of the figure. These lines most likely represent tallies (Severin Fowles, pers. comm., 2016). The large number of tipis depicted in figure 6.3 along with the detailed illustrations of weaponry and war accomplishments suggests that this panel represents a gathering of Comanche people preparing for or recently returned from battle. In the Rio Grande Gorge, the preponderance of petroglyphs that document warfare or depict actual battles highlights the violent nature of Comanche interactions in New Mexico, a violence portrayed by colonial narratives as ­destructive. Although the gorge’s rock art certainly captures Comanche violence, the intrinsic materiality of these petroglyph panels also provides evidence of the Comanche’s creative capacity. The gorge’s rock art is part of a dynamic archive, which documents the activities of Comanche people and provides insights into what events and details they viewed as important to transcribe and preserve. The imagery discussed in this chapter indicates that the documentation of individual or group identity and status were central features of the Comanche archive. In addition to recording the individual accomplishments of Comanche people, the production of this archive seems to have been part of a deliberate attempt by the Comanche to territorialize and historicize the northern Rio Grande region. By materially marking Comanche presence in the region, rock art served as a public means of signifying presence and incorporating the landscape into the larger Comanche historical narrative. This larger history is concerned not only with individual places but with the movement between these places. The concept of “the journey” is deeply embedded in Comanche culture and is part of a nomadic ontology based on

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mobility. This tradition of mobility is embodied in the cultural hero Sokeweki and in the structure of the Comanche language itself, which contains a rich vocabulary for describing geographic features and events, including three different grades of relative distance and a diverse array of words for describing elevation, bodies of water, and vegetation (Gelo 2000, 274). These semantic characteristics are maintained when Comanche speak in English: they offer the exact bearings taken during a trip or provide a narrative of the course taken and the landmarks encountered along the way (Gelo 2000, 275). The concept of the journey foregrounds the importance of movement and place—at the expense of time—in Comanche history. This sentiment is echoed by Comanche tribal member Jimmy Arterberry (pers. comm., 2014), who states, “The Comanche wouldn’t really use calendars, they didn’t need to mark time, and they just kind of knew when was the right time to go somewhere or to start doing something.” The practice of recounting the routes of travel, distance, landmarks, and stopping places is an integral element of casual conversation among contemporary Comanche, whether discussing recent travels or telling of a journey taken by their ancestors. As part of an Indigenous ontology rooted in the fluid movement of people across space, Comanche rock art in the gorge narrates the journey. These panels signal who was present at the site and the status of that person through stylized icons, what happened along the way through elaborate battle scenes and horse capture imagery, and where to go next through the depiction of landscape features and site lines. In addition to narrating the journey, these glyphs were part of a complex logic of territoriality in which control over an area was not synonymous with permanent occupation. Asserting “occupation” by relatively small, f­ amily-­based units moving continuously across the Rio Grande required material displays of presence, including etching images on stone (Gelo 2000, 12). These material markers helped travelers navigate the landscape and publicly declared the Rio Grande to be part of Comanche territory. Comanche history involves a dynamic interplay among movement, place, and the oral tradition. Within this framework, the concept of “place” operates in two distinct ways. On the one hand, the Rio Grande Gorge represents a persistence place, which stores the cumulative knowledge of the community. Through regular and sustained visitation to the site, Comanche individuals produced a permanent archive of events, families, and individuals that has lasted for more than 400 years. Specific places in the gorge, like Vista Verde, gain their significance through bodily engagements with the landscape. These experiences

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are preserved and passed on through detailed personal narratives, which make such places knowable to those who have not yet physically been there. On the other hand, in addition to the permanent natural features that hold significance, Comanche placemaking also happens on the move. In this mode of placemaking, meaning or importance is determined by the domestic unit that travels together rather than by any external feature of the landscape. That is to say, what makes a place important is the presence of Comanche people. Tejerina (pers. comm., 2016) articulates this alternative model of placemaking: “I hear a lot from other Indians about the sacred connection to place. It is kind of hard when you are nomadic. So I think a lot of that is invested in the tipis. The tipis were their place. And that’s why sometimes you would paint tipis with your medicine or just adorn them in ways that you liked . . . because you sort of . . . took your place with you wherever you went.” Tejerina’s comments suggest that the tipi iconography identified throughout the Rio Grande Gorge played an important role in Comanche placemaking. While the landscapes inhabited by Comanche bands were constantly changing, the tipi remained a fixed feature of everyday life. If we extend this framework to its logical end, any space in which a Comanche person camped became an important place within the Comanche universe—a place that could be exploited, revisited, and talked about. This ­Comanche-­centric reckoning of place is at the heart of their expansionist enterprise. In contrast to Western models of empire, Comanche conquest did not entail the sustained occupation of satellite territories. Instead, the permanent individual histories inscribed on rock as well as more ephemeral features, such as tipi rings, mark the boundaries of Comanche land. Accordingly, Comanche history produces something very different than the Cartesian maps of Western geographers. Whereas Cartesian maps create a flat history of plotted points and enclosed spaces, Comanche imperial cartography is produced through an intensive voyage across the landscape, emphasizing “trajectories,” “journeys,” and “lines of flight” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 381). Comanche history is composed of a diverse array of “tracings,” which document the links between points within a territory as opposed to its extent (Deleuze and Guattari 1987). These tracings take many forms, including the thin scratched lines of rock art panels and the stories about an individual’s travels and the events that happened along the way. Furthermore, Comanche cartography has “no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 25); it is in a constant process of becoming (Mitchell 2012, 87). In other words, points on the landscape, such as Vista Verde, are

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living entities that participate in a constantly evolving dialogue with the people who visit and remember them. Comanche Persistence In 1821, the Spanish empire collapsed. While the fledgling Mexican government struggled to maintain authority over the northern portions of its territory, Comanche power persisted. With the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, the Mexican colonial experiment formally ended, and American hegemony began, opening up the West to Euro-­American settlers to an unprecedented degree. Over the rest of the nineteenth century, the early trickle of American settlers became a steady stream as growing numbers of ­starry-­eyed migrants spilled out from eastern port cities and headed west. Armed with guns, germs, and an unshakable confidence in America’s manifest destiny, these settlers posed a serious threat to the Comanche’s imperial project. By the 1870s, the Comanche had suffered demographic and economic catastrophes from a series of smallpox epidemics and a steep decline in the bison population due to climatic change and overhunting (Hämäläinen 2008, 297). The political and economic empire sustained by the Comanche for more than 100 years was further undermined by a concerted military campaign executed by US soldiers, who systematically destroyed Comanche food supplies, horse herds, and sources of shelter (Hämäläinen 2008, 333). In 1875, what remained of the Comanche empire collapsed after the US government forced the Comanche to sign a formal peace agreement accepting reservation lands around Fort Sill in Oklahoma. The initial dispossession of Native lands by American settlers was justified by the ­civilization-­barbarism paradigm. According to this logic, Native people, and particularly nomads, did not have a legitimate claim to the continent  because they lacked the civilization necessary to occupy and exploit the land to its highest potential (Adams 1998, 17). Government administrators enthusiastically concluded that nomads were merely interlopers, standing in the way of the Anglos’ rightful claim to North America. The practical result of this logic was that the Comanche and other “barbarians” were confined to reservations where they could be instructed in the three pillars of US civilization: Protestantism, republicanism, and capitalism (Adams 1998, 4). Accompanying the forced imposition of Euro-­American agriculture, the English language, and Christianity was the strict regulation of movement. In

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an 1867 speech, “Do Not Ask Us to Give Up the Buffalo for the Sheep,” Ten Bear (Yamparika Band) captured the devastating impact of US colonization on the Comanche’s mobile lifestyle: “I was born upon the prairie where the wind blew free, and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no enclosures, and where everything drew free breath. I want to die there, and not within walls. I know every stream and every wood between the Rio Grande and the Arkansas. . . . The white man has the country we loved and we only wish to wander on the prairie until we die” (Vanderwerth and Carmack 1971, 161). Ten Bear’s statement references the expansiveness of Comanche territory and speaks to the central role of mobility in the Comanche way of being. The ­barbed-­wire fences and agricultural plots that made up the reservation clashed with the tradition of Sokeweki and limited the physical maintenance of Comanche places and, in effect, Comanche history. Although confined, Comanche people have continued the active process of creating history by imbuing new places with cultural meaning and by preserving their cultural memories about meaningful places throughout their former empire. The Comanche connection with New Mexico—a central node in their empire—is maintained through ­place-­based stories. One such place is Tucumcari in northeastern New Mexico. According to oral history, the term “Tucumcari” denotes a house where the dawn comes up and also refers to the hills near the contemporary town, which were an important camping place for Comanche people moving north and south through New Mexico (Tejerina, pers. comm., 2016). In addition to meaningful stories about place, the Comanche connection with New Mexico is reinforced by the identification of Comanche archaeological remains in the Rio Grande Gorge. Vista Verde and sites like it offer Comanche descendants an opportunity to return to their ancestral landscape. This process of reengagement was facilitated in 2014, when the Rio Grande Gorge Project hosted a group of Comanche elders in Taos. More than twenty tribal members visited petroglyphs and walked the trails made by their ancestors hundreds of years earlier. Each of these elders offered their own interpretation of the rock art and told stories about similar places or related events. In returning to these petroglyphs, a new generation of Comanche actively engaged in the long-­standing practice of writing and rewriting their history. Perhaps the most palpable connection with the Rio Grande landscape is the current diaspora community of Comanche who live around Santa Fe, numbering around 300 people. Community members often refer to themselves as the

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Toyah Band, which means the Mountain Band (Tijerina, pers. comm., 2016). The Toyah Band’s occupation of the former capital of the Spanish empire and an important political center in Comancheria points to the deep, abiding connection that exists between Comanche people and New Mexico. In a Comanche logic, New Mexico is truly Comanche land and ever has been.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Mission Indians” and Settler Colonialism Rethinking Indigenous Persistence in ­Nineteenth-­Century Central California Lee M. Panich

T

he archaeology of colonialism on the Pacific coast of North America has to date focused on the interactions between the region’s Native people and the first wave of Euro-­Americans, who came to establish religious missions and military outposts or engage in the fur trade (Lightfoot 2006). In California, archaeologists are providing intimate details about the complicated processes of accommodation and persistence that unfolded over the course of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when the primary forms of colonialism were the Spanish missions and the Russian Colony Ross (Gonzalez 2011; Lightfoot 2005; Panich 2013; Peelo 2011; Schneider 2015b). But by the early 1840s, a newly independent Mexico secularized the Franciscan missions along California’s coastal strip, and the Russian mercantile experiment at Ross drew to a close. Less than a decade later, the US annexation of California resulted in a new, more entrenched form of colonialism—one that was undergirded by the ideology of manifest destiny and had little room for Indigenous people (Lindsay 2012). This was a pivotal time for Native groups that in many cases had devised successful strategies for weathering the earlier forms of missionary and mercantile colonialism. What can archaeology contribute to the understanding of how Native Californians negotiated US settler colonialism as it began to crystallize in the mid-­nineteenth century? Here, following Wolfe (2001), I characterize US settler colonialism in California as pursuing a “logic of elimination” that encompassed numerous forms of violence against Indigenous people, ranging from massacres to boarding schools. Within this logic, Native Californians who had spent time in the missions occupied a transitional state in the eyes of many early American settlers, neither fully authentic nor appropriately assimilated. These “mission Indians,” as they were called by contemporary observers, were largely spared the brutal 121

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violence unleashed by settlers on Native people in other parts of state. Their survival was due in part to their ability to integrate, however imperfectly, into the new political and economic order of American California. Seen as an available and docile labor force by whites, many Native people newly emancipated from the missions likely accepted the perpetuation of a familiar, if exploitative, economic relationship rather than face the unknowns of the new, often brutal situation in which they found themselves. Ironically, what may have been a survival strategy in the mid-­nineteenth century became a liability decades later when government officials began allotting land to Native Californian communities. As has been well documented elsewhere, most allotments went to groups outside of the missionized region of California (Field 1999; Lightfoot 2005; Lightfoot et al. 2013). Indeed, those whose ancestors had been associated with the Franciscan missions—particularly along the state’s central coast—were not deemed to be authentically Indigenous people in the eyes of the government or anthropologists. Many of these groups are today among California’s “unacknowledged tribes” that are actively petitioning for federal acknowledgment or reinstatement (Chilcote 2015). Given the increasing sophistication of archaeological approaches to later colonialism, as demonstrated by the chapters in this volume, there is great potential for material evidence to illuminate this dark time in Native Californian histories. Rather than seeing the mid-­nineteenth century simply as a context for further cultural loss for central California’s Native people, we can instead look for ways to locate this period more concretely within the long-­ term histories of the region’s Indigenous groups. To do so, archaeologists have to develop techniques for identifying and interpreting Native material culture from ­nineteenth-­century sites that will avoid essentialist assumptions about cultural authenticity. One important step forward is the recognition that continuity and change do not constitute a zero-­sum game. Instead, to understand the diachronic processes that link different historical moments, we might better think of “changing continuities” (Ferris 2009). These processes are best understood not as simple responses to external stimuli, but as situated actions on the part of individuals and communities (Cipolla 2013; Jordan 2008a; Silliman 2009; Panich 2013). Though this approach is applied slightly differently by individual archaeologists, the shared concern for the intertwined nature of agency and persistence resonates with concepts developed by Indigenous scholars outside of our field, in particular the concept of survivance (e.g., Vizenor 2008).

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If archaeologists are to push forward in time and chart the ways that Native people actively navigated more entrenched forms of colonialism, it is also important to recognize that such processes did not unfold in a vacuum. Another, not mutually exclusive approach then is to eschew the usual c­ olonizer-­colonized dichotomy, which too often colors our expectations about Indigenous material culture and its role in long-­term histories. For Harrison (2014), this dichotomy serves to keep Indigenous people outside of mainstream historical narratives. By viewing such interactions as “shared histories” archaeologists have “the potential to destabilize the discourses on which settler colonialism depends to maintain its ‘other(s)’” (Harrison 2014, 50). This is especially important in central California, where members of unacknowledged tribes acutely feel the double bind of modern Indigenous identity (Field 1999; Panich 2013; see also Ludlow et al. 2016). There, Native people made strategic choices that ensured community persistence but that ultimately played into the logic of elimination described by Wolfe (2001). As succinctly expressed by Ohlone / ​Costanoan-­Esselen scholar Deborah Miranda (2013, xiv), “Those who will not change do not survive; but who are we, when we have survived?” To effectively address this seeming conundrum, the processes of change that unfolded in the nineteenth century must be understood both within long-­term Indigenous histories and alongside the structures of settler society. These potentials notwithstanding, the archaeology of Indigenous life during this perilous time in central California is underdeveloped relative to that of earlier “first contact” situations (Lightfoot 2006; Silliman 2005). Decades of acculturation research at Spanish missions in the region, for example, have led to the assumption that missionization effectively stripped Native people of a distinctive material culture. This, combined with the ubiquity of mass-­ produced consumer objects by the second half of the nineteenth century, makes it difficult to see Native people when using archaeological approaches that often rely implicitly or explicitly on “ethnic markers” (Silliman 2010). In this chapter, I take on these issues in two ways, using as my focus California’s greater San Francisco Bay region (figure 7.1). First, I synthesize recent archaeological research on the Franciscan missions of central California to develop a more complex understanding of which material practices were most salient to Native people at the close of the mission period. Second, I survey regional historical and archaeological literature in order to delineate the types of sites where Native people lived and worked between the 1840s and 1870s. Although comparatively little archaeological research has explicitly studied this important time period, I review the available information to highlight some challenges and potentials

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Figure 7.1. Map showing central California study area with approximate ethnolinguistic territories. Map by Lee M. Panich.

for archaeologists studying Native life at the onset of US settler colonialism in central California. Persistence under Missionization Beginning in 1769, Franciscan missionaries working with the Spanish Crown entered what is today California. Over the following half century, they founded a chain of 21 missions along the coastal strip between San Diego and Sonoma. Together with similar establishments to the south in Baja California, these missions were the key Spanish colonial institution on the Pacific coast. As in other colonial contexts in the New World, the missions were intended to convert Native people to Catholicism and to an agrarian way of life. Through the colonial policy of reducción, the Franciscans resettled members of the region’s myriad small Native polities at missions, where they could be closely monitored and instilled with European values. Once baptized, Native people were collectively referred to as “neophytes”; this term, considered by many today to

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be derogatory, effectively symbolized the rupture between past and future that existed at the core of the missionary project. While Native people managed to subvert many aspects of missionization, the synergistic effects of reducción, disease, and strict social controls had disastrous consequences for Native Californians (Cook 1976; Jackson and Castillo 1995). Archaeologists have excavated portions of each of the 21 Franciscan missions in the region, documenting the material culture associated with churches, industrial complexes, and Native habitation areas (see overview in Lightfoot 2005). In the archaeological study of the mission’s Native inhabitants, acculturation frameworks took hold relatively early. The basic premise was that culture change could be quantified through the comparison of artifacts relating to either traditional Native American practices or imported European lifeways. While much has been written on the subject, it is worth noting here that, as used by most practitioners in archaeology, acculturation approaches relied on an essentialist notion of cultural identity, in which continuity and change were the primary analytical concepts (Panich 2013; Silliman 2009). Since the 1990s, archaeologists working at California mission sites have largely moved beyond acculturation studies to explore a broader range of processes, including accommodation, resistance, and persistence. Much of this research takes a (sometimes implicit) ­practice-­based perspective. In this view, what is most revealing about archaeological materials from mission sites is how they were used, not simply where they originated. Insights from Mission Era Central California Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the San Francisco Bay region was home to a relatively dense Indigenous population composed of myriad small polities. These h ­ unter-­gatherer-­fisher people made their living through sophisticated landscape management practices and relied on long-­distance exchange networks for the conveyance of important materials, such as obsidian and shell beads (Lightfoot and Parrish 2009; Milliken, Shoup, and Ortiz 2009). Today, these groups are classified primarily by language family. In central California, Ohlone (Costanoan) groups held a large territory ranging from ­modern-­day San Francisco, south into the Santa Clara Valley, and back up the eastern shore of the bay. To the north, Coast Miwok groups lived throughout the Marin peninsula. Patwin, interior Miwok, and Yokuts groups all lived directly to the east, converging near the Sacramento River delta. Yet this division by language families belies the complexity of precontact life, which for most groups in the area

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centered on village communities of 100–600 individuals. It was these numerous independent groups that entered the Spanish mission system, and the population at any individual mission would have included members from several different polities and speakers of multiple Indigenous languages. The archaeology of the central California missions is particularly rich. Of the seven Franciscan missions in the greater San Francisco Bay area, substantial assemblages have been recovered from the Native American residential areas, often called rancherias, at Missions San José, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, and San Juan Bautista (Allen 1998; Allen et al. 2010; Farris 1991; Thompson 2003; Panich, Afaghani, and Mathwich 2014). These materials are particularly important because they provide a look at how Native people lived in their own spatially segregated spaces. Archaeologists have excavated communally used open areas, refuse deposits, and individual dwellings, including both adobe barracks and, at Santa Clara, the remains of a N ­ ative-­style thatched dwelling. Taken together, the evidence from Indigenous rancherias helps to counter the prevailing narratives of cultural loss during the mission period and to recalibrate what postmission Indigenous practices might look like archaeologically. Two previous syntheses cover the archaeology of Native life at the missions of the San Francisco Bay area (Arkush 2011; Skowronek 1998; see also Lightfoot 2005). However, significant research has been conducted both in and outside mission sites since they were published, warranting a brief summary here. Setting aside the disastrous demographic effects of missionization, the most widely held assumption is that Indigenous people readily accepted the ­European-­introduced religious beliefs, cultural practices, and foodways. Below, I outline recent research related to these issues. Because religious conversion was one of the primary goals of the Franciscan mission system, the subject interested many previous archaeologists (Skowronek 1998, 681–87). One promising angle on this thorny topic is the study of Indigenous mortuary practices at mission sites. At Mission Santa Clara, for example, various projects have revealed mission era burials as well as the remains of apparent mourning ceremonies (Panich 2015). Native burials in the mission’s cemeteries include grave goods such as shell and glass beads, a practice that was in contradiction to Catholic doctrine. In the Native rancheria at Santa Clara, several pit features have been found filled with thousands of burned shell beads, tobacco seeds, and other presumably high-­value items, which together suggest the persistence of Native beliefs about death and mourning. Remains of several culturally important bird species—golden eagles, hawks, ravens, crows,

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owls—have also been found at local mission sites, many in association with Native habitation areas (Panich, Afaghani, and Mathwich 2014, 482; St. Clair 2005, 78; Thompson 2003, 110). Among the Native Californian groups in question, these species were not eaten and instead provided feathers used for offerings or to adorn ceremonial regalia (Gayton 1948; Levy 1978). Significant archaeological attention has focused on Indigenous technological practices under missionization. In direct contrast to the predictions of acculturation models, Native people appear to have maintained autonomy in many aspects of daily life. Shell beads, for example, are commonly found in excavations in regional missions. A comparison across several temporal horizons at Mission Santa Clara revealed that Native people continued to use shell beads throughout the entire mission period while, at the same time, glass beads were actively incorporated into equivalent practices (Panich 2014). Similarly, obsidian and chert artifacts have been recovered from Indigenous residential areas at several missions (Allen 1998; Farris 1991; Thompson 2003), and l­arge-­scale mitigation projects have revealed impressive lithic assemblages dominated by obsidian. At Mission Santa Clara, data recovery excavations covering almost an entire city block yielded more than 2,500 obsidian artifacts (Panich 2016a), and mitigation work at Mission San José in 2015–2016 produced some 1,100 pieces of obsidian from excavations in and around an adobe barracks (Allen et al. 2018). Archaeologists are also examining Indigenous agency in aspects of daily life that had no direct precontact antecedents. Ceramics, for example, were not regularly produced by most central California Indigenous groups prior to the arrival of Europeans. Natives’ access to imported wares from Mexico or Britain was probably regulated by missionaries or other colonial elites (Allen 1998), and use of these materials may have reflected individual or family status. Yet Native people learned to produce pottery in the missions. Peelo (2009) explores how the diverse Native populations at several missions, including Santa Clara and San Juan Bautista, may have found common ground through the production of ceramic vessels. These practices perpetuated not just traditional basketry vessel forms, but also the precontact association between place and identity. Archaeologists have also recovered many items related to horse handling from Indigenous domestic contexts at area missions (Panich 2017). At Mission Santa Clara, many such objects appear to have been deposited during mourning ceremonies (Panich 2015). These items relate to the Indigenous vaqueros who helped manage the massive herds of livestock held by the Alta California missions. Native men who served as vaqueros had access to a distinct material

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toolkit and likely enjoyed increased spatial autonomy to visit lands beyond the mission walls (Lightfoot 2005, 70–71). Through items such as ceramics and the accoutrements of horse handling, we can begin to see how Native people made sense of new materials, technologies, and even animals in ways that meshed with existing cultural practices. The degree to which Native people continued to rely on wild plants and animals for food, raw material, and medicine is another open question. Domesticated animals dominate faunal assemblages associated with mission residential and work areas, with cattle typically being the most abundant along with quantities of pig, sheep, and chicken. Although wild species are present in faunal assemblages from across the region, their importance seems to have varied. At a housing area at Mission San Juan Bautista, wild species comprised less than 1 percent of the total faunal assemblage (St. Clair 2005), whereas mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) alone contributed 6 percent of the identifiable remains from an apparent kitchen midden at Mission San José (Thompson 2003). Faunal assemblages from residential areas also include remains of several wild species that may have had nondietary value to Native Californians. In addition to the birds mentioned above, bear (Ursus sp.) remains are present in assemblages from Mission Santa Clara and Mission San José (Allen et al. 2010; Thompson 2003). Published archaeobotanical studies from residential contexts at central California missions are comparatively fewer, but studies suggest that Native people continued to use some wild species (Allen 1998, 43–47; Allen et al. 2010, 168; Cuthrell, Panich, and Hegge 2016; see also Popper 2016). In addition to illuminating Native life at mission sites, these studies collectively suggest that Native people enjoyed more spatial autonomy during the Spanish era than previously thought (Arkush 2011; Panich and Schneider 2015). Many of the artifacts, including obsidian and shell beads, appear to have entered the missions via existing Indigenous networks. While we still do not understand the exact nature of those networks, the geographic provenience of the materials recovered from the central California missions is expansive. Shell beads likely moved along two distinct interaction spheres, one of which extended well north of San Francisco Bay while the other involved Indigenous artisans as far south as the Santa Barbara Channel (Panich 2014). Obsidian artifacts were similarly conveyed along two routes, extending more than 100 km into the North Coast Ranges and across the great Central Valley to the eastern Sierra Nevada (Allen 1998; Panich 2016a). These findings are complemented by research on sites of refuge that existed in Native homelands beyond the reach

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of colonial institutions. In the San Francisco Bay area, for example, Schneider (2015a, 2015b) has examined the continued role of shell mounds as meaningful places in the mission era landscape. In sum, recent archaeological research into the lives of Indigenous people during missionary colonialism in central California has important implications for the archaeology of Native lives in the post-­secularization era. Despite the assumptions of acculturation models, it appears that Native people living at missions continued many practices that had strong antecedents in precontact times. Objects like obsidian projectile points and shell beads continued to be manufactured, exchanged, and used throughout the region—perhaps not in the exact same ways as before, but certainly in similar ways. Native people in the missions also actively incorporated new materials, technologies, and organisms into their daily practices. Some of these, such as glass beads, had clear counterparts in precontact traditions and probably circulated through Indigenous networks as much as colonial ones. Others, such as pottery, likely served familiar roles but required fundamentally different knowledge to create or access to colonial networks to acquire. In either case, these materials were used in ways that articulated both the past and the present—the changing ­continuities—of Native life in central California. Even horses and all their material trappings were socialized in ways that harmonized with existing and emerging ­sensibilities. There are two important things to note here. To characterize Native people associated with the missions, as early US settlers did (Rawls 1984), as “domesticated” or “civilized” by their experience with the Franciscan system misses a crucial point. While Native people did acquire skills and habits in the missions, these did not constitute a wholesale replacement of their precontact practices. Instead, archaeological studies demonstrate that the transformations of the mission period are better thought of as persistence achieved through continual strategic adjustments. However, viewed from the milieu of mid-­nineteenth-­ century California, it is clear that Native people leaving the missions were indeed armed with important practical knowledge, and in many cases Catholic faith, that marked them as an integral, if stigmatized part of the established order. Rather than seeing this situation solely as one of exploitation, it is pos­sible to view the choices of Native Californians during this time as one approach within a l­ onger-­term pattern of strategies devised to retain autonomy and maintain community survival in a shifting and unpredictable colonial context (Bauer 2016; Hull 2015).

