ORAL AND RECORDED HISTORY IN JAMES TOBY MORANTZ McGill University

Introduction

The purpose of my presentation is to show that a blend of documentary and oral history is essential to writing honest, thor­ ough histories of Algonquian peoples. My concern here is with histories developed for the non-Indian public. We must ensure that these histories agree with our sense of credibility, integrity and relevance. The particular combination or blend of oral and documentary history for use by individual Algonquian groups must be their decision to suit their needs (in the school setting, for example) . What we produce as ethnohistorians would be a local or re­ gional history, broadly categorized as "social history". Fortu­ nately, now in the 1980s, one does not have to justify to every historian the validity of social histories that concentrate on the events connected with the lives of ordinary individuals in far- flung , rather than on nation state centered political, mil­ itary, administrative, diplomatic and ecclesiastical themes that are promulgated, instituted and documented by an elite. How­ ever, it seems to me that we still have to prove to historians and to ourselves the validity of the oral tradition, of folk history, particularly for Algonquian history. In our area of interest much of Vansina's pioneering promotion of oral history, based as it is 172 TOBY MORANTZ on African chiefdoms with long-standing established oral tradi­ tions, does not apply. Having myself completed a first attempt at writing an Algonquian regional history based on documentary sources (Francis and Morantz, 1983; Morantz 1983) , I feel it be­ hooves me to demonstrate the richnessan d accuracy of the oral tradition by showing how the documentary and oral accounts complement each other to form a more complete, vital portrayal of events. Other Algonquianists such as Gordon Day (1972) and Sylvie Vincent (1981) have made highly significant contributions towards this goal and my work draws on theirs.

Approach

The data I use to illustrate my points come from two principal sources. These are the archival and published documents for the James Bay area and of its principal occupants, the . As well, there are the oral history accounts supplied to me by Cree Way, a curriculum development program in Rupert House, James Bay, . I believe a number of these were originally collected by Richard Preston (1975) for his work on Cree narratives. The written sources are materials that I and others have col­ lected over the past several years for the whole eastern James Bay in northern Quebec covering the historic period from the early 1600s to the mid 1800s. The richestrecord s are the journals and correspondence books of the Hudson's Bay Company, but missionary records of the 17th century Jesuits and 19th century Anglicans also offer important details. With this archival data at our disposal, my colleague Dan Francis and I have produced various historic accounts of life in James Bay. While doing so we were mindful that we were not providing a full or well-rounded account, since we were missing the Indian version. At the time, just synthesizing and analyzing the great volume of data we had collected seemed an impossible task. We did not then incor­ porate to any extent the oral histories which in style differed so much from the Hudson's Bay Company records, although a number of the details were integrated into our writings. Never­ theless these oral histories were consulted and what we learned ORAL AND RECORDED HISTORY 173 from them was applied in our interpretations. The collection of oral history materials available is what I have now analyzed for this paper. It is far from complete in that all but one account has been collected from Rupert House peo­ ple, whereas the history written from documents covers a much larger geographical area and population. Furthermore, since the collection of the historical narratives was not made for historical purposes per se, the collection is also incomplete in coverage. Another consideration impeding the writing of a more represen­ tative regional history is that of the 30 or so oral histories I have on hand only about half of them seem to fall in the period for which I have done the archival research, i.e., up to the mid- 18003. Consequently in view of the above I have not examined these records with the intention here of writing a parallel his­ tory or revising certain statements already made. Rather, my approach is to tantalize us ethnohistorians with "what could be" if we were to expend as much energy seeking out the oral history records as we do the written ones.

Oral History

"Oral history" as defined by Vansina (1965: 1) is simply un­ written historical sources which enable a non-literate people to preserve and transmit a reconstruction of the past. Vansina de­ veloped his notions and precepts governing the application of oral traditions in centralized states, as in , where there were specialists for the transmission of traditions. One can eas­ ily see that the Algonquian form of oral tradition does not mea­ sure up to the New Zealand or Hawaiian ones (Vansina 1965: 34) where a single mistake in recital was claimed to be enough to bring about the teacher's immediate death. Yet, Preston (pers. coram) reports that his chief informant refused to recount stories for which he could not recall all the details. Similarly Day (1972: 103) writes of the careful and deliberate training of young Abenaki children until some know the old stories verba­ tim. The fact that Algonquian historical accounts have survived more than 300 years in recognizable form is further evidence of a 174 TOBY MORANTZ sense of pride and interest in carefully transmitting the accounts. The wide geographical spread of Algonquian myths from Alberta to the east coast also indicates the importance attached to the transmission of the stories. Algonquians, specifically the Cree in James Bay and the Mon- tagnais of the Lower North Shore, distinguish in their oral tra­ dition two types of stories or narratives—one mythical and the other real. These they term atiukan and tipachiman. Preston (1975) , Vincent (1981) and Scott (1983) all explain the dis­ tinctions between these two types. Suffice it to say here that the atiukan or myths are stories concerning the creation of the world when, as Vincent explains (1981: 11) , men and animals were not differentiated. The tipachiman or true stories are of real people, living, or their ancestors. These distinctions are found among other Algonquians such as the Ojibwa (see Hallowell 1960: 56-57; Rogers and Rogers 1982: 156) , among Athapaskans (Mc- Clellan 1975: 67) and among the (see Vincent 1981: 11) . The category known as tipachiman is, of course, the Algonquian equivalent of history. A Cree story teller usually makes it clear which type of story he is telling.