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Options after the Missions In the 1830s, the Mexican government began to secularize the Franciscan missions of California. This process was intended to return mission lands to Native people but was ultimately co-­opted by California’s Mexican era elites, many of whom acquired vast tracts of land where they established ­stock-­raising enterprises called ranchos (Jackson and Castillo 1995, 87–106). In contrast to “wild Indians,” the Native people emancipated from the missions were nonthreatening to settler interests. To the newly arrived Americans, the former mission Indians were seen as a potentially profitable source of labor that had already been pacified and trained by the former Spanish / ​Mexican regime (Rawls 1984). In many cases, American settlers continued the general contours of the rancho economy into the 1860s. Native men were in particularly high demand as vaqueros and field hands while Native women and children often served as domestic servants. These gendered and racialized labor roles first developed in the missions and spread throughout Mexican era California. Given the inertia of the agrarian economy—not to mention the presence of substantial numbers of Americans in California prior to the gold rush—former mission residents were in a position to more successfully weather the transition to US rule in the 1840s and 1850s (Mendoza 2014). The daily practice of labor was a common thread that connected precontact subsistence economies, life in the missions, and the new postsecularization world (Phillips 2010). But labor also fragmented communities. While agrarian work was a viable option for many Native men, documentary evidence suggests that the gendered and seasonal nature of the labor undermined the reproductive viability of some Native communities (Hurtado 1988; Rizzo 2016). The perpetuation of unfree labor conditions also limited the options of Native people. To preserve them as a laboring underclass, state and local governments passed a series of laws that effectively outlawed “idleness” among Indigenous populations. Perhaps most extreme was the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians (1850), which (among other things) provided for the legal indenture of Native children (Madley 2016, 158–59). Thus, while labor offered important continuities with the missions, the legal and economic landscape of labor in American California developed into a major obstacle for the survival of particular Native communities. As Rawls (1984) describes, American attitudes toward Native Californians changed over time. The view of Indigenous people as an available labor force was

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largely born out of the familiarity of pre–gold rush American settlers who had witnessed the mission labor system firsthand. In the post-­1848 world, the population of non-­Native settlers in California for the first time surpassed that of the region’s Indigenous groups. Those who came to California during and after the gold rush had fundamentally different expectations about ­settler-­Indigenous relationships. Rationalized by manifest destiny and supported by state and federal policies, white settlers set about clearing the state of its Indigenous population. This sometimes took the form of makeshift reservations, but just as often involved the indiscriminate killing of Indigenous men, women, and children (Lindsay 2012; Madley 2016). Native people who had been in the San Francisco Bay missions mostly fell outside of these disastrous policies. Few mission Indians from central California, for example, were signatories to the infamous unratified federal treaties of 1851. And the vicious attacks against Native people by white militias were primarily aimed at nonmissionized groups living outside of the coastal strip claimed earlier by Spain and Mexico. Regardless, the first two decades after the US annexation of California were a truly dark time for many Native Californians. In this context, historical documentation of Native communities in California is relatively sparse. Given the deterioration of an already precarious social position, an untold number of Indigenous people made the strategic decision to pass as Mexicans. Scholars point to the practical knowledge gained by Native people under missionization as well as the already close kin ties between some Native and Hispanic families associated with particular missions (Cook 1976; Milliken, Shoup, and Ortiz 2009). Of course, people of Hispanic ancestry faced their own struggles in the racialized social and political hierarchy of American California, but these communities did not suffer the genocidal violence that white settlers unleashed on many Native groups. As noted by Mendoza (2014, 122), a common belief was that during the second half of the nineteenth century it was “better to be a hated Mexican than a dead Indian.” Even those individuals who did maintain outward Native identities may have been mistaken for individuals of Mexican descent by American settlers and were likely to have been underreported in many US Census records of the time (Field, Leventhal, and Cambra 2013; Rizzo 2016, 317). Insights from Mid-­Nineteenth-­Century Central California The mid-­nineteenth century, then, is often where the archaeology of Native California ends (Lightfoot 2006, 281–82). Historically, the reasons are not ­difficult

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to identify. Although the continuation of agrarian labor provided Native people leaving the missions with practical options in the years after secularization, labor in the early American period served to fragment many communities. During this time, the contrast between missionary and settler colonialism also came into stark relief. Violence and removal were officially sanctioned policies, although Native people in the missionized regions of coastal California were buffered against the worst excesses. Last, many individuals and families appear to have made the difficult choice to hide their Native identities in the hope that passing as Mexican would spare them from the most brutal forms of structural and direct violence under US rule. In the view of many archaeologists, the remaining Indigenous communities were either too fragmented or too acculturated to meaningfully study through their material culture. In the spirit of building long-­term Indigenous histories that are concretely linked to the dominant historical narrative, we must look again at the archaeological record of this difficult time period. Lightfoot (2006) advocated a similar approach more than a decade ago, encouraging archaeologists to examine several different types of sites where Native people lived and worked in the mid-­nineteenth century. Yet aside from a small number of projects focused on the Native inhabitants of mid-­nineteenth-­century ranchos, few archaeologists have heeded this call. Modifying Lightfoot’s original list to fit the specifics of my San Francisco Bay case study, I consider four major options for Native people after the close of the Franciscan missions: they could work on the ranchos that often had expropriated former mission lands; move to the region’s growing urban areas; make the difficult legal case for independent land grants in the missionized zone; or join existing autonomous Indigenous settlements on the margins of Spanish / ​Mexican California. For each, I highlight the challenges and potentials of the archaeological record for illuminating the lives of Native people in the mid-­nineteenth century. Ranchos One of the most viable—and archaeologically visible—options for Native people after the collapse of the mission system was to work at one of the many private ranchos that sprang up all around California during the Mexican period. As other observers have noted, the ranchos required the same kinds of labor tasks as the missions, but their owners were typically less concerned with the missionary project of cultural conversion. By attaching themselves to rancho operations, Native people who were emancipated from the missions could exercise

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some autonomy over their own communities and cultural practices (Cook 1976; Hurtado 1988; Phillips 2010). As elsewhere in California, many Native people from the San Francisco Bay area gradually abandoned the missions to work on local ranchos. Milliken (2008, 76–77), for example, discusses the large number of infants born at outlying ranchos and baptized at Mission San José during the 1830s and 1840s. Census records and oral narratives attest to the continued Indigenous presence on ranchos on the eastern shores of the San Francisco Bay into the 1860s, and Native people on at least one rancho maintained a dance house near ­modern-­day San Leandro (Milliken 2008, 86, 89). Little archaeological research has specifically targeted the Native laborers on these East Bay ranchos. Limited testing, for example, has been conducted near the Sunol family rancho, which is known to have been home to Native vaqueros and other laborers who had probably been previously affiliated with nearby missions, such as San José. In addition to mid-­nineteenth-­century ceramic artifacts, an obsidian projectile point returned a hydration date of approximately 1870. Interestingly, the testing revealed that the site had a substantial precontact component, perhaps suggesting the continuity of long-­term Indigenous residence (Luby 1995). The central California rancho where the most archaeological research has been conducted is Rancho Petaluma. There, Silliman (2004) conducted excavations focused on the Native residential area, and a later salvage excavation recovered objects from a nearby trench feature exposed during a flash flood (Alvarez and Parkman 2014). The materials recovered from these projects closely resemble the kinds of assemblages recovered from similar contexts at local missions: faunal and botanical remains composed of both wild and domestic species, ­ground-­stone implements, abundant obsidian artifacts, shell and glass beads, bone tools, imported glass and ceramics, metal implements, and objects of personal adornment. The excavation of the trench feature even revealed what appears to be a complete shell bead manufacturing kit that, along with other items, may have been intentionally buried after a smallpox epidemic (Alvarez and Parkman 2014). These assemblages serve to underscore earlier observations about the relative continuity between the missions and the ranchos. While Silliman (2004) is correct to point out the negative aspects of rancho labor, the archaeology affirms that the ranchos may have offered a strategic option for former mission residents. They were familiar with the labor tasks and general material conditions of life on the ranchos, since these approximated those of the missions, but they

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could live free of the oppressive social controls imposed by the Franciscans. In light of the quantity of obsidian artifacts and shell and glass beads recently recovered from nearby missions (e.g., Panich 2014, 2016a), the impressive quantities of similar artifacts at Rancho Petaluma suggest that Native people there continued to engage in regional Indigenous networks at the same time that they aligned themselves with the new economic and political order of the post-­ secularization period. Urban Areas Few archaeological studies have directly addressed Native people in the burgeoning urban centers of the San Francisco Bay region during the mid-­nineteenth century. The first secular, nonmilitary establishments during the Spanish era were the Pueblo de San José and Villa de Branciforte (modern-­day Santa Cruz), founded in 1777 and 1797, respectively. To the north was the port of San Francisco, which eventually developed into a secular town called Yerba Buena during the Mexican era. Yerba Buena was chartered in 1837 and was incorporated into San Francisco after US annexation (Voss 2008, 61–62). These settlements had diverse colonial populations, most of whom had mixed European, African, and / or Mesoamerican ancestry. During the Spanish and Mexican periods, many Indigenous people of central California also worked in these settlements, which for some may have offered a distinct alternative to entering the Spanish mission system. Labor tasks included domestic work, particularly for Native women and children, as well as agricultural work. After the secularization of the missions, central California’s urban areas continued to offer opportunities to Native people. Rizzo (2016, 336–56), for example, details the historical evidence for the mid-­nineteenth-­century Native community near Santa Cruz, where former mission neophytes apparently maintained a separate residential compound, including a sweat lodge, into the 1860s. Archaeologically, the interpretive challenges posed by the fractured and largely invisible presence of Native people in central California’s nascent urban centers has to date prevented any explicit research into this topic. Perhaps the best example of archaeology’s potential to illuminate these people comes from San Diego in far southern California. There, archaeological investigation has demonstrated the presence of Native people who served as domestic laborers in Old Town from the time of secularization of the nearby Mission San Diego well into the American period. The material evidence includes more than 1,000 Indigenous ceramic sherds (Native people in this region had a precontact ceramic

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t­radition), more than 40 ­ground-­stone artifacts, flaked stone tools, shell and glass beads, and possible ceramic gaming pieces (Schaefer 2012). Assemblages like this have much to offer as we seek to understand how Native communities persisted in urban areas. While the objects from Old Town, San Diego, can all be linked to precontact material traditions, we must also develop interpretive frameworks for instances where the material evidence is more ambiguous. As Silliman (2010) suggests, one way is to approach these sites from the context of labor, ranging from the built environment to tableware. There is no doubt that Native people lived and worked in the growing urban core of the San Francisco Bay area, and archaeologists interested in the mid-­nineteenth century have to carefully consider how to make sense of their presence amid the period’s seemingly ubiquitous material culture. Independent Land Grants The massive ranchos of Mexican California were in many cases built on ex-­mission lands that had been ostensibly held in trust by the Franciscans for Indigenous people. Despite the predominance of Euro-­Americans among those who received private land grants in the 1830s and 1840s, there were a small number of Native Californians who petitioned for and received land in the wake of secularization (Hornbeck 1978, 388). Two noteworthy examples in the San Francisco Bay region are Rancho Olompali and Rancho Posolmi. Rancho Olompali was probably a mission outstation prior to secularization, when a Native man named Camillo Ynitia gained title to the nearly 9,000 acres (Panich and Schneider 2015, 55). Olompali was home to a large and diverse group of Native people, who lived under Ynitia’s leadership until his death in the 1850s. Ynitia’s exact origins are unclear, but it is thought that he was at one point a resident at one of the region’s Spanish missions. Regardless, there is no doubt that he found ways to protect the autonomy and livelihood of his family and other Native people by dealing directly with various colonial agents, including Mariano Vallejo (the proprietor of Rancho Petaluma) and the Russian colony at Ross. Ynitia’s success, however, may have led to his untimely death; he was apparently murdered, perhaps by another Native person, in 1856 (Carlson and Parkman 1986). Another prime example of this option for Native people comes from near Mission Santa Clara in the southern San Francisco Bay region. During the late 1830s and early 1840s, much of the mission’s lands were disposed of through 12 land grants, totaling 66,201 acres. Four grants went to Native people. The most

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well known is Rancho Posolmi, granted to Lope Inigo, an important Native official at Mission Santa Clara prior to its secularization (figure 7.2). After obtaining his freedom in 1839, he built a thatched dwelling near the site of the village where he was born in the early 1780s (Shoup and Milliken 1999, 110). In the 1840s, Inigo received formal title to the surrounding Rancho Posolmi, where he lived for the following two decades, accompanied by members of his family and perhaps other Native people (Shoup and Milliken 1999, 110–17, 133). Unlike Olompali, however, it appears that Inigo’s enterprise was largely aimed at self-sufficiency rather than interaction with Mexican and American economic ­interests. Despite the prominence of these and other land grants to Native individuals in central California, the archaeological record is surprisingly sparse. The examples of Rancho Olompali and Rancho Posolmi offer two views into why this is the case. At issue at Olompali is the traditional division of labor between prehistoric and historical archaeology (Lightfoot 1995), which in California complicates the recognition of mid-­nineteenth-­century Native sites. Slaymaker (1972), for example, conducted excavations in Olompali’s large, open-­air shell midden over the course of many years. What little published information is available treats all N ­ ative-­produced material, including projectile points, flake tools, ground stone, shell beads, and bird bone tubes, as strictly precontact. Glass beads and iron nails are mentioned, but are not tied directly to Native residence at Rancho Olompali. At least one component of Slaymaker’s larger project at Olompali did consider explicitly historic era deposits at an adobe structure thought to have been used by Ynitia. Interior and exterior excavations recovered projectile point fragments and shell beads together with glass beads, “mission” pottery, and a cross, among other objects (Wegars 1974). While these objects, like those recovered from the nearby shell midden, could perhaps yield intriguing clues into Native life at Rancho Olompali, no formal excavation report exists, and the whereabouts of the bulk of the collections are today unknown (Panich and Schneider 2015, 55). In the case of Rancho Posolmi, the landscape changes of the past 150 years have all but obliterated the relevant archaeological record. Sites associated with Lope Inigo and his family have largely been destroyed by looting, agricultural grading, and modern construction. Archaeological work in the early twentieth century led to the recording of several shell mound sites within the former Rancho Posolmi, and two “Ynigo mounds” were named for its original owner (Shoup and Milliken 1999, 145–46). Sporadic archaeological testing for various

Figure 7.2. Lope Inigo, c. 1860. Inigo spent much of his adult life at Mission Santa Clara and was a rare Native recipient of a mid-­nineteenth-­century land grant in California. Courtesy of Archives and Special Collections, Santa Clara University Library.

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cultural resource management projects has more recently revealed portions of the smaller Ynigo mound, which is partially preserved underneath a highway interchange. The deposits contain materials dating back several thousand years, but all historic era artifacts appear to be in secondary context (Bryne and Byrd 2009). Perhaps not surprisingly, given the ill treatment of Native Californians in the American period, human remains from the mounds were casually passed among white settlers as the mounds were leveled for agricultural fields in the early twentieth century. Inigo’s grave, which had been clearly marked, was apparently desecrated by a grave robber sometime earlier (Shoup and Milliken 1999, 146–49). Autonomous Villages Given their small number across the region, official land grants were an option for only a fraction of the thousands of Native people who left the missions in the 1830s and 1840s. Another possibility, particularly for those who wished to avoid the exploitative labor conditions of the ranchos and secular pueblos, was to return to—or establish anew—autonomous villages on the margins of colonial California. The option of returning to, creating, or joining autonomous villages was probably favored by many of the Yokuts, Patwin, and interior Miwok people who entered the mission system later in the period. Their Central Valley and Sierra Nevada foothill homelands remained relatively free of colonial establishments until the onset of the gold rush. For example, several groups from Missions San José and Santa Clara returned to the Central Valley, where they eventually developed economic ties to John Sutter, a prominent white settler in the 1840s (Milliken 2008, 80–82). Direct archaeological connections between mid-­nineteenth-­century sites in California’s interior and people leaving the missions are difficult to ascertain, though researchers have sought to use glass beads recovered from Central Valley sites as evidence for temporally discrete regional interaction spheres (e.g., Bennyhoff 1977). The presence of mission era beads and, in at least one case, a metal crucifix has also been reported for the Sierra Nevada foothills, where early white settlers noted that local groups took in former residents of the coastal missions (Van Bueren 1983). Closer to San Francisco Bay, Native people who had been associated with Missions San José, San Francisco, and Santa Clara returned to existing village locations. One of the most important postmission settlements was Alisal near ­modern-­day Pleasanton. Although the initial occupants in the 1840s were

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associated with the Bernal family’s ranching operation, historical information suggests that community members engaged in a number of labor opportunities and had wide-­reaching social connections. For example, residents of Alisal played a pivotal role in the Ghost Dance revival of the 1870s, which took community members to several places in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Seen from a local perspective, the Ghost Dance was a ­nineteenth-­century manifestation of the Kuksu ceremonial complex, which connected communities throughout central California in precontact times. Indeed, a dance house is known to have existed at Alisal for a number of years in the second half of the nineteenth century. Many Native families continued to live in the area of the Alisal rancheria into the 1910s, before economic circumstances forced them to disperse in the rapidly urbanizing East Bay. The diverse families that lived together at Alisal continued to maintain a distinct community through the twentieth century and today form the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe (Field, Leventhal, and Cambra 2013; Leventhal et al. 1994; Milliken 2008; Milliken, Shoup, and Ortiz 2009; see also http:​ ​/​/ muwekma​.org). To my knowledge, no official archaeological work has been conducted at Alisal, much of which is thought to have been destroyed by the construction of Interstate 680. North of San Francisco Bay, Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo people maintained several villages in the western Marin peninsula. There, Tsim Schneider and I are codirecting a collaborative project aimed at understanding long-­term patterns of Indigenous residence across several distinct forms of colonialism, including the Spanish missions, the Russian mercantile colony at Ross, and US settler colonialism. It is probable that many villages in the region were occupied throughout the mission period, and after secularization some offered opportunities for individuals and families who had been involved with Missions San Francisco, San José, San Rafael, and Sonoma. One such place was Echa-­tamal, a Coast Miwok village near p ­ resent-­day Nicasio. After the secularization of the missions, five Coast Miwok men (all of whom had been at Mission San Rafael) petitioned the Mexican government to grant them the lands surrounding the village, but the land grant was quickly quashed due to competing white settler interests. Despite not holding official title, a significant Coast Miwok community continued to occupy Echa-­tamal until the 1880s. Relatively extensive excavations conducted at Echa-­tamal revealed artifacts that fit within local precontact material traditions—obsidian tools, shell beads, and so on—as well as a large historic era assemblage that includes glass beads, metal implements, and mass-­ produced ceramics and bottle glass (Dietz 1976). Viewed initially as ­evidence

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of acculturation, these materials instead offer direct evidence of how Native people engaged in economic networks that crosscut Indigenous and settler boundaries at the same time that the community “openly endured” despite not owning the lands on which they lived (Panich and Schneider 2015, 55). Similar sites existed to the west of Echa-­tamal along the shores of Tomales Bay, where we have identified several mid-­nineteenth-­century rancherias through historic map research and targeted archaeological testing (Panich, Schneider, and Byram 2018). To date, the primary focus of our archaeological fieldwork has been CA-­MRN-­202, an archaeological site on a landform called Toms Point. In the mid-­nineteenth century (c. 1840s–1860s), this site was home to its namesake, Tom Vaquero (a seaman also known as George T. Wood), his Coast Miwok wife, and an unknown number of Native people, who worked there as part of the international coastal trade. Although we lack concrete demographic information regarding the post-­secularization Native population of Toms Point, data from precontact archaeological deposits and mission sacramental registers suggest that Native people lived there continuously for thousands of years. Our fieldwork at Toms Point recovered the same kinds of artifacts as those unearthed at Olompali, Echa-­tamal, and other sites in the region: objects such as obsidian tools, shell beads, and faunal remains, which have direct antecedents in precontact traditions, alongside flaked glass, glass beads, metal tools and fasteners, and imported ceramics. Unlike at Olompali and Echa-­tamal, however, our investigations at Toms Point were explicitly focused on mid-­nineteenth-­century deposits (although precontact deposits do exist in the general area), allowing us to confirm archaeological associations between classes of artifacts that have elsewhere been separated along essentialist lines either as prehistoric or historic or as Indigenous or Euro-­American. In combination with ethnohistorical information (Schneider 2018), we infer that Native people at Toms Point enjoyed connections with other Indigenous groups throughout the region, and their economic livelihood was directly tied to their participation in networks that included both Native and non-­Native individuals. What can we take from the diverse range of sites that offered Native people autonomous livelihoods during the mid-­nineteenth century? To the east, many—particularly those whose homelands were not directly settled in the Spanish and Mexican eras—joined autonomous groups living in the Central Valley and Sierra Nevada foothills. Few archaeological data are known to exist from that region that explicitly track the movements of people leaving the

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­ issions after secularization, but based on the available evidence it appears m that individuals and families were in many cases able to (re)join existing communities. Given the pressures of settler colonialism, autonomous villages were more difficult to sustain in the core San Francisco Bay area, with the community of Alisal standing out as an important exception. Though little historical or archaeological research has addressed this topic, the residents of some of these communities were apparently in close contact, in particular the people of Alisal and Echa-­tamal (Milliken 2008, 90). The most complete archaeological picture to date comes from a handful of sites on the Marin peninsula. These data demonstrate that local Natives developed a novel material and practical repertoire as a result of missionization and US annexation, but such changes cannot be equated with cultural loss. To the contrary, Native people at places like Echa-­tamal and Toms Point intentionally drew on accumulated knowledge to selectively engage in the new social and economic relationships of American California. Summary The mid-­nineteenth century was a time of great disruption for Native people in central California. In the span of two decades, the region’s Franciscan missions closed, Mexican ranchos appropriated former mission lands, and US annexation fundamentally altered the political and demographic landscape of the region. Based on the limited archaeology of this time period, two key observations can be made. First, we must remain wary of acculturationist assumptions that posit an ­either-­or approach to material culture. Excavations at all four types of places described above have yielded artifacts such as stone tools and shell beads that have clear antecedents in precontact times and that are also indicative of continuing Indigenous networks that crosscut the broader region. These sites further suggest the persistence of certain religious beliefs, based on the historical reports of ceremonial structures at several sites and the apparent destruction of the property of the deceased at Rancho Petaluma. Yet the archaeology and ethnohistory also indicate that Native people used an array of materials that were not present in precontact California, both in their own domestic contexts and while laboring for and with Euro-­American newcomers. These items may be harder to parse archaeologically, but they are no less Native. Indeed, they are directly related to the ways in which Native people survived the dramatic upheavals of the period.

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The second important observation is the persistence of long-­term associations between Native people and their ancestral sites. Although the missions effectively alienated many from their homelands, Indigenous people in the San Francisco Bay region held strong connections to particular places. Native individuals such as Lope Inigo and the original claimants of Rancho Nicasio deliberately solicited from the Mexican and US governments the lands where their ancestors had lived. Numerous people from Missions Santa Clara and San José returned to their homelands in the Central Valley, while others established new economic relationships at places, such as Toms Point and the Sunol adobe, that had been occupied for centuries prior to the arrival of Europeans. Together, these two observations suggest that the archaeological record of Native life in mid-­nineteenth-­century California is more complicated than we thought. Many sites dating to this period have been investigated primarily for their precontact archaeological deposits without the recognition that many apparently “prehistoric” objects may have been manufactured 70 or even 100 years after the initial incursions of the Spanish in this region in the 1770s. Similarly, objects such as mass-­produced consumer goods found at Indigenous sites have not been well accounted for in many excavations (see Silliman 2004 for an exception). Sometimes recorded as a separate component or dismissed altogether, more often these objects are simply left uninterpreted, for example at Olompali or Echa-­tamal. Even where clear material signatures of Native inhabitants have been noted at mid-­nineteenth-­century sites, as at Old Town, San Diego, we need to better account for how Native people may have used objects or spaces that defy easily categorized material manifestations (Silliman 2010). Conclusion In central California, the Franciscan missions founded during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century represented a distinct form of colonialism. Although they shared many of the hallmarks of settler institutions aimed at “civilizing” Indigenous people, they were established in a region with no appreciable settler population. In Spanish and Mexican California, then, Indigenous labor was as important as Indigenous land. This equation shifted radically in the mid-­nineteenth century with the US annexation of California and the ensuing gold rush. These two events, both in the late 1840s, set off an explosion in the state’s non-­Native population that led in turn to the expropriation of Indigenous

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lands in order to consummate manifest destiny. In the eyes of settlers, Native people who to that point had little contact with Euro-­Americans could be eliminated through direct violence or forced onto reservations. Those groups and individuals who had been in the missions, however, had already lost most of their ancestral territories and were in many cases seen as partially acculturated. In this liminal space, Native people who had been emancipated from the missions pursued a number of strategies, working within and against the structures of settler colonialism. Some used the skills acquired in the missions to seek work on ranchos or in urban areas, where they may have shed some outward signs of Native identity. Others formed communities that relied on the reinterpretation of group membership and in some cases alignment with newcomers in novel economic relationships. In each case, a focus on persistence allows us to view these choices as stemming from the accumulated knowledge of the groups and individuals in question. These findings resonate with the concept of survivance, which situates Native people as active historical agents while explicitly rejecting victimry (Vizenor 2008). There is no doubt that Native Californians suffered greatly in the colonial period, but scholarship that reduces their experiences solely to victimhood unwittingly supports the pernicious narratives of “Indian extinction.” By illuminating how Native people actively subverted policies of elimination and erasure, which continue today in the unacknowledged status of so many formerly missionized groups, we can directly work against the logic of settler colonialism (Field, Leventhal, and Cambra 2013). Looking carefully at the later periods, it is clear that the settler project was not fully accomplished. Many Native Californian communities survived this difficult time through a range of strategies as diverse as the communities themselves. These strategies are only now beginning to be explored archaeologically, but to do so productively we must think critically about issues of authenticity, agency, practice, and persistence. In this chapter, I have focused on Native groups that endured the full brunt of Spanish missionary colonialism in the decades before US annexation. In this context, archaeological evidence suggests a complex set of material practices that had antecedents in precontact times as well as the incorporation of foreign technologies and materials. The resulting sites and assemblages can be difficult to identify and interpret archaeologically, but they represent the complicated, locally situated knowledge that enabled communities to weather the turbulent transition from missionary to settler colonialism.

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Acknowledgments Research on Marin County sites was supported by a collaborative research grant from the National Science Foundation (BCS 1558987 and 1559666) and was approved by the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. My understanding of the archaeology of mid-­nineteenth-­century central California has benefited from conversations with many people, including Glenn Farris, Andy Galvan, Sarah Peelo, and Tsim Schneider.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Sword and the Stone History, Identity, and Territoriality among the Mapoyo People of the Venezuelan Orinoco Region Kay Scaramelli and Franz Scaramelli

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n this chapter, we explore the ongoing construction of identity and the territorial claims of the Indigenous Mapoyo community of the Middle Orinoco, Venezuela. We are concerned here with the dialectical relationship that evolved in our partnership with the Mapoyo, as they sought our aid in their territorial struggle and as we attempted to document the long-­term transformations that developed consequent to colonial and neocolonial intervention. Our construction of the evolving patterns of settlement, resource use, and entanglement with the dominant society from colonial times to the present was pieced together through archaeological evidence obtained, often in the company of community members, at the sites that figure in oral tradition. As the community leaders became increasingly well versed in the national and international politics of cultural patrimony and identity, the material remains gained increasing value as tangible evidence that authenticated their occupational history and territorial rights. The creation of the Murükuní Museum, the first Indigenous community museum in Venezuela, was designed to showcase the archaeological collection. This achievement, hand in hand with the community’s nomination and inclusion on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List, highlights the manner in which the Mapoyo leaders have negotiated with different agencies to represent themselves in regional, national, and international arenas. They have made use of material culture and oral history to promote a narrative of patrimony and sovereignty in their struggle for recognition as an Indigenous community with territorial rights in a region where they have been condemned for a “lack of authenticity” or bemoaned as a group on the verge of extinction. We also discuss how the documentation of historical narrative has served to both vindicate and essentialize a more fluid notion of identity and time-­space.

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Introduction It was a diverse group of Mapoyo leaders, local criollos (non-­Indigenous Venezuelans), archaeologists, and students that trudged through the muddy field, searching for the large monolith that had been placed there 50 years earlier by Juan Sandoval, the then-­capitán (chief ) of the Mapoyo, a small Indigenous Carib-­affiliated group that inhabited the right bank of the Orinoco River between the Parguaza and Suapure Rivers (see figure 8.1). This was the site where more than 200 years earlier, Paulino Sandoval established and led his community of followers (capitanía). At the same time, he served as the principal leader of several other loosely related capitanías, each with its own local chief. According to Mapoyo tradition, the chiefs Alejo and Paulino Sandoval were called upon by

Figure 8.1. Study area and archaeological sites in Venezuela that figure in Mapoyo oral history. Early colonial period sites (1680–1767): Pueblo de los Españoles, San Isidro, Piedra Rajada, El Fortín del Parguaza, Carichana; late colonial period sites (1768– 1829): Pueblo Viejo, La Pica; Republican period sites (1830–1930): Piedra Rajada, Cerro de las Piñas, La Achagüera, Caripo, Corocito de Caripito, La Parrilla del Pilón, El Palomo. Map created by Franz Scaramelli.

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José Antonio Páez to aid the Republican rebels who were fighting in the War of Independence from Spain (1810–1823). Battles raged throughout the Orinoco and the nearby Llanos, where the Spanish missionaries and ranchers had their strongholds, commanding Indigenous labor and exploiting the local resources. The Mapoyo leaders guided the rebels on a surprise attack on the Spanish Fortín de San Francisco Javier de Marimarota at the confluence of the Orinoco and Parguaza Rivers. By approaching the fort from inland on paths only known by the Mapoyo, the rebel forces and their Indigenous allies defeated the Spanish hold on this strategic site, aiding the independence movement in Venezuela (Henley 1983, 225). The Mapoyo assert that following the battle, Simón Bolívar himself offered his sword and a lance point, typical of those used by mounted soldiers in the independence battles, to Paulino as a gift of gratitude. At the same time, Bolívar is said to have asked the Mapoyo chief what else he could do to show his gratitude for their aid in the defeat of the Spanish in the battle. He offered three options: money, commercial opportunities, or the titles to their land. The Mapoyo chief chose the latter, and a document was drawn up, granting the Mapoyo all the land between the Parguaza, the Suapure, and the Orinoco, including the headwaters of the first two rivers. He also deposited a copy in Caracas. The copy that was given to the Mapoyo was lost when Paulino’s house burned down (Henley 1975). The sword and lance point are still carefully stored by the present cacique (principal chief ), Simón Bastidas, who keeps them wrapped in a Venezuelan flag (figure 8.2). More than 150 years after the battle, Juan Sandoval, the ­great-­grandson of Paulino, sought to protect the traditional Mapoyo territory in the face of the encroaching criollo population that had migrated to the region in increasing numbers to exploit tonka beans (Dipteryx odorata), to graze their cattle, and to fence off ranches (Henley 1975). The large monolith erected by Juan Sandoval at this time was to serve as material proof of the eastern boundary of the Mapoyo lands. Following an attempt by criollos to expropriate part of their territory in 1975, the Mapoyo had negotiated a provisional land grant with the Venezuelan government under the auspices of the Agrarian Reform Law. But the provisional grant was never finalized, and new threats to the Mapoyo territory came in the early 1980s as the Venezuelan Guayana Corporation commenced vast expropriations of land during the development of Bauxilum (originally Bauxiven), a bauxite aluminum mine and associated infrastructure at Los Pijiguaos. This development also attracted settlements of other Indigenous groups, which

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Figure 8.2. The lance point and sword, shown on the Venezuelan flag, given to the Mapoyos in recognition for their collaboration with the Republican forces in the battle at El Castillito (Fortín de San Francisco Javier de Marimarota) at the mouth of the Parguaza River. Photograph by Franz Scaramelli.

were in search of educational and health services (Allais 1988; ­Arvelo-­Jiménez et al. 1990). The Uóthuha (Piaroa), from the south, established large settlements in traditional Mapoyo territory, and their growing presence eventually resulted in the threat of armed conflict. In 1992, the Fiscalía Indigenista Nacional (Office of the Attorney for Indigenous Affairs) requested that we travel to the area and mediate the dispute between the Indigenous communities. Although the disagreement was resolved peacefully in a signed document with no intervention from the Fiscalía Indigenista Nacional (Scaramelli and Tarble 2000; Scaramelli, Tarble, and Perera 1993), the Mapoyo leaders expressed interest in our expertise as archaeologists in documenting their ancestral living sites, cemeteries, and other places that figure in their oral tradition. This was the beginning of more than two decades of collaboration with the Mapoyo community in its struggle to gain recognition as a legitimate Indigenous entity and to guarantee the ­people’s territorial claims.1 We are concerned in this chapter with the dialectical relationship that evolved

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in our partnership with leaders of the Mapoyo community, as they sought to officially legitimize their territorial claims and as we attempted to interpret the materials and integrate the findings with oral tradition and documentary evidence in an effort to produce a chronological sequence for the area. We seek here to reconstruct the complex interplay / c​ ollision between profoundly different visions of time-­space as conceived, defined, and constructed by the various stakeholders involved in the process. Our collaboration involved diverse goals and aspirations as well as contrasting perceptions of materiality, patrimony, and historicity. Here, we also contextualize our relationship with the Mapoyo leadership in light of the changing political milieu, since the Venezuelan state itself was undergoing extensive redefinition following the Bolivarian revolution that began with the election of Chávez in 1998, a process that has had far-­ reaching effects on the political uses of the past and the perception of the role of subalterns in Venezuelan history. This case illustrates the long-­term colonial entanglement of the Mapoyo, as they have sought authentication through the material evidence of their territorial claims and legitimization through their historical role as agents in the creation of the independent Venezuelan state. The Mapoyo in Historical Perspective The Mapoyo, or Wánai, 2 as they are sometimes referred to in the literature, were first documented in the early eighteenth century by the Jesuit missionaries who settled the area (Gilij [c. 1782] 1987; Gumilla [c. 1741] 1944; Rivero [c. 1733] 1883). The Mapoyo, who were described by Rivero ([c. 1733] 1883) as “bellicose and very brave,” were congregated into two missions: San José de Mapoyes on the banks of the Parguaza River in the 1730s and La Urbana to the north. The mission at San José was ephemeral due to the impact of devastating epidemics, which wiped out entire communities (Vega [1750–1767] 1974, 105; ­Mansutti-­Rodríguez 2003), and reluctant and inconstant neophytes; it no longer figured in official registers by 1749. Some of the remaining Mapoyo converts were relocated to Nuestra Señora de los Angeles de Pararuma, near the fort at Marimarota (Vega [1750–1767] 1974). Oral tradition among the Mapoyo refers to the colonial period as a terrifying time, when Natives in the missions were branded on the cheek to distinguish them from non-­neophytes (Dominga Sandoval, widow of Juan Sandoval, pers. comm., 1998) and forced to work like slaves (Victor Cañas, pers. comm., 1992). The Mapoyo today refer to themselves as “civilized,” following their involvement with Western society. Their memory

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of partialities and capitanías, the divisions of the Mapoyo people under the command of a local capitán, covers the nearly 300 years since their involvement in the mission system (Scaramelli and Tarble 2005). Following the Jesuits’ expulsion in 1767, the Franciscan Observantes took over the missions in the Middle Orinoco, and Father Ramón Bueno referred to the Mapoyo under his charge as “shy, fanciful, and as inconstant as the others [the Piaroa]. . . . they are disinclined to stay in the mission” (Bueno 1965:71, our translation). Bueno also complained about the Mapoyo’s reluctance to abandon their religious practices and their insistence on the use of caves for burials, a contested practice that eventually came to serve as an ethnic distinction for the Mapoyo, even as they incorporated Western elements into their lives and nominally adopted Catholicism (Scaramelli and Tarble 2000). Following the War of Independence, the Mapoyo continued to inhabit the right bank of the Orinoco, adopting a strategy of retreat and selective participation in the national society. They pursued activities that allowed them to maintain their economy, which was based on agriculture, fishing, and hunting, and that also gave them access to valued imported items, such as machetes, metal axes, fishhooks, firearms, canned and bottled food and drink, cloth, and beads (Scaramelli and Tarble de Scaramelli 2005). Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Mapoyo were mentioned in accounts offered by various European travelers as producers of manioc bread (casabe) for sale to criollo settlers (Tarble de Scaramelli and Scaramelli 2012; Vidal 2011). They also participated in the production of turtle oil (Meza 2013), a product that was highly esteemed throughout the Orinoco and the Caribbean. The commercial exploitation of tonka beans, referred to locally as sarrapia, commenced in the Orinoco in 1870, and the Mapoyo were key partners in the collection of the odoriferous seeds, which are used in the international perfume industry (Torrealba 2011). In contrast to the deplorable conditions in the Amazonas state to the south, where the rubber barons exploited Indigenous labor in near-­slavery, uprooting entire communities and disrupting traditional production modes, the Mapoyo were able to negotiate their involvement in the profitable extractive market in such a way that many elders remember the period with nostalgia as a time of affluence. The seasonal nature of the extractive industry allowed the Mapoyo to maintain their own agricultural activities and ties to their territory even as they negotiated with middlemen to collect and sell their products. Although the extractive economy was maintained through a system of debt peonage, there remained sufficient autonomy to practice traditional subsistence

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activities and to enter into contracts on what were considered to be favorable terms (Scaramelli and Scaramelli 2015). Archaeological evidence for the transition from the colonial to the post­ colonial period attests to the developments discussed above and is described at length elsewhere (F. Scaramelli 2005; Scaramelli and Tarble 2005; K. Scaramelli 2006). Early colonial sites in the area (1730–1767) have been identified as the remains of the fort of Marimarota, known locally as El Castillito, and a Jesuit mission site at Nuestra Señora de los Angeles de Pararuma, referred to today as Pueblo de los Españoles. A later colonial period site, Pueblo Viejo on the banks of the Parguaza River (figure 8.1), appears in Mapoyo oral tradition as the site of the community where Alejo Sandoval was the Mapoyo chief in the early 1800s. The archaeological materials collected at this site correspond to this time frame. The Indigenous presence at the missions is evident in the overwhelming predominance of locally made pottery, which is related to several ceramic styles that were present in the area prior to contact. The material remains at colonial period sites speak to the dependence on Indigenous knowledge and labor in an area where imported goods were hard to come by, even as the vestiges of substantial constructions that served as forts and the centralized construction of plazas and residences for the priests and military signal the hierarchy and power structure that was imposed on the Indigenous population (Tarble and Scaramelli 2004). Although the Jesuits and Observantes attempted to relocate the Indigenous neophytes to the missions, they were forced to tolerate the establishment of outlying settlements where the Indigenous communities maintained their agricultural plots and made forays to hunt, fish, forage, and trade (Gumilla [c. 1741] 1944; Vega [1750–1767] 1974). This autonomy was a source of considerable tension in the mission system since it introduced a contradiction between the desire to control the movements and activities of the neophytes and acknowledgment of the Europeans’ absolute dependency on Indigenous production modes (Alvarado 1966, 252; Vega [1750–1767] 1974). Archaeological evidence for these satellite sites consists of the presence of chronologically contemporary material goods similar to those found at the mission sites, such as an abundance of local pottery, small quantities of imported beads, ceramics, and metal tools. Nonetheless, no substantial architectural remains have been found at these outliers, suggesting that the settlements did not have the same spatial hierarchy that characterized the mission sites. In an attempt to control the fluvial route connecting Santa Fe de Bogotá

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and the Antilles, colonial settlements were located along the course of the Orinoco River (Rey Fajardo 1971; Useche Losada 1987; Whitehead 1988). During the Republican period (1830–1930), the principal waterways continued to be dominated by the criollo population, who controlled transport and commerce and reserved for themselves access to the rich agricultural and fishing resources located along the stream. In contrast, Indigenous settlements corresponding to this period were scattered throughout the inland savannas and watersheds, near lagoons, agricultural land, and forested hills that provided essential resources such as hardwoods, medicinal plants, and game (see figure 8.1). The places that figure in the memory of the Mapoyo as ancient habitation sites are visible as light surface scatters of local pottery with an abundance of ceramic griddles and punched metal graters used to make manioc bread, imported ironstone bowls and cups, metal cans, knives, gunpowder flasks, and bottle fragments (Tarble de Scaramelli and Scaramelli 2011). Rockshelters with evidence of tonka bean collection (in the form of abundant seedpods, discarded cans, and bottles) also dot the areas where concentrated stands of trees (sarrapiales) were located. Archaeological evidence is also found in the rockshelter used as the traditional burial ground, Cerro de los Muertos, where the remains of members of the Mapoyo community who desired to be interred in the traditional manner have been deposited, either wrapped in palm fronds and canes and bound with vines or placed in commercially bought coffins among the boulders. Another large rockshelter at the base of Cerro de las Piñas is sacred to the Mapoyo, being the site of a mass suicide that is said to have occurred following a transgression of ritual proscriptions. Since the 1980s, community elders have carefully placed human skeletal remains into inaccessible crevices to protect the site from vandals and curiosity seekers (Perera 1992). Alternative cemeteries, where the bodies have been interred in the Western manner and marked with crosses, flowers, and candles, have been established by other members of the community in keeping with their conversion to Catholicism (Scaramelli and Tarble 2000). The construction of the main highway connecting Caicara del Orinoco with Puerto Ayacucho, completed in the 1980s, brought about a new shift in settlement pattern for the Mapoyo. It served as a magnet, and the principal Mapoyo community of El Palomo was relocated beside the roadway. At the time of Henley’s visit in 1975, the Mapoyo community had dwindled to about 115 individuals, 75 of whom lived in the area between the Villacoa and Caripo Rivers (Henley 1975, 1983). He reported that Mapoyo had married criollos or members of other Indigenous groups, and some had migrated to the larger towns in the

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area, such as Caicara or Puerto Ayacucho, seeking educational opportunities and jobs. The Mapoyo who had occupied the lower reaches of the Parguaza River in the late 1940s, as reported by Cruxent (1948), no longer were to be found in this area, or perhaps they had intermarried with the Uóthuha, who were expanding downriver (Mansutti-­Rodríguez 1990). In the decades prior to his death in 1983, the Mapoyo leader Juan Sandoval’s greatest fear was that the community would be denied its territorial claims and be overridden by encroaching outsiders. This moment coincided with the first modern ethnographic descriptions of the group, undertaken as a version of “rescue anthropology,” which seeks to document aspects of a people deemed to be on the verge of cultural and even physical extinction (Cruxent 1948; Henley 1975; Perera 1992). Parting from an essentialist conception of culture that was current in the literature of the time, in which authenticity was measured in terms of a pristine, homogeneous ideal of Indigenous culture, the Mapoyo were considered to be practically indistinguishable from their criollo neighbors (Henley 1983). According to Henley, the Mapoyo no longer spoke their language nor taught it to their children.3 This statement exposes an attitude that cultural change, including the adoption of the national language, Spanish, was a sign of either acculturation or loss of culture, and this view was extended to kinship categories, dress, religious beliefs, and other aspects of Mapoyo culture, such as intermarriage with other ethnic groups, that did not conform to an ideal of precontact cultural integrity. As stated by Henley, “There appear to be few obstacles in the process of a complete absorption of the indigene by the local criollo population. There are very few people under forty who speak the Wánai [Mapoyo] language, and those who are informed about their cultural traditions are even fewer. Although they remain subject to discrimination on the grounds of their indigenous descent, it is difficult to predict how long this attitude will continue, which in a way places them in a marginal position vis-­à-­vis the criollo population” (Henley 1983, 238, our translation). Contrary to the pessimistic predictions by the anthropologists who documented the Mapoyo in the twentieth century, by 2011 the community of El Palomo had increased to more than 240 individuals (Hernández 2013, 170). The most recent national Indigenous census in 2011 reported 423 Mapoyo in all. This demographic increase can be explained, in part, by new births in the community and by a process of migration to the community by outsiders. Other members of the community who had not adopted that affiliation previously adopted a Mapoyo identity in 2011. Hernández (2013, 171) explains this

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as a process of ethnogenesis, in which an inclusive attitude on the part of the community has fostered a malleable conception of ethnicity. The demographic growth has gone hand in hand with many gains in the ­twenty-­first century, including the construction of new school buildings, the creation of a health clinic for outpatient services, the installation of electricity and water tanks, participation in g­ overnment-­sponsored projects to promote the reproduction of the turtle population, the acquisition of a tractor, and the inauguration of the Murükuní Community Museum. These are just a few examples of the successful projects the community has negotiated with national agencies, not the least of which is the title to 250,000 hectares of land, granted to them in 2013, and the declaration of their oral tradition and language as an intangible patrimony by UNESCO that same year. The Mapoyo in the Time of the Bolivarian Revolution This remarkable Mapoyo renaissance can only be understood in the context of the political and social situation in Venezuela since 1999. Following growing disillusionment with the traditional political parties that had governed for more than four decades, Venezuelans elected Hugo Chávez Frías as president in 1998 by an overwhelming majority. The adoption of the Constitution of 1999 marks the foundation of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, or the Fifth Republic (Venezuela 1999). The constitution and ensuing laws grant full recognition to the popular sectors that constitute Venezuelan identity and guarantee respect for and recognition of the equality of cultures, counteracting the prevailing ideology of mestizaje (melting pot) and homogeneity, which called for the assimilation and acculturation of Indigenous peoples. The new constitution was widely proclaimed as a model for its inclusiveness, refounding the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela as a “foremost democratic, participative, multiethnic and multi­ cultural society, in a just, federal, and decentralized State” (Venezuela 1999, preamble, our translation). At the core of the refoundation of the Venezuelan republic and the move to distance it from the neoliberal policies of the preceding republics was a shift in discourse in which the Indigenous populations, past and present, were recognized as being the First Nations (pueblos originarios), to which an enormous historic debt was owed. Indigenous rights were further defined and protected through the enactment of the Law of Demarcation and Guarantee of the Habitat and Lands of the Indigenous Peoples (Venezuela 2001), the Organic Law of Indigenous Peoples and Communities (Venezuela 2005),