One of the common characteristics of Algonquian histories is the disregard for a standard chronology as we view it. In addi­ tion to lacking a mathematical ordering of time, the oral histories tend to focus on a topic much as we do in our unrecorded folk his­ tories. We use dates only in official written accounts—in formal history. How many of us can be precise in recalling and dating past events? Usually we relate them to past personal occurrences such as births, marriages or deaths. It is easy to understand that when narratives are transmitted over several generations, time and events become telescoped and scrambled. What we are left with in oral history then is what McClellan (1975: 72) has so aptly phrased as the quality of time rather than its quantity or diachronic nature. Similarly, it seems over time that the events rather than the personalities become transcendent so that what happened is more important than who was involved (Allen and Montell 1981: 36) . It is here that the fit or complementarity ORAL AND RECORDED HISTORY 175 with recorded history is so important, for the recorded history enables us to satisfy our need in western society for ordering the historical data (time and actors) while the tipackiman stories provide the content in many cases. The skeletal structure of the written, official documents is fleshed out with the human details from the Indian version.

The time dimension is not entirely lacking in the oral his­ tory as there are clues that can be used to assign a time period. Vincent in her analysis of Montagnais oral histories has isolated some of these indicators, all to do with the presence of the white man. For example, these are periods when there were only In­ dians (i.e., no white men), only game (no flour), only hides (no cloth) and so forth. As will be seen, the events themselves also can often be dated. The indicators are names of people and specific happenings which can be dated precisely by recourse to the written record. This brings us to a sub-classification of the tipachiman stories that Vincent (1981: 11) noted and is also ap­ parent in the collection I have used from Rupert House. There are what she calls "relatively fixed" narratives, ones usually of great age and with unidentifiable actors. Also there are often several versions of the same account. In contrast are more per­ sonal or family accounts of a more recent period. These Vincent refers to as "commentaries". Again, these distinctions are not always easily made and a continuum would best represent the variety of historical accounts. At one end one might set down a "universal history" and at the other "personal history". Because it is a social history one is interested in, both are equally impor­ tant in light of the information they impart. Both types will be drawn on here to illustrate their articulation with recorded history. I should emphasize here that I am viewing oral his­ tory from the perspective of recorded history only because my research started with the documents. This same paper could easily be written starting with the oral history and then finding the documentary evidence which coincides with it.

The Historical Accounts 176 TOBY MORANTZ Formal history tells us it was who first set sail into Hudson and James Bays in 1610. He wintered in 1611 either near the mouth of the or to the north of it. In the Spring only one Indian man approached the ship and traded. Later that Spring Hudson went searching for food and came across a camp of local people who set fire to the grass in order to keep him away. Colin Scott (1983) has recently collected at (90 or so miles north of Rupert House) two Cree versions of the firstmeetin g of the white man. In both versions there is reference to a huge spruce standing in the water. Clearly the firstarriva l of the white man was by rather than by land for the spruce refers to the mast of the ship. The account of the trade given in the written version (Asher 1860: 114) dwells on the European trade items offered—a knife, a looking glass, buttons and a hatchet which were received for two deer (cari­ bou) skins and two beaver skins. Interestingly, the Cree versions bear a different emphasis. They speak mainly of the furs the Indians were wearing. The suggestion that the Europeans were all too eager to receive these furs is contained in this following, somewhat humourous passage:

Their jackets were made of fur from animals that he trapped. So people on the ship gave them some other clothes to wear. Take your clothes off* they were told, and they understood what they were told. "Put these clothes on", they were told. (Narrator's aside: "I guess they took their clothes off where nobody could see them. There must have been a small room where they could undress. •) So the woman whose pants were made of muskrat fur, removed her pants. And they went home wearing the clothes that the people from the ship had given them (Scott 1983: 230).