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the Law for Indigenous Languages (Venezuela 2008), and the Law for the Cultural Patrimony of Indigenous Peoples and Communities (Venezuela 2009a). The constitution also proclaimed Venezuela to be a participative democracy. This new project was designed to provide for grassroots participation in ­policy-­and ­decision-­making at the municipal level, specifying the rights of each municipality to organize, govern, and administer itself according to local geographic, historic, and cultural conditions, with explicit reference to self-­determination in the case of municipalities with Indigenous populations. In 2009, communes and community councils were declared to be responsible for the identification of local needs and the development of projects to address them (Venezuela 2009b). New ministries, all designated with the prefix “Ministry of Popular Power” (Ministerio del Poder Popular), were created to oversee and institutionalize these different missions as part of the long-­term plans to achieve the goals of autonomy, economic growth, and well-­being for the people, an example of which is the Ministry of Popular Power for Indigenous Peoples, created in 2007. These proposals all fall under the umbrella of the New Geometry of Power, devised by the Chávez government to restructure the distribution of political, social, economic, and military power in the Venezuelan territory, counteracting the capitalist and neoliberal structures that had their roots in colonial times (Di Giminiani 2007). As the t­ wenty-­first century commenced, the Mapoyo saw in the Bolivarian revolution the opportunity to legitimize their claims in legal terms, and they began the complex bureaucratic dealings aimed to gain both ethnic authentication and territorial recognition. The Mapoyo, along with many other Indigenous groups, fully embraced the Chávez government. They formed their community council, with elected officials, in order to obtain access to the different programs offered by the government. This involved the adoption of a political structure that could be seen as superseding more traditional forms of leadership (Angosto 2008, 27–28). In accordance with the New Geometry of Power, the Mapoyo began negotiations to declare their territory as a commune and elevated their capitán, Simón Bastidas, to the role of cacique of the entire territory, which included non-­Mapoyo communities. At the same time his son Argenis was named capitán of El Palomo, and his daughter Carolina and grandson Jairo assumed the role of spokespersons. Although the adoption of the new form of political and social organization represented a move away from more “traditional” forms of organization, this shift was in keeping with their past interactions with the national society, in which the chief was charged with the task of

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negotiating contracts and services for the people he represented.4 The internal issues of the Mapoyo were still dealt with in open community meetings, but the cacique and capitán were the public faces when dealing with the national government. Confrontations of Territoriality, Historicity, and Patrimony The need to comply with the exigencies of the Venezuelan legal system demanded a fundamental shift in the conception of both territoriality and historicity in order to conform to Western standards of authenticity and materiality (S. Jones 2010). Traditional Mapoyo historicity had developed as an oral tradition, anchored in the present through spatial features and objects. It can be described as a spatiotemporal history, “a way of speaking about the past that cohered neither chronologically nor around historical figures, but around spatiality” (Green, Green, and Neves 2003, 387), which is resonant with other accounts of the construction of time-­space in the lowlands of South America (Duin et al. 2015; Green and Green 2009; S­ antos-­Granero 1998). The Mapoyo past, as we came to comprehend during our years of collaboration, is a fluid and ongoing performance, occasionally contradictory, specific to the audience or the narrator; is based on active visitation, storytelling, and the valuation of places as events; and is peopled by ancestors, spirits, friends, and enemies ­(Tarble and Scaramelli 2007). Memory is entwined with the landscape, and narratives are triggered when passing sites that had been used in past activities, such as hunting expeditions, tonka bean collection, or agriculture. Visits to key sites evoke these “story tracks” (Green and Green 2009), and while we carried out our archaeological tasks, we were regaled with fantastic accounts of two-­headed gods and cultural heroes capable of transforming from human to animal or other forms. Although some events are known to be sequential, there is no attempt to develop a unique timeline. This is a past in which the boundaries between the natural and the supernatural and between the underworld and the upper world are fluid and fuzzy. Some places are imbued with danger or shelter malignant entities that could cause harm if not respected. Mountains have agency and are known to have battled one another in the distant past in epic battles fought with thunder and lightning. This is a “dwelling perspective,” in which the landscape constitutes an “enduring record of—and testimony to—the lives and works of past generations who have dwelt within it, and in so doing, have left there something of themselves” (Ingold 1993, 152).

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As we interacted with the members of the Mapoyo community who accompanied us in our archaeological work and who conversed with us back in the community, we became aware of the significance of toponyms and visitation as powerful mnemonic devices. This past is not a mere narrative, to be learned and recited, but rather is intimately linked to place and evoked upon visitation and remembrance. Parallel to this lived landscape, the Mapoyo had developed a narrative of their own historic lineage as traced through the succession of leaders since the time of the War of Independence. This was a history based on protagonists, with a chronological order similar to the textbook histories that were being taught in their schools and absorbed through television programs and books that were now available in the community. We perceived a tension between the different versions of the past and a fear that the first was being surpassed by the second. Some members of the Mapoyo community expressed concern that their culture was being lost and that their identity as a group was being compromised by the new ways. We also gained an understanding of the role of material objects for the Mapoyo in their conception of historicity. During our archaeological work, as we recovered evidence in surface collections and limited excavations, we shared our findings with the members of the Mapoyo community. As collaborators, we shared common goals in our project, namely a desire to document ancient Mapoyo settlements in order to justify territorial claims and to anchor local traditions to specific sites, with the aim of increasing regional and national visibility and respect. This was a participatory archaeological project, as defined by Duin and colleagues (2015). Nonetheless, in order to tease out the patterns that were beginning to emerge on the ground, we were compelled to take the collection to our laboratory in Caracas to carry out stylistic and chronological analyses that were impossible in the field. As archaeologists, we were attempting to create a regional chronology, to document settlement pattern, and to provide evidence for interaction that would aid in the comprehension of the impact of colonialism in the region (F. Scaramelli 2005; K. Scaramelli 2006). As the ceramic, glass, and metal objects gained meaning as a “collection,” a new value accrued to it that had not been fully apprehended by members of the community when they came across bits and pieces littered on the ground. The collection was now an entity, discussed at international congresses and symposia and shared back with the community in the form of publications and presentations. Interest and curiosity about the collection grew, but so did occasional suspicion and animosity, as some members of the community feared the loss of

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the “evidence of the Mapoyo past” as it was now perceived. The collection had gained symbolic capital, consonant with the value that the community placed on the sword and lance point referred to above, which have been zealously curated by the Mapoyo for generations (Meza and Menezes Ferreira 2016). As stated in an interview in the Correo del Orinoco on January 22, 2015, with Cacique Simón Bastidas, the sword had “defended them for decades against outside threats . . . and represents all the knowledge they have passed down from generation to generation,” manifesting the agency of objects. 5 Just as the monolith placed by Juan Sandoval has acquired significance as a territorial marker and just as the bones of the ancients in the cave at Cerro de las Piñas symbolize the mass suicide, the archaeological remains have acquired symbolic capital to the Mapoyo as material evidence of their claim as legitimate beneficiaries of the land as ordained by Simón Bolívar. During our collaboration with the Mapoyo community, we witnessed the desire not only to preserve and display these objects, but also to incorporate new and alternative forms of knowledge, so as to construct a version of Mapoyo-­ ness that would further serve to authenticate their identity in the eyes of official agencies and other entities. Their leaders sought the aid of “experts” in different fields to document and preserve what they perceived as the authentic version of ­Mapoyo-­ness, which they feared was under threat of extinction. The community leaders and teachers were also concerned about the vulnerability of the Mapoyo language, spoken at the time by a mere handful of the elder members of the community, and they promoted a program for revitalization through UNESCO (Granadillo 1997; Villalón 2000, 2003, 2004). They solicited collaboration from ethnographers, cinematographers, and experts in agricultural practices and turtle reproduction, which culminated in numerous projects, theses, and documentaries. Several of the most active Mapoyo participants in our archaeological research were literate, and they requested copies of the documents, reports, maps, and other historical materials that mentioned the Mapoyo. They avidly read the Jesuit accounts of the mission era, pored over the early maps that indicated the Mapoyo’s occupation of the territory, and scrutinized our reports of the archaeological findings. We were asked to record and transcribe legends and myths and to photograph sites of historical importance. The Mapoyo collaborators who accompanied us to the sites came to understand the use of archaeological evidence in establishing a relative chronology. They awaited us, year to year, with news of sites to be added to our inventory and were especially excited to have discovered evidence for several

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occupations associated with abundant Indigenous pottery and large grinding stones, which they considered to be proof of their people’s precontact presence in the area (Bacadare 2012; Ochoa 2010). The community leaders further called on our expertise to aid in the “authentication” of the Mapoyo time-­space in conformity with governmental criteria. This involved the translation of a lived landscape into a two-­dimensional rendition of space in the form of maps and a chronological rendering of the settlement history based on archaeological dating techniques. As a part of this process, we collaborated in the workshops to draw the “mental maps” of the Mapoyo territory, in which different resources were carefully mapped and named by members of the community, a requirement of the official procedure for allocating territorial recognition. By that time, our archaeological analysis was generating results that led to the creation of a map of the sites that figure in Mapoyo oral tradition, with their respective chronologies and GPS positions, which was used to support their territorial claim. In 2006, the Mapoyo capitán and communal council members requested the return of the archaeological collection of the objects found at their ancestral sites, and this was the birth of the idea of the community museum. Under our supervision, an undergraduate thesis student from the Anthropology School of the Universidad Central de Venezuela worked with members of the community to incorporate their vision into the design of the exhibits and the layout for the museum (Durán 2008). The Mapoyo community designed and constructed the Murükuní Museum with financial support from the Ministry of Popular Power for Culture and museographic expertise offered by the Museo Nacional de las Culturas. Although in the early discussions about the content of the exhibits, the Mapoyo participants voiced the desire to exalt an exclusive vision of the “traditional” Mapoyo way of life, the final product, Tei Pata Mopue (The Territorial Rights of the Mapoyo), included exhibits that focused on evidence of the Mapoyo’s presence in the territory, productive activities, the inclusive and receptive nature of the contemporary Mapoyo community that highlights the diversity of the groups that inhabit the area today, and the history of their struggle for territorial recognition. All texts were written in both Spanish and Mapoyo, and the schoolchildren and other community members collaborated in the production of the exhibits. Prior to the inauguration of the museum, a public ceremony was held in the community to repatriate the archaeological collection we had cataloged, classified, and analyzed in Caracas (figure 8.3). Eventually, artifacts from the collection were placed on display as part of the

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Figure 8.3. Children of the community reach out to touch the boxes containing archaeological materials at the ceremony for the repatriation of the Mapoyo archaeological collection at El Palomo, Bolivar, Venezuela, December 10, 2011. Photograph by Franz Scaramelli.

exhibit that documented the Mapoyo’s occupation of the territory through time, which was both an act of authentication through professional expertise and an appropriation of “authorized heritage discourse,” as defined by Smith (2012). In the museum display, the symbolic capital of the collection was converted to political capital through the invitation extended to national and local political authorities to the inauguration of the first Indigenous community museum in Venezuelan territory in May 2012. Just as the Mapoyo embraced the revolutionary government, the Vene­zuelan government also embraced the Mapoyo in keeping with the two foundational discourses of the Fifth Republic: Bolivarianism and Guaicaipurism, as defined by Angosto (2008, 2010). The discourse of Guaicaipurism glorifies the resistance to colonialism displayed by the Indigenous First Nations. National tradition holds that Guaicaipuro was a famous cacique who died defending his people against Spanish settlement, and this sacrifice exemplifies the unfaltering loyalty that was demanded in defense of the Chávez revolution. Bolivarianism, on the other hand, exalts the heroic leadership displayed by Bolívar in the fight for independence against the Spanish. These discourses were called on in an

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effort to distinguish the Bolivarian revolution of the Fifth Republic from earlier governments as anti-­capitalist and anti-­imperialist and to forge new alliances among the countries that have rejected the hegemony of the Western powers, including Cuba, Iran, Russia, Bolivia, and many African nations. The Mapoyo embody both discourses, in the eyes of government officials; they have a reputation for having resisted the Spanish colonizing efforts, and they played a role in the independence movement and were materially rewarded in the form of the sword and lance point from the hands of Bolívar himself. Through the efforts of the Mapoyo leadership, in conjunction with different official agencies, these and other aspects of their intangible heritage became the showcase for the revolutionary government’s discourse on indigeneity. Following the inauguration of the community museum and based on the recompilation of oral tradition related to the landscape and on the linguistic research that had been carried out in the community, in March 2013 the Centro de la Diversidad Cultural (Center for Cultural Diversity) put together a proposal to UNESCO, “La tradición oral mapoyo y sus referentes simbólicos en el territorio ancestral” (Mapoyo oral tradition and its symbolic reference points within their ancestral territory; UNESCO 2014), which was incorporated into the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding in 2014. This nomination coincided with the successful culmination of the Mapoyo’s petition for a grant by the Venezuelan government for the title for the demarcation of habitat and lands in March 2013. As stated in the proposal: The oral tradition of the Mapoyo and its symbolic points of reference within the ancestral territory have been used as [a] vehicle for the self-­ acknowledgment and self-­identification of the community. It touches on the social structure, the knowledge, the cosmogony and the stories that have made these people legitimate participants in the birth of Venezuela as a Republic. [Section 1. Identification and Definition of the element] . . . Members of the Mapoyo community are aware of the fact that the viability of the symbolic elements associated with the territory is likely to be compromised. Even though this weakening is being fought in various ways, the element as a whole still faces serious risks. Urgent measures are therefore required to guarantee its transmission. The Mapoyo are seeking respect for their culture, fighting against stereotypes and trying to ­reaffirm their ethnicity. For them, their culture and heritage require urgent

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r­ ecognition and visibility, both nationwide and abroad. [Section 2. Need for urgent safeguarding] (UNESCO 2014, 4–6) Although the nomination to UNESCO placed emphasis on the Mapoyo oral tradition in the broadest sense, the coverage by the national press gave pre­ eminence to the history of the battle for independence and the sword and lance point that Bolívar gave to the Mapoyo. In the words of Alberto Crespo, the Venezuelan ambassador to UNESCO, the recognition of the nomination “is a great achievement for the revolution and the people . . . since they are a people who participated in our War of Independence, and for that reason they form part of our history” (qtd. in Meza and Menezes Ferreira 2016:102, our translation). It appears that the Mapoyo received greater recognition as protagonists in support of the independence movement than for their traditional worldview, language, productivity, openness to diverse neighboring groups, and endeavors to protect their lands and habitat, as described in the nomination. Reflections on Collaborative Archaeology and the Politics of Patrimony During 25 years of collaboration with the Mapoyo community and leaders, we have learned to appreciate their perseverance and unswerving dedication to the defense of their culture and territory, gained through centuries of negotiation with colonial and neocolonial powers. Throughout nearly 300 years of contact, the Mapoyo people have reached out on their own terms to the prevailing powers, with the knowledge that it is their intimate bond with their land that has permitted them to sustain a differentiated identity as an Indigenous people. We were only two of the many “experts” sought out in this process, as they pursued regional, national, and, finally, international venues to air their demands. We are enormously satisfied that the goal of our collaboration came to fruition in the form of the recognition of their lands and their incorporation on the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage (figure 8.4). A few words regarding the role of archaeology in this process are appropriate here. We were, first and foremost, guests in the Mapoyo community, and their priorities set our priorities. It was not our role to prove or disprove—through scientific dating techniques, DNA analyses, or other methods—whether the evidence the Mapoyo offered about their past was “authentic” or not (S. Jones 2010). We were aiding in the documentation of Mapoyo historicity, at their request; we respected their historicity as their authentic version of their past;

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Figure 8.4. Monolith erected by Juan Sandoval in the 1960s to mark the easternmost boundary of Mapoyo territory. Left to right: Rommy Durán, anthropologist; Kay Scaramelli, archaeologist; Alfredo Miranda, anthropology student; Anselmo Pino, friend of the community; José Secundino Reyes, Mapoyo language instructor; Capitán Argenis Bastidas, Mapoyo chief. Photograph by Franz Scaramelli.

and we gained immense knowledge about alternative forms of thinking and representing the past in the process. At the same time, as archaeologists we had confidence in the relative chronology that we constructed based on evidence recovered at the occupations that figure in Mapoyo oral history, and we were able to demonstrate that these places coincide with those cited in oral tradition and in documents and maps dating from colonial times up to the recent past (F. Scaramelli 2005; K. Scaramelli 2006). In this sense, we did not feel that our professional ethic was compromised in any way in the results presented. We refrained from assigning an ethnic designation to materials dating to early colonial and precontact times, since we cannot clearly demonstrate that the Mapoyo, as a people, can be correlated with any material remains that distinguish them from other similar and linguistically related groups that occupied the area (Tarble de Scaramelli and Scaramelli 2011). This is not to deny that

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they are clearly descended from precontact groups, but only to recognize that many transformations have taken place over time due to the catastrophic events related to the colonial enterprise, among which epidemics, forced relocation, and intermarriage with other groups played significant roles in the formation of the community known as the Mapoyo today. Our case study relates to broader concerns currently affecting the practice of archaeology and the definition of patrimony, on the one hand, and Indigenous imaginaries and expectations, on the other. Our collaboration with the Mapoyo raises questions about the role of material culture in the ongoing decolonizing process and the sociocultural milieu from which this process draws. Following Appadurai (1996), for whom modernity, rather than being conceived as a conventional divide between past and present, is better seen as uneven, self-­ conscious, and practiced, we have underlined the need to explore, in the context of our archaeological project, diverging politics of “pastness” as fundamental codes operating in the production of widely varying postcolonial subjectivities. We have discussed the manner in which a limited set of material processes and practices provides insight into the diverse claims of distinctiveness and authenticity, according to which different social factions, including Indigenous people, criollos, government agencies, and scientists, respond in different ways to ideals and values concerning history and the means of cultural control. Heritage here, rather than being attributed to the archaeological collection itself, is better understood as a process of the “subjective political negotiation of identity, place and memory” (Smith 2012, par. 2) and, as such, plays a key role in contested identity politics. In this case, the stakes were high, and heritage played an important role in the “politics of recognition” (Fraser 2000), in which identity claims were entangled with struggles for the distribution of land and access to the resources thereon. Here, value became entangled with ideologies explicitly designed to portray and legitimize the power and rationale of the Bolivarian Venezuelan state as a multiethnic entity proclaimed in the Constitution of 1999. The creation of the Murükuní Museum and the inclusion on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List underline the diverse mechanisms co-­opted by the Mapoyo to represent their place in the context of the Bolivarian revolution. They have been celebrated by the Venezuelan government as a forgotten patriotic force (Meza and Menezes Ferreira 2016) and have made use of material culture to promote a narrative of patrimony and sovereignty in their struggle for recognition as an Indigenous community with territorial rights in a region where they have been

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condemned for a “lack of authenticity” or mourned as a group on the verge of extinction. This is but one example of the ongoing struggle for authority between hegemonic and (neo)colonized groups, where material remains and historical narratives become the groundbreaking force of a contemporary “politics of difference,” animated by arguments of race, class, nation, and cultural critique. Another aspect of the process of cultural recognition as it has played out in the arena of the Mapoyo struggle for authentication and legitimization has to do with the long-­term consequences of the negotiations, particularly those with the national government. As in any negotiation, there are expectations on both sides. The revolutionary government under the direction of President Nicolás Maduro has expanded on Chávez’s plans for the New Geometry of Power. In February 2016, a massive development program was begun for the Arco Minero del Orinoco (Orinoco Mining Arch), which covers 114,000 square kilometers in the Bolívar state of Venezuela, with plans to develop ­large-­scale mining enterprises. In spite of vehement criticism of the potentially destructive effects on the environment and widespread rejection by numerous Indigenous organizations, the Mapoyo came out in support of the proposal, as posted online by Telesur on April 6, 2016, in “Venezuela: Arco minero es impulsado por comunidades indígenas” (Mining arch is driven by Indigenous communities). This action has the potential of isolating the Mapoyo from other Indigenous communities, which may consider them to have capitulated to the demands for loyalty by the current neocolonial regime in exchange for their land grant. The government has pressured the Mapoyo leaders and those of other groups that received their land titles in 2013 to defend the Bolivarian revolution. In an online article posted by Aporrea​.org on March 28, 2013, Jorge Arreaza, executive vice president of Venezuela at the time, claimed that if the right wing were to return to power, “in less than one year they would abolish all the rights gained by the Indigenous peoples” (our translation). Only time will reveal the eventual consequences of the Mapoyo’s collaboration with the Venezuelan government. On a final note, we would like to comment on another aspect of the authentication process aimed at cultural affirmation. In this chapter, we have referred to the tension that arose between traditional representations of time-­space and the exigencies of the bureaucratic process involved in claiming territorial rights. Both the recordation of Mapoyo oral history and the production of cartographic territorial maps resulted in a fixed vision of time-­space. What had been dynamic, fluid, fuzzy, and ambiguous renditions of time-­space were transformed into a

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static, crystallized form as a two-­dimensional map. Recorded stories were transcribed, reproduced, and used as lessons in the classroom and as captions for exhibits in the museum. Maps and written texts were increasingly used to represent traditional knowledge and story tracks, as the elders, who had delighted the younger generations with spontaneous renditions of tales related to different points on the landscape, aged and passed away. Archaeological materials that had once sat eroding on the surface of historically significant places, to be scrutinized by curious passersby, are now stored in boxes and displayed in the community museum. An unforeseen consequence of the struggle for official recognition and legitimization has been the undeniable effect of petrification. There is now an official version of Mapoyo history and territory, a “setting in stone” for future generations of the community. We can only hope that the younger generations continue to come up with new stories, to find their place with the old, and to narrate their ever-­changing and dynamic culture in innovative and creative ways, as their ancestors have done for centuries. Acknowledgments We would like to thank the editors, Heather Law Pezzarossi and Russell Sheptak, for their kind invitation to participate in this volume. We are ever grateful for the open welcome we received from the Mapoyo community of El Palomo in this collaborative effort, and we dedicate this chapter to our teachers and friends José Secundino Reyes (Candecho), Víctor Cañas, and Petra Reyes, who now share the secrets of the caves and hills where they lived and died. To Cacique Simón Bastidas, Capitán Argenis Bastidas, and other members of the Mapoyo community who persevered in their negotiations to obtain the grant for their lands, we express our deepest admiration and appreciation. Financial support for portions of our fieldwork was facilitated by grants from the Consejo de Desarrollo Científico y Humanístico of the Universidad Central de Venezuela through PI 05-­16-­4941-­2002 and PI 05-­00-­6753-­2007. Notes 1. When we refer to the Mapoyo, it should be stressed that we are using the term to refer to the people who identify themselves as Mapoyo in the present and to the “nation” referred to as Mapoyo or Mapoye in historical documents. We lived in the community of El Palomo for four months in 1994–1995 and during

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shorter field trips subsequently, while carrying out our fieldwork and mapping project. During these visits we worked closely with the political leaders, elders, teachers, and youth, and we shared our project goals and results in community meetings. Nonetheless, we do not claim to speak for the whole community, and we use the term “Mapoyo” as a shorthand reference while acknowledging that it does not adequately address the diversity of opinions and outlooks of the members of that community. 2. There is some discussion in the literature about the name and the original geographic location of the Mapoyo, partly due to the confusion of terms used to refer to distinct groups (Henley 1975, 1983). Although Henley maintains that Wánai was the ethnonym used by the group in 1975, by the time we began our work with the community in the late 1980s, only a few of the members recognized that name, and most referred to themselves as Mapoyo, as did their Indigenous and criollo neighbors. 3. At the time of Henley’s visit, no more than 10 individuals were fluent speakers of Mapoyo. Today, that number has dwindled dramatically. The Mapoyo undertook a revitalization project with the collaboration of the linguist María Eugenia Villalón to introduce the language in the elementary school at El Palomo. The Mapoyo language instructor, José Secundino Reyes, passed away in 2016. 4. This type of negotiation can be documented as far back as the accounts of independence, when the Mapoyo capitanes Alejo and Paulino Sandoval made a pact with the insurgents to participate in overthrowing the Spanish. It was the prevalent mode throughout the era of tonka bean extraction, when the capitán represented the community in the negotiations about the prices and quantities of the product to be traded (Torrealba 2011). 5. Bastidas tells of being offered money for the sword in the past and an attempt to expropriate it by a previous government. He claims that Chávez himself told him to protect the sword and never let it out of the hands of the community, since it was the “original document to their lands.”

CHAPTER NINE

Indigenous Refusal of Settler Colonialism in ­Nineteenth-­Century Central California A Case from the Tolay Valley, Sonoma County Peter A. Nelson

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y the 1870s, Coast Miwok people of California’s Marin and southern Sonoma Counties had experienced over half a century of land dispossession, labor exploitation, and violence through Spanish, Mexican, and early US settler colonialism. Settlers’ claims to Indigenous land, labor, and natural resources materialized in diverse ways throughout California’s history, and each spatiotemporal context for these claims had implications for how Indigenous people strategically navigated these situations. Archaeologists studying Spanish missions and Mexican ranchos in California have found both change and persistence in Indigenous practices, evident in the use of ­European-­manufactured goods—some of which were refashioned into Indigenous tool forms—and in the reoccupation of culturally significant sites as places of refuge (Panich and Schneider 2014; Schneider 2015b; Silliman 2009). In thinking about the ways that change and persistence operate materially in such colonial contexts, Stephen Silliman (2014) elaborates on Gerald Vizenor’s (1998, 1999, 2008) concept of survivance. Survivance renounces dominance and victimry and recognizes the agency of Indigenous people in these histories. Survivance, therefore, offers an analytical perspective in which change and persistence can be thought of as part of the same process rather than as dichotomous and mutually exclusive categories of analysis (Silliman 2005, 66, 2009, 2014). Applying the concept of survivance to Coast Miwok people negotiating settler colonialism in the nineteenth century, I discuss how changes in material practices and relationships to places maintained Indigenous relationships to these places rather than severed ties to them. In this chapter, I present an analy­ sis of Indigenous responses to a catastrophe that reverberated throughout the Coast Miwok and Pomo world in the 1870s. This incident involved the d ­ raining 169

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of Tolay Lake, a well-­known Native doctoring site that California Indians actively used up to the time it was emptied.1 This lake was drained to increase the amount of land available for the agricultural exploits of a ­German-­born settler named William Bihler. The waters of this lake contained implements of doctoring practices called charmstones as well as the sicknesses from thousands of years of patients. When the water was released from the lake, so were the sicknesses released into the world. California Indians physically distanced themselves from Tolay Lake until the mid-­to late twentieth century when Coast Miwok people visited Tolay to silently monitor collections of artifacts from the Cardozas, a family of Portuguese dairy farmers. As the landowners at that time, they displayed artifacts collected from their property during their annual fall festivals. In 2006, the Sonoma County Regional Parks Department purchased the property, which encompasses a great deal of land in the Tolay Valley, including the dry lake bed where Tolay Lake formerly existed. Citizens of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, a federally recognized tribe composed of descendants of Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo people from this area, were involved early in conversations with the Sonoma County Parks Department, and they helped finance the acquisition of this park. Since the purchase, the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria have been intimately involved in the planning, development, and restoration of Tolay as comanaged parkland. Tolay’s history is still very much unfolding as this chapter is being written, and it is characterized by a continuity of Coast Miwok engagement with this significant place, although views have shifted on how to appropriately and safely engage with the valley after the lake and surrounding landscape were physically altered by settlers. To understand the departure of Coast Miwok people from Tolay Lake when it was drained in the 1870s and the return of Coast Miwok people in efforts to revitalize the place after more than a century of separation from it requires discussion of survivance, territoriality in the context of settler colonialism, and Indigenous refusals of settler claims to territory. This chapter focuses on ­settler colonialism, because the majority of the data and discussion refers to the American period in contrast to the Spanish and Mexican periods. However, other forms of colonialism are included when I talk about the earlier periods. In discussing the themes of change and persistence, territoriality, and refusal, I present an analysis of historic and archaeological data from the Tolay Valley to illustrate how Coast Miwok people changed and adapted in order to cope with times of adversity while still maintaining and reaffirming their cultural

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i­dentities and refusing to take on settler ideologies about land and how to engage with it. Colonialism and Settler Colonialism in Central California, 1776–1873 Although the first interactions between Europeans and Native Americans on the coast of California were ­short-­term episodes of contact between people from very different cultures, the subsequent incursions into California by Spanish, Mexican, Russian, American, and other foreign people are part of a long settler occupation of Indigenous lands that continues into the present day. As Silliman (2009, 59–62) discusses, many of the early studies in the archaeology of colonialism focused primarily on the first instances of culture contact rather than on long-­term entanglements and portrayed colonial histories as the unidirectional acculturation of Indigenous peoples into settler societies. More recently, archaeologists studying colonialism in North America have begun to recognize the long-­term nature of the interactions between Indigenous and non-­Indigenous peoples of the Americas and the unequal distribution of power and the processes of racialization in these relationships, which separate modern colonialism from other forms of cultural entanglement (Cusick 1998; Gosden 2004; Silliman 2005, 2009). Developments in the archaeology of colonialism toward viewing these interactions as long-­term entanglements complement how scholars of settler colonialism conceive of these structures. Stephen Silliman (2005, 62), an archaeologist studying colonialism in California and Connecticut, states that “colonialism is not about an event but, rather, about processes of cultural entanglement, whether voluntary or not, in a broader world economy and system of labor, religious conversion, exploitation, material value, settlement, and sometimes imperialism.” This statement is similar to how Patrick Wolfe (1999, 2006, 390) conceives of settler colonialism as “a structure rather than an event.” Eve Tuck and Wayne Yang (2012, 5) further define the distinction between settler colonialism and other forms of colonialism: “settlers come with the intention of making a new home on the land, a homemaking that insists on settler sovereignty over all things in their new domain.” Settlers cement their claims to Indigenous land and make a place their home by simultaneously removing Indigenous people and exploiting chattel slave labor, which establishes a triad of ­settler-­Native-­slave (Tuck and Yang 2012, 6). In many regions of North America, the entangled colonial triad of ­settler-­Native-­slave is composed of

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mutually exclusive categories that are racially structured as white settlers, red / ​ brown Natives, and black slaves. However, in places such as California, Mexico, the US Southwest, and Canada, settlers used Indigenous people as chattel slaves or cheap labor in the absence of another labor force (Neeganagwedgin 2012; Resendez 2016; Tuck and Yang 2012, 6). In California, Spanish colonialism through the process of missionization focused on the conversion of Indigenous people to Christianity and the exploitation of these converts. Even though there was population decline and poor conditions for California Indians in the missions, “without Indians alive, working, and undergoing a process of civilization, the conquest had lost its object and could even be deemed a failure. In this regard, the views of California missionaries and those elsewhere in the Spanish Borderlands differed sharply from those of contemporary Anglo-­Americans during and after the colonial period” (Hackel 2005, 122). Drawing on records spanning the entire Spanish period in central California between the establishment of the first mission in the San Francisco Bay area in 1776 and the secularization of the missions in 1834, Spanish missionaries baptized 2,828 Coast Miwok people, most of whom were moved to mission quadrangles to perform labor (Milliken 2009, 5). This removal left much of Marin and southern Sonoma Counties depopulated except for small groups that managed to escape the clutches of the mission fathers or individuals who received permission to leave the missions (Milliken 2009). After Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821 and secularized the missions in 1834, religious conversions of the Indigenous population were deemphasized, and the exploitation of Native labor became a primary support for Mexican economic activities in California. Secularization also brought about claims to “surplus” mission lands that were originally promised to California Indians, and millions of acres of land grants were awarded to Mexican citizens (Hackel 2005, 388). To support the seizure of land and to ensure a constant supply of laborers for ranching operations, military leaders such as Mariano Vallejo executed ­slave-­raiding operations, which often involved separating children from parents and men from women. These acts hindered biological reproduction and the transfer of cultural knowledge from one generation to the next and contributed to the genocide of California Indians (Madley 2016, 63). Though the Spanish and Mexicans in California had very different priorities than American settlers after the United States annexed California in 1846, the structures and policies of the earlier periods set precedents for US settler colonialism and interactions with California Indians.

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Hixson (2013, 1) states that “American history is the most sweeping, most violent, and most significant example of settler colonialism in world history.” The early American period in California (1846–1873) is one of the most harrowing examples of this history of violence. Vagrancy laws maintained California Indians’ peonage to landowning settlers, who exploited their unfree labor, and ­state-­funded militias participated in “expeditions against the Indians” that directly contributed to increased violence toward California Indians and declines in the Indigenous population (Johnston-­Dodds 2002, 15–19; Madley 2016). Scholarship (Field 1993; Lindsay 2012; Madley 2016) shows that individual acts of violence as well as California state and US federal governmental policies impacted the livelihood of California Indians and also satisfy the criteria for being classified as genocide, as defined by the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. California’s early legislature also denied Native peoples the right to reservation lands afforded to most other tribes in the United States by convincing the federal government not to ratify the 18 treaties with California tribes due to the perceived future conflicts these rights to land would bring about between miners and Native peoples. Thus, US settlers much more than the Spanish or Mexican settlers before them focused their efforts on removing and exterminating California Indians, even though Native peoples were at times needed for labor. Territoriality, Hinterlands, and Refusal of Settler Conceptions of Space Applied to the early American period of California (c. 1846–1873), settler colonialism is particularly apt for describing the structural backdrop for interactions between Indigenous peoples and non-­Indigenous settlers. As Patrick Wolfe (2006, 387–88) notes, settler colonialism is not invariably genocidal, but it is inherently eliminatory, the primary motive for which “is not race (or religion, ethnicity, grade of civilization, etc.) but access to territory. Territoriality is settler colonialism’s specific, irreducible element.” What changes when scholars consider that territoriality or access to the territory of Indigenous peoples—not labor, violence, racism, or genocide—is settler colonialism’s defining characteristic? And how does the analysis of histories change when scholars take into account how Indigenous peoples conceive of the broader landscapes of their homelands rather than how colonialism draws these territories on a map? Some contributions to the archaeology of colonialism have reoriented the focus of investigation from colonial centers to the areas beyond colonial i­ nfluence

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to investigate how Indigenous peoples used hinterlands such as refuge sites, villages, hunting and gathering areas, ancient sites, and other meaningful places “to navigate their own traditions and the colonial world thrust upon them” (Schneider 2015b, 708–9). This shift to studying sites in the hinterlands of colonial institutions is part of an effort to address the inadequacies in studies across the Spanish borderlands and to reconsider how colonial centers, frontiers, and Indigenous homelands are defined and experienced (Lightfoot, Martinez, and Schiff 1998; Panich and Schneider 2014; Silliman 2004, 2005, 2009). Many of these studies highlight Indigenous agency and resistance despite hardship and coercive or oppressive colonial forces structuring Indigenous peoples’ ­environments. Tsim Schneider (2015b, 696) acknowledges that there are many responses to colonialism, and these forms should not be understood simply as colonial domination and gain versus Indigenous resistance and loss. The failure to see other possibilities for Indigenous responses to colonial encounters obfuscates human agency and hinders the ability of archaeologists to understand “some sites as places of ongoing commemoration and significance” (Schneider 2015b, 697). In his ­resistance-­memory-­refuge framework, Schneider (2015b, 697) reiterates the importance of places on the landscape where people do not visit or to which they return after long periods of “abandonment.” Certain sites on the landscape, such as Mount Tamalpais (tamal pais means “coast” or “west mountain” in the Marin dialect of the Coast Miwok language), are places that Coast Miwok and other California Indian peoples approach cautiously or do not visit at all because they are sacred. Some of these places have stories and knowledge attached to them and serve as cosmological and ontological texts for local Indigenous people, aiding in structuring and making sense of the world (Sarris 2003). These are places that boundaries cannot encapsulate, intangibles that cannot be bought or sold, persisting connections that refuse any other way of being in the world. Indigenous places do not exist within or outside of colonial centers or hinterlands, and they are not crosscut by borders that limit their potency; they exist instead of these colonial constructs. “Existing instead of ” is a refusal to acknowledge—or rather a ­counter-­refusal of—terra nullius and settler understandings and ways of being in the world. This is not to say that the act of refusing wishes away the settlers’ stone walls and physically bounded spaces or their violent reprisals for not adhering to settler constraints on Indigenous

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lifeways. There are serious material implications for refusing settler claims, but Indigenous people refuse them all the same because refusal is generative and makes space for Indigenous futurities in which decolonization or the return of stolen land is physically possible and is not only a metaphor (Tuck and Yang 2012). Indigenous refusals do not acquiesce to settler moves to innocence or concessions in exchange for land, because this would compromise the goal of decolonization. In some cases, California Indians resisted settler violence, as in the cases of Captain Jack and Modoc warriors opposing the US Army and militias from California and Oregon in northeastern California in 1873 and, earlier, Sati­yomi opposition to Captains Salvador and Mariano Vallejo and Mexican soldiers in the Napa Valley in the 1830s and 1840s (Heizer 1953, 229–31; Madley 2016, 337). These acts, like the X marks on the 18 unratified California treaties, were responses to material aggression and to settler threats on the lives and sovereignty of California Indian tribes. In contrast to resistance, whether forced or willful, however, refusals of affiliations, identities, and relationships stake “claims to the sociality that underlies all relationships, including political ones. In that sense . . . refusal [is] genealogically linked to resistance, but not . . . one and the same” (McGranahan 2016, 320). Refusal is generative, social, affiliative, and willful (McGranahan 2016, 322–23). Resistance overestimates the place of the state, whereas refusal “points to the presumptive falsity of contractual thinking” (Simpson 2016, 330) and reconfigures social and political relations as an aspirational move toward change that is altogether configured differently (McGranahan 2016, 323). The Persistence of Indigenous Practices in the Tolay Valley Tolay Lake is part of a chain of lakes that stretch from San Pablo Bay to Parson’s Meadow above Santa Rosa, California. Each of these lakes serves a specific ceremonial purpose for Indigenous peoples of the region and has stories associated with it (Sarris 2011, 3–4). Tolay is the last lake in this series before reaching San Pablo Bay, and its purpose was to retain the sicknesses that Indigenous doctors extracted from their patients. The doctors used implements called charmstones, which served as the receptacles for the sicknesses and needed to be drowned so that the sicknesses would not escape into the world. Charmstones were fashioned mainly from basalt, granite, or steatite raw materials and made smooth

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by grinding them against harder rocks until they took one of a variety of forms, the most common being a plummet or spindle shape about 10–20 cm in length (Elsasser and Rhode 1996). No place in central California is known to have contained more charmstones than Tolay Lake. A total of nearly 2,000 charmstones from the lake are housed in the private collections of the Cardoza family and in the public collections of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History and National Museum of the American Indian, the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California in Berkeley, and the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Many more charmstones have been collected from the lake by visitors to the valley, and Cherney (1984, 75) estimates .

Figure 9.1. The Tolay Valley and surrounding area from A. B. Bowers, Map of Sonoma County, California (1867), showing J. B. Lewis’s property boundary.

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that there may have been as many as 15,000 charmstones removed from Tolay since the nineteenth century. Despite the removal of Coast Miwok people from their traditional homelands, including the Tolay Valley, by 1822, many Coast Miwok and other California Indians were brought back into Sonoma and Marin Counties to provide labor for Mexican ranchos (Milliken 2009; Silliman 2004). One was Mariano Vallejo’s Rancho Petaluma, which was established in 1834 and encompassed 66,600 acres of land, including the entirety of the Tolay Valley. The reasons that California Indians participated in ranch labor were complex and varied and often involved one or more of the following: the passage of laws that required Native people to perform labor; the indebtedness of Native people to landowners; the use of force and violence against Native people to make them work; labor in exchange for military protection; and opportunities for trade and social interactions facilitated by labor (Silliman 2004, 28–30). Considering the latter reason, some former mission Indians may have volunteered to work on Vallejo’s rancho because it offered the Coast Miwok who had a connection to that place or who lived in the valley before missionization a chance to reconnect with Tolay as a place of refuge from their lives of labor at missions or other ranchos. This situation is especially likely given that by 1834 the original inhabitants of the valley had only been separated from Tolay for a maximum of 23 years (if they were among the first from this valley to be baptized in 1811) or a minimum of 16 years (if they were among the last to be baptized in 1818). Some Coast Miwok may have even received permission to visit Tolay while still laboring in the missions between 1811 and 1834. Attesting to the continuity of Coast Miwok connections to Tolay in the mid-­ to late 1800s, J. B. Lewis, an American settler who lived just to the northwest of the Tolay Valley, observed: “When I came here in the early [eighteen] fifties, there used [to be] large numbers of Indians [who would] go by my ranch in the fall, down to the creek to catch sturgeon and dry them, and they always went back by the way of the lagoon and stayed a day or two and had some kind of a pow-­ wow. After the lagoon was drained, they never came back.” Mr. Lewis, on arrival in California, [had] heard that a numerous tribe living near Petaluma was practically exterminated by some contagious disease. He believed that the Indians returning annually to hold ceremonies at the lagoon belonged to this tribe. (Moorehead 1910, 109)

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Considering Lewis’s observations in the 1850s, oral tribal knowledge about practices associated with Tolay Lake, and Catherine Bell’s (1992, 89) concept of ritualization as a practice that differentiates itself from other practices, Tolay can be considered a ritualized landscape, and the activities that Lewis described as a “pow-­wow” can be considered ritualized, sacred, or ceremonial practices. The practice of holding a ceremony at the lake is differentiated from subsistence practices in Lewis’s own description of going to the lake to “stay”—it was a place with charmstones and “never any fish” (Lewis 1900, 3)—as opposed to the activity of going to acquire fish and other resources elsewhere in the valley and bringing them back out of the valley without staying. Lewis’s statements also imply that the regimes of Coast Miwok activities, which ranged through his property either to the Petaluma River or to San Pablo Bay for sturgeon and other resources in the surrounding landscape, and the ritualized activities at Tolay Lake were routine and seasonal (i.e., they took place throughout the 1850s and 1860s during the fall). Even if these Coast Miwok people only stayed in the Tolay Valley for short periods of time, the routine nature of their activities produced material traces. Material Traces of Continued Indigenous Engagement with Tolay Material traces of Coast Miwok activities during the nineteenth century have been identified at two sites in the Tolay Valley: one at the north end, investigated by George Phebus (1965, 1990) in the 1960s, and the other at the south end, which I investigated in 2013 and 2014. For the purposes of this chapter, the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria requested that no names of sites and no precise site locations be disclosed, because these places are located in a public park, and the information could be used by looters to damage the sites. I therefore treat them as though they are human subjects and redact their names so as to not compromise their safety. The exception to this is Tolay Lake, the location and archaeological significance of which are well known to the public, but this site is also much more directly under the surveillance of the Sonoma County Regional Parks Department than some of the other sites in the valley. Thus, I identify the three sites considered here as Tolay Lake, the northern site, and the southern site. Archaeological materials at both the northern and southern sites include precontact and postcontact materials such as midden soils, fire-­cracked rock, lithic debitage, faunal bone, shellfish, charred botanicals, metal nails, ceramics, and bottle glass. While many of the artifacts cannot be dated with precision to

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exclusively the Spanish period (1776–1821), the Mexican period (1821–1846), or the American period (1846–1920s), there are a few notable objects that offer clues about a more precise range within one of these periods or a sense of Coast Miwok’s use of these sites generally throughout these periods. One such object at the northern site is a fragment of s­ hell-­edged earthenware with blue painting that dates to between the 1840s and the 1860s. Phebus (1965) also reported that some historic artifacts were found in situ in excavated contexts within the midden of the northern site, which he believed was evidence for California Indians’ use and occupation of the site in historic times. The historic occupation at the southern site seems to date a little later into the American period than the northern site does. A champagne finish and neck of a ­mouth-­blown bottle collected on the surface of this site dates somewhere between 1880 and 1920. Also, a ­surface-­collected liquor bottle base with an emblem produced by the San Francisco and Pacific Glass Works dates to between 1876 and 1902. California Indians’ use of this site in historic times is suggested by a piece of aqua glass reworked into a scraper with three concave working surfaces similar to those for scraping the bark off long, narrow sticks of willow or dogbane for basket weaving or cordage. Another flaked glass object found at the site was a brown bottle bottom reworked into a burin etcher or perforator tool. Unfortunately, these two flaked glass objects do not have any chronologically diagnostic markings. The northwestern portion of the southern site also contained a concentration of ­machine-­cut nails and flat glass that seems to indicate some kind of a structure, probably without a subsurface foundation since geophysics and excavation did not identify traces of any such historic features. The presence of flaked glass and what it suggests of other historic materials at the southern site, including the possibility of a building or structure, indicates that Coast Miwok people used at least some of these new ­European-­manufactured goods for traditional purposes. They reaffirmed their connections to places of significance and refuge as well as actively supplemented their diets, tool sets, and lives with Indigenous resources from the valley and beyond, just as their ancestors had since time immemorial. Boundaries, Refusal, and Survivance In order to claim territory, demarcate property, and control cattle, Euro-­American settlers erected physical stone fence lines throughout Marin and Sonoma Counties and in so doing refused to acknowledge Indigenous spaces and places.

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Later examples (after c. 1880s) of these walls were probably built by Chinese laborers (Chan 1986, 242), but many of the earlier walls, like those on Tomales Point (Wing, Iida, and Wearing 2015) and possibly some in the Tolay Valley (Jones 2009), were constructed by California Indian people though not directly attributed to the labor of any particular group in the archaeological assessment reports. A number of stone walls still meander across the hills of the Tolay Valley, demarcating space that matches property lines on historic maps from 1867, 1877, and 1898 (Bowers 1867; Reynolds and Proctor 1898; Thos. H. Thompson and Co. 1877). But Coast Miwok people refused to acknowledge the physical colonial boundaries that kept them from engaging with the Tolay Valley as a place of significance and a place of refuge. Materially, the traces of these refusals of settler boundaries reveal a story of Coast Miwok survivance and engagement with significant places despite the risks associated with crossing the boundaries. California Indians in the mid-­to late nineteenth century who were caught “idle” on the lands claimed by Euro-­American settlers could be subjected to imprisonment or de facto slavery through various “vagrant laws” enacted by the California state government (Johnston-­Dodds 2002; Madley 2016). California Indians risked life and limb to persist in their homelands, and physical violence and enslavement were not always enough to stop Indigenous people from engaging with their territory. This is not to say that California Indian people were borderless or had no sense of boundaries; Indigenous borders were the ones that were meaningful to Coast Miwok people. Refusing settler control and use of space by hopping a fence or two reaffirmed that Coast Miwok territory was Coast Miwok territory even if settlers grew grapes on the hillsides, herded cattle in the valleys, and built houses, barns, and distilleries on sacred sites, all for their own settler claims and gains. Refusing to see the settlers’ boundaries within Coast Miwok territory then and now keeps the possibilities open for a greater futurity for Coast Miwok people and Tolay. Catastrophic Change and Refusal: An Indigenous Reworking of Relationships to Tolay Returning to J. B. Lewis’s observations of Coast Miwok people’s engagement with Tolay Lake during the mid-­nineteenth century, he noted that “after the lagoon was drained, they never came back” (Moorehead 1910, 109). When did this event occur, and what did it mean for California Indians as well as settlers

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in this area? In the mid-­nineteenth century, the land in the Tolay Valley was sold to William Bihler, who raised horses there and grew potatoes, grapes, and other crops. Like Vallejo before him, Bihler probably used California Indians as seasonal laborers in addition to a few Chinese laborers, who are recorded in census records and newspaper articles as working in his household and in his fields (Daily Alta California 1884; US Federal Census 1860, 1870). Bihler was responsible for removing a barrier at the southern end of Tolay Lake and releasing all of its waters down the valley to San Pablo Bay. Bihler drained the lake in order to expand the amount of land available in the valley bottom for agriculture and viticulture. According to the superintendent of the property, this event took place in 1870 (Elsasser 1955, 30; Meredith 1900, 282; Thompson 1877, 52). Even though the lake was drained in 1870, it was still represented on maps of Sonoma County as a body of water until 1898, when it was shown as a wetlands (Bowers 1867; Reynolds and Proctor 1898; Thos. H. Thompson and Co. 1877). The maps may have lagged in updating the status of the lake because later surveyors may have used the maps of previous surveyors as references for their renderings. Or perhaps another explanation is that Tolay Lake filled with water seasonally until the creek was channelized in the early 1900s, as can be seen on the 1914 USGS 15-­minute map (US Geological Survey 1914). Regardless of whether there was some portion of the lake that filled and dried up seasonally after 1870, the act of draining the lake was a catastrophic event for Coast Miwok and other Indigenous people in the area. The water had protected people from all of the charmstones holding sicknesses from thousands of years of doctoring, and when the lake was drained, these sicknesses were released into the world. On the surface, the draining of Tolay looks like a zero-­sum game, a complete loss, a complete destruction, a conquest. But these understandings of this situation frame it as one of dominance and resistance where the resistance has failed. It is true that California Indian people were horrified by the denigration of such a sacred place. It is also true that the initial decision to “never come back” to Tolay was an effort to preserve health and well-­being in a potentially hazardous situation. But these actions also reflected an understanding of the draining of Tolay through an Indigenous ontology and way of being in the world. The event dictated that California Indians should physically distance themselves from Tolay, and it changed how future generations of California Indians would engage with this place. This did not mean that the area would be conceived of as off-­limits forever, but it