This version relates nothing of European trade items. The sec­ ond version speaks only of a gun being given on board the ship and tried out by the hunter under the guidance of the Europeans. I suggest that there is a very important lesson to be learned here. In writing the history we only write of the impact the new metal-based technology must have had on the Indians. No one ever comments on how the Indians viewed this exchange, how they saw the Europeans as coveting their goods, literally, taking the shirts off their backs. The oral history account locates this first encounter at Old ORAL AND RECORDED HISTORY 177 Factory River, which is not too surprising since most of the We- mindji people moved from there recently, about 30 miles down the coast. Then again, perhaps for some 17th century Cree their first encounters with the Europeans were at this place. The Hudson's Bay Company historian Rich (1958) writes vaguely of setting up an outpost there in the 1680s. (The first trading voy­ age to thb area was in 1668. ) Thb Cree narrative suggests that perhaps the historian ought to look into this question. Perhaps there was trade ongoing there from a ship, a practice the Com­ pany resorted to when it did not wish to undertake the expense of a post. Whether or not these oral accounts refer to Hudson or the later Hudson's Bay Company does not really matter. What we need from thb oral tradition, and are obviously finding it, b how the people viewed the event—what significance it has held for them over the centuries. Chronologically, the next tipachiman stories that are fixed,i n that they refer to a specific set of occurrences, are the Nottoway stories. We know by reference to the Jesuit Relations that in the historic period Nottoway attacks occurred in the 1660s, though threats of such attacks continued into the 1750s. These later threats were said to be started by the rivalFrenc h traders to terrify the Indians and prevent their travelling to the Hudson's Bay Company posts. It b clear from these references in the Hud­ son's Bay Company journals that they were equating Nottoway with Iroquois. Thb links us to the century before when Iroquois attacks on eastern Algonquians were recorded by the Jesuits. In James Bay, Jesuits were not eyewitnesses to such events but ar­ rived in the area several years later. Hearing of the attacks from the local Indian populations they recounted them in their Jesuit Relations. In each case in the James Bay region, the Iroquois (sometimes identified as Mohawks or Onondagas) were said by the Jesuits to have attacked large numbers of people gathered at lakes. In the case of the Lake Nemiscau attack 90 people were said to have been killed or captured by about 30 Iroquois (Thwaites 1896, 50: 37ff) . 178 TOBY MORANTZ Two of the six Cree narratives I have seen are similar to the Jesuits' report. The others differ dramatically. Vansina (1972: 429) has commented that it b rare to find in the traditions of an African chiefdom the acknowledgement that it lost a battle. No doubt this b true for many societies. Yet, in the Cree case, we have accounts of both winning and losing. Interestingly in the two accounts that parallel the Jesuits' version, where the Iroquois are said to have attacked groups of people, the Iroquois were the victors. But in the four other accounts Iroquois war­ riors are said to have been outsmarted by individuals—men and women. These encounters seem to have been with single Cree families. These latter stories are reminiscent of those for other eastern Algonquians such as for the Penobscot (Smith 1983) and the Pasmaquoddy (Erikson 1983) , whereby a woman single- handedly tricks a party of Iroquois into going over a falls to their deaths. Therefore I think it worth asking if here embodied in the Cree oral tradition are two different episodes of attacks by Nottoways. With such stories having such a far-flung geographic dbtribution, it seems worth at least asking whether a much ear­ lier proto-Algonquian group were raided by Nottoways—either an Iroquoian speaking people or other enemies. Thb b suggested not only by their variance with the Jesuit account. The Jesuits could have been wrong or could have distorted the facts. We all know the Jesuits had every reason, from their perspective, to portray the Iroquois as ruthless warriors. However, the ' own oral accounts also seem to be unrelated. In one Cree ac­ count an old man who had been, when young, a victim of the Nottoways (and thb fact too is worth noting, since we know only of Iroquois attacks in the 1660s—not significantly earlier) , saw them on hb trail and proceeded home to his lodging where he asked his wife to mark or paint hb entire body. The Not­ toways arrived and proceeded to shoot at him but he was invin­ cible. Finally he slew them all with hb bow and arrow. The next morning he journeyed to where the Nottoway women were camped and killed all of them. This portrayal stands in contrast to one in which the Nottoways would surprise groups of people ORAL AND RECORDED HISTORY 179 in their tents. There are definitely two very different military strategies presented here. In the second type of account, the Nottoway would kill everyone, including women and children, although women were sometimes taken as captives. There are other details which are readily incorporated into our understanding of these Iroquob northern incursions. For instance, Trigger (1976, 2: 627) has suggested they were parties raiding for furs, and the oral accounts in which the Cree are killed claim the Iroquob took everything, including their bows and arrows. One of the Jesuits (Thwaites 1896, 50: 37ff) reported that in 1672 he found at Lake Nembcau the remains of a large fort constructed by the Iroquois. As seen, Nottoway women are referred to in the oral accounts, indicating as does the above Jesuit account, a year-round settlement. There were still other hostilities in which the Cree were in­ volved and thb brings us in chronological order to our next major fixed narrative. Thb one b of fightingwit h the Inuit. There are two different Cree groups warring with the Inuit. One group was the homeguard or coaster Indians from Moose and Albany Forts who journeyed periodically all the way around the Bay and up to Richmond Gulf. The firstmentio n of thb b in the 1686 de Troyes account and thereafter in the Hudson's Bay Company journals up until the early years of the 19th century (Francis and Morantz 1983: 75-76) . No eastern James Bay people were said to be involved. It is not known when these "Esquimaux wars" started or really why they persbted. The Albany and Moose men brought back the occasional captives and scalps. That is all that b ever mentioned—not even booties of caribou hides. The oral tradition suggests though that the southern Indians were afraid of the Eskimo because they ate raw meat. They thought they were atooshes (i.e. windigo). The other Cree-Inuit fighting occurred among the northern people who shared the barren grounds. These hostilities seem to have been of long standing duration and are more readily under­ stood in terms of competition for resources. It b first referred to in the 1750s when it b said that the northern Indians, fearing 180 TOBY MORANTZ the Inuit, were hesitant to come to the newly establbhed post at Richmond Gulf. Thb enmity continued until 1840. Thereafter both Inuit and Cree traded at the same post of Fort George. Having read the oral hbtory, The Hudson's Bay Company his­ toric claims of having been instrumental in putting an end to these hostilities now seem reliable. Not only b it so claimed in the Hudson's Bay Company journals, but so also says the oral tradition. Furthermore, unlike the records, it provides an expla­ nation. According to Cree narrative the Company showed guns to the Inuit and told them they would not receive any until they agreed not to kill the Indians. Of course, we await the oppor­ tunity to contrast the Cree version with an Inuit one. All the written records tell us is that they sent out among the Inuit a trilingual Inuk imported from Churchill, named Moses, who was enjoined to convince the Inuit to make peace and begin trade but it is not said how he accomplished thb task.

As it happens, before Moses brought in to Fort George hb first group of 30 Inuit families in 1840, a lone Inuit family appeared there in 1839 brought by an Indian hunter, named Katsaytaysit, who told of having met thb family near Cape Jones and in­ vited them to accompany him (Francis and Morantz 1983: 139) . There b an oral account which reads quite similarly. It is about Indians having been blown over from the mainland to an bland of Eskimos who did not kill the Indians but took care of them. Gradually they were able to understand each other. When it came time to leave the Indians said they could not make it back on their own to their hunting grounds. The story ends there but seems to be suggesting the Inuit family returned with them. As for the stories of thb Indian-Inuit fighting,i t b said in one oral hbtory that the narrator's grandmother did not tell him a lot of stories about the Eskimos for they were not as "bad" as the Nottoway. There are no Hudson's Bay Company reports of the fightingi n the north for no European men were ever present as was Samuel Hearne in the northwest. In the one oral account I have seen, of which there are two versions detaib come out which are important to our understanding of ORAL AND RECORDED HISTORY 181 these repeated occurrences. In these stories it is mentioned that the Cree had guns while the Inuit only bows and arrows. It b conceded here that the Cree therefore had a better chance to kill them. However, in one instance, it b said the Inuit were better at handling the bow and arrow. In thb narrative even though the Inuit put up a valiant fight(th e Company similarly recognized them as ferocious fighters) , one Cree and his son managed to gun them down and later returned to do the same to the women. Unfortunately, I have not yet had an opportunity to collect any Inuit versions of these encounters. Having thb third perspective will be invaluable in measuring and assessing the validity of the oral tradition.

In the oral hbtory accounts I have used there remains one more of a violent nature, that of the Hannah Bay incident or massacre of 1832. Hannah Bay was an outpost of Moose Fac­ tory. It was attacked in the middle of winter by a party of a dozen Indians. Nine of the post's residents were killed. The per­ petrators of the crime were said to have been in a "starving and naked state" and had been given some provbions at the post two days earlier.