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Table 9.1. Numbers of California Indians and Chinese Immigrants Recorded in the Federal Census for Vallejo Township, Sonoma County, California Year

California Indians

Chinese

1860

6

0

1870

0

20

1880

2

59

did merit caution and distance, and time needed to pass before they returned. The need to leave Tolay for a period before reengaging with it is a story of ­survivance and an instance of change as persistence. Redefining the bounds of what was safe for California Indians was an act that sought to protect and preserve Native lives and community identity. Staying and persisting at Tolay would have meant engaging with this sacred place like an agriculturalist settler and would have brought negative changes to the health of those who did not leave. Temporary Native Absence and Chinese Labor at Tolay For William Bihler, the refusal of Native American people to work in his fields meant a greater reliance on Chinese laborers, who came to Napa and Sonoma Counties in much larger numbers in the 1870s from California’s mines (Chan 1986; US Federal Census 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880). Census records from this time show that while there were some California Indians present in Vallejo Township, Sonoma County, in 1860, in 1870 and thereafter few Native people were living in the township. Chinese laborers, on the other hand, show the reverse pattern: there were no Chinese people in Vallejo Township before 1870 but increasing numbers in 1870 and even more in 1880. The Chinese laborers were not aware of the Indigenous taboos about the drained lake area and the dangers of the sicknesses in the charmstones. The histories and experiences of Chinese immigrants are important in exploring the intricacies of how settler colonialism operated in rural central California in the early American period. However, the issues at stake for California Indians compared to Chinese and other immigrants are incommensurate, because the former peoples were concerned about access and ongoing

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connection to the land that was stolen from them, whereas the latter peoples sought opportunities to improve their lives and make themselves equal to white settlers. That being said, many Chinese laborers suffered abuses at the hands of white settlers, and one short example merits space in this narrative about settler colonialism in the Tolay Valley. Just a few years before William Bihler sold his property to James G. Fair in the late 1880s (Johnson and Eastman 1995), another disturbing event occurred in the fields of Bihler’s farm. On October 16, 1884, there was a dispute between Bihler’s white foreman, Charles Fresh, and fifteen Chinese laborers who were picking grapes in the fields (Daily Alta California 1884). Fresh insisted that the picking had to be done in a certain way, which the laborers disregarded. In response, Fresh threatened to terminate the employment of the workers and remove them from the property. Feeling defenseless, the laborers picked up grape sticks and refused to stand down. Rather than reason with them, Fresh pulled out a gun and shot two of the men. The other workers beat Fresh with their sticks in an effort to protect themselves, after which some neighboring white landowners chased them off. All of the Chinese laborers were arrested and put in jail, whereas there was no punishment for the white foreman, Charles Fresh, who wounded and possibly murdered two men in cold blood. This story is a striking illustration of how racist tensions were growing between white settlers and Chinese immigrants and of the poor working conditions on the early “gentlemen farms” of Sonoma County. Even though the lake bed itself was taboo to visit for a while after it was drained, Coast Miwok people continued to visit other sites in the Tolay Valley and continued to tell stories about the lake (Sarris 2011). Stories about the Tolay Valley and Tolay Lake have been maintained in the oral traditions of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria into the present day. In the second half of the twentieth century, some Coast Miwok people visited the Tolay Valley during the Cardoza family’s fall festivals, and they continued to monitor the status of old village sites, sacred places, and tribal cultural resources in the valley, even though there were few laws at the time giving Indigenous people the right to protect and preserve cultural resources. In 2005, the Sonoma County Regional Parks Department purchased the Cardoza family’s land in the Tolay Valley to establish Tolay Lake Regional Park. The Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria took this as an opportunity to work in collaboration with the Sonoma County Parks Department to develop plans for comanaging the Tolay Valley as a park. Ongoing tribal involvement in the development and management of the park

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affirms once again that Tolay is a significant place to current tribal citizens, some of whom are direct descendants of people who lived in the Tolay Valley region before contact with Western colonial nations. Conclusion Tolay Lake is a sacred place to Coast Miwok and other California Indian people that originally served as a site where doctors healed the sick. Coast Miwok people affirmed their connections to it throughout the Spanish, Mexican, and American periods as a place of significance and a place of refuge. Coast Miwok people did not engage in active resistance at Tolay nor attack settlers to resist their claims to land in the valley. Rather, through a process of refusing to acknowledge settler claims to their territory and through their conceptions of how they used the space, Coast Miwok affirmed their connections to an Indigenous world with Indigenous boundaries instead of an Indigenous place within or outside of the boundaries defined by colonial institutions. Stories of Coast Miwok survivance and refusal of settler territoriality reaffirm Indigenous affiliations of family and territory and maintain a Coast Miwok futurity and ­hopefulness for what Tolay and other places in Coast Miwok territory are and can be. The draining of Tolay Lake was a catastrophic event in a long history of ­settler colonialism that continues to the present day, but this event should not be viewed as a complete loss, a conquest, or a failed resistance. Even though Coast Miwok people had to distance themselves from Tolay after 1870 in order to maintain their well-­being, they and other California Indians curated stories of survivance about their experiences in the early American period and what happened to the lake. That is to say, no matter how the landscape itself is changed or how Coast Miwok people have had to adapt and change their own practices for the well-­being of their families, their connections to sacred places and to their homelands are never severed. Refusal and survivance offer frameworks for thinking about Indigenous relationships with places and the futurity of Native communities and territories. These spaces are healing and hopeful. Today, through the work of the tribal council, committees, and individual citizens of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo people are collaborating with the Sonoma County Regional Parks Department to comanage, restore, and protect Tolay as parkland. Though this

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is not full decolonization or a return of land, it is a start, a place to begin to heal for future generations. Notes 1. In this chapter, I use the term “California Indians” to refer to Native American peoples within the modern boundaries of the state of California. I have been involved in the California Indian Conference, where this language is used regularly. I acknowledge that the word “Indian” has been used in the past by non-­ Native people to racialize and essentialize all Indigenous peoples in the United States. As a Native person, I use the term as part of a reclaiming project.

CHAPTER TEN

Materialities and Practices of Persistence Indigenous Survivance in the Face of Settler Societies Rosemary A. Joyce

T

he archaeology of the Americas has suffered from the unintended consequences of a division of labor between those whose work concerns the continuing traditions of the Native American peoples who occupied North, Central, and South America and those whose work is structured around the new institutions that arose after European nations began to colonize these territories. Conceived of as, respectively, prehistoric and historical archaeologies, these practices segmented continuous histories in ways that often led to the assignment of historical agency almost exclusively to Europeans acting in the “historical” period, with a kind of passive form of being attributed to Indigenous people in the “prehistoric” period. This artificial division has been roundly critiqued by archaeologists working throughout the hemisphere (Schmidt and Mrozowski 2014). Yet it has left a legacy of archaeological accounts in which Indigenous people living in the “historic” period occupy an uncomfortable position: they are viewed as anomalous, as subject to change imposed from without that somehow breaks their connections to their “prehistoric” predecessors. The authenticity of Indigenous cultures becomes a question (Cipolla 2013). And as Jane Anderson shows, questioning authenticity risks the dispossession of Indigenous peoples. Demonstrating authenticity “demands a specific ‘performance’ of legal subjectivity” (Anderson 2005, 350). This makes archaeology consequential in ways that go beyond academic debates about chronology, identity, and causality. Archaeology may be recruited for the assessment of the authenticity of performances of “legal subjectivity,” even against the discipline’s will and in violation of its intentions (Martindale 2014). In response, archaeologists around the globe have invested themselves in new modes of practice, in projects developed under the tenets of community-­ engaged scholarship (Atalay 2012; Martindale et al. 2016) and sometimes ­explicitly 187

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rooted in decolonizing methodologies of Indigenous archaeology (Atalay 2006a). There are now abundant examples of archaeologists doing research in new ways, which are intended to reduce the potential that archaeology will be used against Indigenous communities and to ensure that the exploration of material histories will be of value for community members. The contributors to this volume take on a complementary task, attending to the ways that archaeological knowledge is represented and to the power that writing has to directly question the demand that an authentic identity be unchanged from an imagined prehistoric past. They foreground the actions taken by members of Indigenous communities that persisted long after narratives of colonization might have predicted their disappearance. In these histories of both the more recent past and the long term, rather than emphasizing moments of first engagement with European powers, the authors exemplify how continuity is a historical product of change. This shared commitment aligns these authors closely with Gerald Vizenor’s (1999, 2008) powerful discussion of the concept of survivance (see also Silliman 2014). Vizenor asserts that survivance is the active work of people against attempts to subordinate them. Unlike the idea of resistance, survivance can unfold in ways that work through and with the new opportunities provided by the colonial and nationalist situations in which Indigenous peoples of the Americas have participated for more than five hundred years. The contributors to this volume offer a number of innovative perspectives that extend or embody specifics of how the work of survivance proceeded, adding an analytic vocabulary of strategies and tactics, refusal and refuge, movement and territorialization, the construction of Indigenous archives and historicities, emergence and entanglement. It is also noteworthy that this volume presents perspectives informed by the full scope of hemispheric indigeneity through the inclusion of studies of North, Central, and South American histories. Fernando Coronil (2013) in a critical discussion of postcolonial studies has suggested that attention to Latin America could “recast” the relationship of colonialism and modernity due to the time depth of the societies in regions colonized by Spain. This can lead to attention to distinctions between what he saw as colonial, national, and global imperialisms, which can be confounded when all settler societies are approached as equivalent. The contributions to this volume work across and through this continuum. In doing so, they also participate in a wider movement in which Native American studies is presently engaged, which considers the differences

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between Indigenous histories in areas colonized by Spain and those colonized by other European powers. Colonial, National, Global, Cosmopolitan Four chapters consider situations where the Spanish colonial enterprise set the original conditions of survivance; each case demonstrates that the work of survivance proceeded into the succeeding nationalist (or republican) and even contemporary globalist frameworks. Russell Sheptak traces the continuous identity of one Indigenous community that persisted from before colonization through to the nineteenth century. In his Honduran example, it was only under the deliberate policies of republican national authorities that memory of Indigenous autonomy was obscured. Writing about neighboring Guatemala, part of the same colonial administrative province, Guido Pezzarossi offers a vista in which the continuity of indigenous identity into the republican and globalist present is more evident. In large part, the difference between these two long-­ term cases of Indigenous survivance reflects the way that the nations of Guatemala and Honduras figured their identities as rooted in an Indigenous past as they moved to be recognized in a global community. In both cases, nationalism projected through the recognition of cultural heritage sites has emphasized places associated with the Classic Maya (Joyce 2005a). Maya-­speaking people of the highlands of Guatemala are recognized in Guatemalan nationalist discourse as visible tokens of national authenticity, while the people of Masca, who Sheptak argues were Lenca-­speaking, are refigured as peasants whose mobility and capability in navigating Spanish law are evidence of their inauthenticity. Lee Panich’s study of Native Americans in what today is California may seem radically different from these Central American cases. So it is worth reiterating that the religious missions that re-­created the identities of many California Indians and interfered with their recognition by the United States, where these people currently live, were Spanish colonial institutions of the same kind as those operating in Central America. Their time depth in California is much shorter than in the colonial provinces of Guatemala and Honduras, but the way missions worked in these three areas can be considered as supporting the same colonial enterprise under differing nationalist and global futures. In all three cases, the preservation of Indigenous practices, even as people adopted Spanish Catholicism as part of their spiritual lives, and the maintenance of networks to obtain materials outside of the Spanish economy, such as obsidian, marine

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shells, and cacao, are evidence of common ways Indigenous people worked the Spanish regime for survivance. The Indigenous Mapoyo of Venezuela discussed by Kay Scaramelli and Franz Scaramelli at first glance share much of the same Spanish colonial framework, including the experience of a period of missionization. In this case, however, the use of colonial documents by the Mapoyo forms part of the tactics that allow survivance in the global present. They are perhaps the most potent actors of these four related cases of survivance under Spanish colonial and succeeding nationalist societies. Archaeology’s emphasis on the materiality of practices allows us to see how everyday actions persisted in these four locations in ways not captured by documentary history alone. The archaeological sensibility allows these authors to view colonial documents themselves as materialities of practice, so that for the Mapoyo and the people of Masca the production, conservation, and deployment of Spanish documents provides a tactical advantage in movement through a changing landscape. In the North American cases, there are two different ways that survivance played out in areas where the history of coloniality is shallower and where there was no explicit ideology of reconstitution and the continuity of Indigenous communities, like that represented by Spanish imperial policy governing pueblos de indios. Two of these cases trace trajectories linking the national and the global. Two others forcefully confront us with Indigenous histories in which even the concept of survivance may assume too much reaction to properly account for how Indigenous communities strategically engaged with changes in the spectrum of peoples in their geographic regions. While the changing engagement of Coast Miwok people with Tolay Lake has taken place in a region previously under Spanish colonial control, the events Peter Nelson describes occurred during the period of US nationalism and have extended into the contemporary epoch of globalization. His narrative traces the way that Indigenous spatiality has been maintained despite the imposition of new land management practices, through the refusal of reterritorialization. Echoing Audra Simpson’s (2014) key discussion of refusal, Nelson shows that refusal applies to the Coast Miwok people’s continued concern about Tolay Lake even after it was drained, when they chose not to remain in close proximity to what now was a source of disease. Heather Law Pezzarossi undertakes the most radical approach in this volume, one that is distinguished by its attention to the ways that archaeological practice creates stratified, orderly histories. She begins with the excavated site

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itself and, rather than treat it as a series of moments, acknowledges the complexity of its juxtapositions of materials of different ages and kinds. She extends her previous analyses of “European” materials that can be viewed as constituents of the continued and changing practices of basketmaking by mobile Nipmuc people (Law Pezzarossi 2014). To this she adds a consideration of how things of older age might have been seen by Nipmuc people as part of their own histories of change and continuity. Her contribution starts with the global and works backward to the nationalist. While at first glance very different, Kurt Jordan and Peregrine ­Gerard-­Little’s discussion of Haudenosaunee political economies is consistent with Nelson’s and Law Pezzarossi’s insistence on Indigenous perspectives. Jordan and Gerard-­ Little describe what can be seen as Haudenosaunee national politics, which are not a product of colonization. In this case study, rather than the refusal of territorialization that Nelson shows was a mainstay of central California Indigenous peoples, Jordan and G ­ erard-­Little demonstrate the territorialization within which the Haudenosaunee nations inscribed the new European peoples who became accessible to them as resources. The Haudenosaunee people incorporated European settler groups into their own globality, and we make a mistake if we read their history as a product of intentions from outside. Lindsay Montgomery’s discussion of Comanche “imperialism” presents an even less often considered situation, one that is countercolonial and global in its aspirations. That the imperialism she describes took place at the same time that European settler society nationalisms of the United States and Mexico were neighboring social formations provides a context, but not a cause, for Comanche approaches to the landscape. All of the contributors to this volume share as a framework a realization that the Indigenous people whose histories they explore through materialities were cosmopolitan throughout those histories. Cosmopolitanism is the essential condition of indigeneity in the Americas, where language diversity in close proximity promoted multilingualism, where lifeways engaged with plants and animals used strategies that archaeologists now classify as ­hunter-­gatherer, horticultural, and agricultural, and where the political organization of communities could range from bureaucratic states to self-­governing villages. The Indigenous Americas were vastly more varied and complex in language, economics, and politics than the Europe that sent waves of colonizers to its shores starting in the fifteenth century, where farming was the universal basis of economies and a single religion had promoted regional norms of governance and social life.

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Indigenous peoples of the Americas were cosmopolitan in ways that archaeologists and other researchers are only beginning to recognize. As a result, they brought to the colonial situation extensive repertoires of tactics and strategies already developed to engage with new peoples with novel ways of living entering their lands. Practices of Survivance My reference to “tactics” and “strategies” invokes the work of French historian Michel de Certeau. For de Certeau (1984, xix), institutional forces that seek to control people’s everyday behaviors use strategies, “the calculus of force-­ relationships which becomes possible when a subject of will and power (a proprietor, an enterprise, a city, a scientific institution) can be isolated from an ‘environment.’ A strategy assumes a place that can be circumscribed as proper (propre) and thus serve as the basis for generating relations with an exterior distinct from it.” The official policies of the Spanish empire, the actions of the mission fathers in California, the land-­titling regulations and laws of municipalities in New England, and also the intentions of Comanche and Haude­ nosaunee leaders—all are strategic in de Certeau’s terms. Tactics are different. De Certeau (1984, xix) begins with the observation that tactics “cannot count” on “a spatial or institutional localization” but rather inhabit a place that “belongs to the other”: A tactic insinuates itself into the other’s place, fragmentarily, without taking it over in its entirety, without being able to keep it at a distance. . . . because it does not have a place, a tactic depends on time—it is always on the watch for opportunities that must be seized “on the wing.” Whatever it wins, it does not keep. It must constantly manipulate events in order to turn them into “opportunities.” The weak must continually turn to their own ends forces alien to them. . . . the intellectual synthesis of these given elements takes the form, however, not of a discourse, but of the decision itself, the act and manner in which the opportunity is “seized.” Tactics are opportunities seized, the outcomes of strategies turned to use from moment to moment. Sheptak invokes these in the broader form of “making do” that is part of the concept of persistence offered by de Certeau (1984). Elsewhere, Sheptak has described making do as “the continuing ways that human

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subjects occupy social landscapes that they do not entirely control. Tactics can be conceived of as the ‘appropriation’ of what is offered . . . exceeding the intentions of those who seek control, seizing the moment for one’s pragmatic ends” (Sheptak, Joyce, and ­Blaisdell-­Sloan 2011, 149–50). In this vein, Montgomery emphasizes the way that Comanche ontology and epistemology facilitated the emergence of a Comanche culture that tactically incorporated horses and some aspects of Christianity in narratives of the experience of movement across the spaces of the landscape. Tactics and strategies, the contributors to this volume show, are the ways that survivance works. For Vizenor (2008, 11), as Sheptak notes, “survivance is an active resistance and repudiation of dominance.” This was enacted as much through Indigenous strategies of territorialization as through their tactical refusal of settler territorialization, as much through the strategic creation of Indigenous archives and historicities as through the tactical appropriation of colonial and nationalist historical discourses. Above all, from the perspective of archaeology, survivance is enabled through materialities that become so entangled that any project designed to determine where authentic identity ends must fail. Territorialization Territorialization, as Nelson shows, is a strategy through which settler societies try to impose control over those elements considered to be within the settler society and to establish defined relations with elements viewed as outside that society. The Coast Miwok’s refusal of this strategic territoriality by continuing to inhabit space according to their own histories and intentions, Nelson argues, is best seen as a counterstrategy, not simply a tactic. Nelson emphasizes the importance of hinterlands, areas outside direct settler control, in the maintenance of Indigenous spaces in colonized California. This is where, as Nelson and Panich note, the maintenance of refuge places occurred, a tactical occupation of space. Continued cacao cultivation by the Honduran community of Masca maintained a territorialization that was distinct from that of the Spanish settlers and thus can also be seen as an instance of refusal. Nelson argues that Indigenous places exist “instead of ” colonial geographies through the refusal by the Indigenous people to acknowledge settler geography. Refusal, he tells us, “is generative and makes space for Indigenous futurities.” In the legal petitions from Masca, we literally see refusal while futurity was being created.

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In other cases, Indigenous mobility enacted a tactical refusal of settler strategies of territoriality without necessarily constituting a counterterritoriality. Nipmuc basketmakers tactically inhabited space without regard to the strategic boundaries imposed from without. When the people of Masca shifted their settlement from one place to another while insisting they were the same community, they troubled the colonial will to power and its strategic vision, its “proper” territorialization. They tactically seized on the legal code and the courts to inhabit a space that was not their own. Other contributions raise the intriguing possibility that the same actions might be seen as tactical in the face of the strategies of an other but as strategic when viewed from the perspective of the Indigenous society. Comanche mobility refused the entire strategic definition of territoriality that European powers imagined. In Jordan and ­Gerard-­Little’s discussion of Haudenosaunee practices of relocation, they write that the Haudenosaunee “abandonments, relocations, and rebuildings” provided periodic opportunities “to reimagine themselves, tailoring the arrangement of houses, fields, and fortifications to reflect their understanding of upcoming conditions.” These were more than tactical moves; they were moments of formulation of strategies. The Indigenous Archive The shifting settlement locations of the Haudenosaunee nations and of the people of Masca exemplify Vizenor’s concept of survivance but in situations where the Indigenous communities were more and less capable of formulating strategies. The strategies that were formulated found expression in many of the case studies included in this volume in narrative histories. These are critical resources for archaeologists to understand. Sheptak shows that in its narratives of relocation, Masca demonstrated which features were central to what Vizenor calls its “sense of presence.” For Masca and its neighbors, the reproduction of cacao groves was an imperative so strong that communities successfully petitioned Spanish authorities to relocate based on threats to cacao production. This was cultivation that primarily served to provision Indigenous communities of the region and probably supported religious ceremonies emerging from the articulation of Catholic doctrine and Indigenous relations to the earth. The situation Sheptak outlines contrasts with the experience of San Pedro Aguacatepeque, discussed by Pezzarossi. Although the situations took place at the same time in the same European administrative district, the latter was

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marked by the replacement of cacao cultivation by sugarcane production. San Pedro Aguacatepeque’s residents used the Spanish market system, which valued sugar more, as one of their means of survivance. Yet this is not a story of pure abandonment of a previous sense of presence. Pezzarossi argues that the adoption of sugarcane continued San Pedro Aguacatepeque’s sense of itself as a community engaged in the specialized farming of a high-­value crop. He notes that cacao cultivation in the precolonial and early colonial periods produced not just a commodity but “knowledges, memories, dispositions, and subjectivities.” Sugar production did not require the abandonment of these significant values; instead, it facilitated their continued reproduction. The introduced nature of the crop does not make the people of San Pedro inauthentic. There was, after all, a time before cacao cultivation as well. The contractual documents and petitions of Candelaria / M ​ asca are embodiments of Indigenous futurity. These narratives exceed the needs of the Spanish legal system and, indeed, mobilize concepts and histories that strictly speaking add no weight to their legal argument. When the elders of Masca say that their people were in “ancient times” located on the coast, they are writing from their own sense of presence, in which events taking place well within the colonial period were ancient. These petitions exemplify Vizenor’s (1999, vii) concept of “Native survivance stories.” The “Indigenous archive” Montgomery describes, composed of Comanche rock art and interpreted using the ontologies and traditional knowledge of descendant communities, also can be seen as a Native survivance story. Montgomery argues that the Comanche, newly dominant in multilateral relations with other Indigenous groups and Spanish colonists, placed new rock art and amended existing rock art as a way of infusing the landscape with their presence. They then could assert they had always been in these places. The conventions used in the rock art were later transferred to ledger art as an innovative, authentic practice through which Comanche social relations were reproduced. Montgomery’s account leads to a deeper consideration of the materialities that emerged as important in the work of survivance. Materialities If Indigenous people who move are of doubtful authenticity, then even more suspect are those who use manufactured goods. While many of the authors consider cases where at least some material practices with older roots continued

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during histories of colonialism, they all also argue that new practices, new materials, and even materials introduced from settler cultures could be tactically appropriated in the cause of survivance. The media, structures, products, and people that entered the Americas as a result of European efforts at settlement were different in kind, but not in category, from the media, structures, products, and people that moved through the spaces of Indigenous life in previous centuries. Indigenous people continuously made and remade—and continue to remake—their ways of being through engagement with what comes together in the spaces where they live. These materialities can take novel forms, including documents using introduced European materials and scripts. In the context of a changing landscape and changing political relations, the Comanche used treaties, an entirely novel form, in the service of their survivance. Similar is the series of successful petitions through which Masca / ​Candelaria insisted on its right to persist on the Honduran landscape. Newly introduced animals (e.g., the horse), E ­ uropean-­style buildings (from Nipmuc houses to Honduran churches), and consumer products were all part of practices through which Indigenous people ensured their survivance. Panich makes clear the dangers of adhering to an authenticity paradigm that sees participation in new economic, spatial, and social settings as contamination. Neither the timing (early or late) nor the nature of these new features invalidates the historical continuity achieved with them. Sheptak notes that the presence of obsidian blades in late e­ ighteenth-­century Honduran assemblages on the Caribbean coast implies networks of obsidian acquisition that must have been reconfigured by Indigenous people outside the markets structured and organized by the Spanish. These networks were not simply the same structures that existed before Spanish disruption of the ranked societies of this region; they were something new, something that emerged in practice in order to perpetuate access to a material used only by Indigenous people. Similarly, Pezzarossi discusses the role of Dominican friars in maintaining the production and circulation of Chinautla polychrome pottery in the highlands of Guatemala when prior systems for its production and circulation were dismantled. Pezzarossi suggests we think about ways that “previously novel” things “transitioned from heterodox to doxic and simply became one of many quotidian elements of how Native families and individuals dwelled in the world.” Here, we can invoke work on communities of practice, which sees identity as a product

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of collaboration in activities. Using this approach, Sheptak discusses how late ­eighteenth-­century pottery from Indigenous communities in northern Honduras appears to be conservative in form and surface color but reveals novel approaches to shaping and finishing that may have resulted from the efforts of a mixed group of Indigenous and in-­marrying ­African-­descendant spouses to reproduce pottery that, in some cases, they did not previously make. Rather than see things like this as breaks in authenticity, contributors to this volume view them using concepts of emergent materialities. Emergent materialities arise from the juxtaposition of Indigenous knowledges and values and Indigenous and ­European-­origin tools, goods, and market possibilities. The only reason this could seem surprising is that there is an existing narrative in which indigeneity becomes contaminated by exposure to things from other peoples and in which using new things or making new things or doing new things is inauthentic. Law Pezzarossi (2014) endorses as an alternative a concept drawn from Manuel DeLanda’s (2006, 5) assemblage theory in which an assemblage is a “whole whose properties emerge from the interaction between parts.” This can be applied to the archaeological assemblages we excavate without prioritizing part of these assemblages as more authentic because of a longer local history and without seeing more recently adopted materials as contamination. Law Pezzarossi offers a powerful example, contrasting her previous celebration of a steatite bowl as a sign of deep Indigenous roots, due to its 3,000-­year age and unquestioned Indigenous materiality, with inattention to the intergenerational scales of transmission implied in the presence of Revolutionary era, ­European-­manufactured goods in a ­nineteenth-­century Indigenous house, where they most certainly attest to the residence of preceding ­generations in recent time who literally ensured the continuity of this Nipmuc family. The concept of emergent materiality allows for both the use of the new and the continued use of the old as equally part of contemporary innovation. In Jordan and G ­ erard-­Little’s demonstration of differences at three moments in time, at the Ganondagan, White Springs, and T ­ ownley-­Read sites, they note that some patterns of use follow linear trends (such as decreases in ­Native-­made pipes and red glass beads), but others do not. They write that their analysis “reflects changing patterns of engagement with both Indigenous and settler interlocutors as well as local choices.” That condition of continuous and thus continuously shifting engagements with broader social worlds existed before

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Europeans began their invasions of the Americas, and it continues through to the present. Being part of changing conditions does not disqualify anyone from having a historically rooted identity. One of the apparently stable objects in all these accounts, the residence, exemplifies the condition of identity unfolding in change. Jordan and ­Gerard-­Little pay explicit attention to changes in the form of residential buildings, places that combine the employment of new technologies with existing visions of what social life should be like and ultimately form the nucleus of survivance. Jordan and ­Gerard-­Little show that two-­family longhouses became the most common house form in the Haudenosaunee territory in the early to mid-­eighteenth century. We could take the rebuilding of structures as representative material manifestations of the rebuilding of culture: consistently present but never forced to remain “the same.” Entanglement Advancing the project of making understanding less binary, Law Pezzarossi, Nelson, Scaramelli and Scaramelli, Jordan and G ­ erard-­Little, and Pezzarossi all use the image of entanglement, viewing Indigenous being in emergent social orders as something that is complexly structured and impossible to resolve into delimited parts. Law Pezzarossi writes that the assemblage theory on which she builds “relishes the interdependence and entanglement of heterogeneous human and nonhuman elements in an emergent entity.” Nelson provides the most sustained discussion of entanglement, citing Stephen Silliman’s (2005, 62) description of colonialism as “processes of cultural entanglement, whether voluntary or not, in a broader world economy and system of labor, religious conversion, exploitation, material value, settlement, and sometimes imperialism.” The attraction of entanglement is its connection to values, especially those that emerge out of a complexity of forces. The condition of being entangled has too often been eliminated from analy­ ses that rely on dichotomies between two preexisting social realities. If we understand social life as continually being reproduced in every human society, then the entanglements that form around things are continually emerging everywhere. New things are opportunities for new entanglements. It would be absurd either to claim there was once a time when entanglements were set in place, not changing, or to try to sort out some entanglements as “authentic.”

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Critical Reflections The contributions to this volume provide a necessary corrective to work that has long viewed some Indigenous histories of change as evidence of loss: loss of identity, loss of authenticity, loss of a claim to be heard and determine one’s own future. Anthropological archaeology has tended to privilege the early history of the Indigenous confrontation of attempts to install European hegemony, often at the expense of considering more prolonged Indigenous and colonial engagement. Archaeologies of these initial engagements, whether described as “conquest” or “contact” or “colonization,” are based on an assumption that a particular moment, often long ago, was the last time a truly authentic Indigenous history existed, which was truncated by the inherently contaminating contact with Europeans and their practices and products. Law Pezzarossi calls into question this binarism, which pits an Indigenous static past against the presumed unity of a European modernity. Drawing on the work of Edward Said, she argues that this dichotomy produces an “American conception of an essential ‘Indianness,’ which defined indigeneity against Western modernity, legitimating Native identity based on evidence of cultural stasis, racial / ​genetic purity, geographic rootedness, and the past.” The Comanche’s claim in their treaty with the Republic of Texas, that the landscape was “Comanche land and ever has been,” does not just contest a European refusal to see the Comanche as present; it overwrites other Indigenous histories of dwelling. Montgomery’s provocative description of the Comanche as “imperial conquerors” is a reminder that persisting as Indigenous after European invasions opened up a wide range of ways of acting, from which historians and anthropological archaeologists have tended to select only a few stereotypic models. In Honduras, a similar alternative to the c­ olonizer-­colonized dichotomy existed in the Miskito kingdom, an independent Indigenous power that controlled more territory than the official Spanish administration and that maintained its own diplomacy with England while it also raided pueblos de indios like Masca to carry away enslaved people (Ibarra Rojas 2011, 2012). In New Mexico, Jun Sunseri (2014, 2017) has demonstrated another alternative, where Indigenous people who were extracted from their communities of origin were deliberately displaced to new mixed communities in locations on the colonial frontier. There, they were expected to defend the colony as genízaros, a word

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arguably derived from the Ottoman janissary, which refers to people loyal to power because that power has abstracted them from personal, familial relations. Jordan and G ­ erard-­Little offer the most distinctive challenge to the colonizer-­ colonized dichotomy in their archaeological account of the Haudenosaunee nations, which enjoyed approximately 250 years of political autonomy while actively engaged with Euro-­American powers. Like Sheptak, these authors examine communities that persisted in part through mobility and through the active incorporation of “significant numbers of outsiders.” These autonomous Indigenous communities do not show the features that a theory of authenticity as changelessness would lead us to expect. The Haudenosaunee people engaged in a wide array of strategies and tactics to ensure their reproduction, and these actively incorporated new elements emerging from the colonial situation to their east and from other Indigenous nations in the fluidity of changing relations across the Northeast. Thus, the fortification of White Springs can be seen as less directed at the European powers and more as an anticipation of conflict with other Indigenous groups. All of these situations are histories that begin with the European intent to appropriate the territories of the Americas, but their outcomes were not entirely intended by the European powers. A dichotomous framework has difficulty encompassing the many ways that Indigenous people persisted in the face of threats, dispossession, and violence. Authenticity Nelson, in common with other authors in this volume, stresses that Indigenous coping has defied the logic of authenticity, which demands unchanging practices or judges change as a loss of authenticity, emphasizing that what appear to be changes may have been tactics of persistence. The disastrous draining of Tolay Lake in the 1870s frames Nelson’s account. This is a reminder that we need to confront the disruptions, often violent, intentionally inflicted on Indigenous communities and view the continued existence of those communities as a product of people’s responses to often harrowing situations. This is the essence of Vizenor’s concept of survivance—dealing actively with situations so grave that they could well have been expected to end dwelling in particular ways at particular places. When Tolay Lake was drained to expand the potential of Euro-­American settler farming practices, two negative changes faced the local Indigenous communities: the exposure in the now-­dry lake bed of medicinal

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objects meant to remain undisturbed and the release of sicknesses that healers had transported into the waters. Movement away from that place was required for community survival, but Nelson shows that Miwok people never stopped monitoring the objects, which were now subject to appropriation by settler ­collectors. California was affected by European settler societies early through its proximity to Mexico, but the most profound effects in central California came relatively late: missionization and Spanish governmental organization really began in Alta California in the late eighteenth century. Panich notes that Indigenous people in California who were incorporated into the Spanish missions had an ambiguous position in the eyes of the Euro-­American settlers who occupied their former territories: “neither fully authentic nor appropriately assimilated.” The histories of questioning authenticity cited by many contributors lead to a question hanging over this volume: in what circumstances does the Indigenous labor of keeping on become untenable? I am not asking when a culture becomes so hybrid that it must be ruled inauthentic; archaeologists should not be in the business of judging that. Rather, I am asking that we acknowledge the extreme impacts of certain kinds of histories on Indigenous continuity and recognition. The gradual land dispossession experienced by Sarah Boston’s family, the loss of men in the American War of Independence, and the reshaping of settlement and economy due to the Industrial Revolution eventually disrupted dwelling by her family at their long-­established homesite (Law 2014). While Nipmuc people today maintain and defend their identity, they do so without some of the historical resources that continuity of dwelling would provide and against the presumption of those around them that practices using a European religion and its buildings are incompatible with indigeneity (Gould 2014). Masca can be traced from 1536 to the 1820s, but today Candelaria no longer exists as a community as a consequence of wars following the independence of Central America from Spain, epidemic diseases that many communities experienced in the wake of these battles, and explicit government policies changing the grounds to recognize Indigenous identity, including elimination of this identity as an option in censuses. Warfare, land dispossession, the loss of population due to economic opportunities elsewhere or forced labor, and epidemics all disproportionately endangered communities whose survivance rested at the scale of the family and small town. The relocation of people to a frontier that Sunseri (2014, 2017) discusses was part of a Spanish colonial strategy that imposed immobility on ­Indigenous

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people for administrative purposes. This forced immobility then became naturalized as a connection of people to place, which made movement inauthentic, a logic that has persisted in a Honduran historiography that counts Masca as “deserted” when the people of Masca moved to their inland location and that perceives the people of San Pedro Masca and Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria as not truly Indigenous anymore. While less overtly expressed as policy in New England, the idea that movement destroys identity is also part of the logic of anthropology and of governmentality there. Ultimately, as Law Pezzarossi notes, we need to acknowledge that the unequal valuation of some aspects of cultural practice over others has aligned archaeology uncomfortably with national policies that are not in the interests of Indigenous people, whose histories may be held against them as they are held to an impossible standard of frozen presentism. In telling the stories of persistence and survivance, we need to ensure that we answer the question, what happened next? This brings me back to the concept of tactics drawn from de Certeau (1984). Tactics provide the potential to creatively inhabit a space not of one’s own design, a space not intended for the use to which it is put. Tactics do not take place in an abstract void, however. The spaces that are occupied tactically are created by the strategies of the powerful. It is this that gives urgency to the work being done by archaeologists, like the contributors to this volume, who decenter European and official power in favor of the practices, memories, histories, and agency of descendants of the first peoples of the Americas throughout the centuries during which they have reworked European systems, materials, and institutions to facilitate their own lives. Conclusions The contributors to this volume address situations throughout the Americas. They do so in dialogue with Native American studies at a moment when that academic discipline, shaped by understanding the experiences of Indigenous peoples in North America, is expanding to encompass a hemispheric perspective. More than a decade ago, a major review of Native American studies identified this move to “a borderless discourse” of hemispheric scope as “the best trend” in the field, explicitly noting that this was likely to involve exploring distinctions between Indigenous experiences as much as similarities (Weaver 2007, 237).

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Since then, scholars adopting a hemispheric perspective and examining the way indigeneity may differ in Central and South America have advocated for recognition of the Indigenous status of communities that are products of mestizaje, the ­cross-­racial and c­ ross-­ethnic alliances for survival that have characterized Latin American histories (Barrenechea and Moertl 2013, 117). Yet Jace Weaver (2007, 241) worries about the impact on Native American identities of Latin Americanist scholars advocating for the recognition of new hybrid peoples as a positive outcome of five centuries of colonial history in Central and South America, writing that “the results could be both a cooptation of [Native American studies] . . . and a simple reinscription of a narrative of descent from an authentic past precontact to a postcontact present in which it is impossible to express a Native perspective.” This concern could easily extend to questioning the indigeneity of the people of long-­colonized places like Masca and San Pedro Aguacatepeque and of many others in places like New England where, as Rae Gould (2014) notes, Indigenous people are routinely questioned because their histories of intermarriage have left them with skin and eye colors that the dominant society does not accept as Indigenous. How can we pursue scholarship aimed at supporting histories of survivance while balancing the concerns expressed by Weaver with the damage that can be done to Indigenous people by questioning their complicated histories? I draw on the discussion by Indigenous scholar Kim TallBear (2013) of new ways to think about indigeneity in light of the elevation of genomics to its current centrality in public perceptions of the reality of identity. She uses the concept of “articulation” to describe “how previously disparate elements are conjoined into new cultural and social formations in acts of borrowing, interpretation, and reconfiguration” (TallBear 2013, 512). She notes that indigeneity has commonly been predicated on “historical continuity with precolonial societies and ancestral territories, cultural distinctiveness from settler societies, economic and cultural nondominance, and determination to persist as culturally and / or nationally distinct entities” (TallBear 2013, 514). The contributors to this volume have shown that the first two of these ­features—historical continuity with precolonial societies and cultural distinctiveness from settler societies—are among the expectations that work against the recognition of Indigenous survivance, preventing appreciation of the multiple ways Indigenous people have made do in landscapes under constant pressure from others. Montgomery’s and Jordan and ­Gerard-­Little’s contributions

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require questioning the demand that indigeneity be associated with economic nondominance, as the Haudenosaunee nations and the Comanche worked to maintain and even expand their political economies as settler societies intruded in neighboring areas. These are far from the only instances in which Indigenous populations in the Americas created new economic situations that they controlled and from which they profited as part of the work of survivance. To the independent Miskito of Honduras discussed by Ibarra Rojas (2011, 2012), whose polity emerged precisely through exploitation of the possibilities provided by a conflict between two of the European powers attempting to profit from the colonization of Central America, we can add the Lacandon Maya, who maintained independence from the same two antagonistic settler societies while profiting from trade across the boundaries between them (Palka 2005). The contributors to this volume privilege what TallBear (2013) has characterized as the “determination to persist” as the key axis they recognize that joins descendant Indigenous peoples and their ancestors. From this perspective, it is the self-­description of Masca as a pueblo de indios and the retelling of its history that demonstrate its continuity. The authors here provide persistence with a richly developed analytic vocabulary that replaces any passivity this word might entail, whether it is Nelson’s employment of refusal, Sheptak’s use of tactics and survivance, or Law Pezzarossi’s advocacy of assemblage. TallBear (2013, 514) adds another tactical approach taken by Indigenous peoples determined to persist, which is reflected in the contributions to this volume: “It is not simply firstness in relation to the temporality of settlers that grounds indigenous peoples’ identities in place. They narrate their peoplehoods as emerging in concert with particular land-­and / or waterscapes. They were not simply first but they arose as peoples, as humans in relationships with particular places.” Here is an important point of intersection between archaeological methods and Indigenous interests. This is the mapping of relationships to place and the way that place underwrites indigeneity, which, as TallBear notes, differentiates a genomic notion of origins from a useful Indigenous one. The shift in this volume toward narratives of emergence in place and across space can be seen as part of a movement in archaeology that may finally allow archaeologists of indigeneity to dismantle the use of archaeology as a tool for nations to authenticate and deauthenticate identities. As Pezzarossi notes, the tendency to privilege a precolonial “baseline” has been complicated by more recent Indigenous activism that has mobilized strategic

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essentialism and by the backlash against such political movements, which has often sought to demonstrate a supposed absence of political standing based on showing that something in Indigenous identity had changed. Inherently, these critics treat Indigenous identities as something different from European identities, as something that cannot change. The “precolonial” in this reading becomes static, which could easily be falsified were it not for the sharp division of labor that historically marked archaeology, in which the precolonial or “prehistoric” was treated differently than the colonial or “historic.” The contributors to this volume shift the focus from a narrow range of events that initiated the histories they consider, TallBear’s “firstness in relation to the temporality of settlers,” to the unfolding of histories in which Euro-­Americans and Native Americans were and remain entangled. They decenter the European colonial enterprise, trace long histories of Indigenous persistence or survivance, and refuse to treat changes and innovations in practices as a loss of authenticity. They emphasize how archaeological research, with its strong grounding in materialities at scales from the handheld thing to the landscape, is in an especially good position to show how as practices are reproduced over generations, they are also transformed in light of new materials, new challenges, and new knowledges. Repeatedly, they refuse, erase, or reconfigure the lines intended to demarcate a pristine Indigenous world before the arrival of Europeans from a contaminated sphere that was introduced the moment Europeans appeared on the scene. Because they refuse this initial dichotomy, the contributors to this volume are in a better position to make clear that there are Indigenous histories of the last five centuries in which Europeans do not determine the conditions of agency and may not even be disruptive presences of unprecedented form. These chapters complicate our understanding by demonstrating that the apparently colonized, nationalized, and appropriated landscape was nothing of the sort, but rather was and remains inhabited by people whose cartography cannot be subsumed to a linear narrative of disappearance, assimilation, or loss. These authors show how archaeological tools can be useful and, perhaps more important, how archaeology can avoid being an obstacle in urgent contemporary projects of insisting on presence and history. The contributors to this volume present arguments for reconsidering Indigenous presence as continuing, as agentive, and as authentic in situations in the Americas where histories and governmental policies have questioned ­indigeneity.

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The situations these authors discuss all involve remarkable stories of change, which is to be expected: there has never been a history in the Americas or elsewhere in which human societies did not change constantly. Change, these authors show, is how people continue in their historical relations with their land, their predecessors, their traditions, and their values.

REFERENCES

Abbreviations AGCA Archivo General de Centroamerica, Guatemala City, Guatemala AGI Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Spain

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INDEX

Page numbers in italic text indicate illustrations. autonomy, 2, 11, 15, 17, 39–40, 64, 94, 127–29, 133, 135, 150–51, 155, 189, 200

Acalan-Tichel, Campeche, Mexico, 33, 232 accelerator mass spectrometry, 60 acculturation, 5, 62, 123, 125, 129, 140, 141, 153–54 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, 130 affordances, 64–67 agency, 57, 59, 94, 103, 122, 127, 143, 156–58, 169, 174, 187, 202, 205 agriculture, 36–37, 46, 48, 118, 150, 156, 158, 181 Aguacatepeque, Guatemala, 60, 66, 68–71, 194, 203 alcohol, 33, 36, 67, 68 Alisal, California, 138–41 alliance, 21, 99–100, 109, 161, 203 allotment, 5, 8, 122. See also Dawes Act alterity, 3 alternative geographies, 17, 117 alternative histories, 7, 13, 73, 163 American Revolution, 39, 54, 96 Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research, 80, 96 Anguiano, Ramon, 35 Appadurai, Arjun, 164 Arco Minero del Orinoco, 165 Arkansas River, 99 Arreaza, Jorge, 165 Arterberry, Jimmy, 105, 108, 116 articulation, 15, 103, 194, 203 assemblage theory, 84–85, 197, 198 authenticity, 2–3, 8–9, 12–14, 16–21, 37–38, 58–59, 84, 93, 122, 143–45, 153, 156, 164–65, 187–89, 195–97, 199–202, 205

Balcones Escarpment, 104 barbarianism, 118 basket, 59, 81, 85, 91–94, 127, 179, 191, 194 basketry, 94, 127 Bastidas, Argenis, 163 Bastidas, Carolina, 155 Bastidas, Jairo, 155 Bastidas, Simón, 147, 155, 158, 166, 167 Bauxilum, 147 beads, 11, 33, 42, 138, 150–51; glass, 42, 50–54, 56, 126–27, 129, 133–36, 138–40, 197; Indigenous use in central California Missions, 125–41; shell, 52, 125–29, 133–36, 139–41, 150–51; stone, 33, 53 beehives, 88 Bihler, William, 170, 181–83 Blackstone River Valley, Massachusetts, 79–81 Blaisdell-Sloan, Kira, 29, 31 Blood quantum, 8 Boca del Monte, Honduras, 26 Bolivar, Simon, 147, 158 Bolivarianism, 160 Bolivarian Revolution, 12, 16, 149, 154–55, 161, 164–65 Boston and Albany Railroad, 90 Boston, Sarah, 14, 80–89, 92, 94–96, 201 Braudel, Fernand, 57, 59 Bricolage, 5 Bueno, Father Ramón, 150 Bureau of Indian Affairs, 81 Burnee, Sarah, 86–87, 94, 96

241

242 Index

cacao, 10, 14, 16, 25–26, 32–38, 60, 64–68, 190, 193–95 California, 1, 11–12, 21, 31, 62, 121–39, 141–44, 169–77, 179–85, 189, 191–93, 201; Alta, 127, 181, 183, 201; Baja, 124 California Mission Indians, 11, 121–44 Canandaigua, New York, 46 Candelaria, Honduras, 25, 30, 34, 37–38, 195, 196, 201. See also Masca, Honduras Candinaños, Fernando, 35 Cano, Salvador, 26 Cardozas Family of Tolay Valley, California, 170 Caripo River, 152 Catholicism, 19, 38, 124, 150, 152, 189 Cayuga, New York, 45, 55 central California Missions: autonomous villages of, 138–41; Indigenous ceramic production and use at, 131; Indigenous Foodways at, 128; Indigenous horse handling at, 127–29 Centro de la Diversidad Cultural, Venezuela, 161 ceramic production, 30, 70–72 ceramic smoking pipes, 49–53 ceramics, 15, 28–30, 38, 59, 60, 62, 71–73, 94, 96, 127–28, 133, 139, 140, 151, 178. See also Chinautla polychrome, Majolica, Ocate Micaceous, Puebla polychrome Cerro de las Piñas, 146, 158 Cerro de los Muertos, 152 Chaat Smith, Paul, 20 Chabacan, Agusto, 27 Chabacan, Marcos, 28 Chabacan, Martin, 28 Chapman, Anne, 36–37 charmstones, 11, 170, 175–78, 181–82 Chavez, Hugo, 12, 149, 154, 155, 160, 165, 167

chert, 11, 14, 60, 68, 70, 127 Chi, Diego, 27, 210 Chi, Guillermo, 27 Chi, Juana, 27 Chi, Roque, 27 Chiapas, Mexico, 64, 67 chicha, production and storage of, 36, 68 chilate, 36 Chinautla polychrome, 14, 60, 71–72, 196 Choloma, Honduras, 37 citizenship, 8, 82 Coast Miwok, 10–11, 15–16, 169–94; and Tolay Lake, 169–94; at Echatamal, 139; territoriality and, 125, 139, 193–94 Çocamba, 34 Cochuah, Guatemala, 34 collaboration, 4, 41, 80, 101, 139, 148–49, 156, 158, 162, 164–67, 183, 197 collective memory, 88 colonialism, 1, 4, 12, 59, 78, 91, 121–24, 129, 132, 139, 141–43, 157, 160, 169–74, 182–85, 188, 196, 198 colonies, 10, 11, 45, 64 Comanche, 9, 11, 13, 20, 99–106, 108–10, 191–196, 204; bison hunting, 105; conquest, 104–5, 108–9, 117, 199; coup-counting, 115; decorated lances, 114–15; decorated shields, 114–15; diaspora, 119; empire collapse, 118; imperialism, 99–120, 191; language, 108–9, 116, 118, 191; mobility, 101, 116, 119, 194; territoriality, 116; tipi iconography, 117; Toyah Band, 120; warfare, 115 Comayagua, Honduras, 23, 27 communities of practice, 28, 30, 71, 196 composturas, 36–38 Conchagua Vieja, El Salvador, 31 contact, 3, 6, 16, 39–40, 54–55, 63, 65–67, 74, 79, 83, 103, 123, 125, 127, 129, 130, 133–36, 139–43, 151, 153, 159, 162–64, 171, 178, 184, 199, 203

243

Index

contemporary indigeneity, 2, 4 continuity, 1, 4–5, 7, 9, 14, 16, 18–19, 21, 30, 33, 38, 57–75, 79, 81, 83, 97, 125, 133, 170, 177, 188–91, 196–97, 201–4 convent, 71–72, 164, 173 Convent of Santo Domingo, Santiago Guatemala, 71 Cornell University American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program, 41 Coronil, Fernando, 188 Cortés, Hernan, 33 Cortés, Martin, 33 cosmopolitan, 90–91, 189, 191–92 cosmopolitanism, 91, 191. See also global­ ism counter-archive, 13, 102 counter-narrative, 3 creolization, 2 Crespo, Alberto, 162 Cuculi, Blas, 27 Cuculi, Miguel, 27 Cuculi, Simon, 26–27, 37 cultural entanglement, 15, 171, 198 cultural exchange, 100 Curly Bear Wagner, 102 Dawes Act, 5 de Anza, Juan Bautista, 114–15 de Ávila, Alonso, 34 de Celis, Diego Garcia, 34 de Certeau, Michel, 9, 21, 37, 192, 202 de Landa, Diego, 33 de Oseguera, Alonso, 24, 27 de Ulibarri, Juan, 103 Dean and Barbour Associates, 49, 50 decolonization, 175, 185 decolonize, 7, 17, 102 decolonizing methodologies, 103, 188 demographic viability, 39 Despoloncal, Honduras, 34 deterritorialization, 106 dialogue, 16, 20, 118, 202 disease, 3, 8, 11, 64, 128, 177, 190, 201

Dominican friars, 14, 71, 72, 198 Echa-tamal, 139–142. See also Nicasio, California economic dominance, 100 El Boqueron, Honduras, 26 El Chayal, Guatemala, 69 El Fortin de Parguaza, 146 El Palomo, Venezuela, 146, 152–55, 160, 166–67 El Salvador, 32, 64, 69 emergence, 10, 15, 29, 57–58, 71, 103, 107, 188, 193, 204 empire, 73, 95, 99–101, 104–5, 109–10, 117–20, 192 entanglement, 1–2, 5–6, 10, 12, 15–17, 54, 57, 60, 62–63, 74, 85, 97, 145, 149, 171, 188, 198 equestrian nomads, 99, 101, 105 erasure, 5, 8, 15, 21, 61, 80, 85, 87, 89 Esarey, Duane, 52 ethnogenesis, 2, 154 exchange, 20, 27, 30–33, 35, 40, 66, 69, 71, 84, 99–100, 126, 129, 166, 175, 177 Fall Brook Site, 46 faunal, 178; assemblage, 128, 178; remains, 42, 54, 104, 133, 140 federal recognition, 57–58 Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, 144, 170, 178, 183–84 Fiscalía Indigenista Nacional, 148 foodways, 57, 59, 81, 126 Forbes, Harriet, 88, 90 Fortín de San Francisco Javier de Marimarota, 146–40 Fort Hill Site, 46–47, 56 Fort of Marimarota, 149, 151. See also Fortín de San Francisco Javier de Marimarota Fort Omoa, Honduras, 29 Fort Sill, Oklahoma, 118 Fowles, Severin, 101, 115

244 Index

fur trade, 121 Ganondagan, 40–44, 46–53, 55–56, 197 generational memory, 14 Genesee Valley, 46 genocide, 3, 8, 172–73 genomics, 203 Georgian Order, 94 Ghost Dance, 139; revival, 139 Gigger, Simon, 88, 90 globalist, 189 globalization, 94, 95, 190 Grafton, Massachusetts, 80, 86, 89–90, 92, 96 Greenhalgh, Wentworth, 49 ground stone, 133, 135; manos, 66 Guadalcana, Spain, 34 Guaicaipurism, 160 Guaicaipuro, 160 Guatemala, 19, 25–27, 32, 58, 60–61, 66, 69, 71–73, 189, 196; Amatique district of, 25; highland, 57, 70, 73, 196; Pacific coastal, 64, 66 Guayamil, Mexico, 34 Guayaquil, Guatemala, 66 Gulf of Fonseca, Honduras, 31 gunflints, 15, 70 Hamell, George, 52 Hassanamesit Woods Project, The, 80 Haudenosaunee, 1, 9, 11, 39, 41, 43, 45–47, 55n4, 56n6, 194, 200, 204; confederacy, 11, 15, 39, 41, 49, 55n1; persistence, 11; political economies, 11, 39–40, 42, 46, 54, 191; power, 41, 45–46; settlement practices, 194; territory, 39, 196, 198; wars, 45 Herder, Johan Gottfried, 19–20 heritage, 17, 57–58, 73–74, 81, 95, 97, 145, 160–62, 164, 189 hinterlands, 173–74, 193 hispanicization, 62 histoire événementielle, 59

historical archaeology, 2, 17, 77, 78, 94, 136 historical baselines, 14 historical consciousness, 19 historical narrative, 110, 115, 132, 145, 165; Mapoyo documentation of, 148 historicity, 14, 149, 156–57, 162 history, 2, 7, 9–13, 31, 40, 55, 57, 60, 65, 67, 71–72, 74, 77, 79, 82–85, 88–89, 96, 99–100, 102–6, 109–10, 115–17, 119, 141, 145–46, 149, 156–59, 162–66, 169–70, 173, 176, 184, 190–91, 199, 203, 205–6; Indigenous, 14, 42 Honeoye, 48 Houston, Sam, 104 Huntoon Site, 46, 53 hybridity, 2, 5–6, 58 identity politics, 164 identity, 5, 9, 12, 16–17, 19–20, 22, 27–28, 38, 58–59, 80, 82, 109, 114–15, 125, 127, 145, 153–54, 157–58, 162, 164, 182, 187–89, 192, 196, 198–99, 201–3, 205; formation, 5; Indigenous, 6, 17, 83, 91, 123; Native, 5–6, 9, 58, 78, 82, 95, 143 illegitimacy, 5, 7, 40 imperialism, 15, 99–101, 103, 105, 109, 171, 191, 198 Indianess, 8, 58, 78–79, 93, 199 indigeneity, 2–4, 7–8, 17, 58, 78–79, 82, 161, 188, 191, 197, 199, 201, 203–5; capitalism and, 78, 118; contemporary politics and, 12; modernity and, 3, 4, 17, 57, 78–93, 164, 188, 199 Indigenous, 1–23, 25–35, 37–42, 45, 53–55, 57–60, 73–74, 77–79, 82–84, 88–89, 91, 93–95, 97, 99–103, 105–6, 109–10, 116, 121–23, 125–35, 139–42, 145–48, 150–55, 159–60, 162, 164– 65, 167, 169–75, 177–85, 187–205; archives, 10, 13, 188, 193; futurity, 3–15, 175, 1193–95; history, 14, 42, 89, 102; historical archaeology, 2,

Index

17, 77, 94; knowledge, 12, 15, 58, 151, 197; mobility, 194; politics within California, 124–26; refusal, 175. See also counter-archives indios principales, 28 industrial era, 79, 81, 90, 93 Industrial Revolution, 1, 79, 81, 201. See also industrial era Inigo, Lope, 136–38, 142 innovation, 7, 18, 70–71, 89, 93, 197, 205 institutional forgetting, 88 instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA), 71 intangible cultural heritage, 145, 161–62, 164 intangible patrimony, 154 interior autonomy, 39 intermarriage, 7, 19, 100, 153, 164, 203 Iximche, Guatemala, 64, 74 Ixtepeque, Guatemala, 32, 69 Jemison, G. Peter, 41, 55 Jetegua, Honduras, 32–37 Jicarilla Apache, 107–8 Jones, Eric, 47, 56 Joyce, Rosemary, 13, 18, 29 Kendaia, 46 Kirkwood, 45 Kuksu Ceremonial complex, 139 La Urbana, Venezuela, 149 Lake Ontario, 45 landscape, 5, 11–13, 16–17, 19, 21, 24, 26, 35, 47, 48, 61, 63, 65–66, 77, 81, 86–92, 97, 104–5, 109, 110, 116–17, 119, 125, 129, 130, 136, 141, 156–57, 159, 161, 166, 170, 173–74, 178, 184, 190–91, 193, 195–96, 199, 203, 205; ancestral, 43, 119; and social memory, 88–89, 96, 110, 149, 152, 156, 164, 174, 189 Law for Indigenous Languages (Venezuela), 155

245

Law for the Cultural Patrimony of the Indigenous Peoples and Communities (Venezuela), 155 Law of Demarcation and Guarantee of the Habitat and Lands of the Indigenous Peoples (Venezuela 2001), 154 legal subjectivity, 187 legitimacy, 1, 3, 5–8, 11–13, 17, 40, 79, 85, 90–97 Lemoa, Honduras, 32–34 Lenca, 29, 31, 35–38, 189 lithic technology, 18, 57, 62, 70 lithics, 16, 57, 59, 60, 62, 68–70, 127, 178 logic of elimination, 121, 123 longue durée, 59, 62, 70 Los Pijiguaos, Venezuela, 147 Maduro, Nicolás, 165 Majolica, 14, 15, 30, 60, 61, 70–73. See also Chinautla polychrome manifest destiny, 118, 121, 131, 143 Mapoyo, 145–67; authenticity, 153, 156, 164–65; cave burials, 150, 158; collaboration with Venezuelan Government, 148–49, 165; dwelling perspective, 156; ethnogenesis, 154; historicity, 149, 156–57, 162; land grant, 147, 165; patrimony, 145, 149, 154–56, 162–64; settlement history, 159; spatiotemporal history, 156–57; territorial claims, 148–49, 153, 157. See also Wánai Marin County, California, 144, 169, 172, 177, 179 Marin Peninsula, California, 125, 139, 141 marine shell artifacts, 50, 52, 54 Marquis de Denonville, 41, 45, 47 Masca, Honduras, 19, 22, 23, 25–29, 30, 32–34, 37, 189, 190, 193–96, 199, 201–4. See also Candelaria, Honduras

246 Index

Massachusetts Indian Enfranchisement Act, 81 materiality, 59–60, 63, 93, 96, 115, 149, 190, 197 Maya, 1, 23, 33, 57–58, 60–64, 69, 71–74, 189; K’iche, 64; Kaqchikel, 60, 64, 74; Lacandon, 204 middle Orinoco, Venezuela, 145, 150 military monopoly, 100 Ministry of Popular Power, 155, 159 Miranda, Deborah, 123, 163 Miskito, 23, 32, 199, 204 Mission: Indians, 121, 130, 131; San Francisco, 138–39; San Jose, 126, 128, 133, 138–39, 142; San Juan Bautista, 126–28; San Rafael, 139; Santa Clara de Asís, 126–28, 135–38; Santa Cruz, 126; Sonoma, 139 missionization, 123–27, 131, 141, 172, 177, 190, 201; Franciscan, 121–26, 129–30, 132, 134–35, 141–42, 150 Miwok, 11, 125, 138; Coast, 10, 11, 15, 125, 139, 140, 169, 170, 172, 174, 177–81, 183, 184, 190, 193, 201; Marin dialect of, 174 mobility, 7, 10–11, 19, 30, 39–40, 89–91, 101, 116, 119, 189, 194, 200; restriction of, 201–2. See also movement modernity, 3–4, 8–9, 14–15, 17, 57, 78–79, 81, 83–84, 87, 89–91, 93, 95, 164, 188, 199; and Native identity, 199 Mohawk Nation, 39, 53, 55 Montaukett, 21 Mopechucope (Old Owl), 104 mortuary practices, 126 movement, 7, 9–11, 13, 58, 82, 140, 147, 151, 161–62, 188, 190, 193, 201–5; Comanche imperialism and, 102–6; Comanche archives and, 112–18; of an Indigenous community, 19, 44; Maya, 58; mission Indians and, 140; modernity and, 89–92. See also mobility

moyenne durée, 59 Murükuní Museum, 145, 154, 159, 164 Museo Nacional de las Culturas, Venezuela, 159 Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, California, 139 Naco Valley, Honduras, 34 NAGPRA, 58 narrative conquest, 108 nationalism, 189–91 National Museum of the American Indian, 20, 176 nationhood, 4 Native labor, 67, 133, 172 Native wood-splint basket, 92–93 networks, 10, 16, 69, 84, 85, 140, 189, 196; cacao exchange, 33; ceramic exchange, 71; colonial, 40, 129; distribution, 69, 71; economic, 140; exchange, 69; indigenous, 31, 91, 128, 129, 134, 140–41; Latourian, 84–85; social, 31, 91; trade, 40 New Ganechstage Site Complex, 44, 48 New Geometry of Power, 155, 165 New Mexico, 99–101, 103–4, 106–7, 110, 111, 114–15, 119–20, 199 New York State Division for Historic Preservation, 42 Newson, Linda, 33–35 Nicasio, California, 139, 142 Nipmuc Nation, 79–83, 85, 87, 94–97, 191, 194, 196–97, 201; and the industrial era, 79–82; basketmaking, 81, 85, 92, 191; foodways, 126; inter-racial identity, 82 nomad, 99–101, 105–6, 115, 117–18 nomadism, 106 nomadology, 7, 106 nucleated settlements, 43, 46, 48, 50 Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria de Masca, 25. See also Candelaria, Masca Nuestra Señora de los Angeles de

247

Index

Pararuma, 149, 151. See also Pueblo de los Españoles obsidian, 10–11, 14, 30–32, 36, 38, 61, 69–70, 125, 127–29, 133–34, 139–40, 189, 196; sources, 14, 31–32, 69–70; trade, 31, 69, 140 Ocate Micaceous, 107 Ohio Valley, 46 Ohlone, 123, 125, 139. See also Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, California Omoa, Honduras, 30–32, 37–38 oral history, 11–14, 19, 39, 41–42, 55, 57, 59–62, 65, 75, 77, 79, 83–85, 87, 104–5, 110, 116, 119, 127, 133, 138, 145–46, 148–49, 151, 154, 156, 159, 161–63, 165, 169, 178, 183, 204–5 Organic Law of Indigenous Peoples and Communities (Venezuela), 154 origins, 2–3, 6, 12, 58, 74, 135, 204 Orinoco River, Venezuela, 146–47, 152 Oseguera, Antonio, 24 otherness, 6, 72, 79 Páez, Jose Antonio, 147 palisade, 47–48, 55–56 paradox, 11, 15–16, 77–78, 90, 96 Parguaza River, Venezuela, 146–49, 151, 153 participatory archaeological project, 157 patrimony, 148–49, 154–56, 162, 164 Patwin, 125, 138 Pequot, 21, 62, 96 performativity, 59 persistence, 1–4, 6, 8–12, 15–16, 18–19, 21, 23, 28, 32, 35, 61–63, 68–69, 77–78, 81–82, 84, 88, 91, 94, 96–97, 103, 116, 118, 121–26, 129, 141–43, 169–70, 175, 182, 187, 189, 191–93, 195, 197, 199–205 petition, 22, 24, 27, 32, 34, 36, 38, 64–65, 122, 135, 161, 193, 195–96 petroglyphs, 13, 101–2, 105–7, 109–10, 115, 119; iconic versus narrative

composition, 112; tipi representation, 108, 110–15, 117 Piaroa, 148, 150 pipe, 42, 49, 50–54, 95, 197 pipestem, 42, 95 Pipestone National Monument, 53 pipestone, 53; red, 53–54 pirate, 23–26, 32, 38 plow-zone, 43, 50, 52, 56 Plymouth, Massachusetts, 2 political alliance, 99–100, 109. See also alliance political autonomy, 39, 200 politics of recognition, 164 Pomo, 10, 106–7, 109, 139, 169–70, 184 postcolonial decline, 8 post-secularization era, California, 129, 134, 140 Powell, Malea, 21 power, 2–4, 6–7, 9–10, 12–13, 16, 21, 37, 41, 45–46, 53, 66, 70, 72, 74, 79, 89, 95, 101, 103–4, 107–10, 114–15, 118, 151, 155, 157, 159, 161–62, 164–65, 171, 188–89, 192, 194, 197, 199–200, 202, 204 precolonial, 1, 3–7, 13, 31, 57–75, 79, 84, 195, 203–5 prehistory, 2, 13, 102 principal communities, 44 Principate, Rome, 109 Providence and Worcester Railroad, The, 89 Puebla polychrome, 61 Pueblo de los Españoles, Venezuela, 146, 151 Pueblo Viejo, Venezuela, 146, 151 pueblos de indios, 21, 23–24, 28–29, 31, 34–36, 199 Puerto Caballos, Honduras, 24 Quelequele, Honduras, 34 raids, 23, 32, 100, 105, 110–13

248 Index

rancherias, 126, 140; indigenous mortuary practices at, 126–27 Rancho Olompali, 135–36, 140, 142 Rancho Petaluma, 133–35, 141, 177–78 Rancho Posolmi, 135–36 rapaduras, 65, 67 reducción, 124–25 refuge, 12–13, 128, 169, 174, 177, 179–80, 184, 188, 193 refusal, 10–13, 15, 169–75, 180, 182, 184–85, 188, 190–91, 193, 199, 204. See also Indigenous refusal reinscription of rock art, 108 rescue anthropology, 153 residence, 7, 21, 46, 88, 95, 133, 136, 139, 151, 197–98 resistance, 7, 12–13, 20, 57, 59, 84, 94, 100, 103, 125, 174–75, 181, 184, 188, 193 revisionist: narratives, 104; images, 109 Rio Bijao, Honduras, 24–25, 37 Rio Grande, New Mexico, 100, 107–9, 111, 116, 119 Rio Grande Gorge, New Mexico, 102, 105–6, 110, 115, 117, 119 Rio Grande Gorge Project, 101, 103, 107, 111, 114 Rio Grande Pueblo, New Mexico, 100, 103 Rio Ulua, Honduras, 25–26, 33, 35 ritual, 35–37, 60, 62, 74, 110, 152, 178 Rochester (New York) Museum and Science Center, 42 rock art, 102–19, 195 ruins, 83–90, 101 Russian Colony Ross, 121, 135, 139 San Bartolomé Milpas Altas, 69–70 San José de Mapoyes, 149 San José, California, 134 San Martín Jilotepeque, 69 San Pedro Aguacatepeque, 60, 66, 68–71, 194–95, 203 San Pedro Masca, Honduras, 25, 202 San Pedro Sula, Honduras, 24–26

Sanchez, Julio, 36 Sandoval, Alejo, 146, 151, 167 Sandoval, Juan, 146–47, 149, 153, 158, 163, 167 Sandoval, Paulino, 146 Santiago Çocamba, Honduras, 34 Santiago, Guatemala, 61, 71–72 Sarah Boston Site, 86, 92 satellite: communities, 44–47, 54, 151; colonies, 11; territories, 117 scale, 13, 19, 41, 44, 52, 57, 59–60, 62–63, 66, 96, 113, 127, 165, 197, 201, 205 Schoff, Harry, 44 self-determination, 6–7, 74, 97, 155 self-reflexive anthropology, 103 Seneca-Iroquois National Museum, 41 Seneca: nation, 39; territory, 40, 54 settler colonialism, 4, 12, 121, 123–24, 132, 139, 141, 143, 169–71, 173, 182–85 settler common sense, 40, 55 shared histories, 123 shell mounds, 129 sign language, 108–9 Simpson, Audra, 12, 190 slavery, 150, 180 smooth space, 106 social networks, 31, 91 Sokeweki (Land Searcher), 105, 116, 119 Sonoma County Regional Parks Department, 170, 178, 183–84 Sonoma County, 124, 169–84 sovereignty, 3, 6–7, 9, 100, 145, 164, 171; spatial autonomy and, 128 space: smooth, 106, 175; striated, 106 spatial histories, 12 steatite, 95–97, 179, 197 St. Lawrence Valley, 45 strategic essentialism, 58 strategies, 2, 7, 9–11, 15, 17–18, 37, 40, 58, 60, 112, 121, 129, 143, 188, 191–94, 200, 202 strategy, 5–6, 10–11, 13, 21, 122, 150, 192–93, 201

249

Index

stratigraphic time, 14, 82–83 stratigraphy, 43, 77, 83 subaltern, 2, 149 sugarcane, 14, 60, 65–68, 195 survivance, 9–10, 13, 15–23, 27–30, 32–33, 37–38, 122, 143, 169–70, 179–80, 182, 184, 187–90, 192–96, 198, 200, 202–5 Susquehanna Valley, 45–46 Sutter, John, 138 syncretism, 5 Tabasco, Mexico, 33 tactics, 9–10, 15, 17–18, 21–23, 28, 33, 37, 188, 190, 192–93, 200, 202, 204. See also de Certeau, Michel; strategy Tall Bear, Kim, 203–5 Taos, New Mexico, 106, 108, 119 Taos Pueblo, New Mexico, 103 taphonomic processes, 89 Taylor, Charles, 20 technology, 16, 30–31, 40, 57, 62, 70 Tei Pata Mopue, 159 temporal baselines, 60 temporality, 14, 83, 204–5 Ten Bear, 119 terminal creeds, 3 terminal narratives, 8, 11 territoriality, 9, 116, 145, 156, 170, 173, 184, 193–94 territorialization, 10, 12, 104–6, 190–91, 193–94 Tibombo, Honduras, 34 Ticamaya, Honduras, 27, 29–32, 34, 38 tipi rings, 13, 101, 111, 117 tobacco seeds, 126 Tolay Lake, California, 10–12, 16, 170, 175–76, 178, 181, 183–84, 190, 200 Tolay Valley, 10–11, 169, 170–84 Tomales Bay, California, 140 Toms Point, California, 140–42 tonka beans, 147, 150

Townley-Read, New York, 40–44, 44, 48–53, 55–56, 197 trade, 15, 31, 34, 39, 40, 52–54, 69, 100, 121, 140, 151, 167n4, 177, 204; fur, 121. See also networks, exchange trails, 13, 101, 105, 119 transmotion, 7 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 118 tribute, 23, 25, 34, 64–70 Trujillo, Honduras, 23 Tuck, Eve, 171–72 Tucumcari, New Mexico, 119 Tutuxio, Guatemala, 34 Ulua Valley, Honduras, 23, 31, 33, 35–36 UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List, 145, 164 UNESCO World Heritage City of Antigua, 73 Uóthuhas, 148, 153. See also Piaroa Vallejo, Mariano, 135, 172, 175, 177, 181–82 vaquero, 127, 130, 133 Vaquero, Tom, 140. See also Wood, George T. Venezuelan Agrarian Reform Law, 147 Venezuelan Guayana Corporation, 147 vertical assemblage, 14, 84–85 victimry, 10, 20, 37, 143, 169 Villacoa River, 152 Villa de Branciforte, Venezuela, 134 violence, 1, 8, 54, 58, 64, 66, 100, 116, 121–22, 131–32, 143, 169, 173, 175, 177, 180, 200 Vista Verde Site, 109–14, 116–17, 119 Vista Verde Trail, 109 Vizenor, Gerald, 3, 6–7, 9–10, 19–22, 37, 122, 143, 169, 188, 193–95, 200 Volcán de Fuego, Guatemala, 60 Volk, 19 Wampum, 52–53 Wánai, 149, 153, 167. See also Mapoyo

250 Index

war, 8, 34, 41, 47, 79, 96, 105–6, 108, 113, 115, 147, 150, 157, 162, 175, 201 warfare, 52, 115, 201 warrior societies, 100, 114–15 White Springs, New York, 40–44, 47–54, 56, 197, 200 Wilcox, Michael, 3, 43 Wolf, Eric, 3, 102, 121, 123 Wolfe, Patrick, 121, 123, 173 Wood, George T., 140

Worcester, MA, 40, 80–81, 87, 89 Wray, Charles, 44, 51–53 XRF, 69 Yang, Wayne, 171 Yerba Buena, California, 134. See also San Francisco, California Ynitia, Camillo, 135–36, 138 Yokuts, 125, 138