The oral tradition, of which I have seen two versions, differs little from the Hudson's Bay Company's account. They are very complete in their detaib of how the killings were done and in the events surrounding the later arrests and executions. In the version collected at Rupert House it b said the attackers decided to kill the post manager because they were dissatisfied with the little he gave them. In a version collected at con­ juring is blamed and we are told that from that day on the people at Moose abandoned the shaking tent. The written records refer only to conjuring as a possible explanation. Except for dates, names and the events that occurred at the posts of Moose Fac­ tory and Rupert House, the oral tradition is as rich in detail as the recorded versions. In fact, the oral tradition offers informa­ tion not available in the journals such as the panic and reaction of the people who were trapped in the post and subsequently murdered. We even learn that the manager was sitting down to 182 TOBY MORANTZ dinner when the attack began and that he had servants wait­ ing on him. As for those accused of the murders we find both records presenting their capture in similar fashion rightdow n to the detail of the wives standing by as their men were shot down. It b the oral accounts which tell what happened to the surviving families of the fiveexecute d Rupert House men who disappeared from the records—they were transferred to Moose. The head of the family who was implicated in the murders (Quappakey) b said, in the oral accounts, to have denied responsibility, claiming it was hb children who did it. However the accounts relate that as the oldest man in the camp he was responsible and so he was executed. Much to my surprise, one of the oral versions refers to the manager as a white man, yet I know from the records that William Corrigal was part Indian. Another oral hbtory account describing life at Rupert House post refers to post servants as wemstukshiokanor 'made into white people'. Since many of these former part-Indian or post servant families seem to have blended back into the mainstream of Indian life much as they seem to have done in the 19th century, I have always viewed them as closer to Indian on an Indian-white scale. A remark such as thb forces me to re-evaluate such a claim and look for other evidence. The forgoing are all the major fixed accounts that are in thb collection from Rupert House. There are other lesser ones which I can only highlight here. Attached to the story of the first white man collected at We- mindji are several briefer ones. There is reference to an old Englishman who resided on land belonging to hb wife's family. In Cree the place b called Maatuskaau, in Englbh, Moar Bay. It so happens that the first Englishman to retire from Company service and continue to live in James Bay was a post employee by the name of Andrew Moar. Unlike all the others before him he neither died in office nor retired back in England. Hb retirement was sometime before 1830 but as early as 1814 the records refer to hb living at Moar Bay (HBCA, B. 59/a/90: Apr. 16) , some 50 miles north of Post to which he was attached. ORAL AND RECORDED HISTORY 183 Thb story seems scrambled together with another one, of thb old Englishman's son-in-law (i. e. , an Indian) having accompa­ nied him to hb town, i. e. , England. Evidently the only Indian youth who went to England was George Atkinson, Jr. , son of the chief trader at Eastmain from 1778-1792. In 1790 George Sr. sent hb son to England for the year, against the Company's wbhes, "to shake of a little of the Indian" (HBCA, A. 11/57: 121) . It may well be Atkinson who is the subject of thb narrative and the one who b reported as having joked about hb "chance to fool around with the women there". Unfortunately the Com­ pany journals are silent on hb activities in England. They are not silent about him after hb return. Whatever George Aktin- son's activites were, that year and another two in England must have radicalized him, for back in James Bay he counselled the hunters on several occasions not to trade their furs unless they received higher prices for them (HBCA, B. 77/e/5: 5) . Actually the merging of the stories about the Moars and Atkinsons may not be as scrambled as all that, since George, Jr. b said to have had hb home in Moar Bay. He may well have married Andrew Moar's daughter as one of hb two wives. Al­ though the Hudson's Bay Company records may never be able to yield thb information, we can expect that genealogies and family hbtories collected amongst the Atkinson and Moar families will. There are 20 or so hbtorical narratives remaining in the col­ lection used for thb study but which will not be described here. Many are from the second category which Vincent designates as "commentaries". All that can be done here b list several de­ tails and themes that struck me as being particularly important in either confirming what is written in the archival record or in improving it. These are in no particular order.

1) A full description of how haying at the post was carried out by the coasters, details of which are lacking in the journals. 2) The women stayed inland at trading time and did not come to the post. Thb confirms a deduction made from the post records but which has never been clearly stated. 3) How the post got its meat provbions. Thb gives us insight 184 TOBY MORANTZ into the Cree view of how the posts functioned and their role in it. 4) A reference to using a metal loader for a gun b useful for dating the account, as is one with the comment "no flour". At that time men trapped in groups of three or four, which confirms what b deduced from the documentary evidence. At times of scarcity people split up. On the barren grounds men hunted deer in groups of ten to twenty. 5) Construction of a birch bark canoe and of tipb. 6) Details of the Revillon Freres operation which helps bal­ ance the Hudson's Bay Company's rather biased account. 7) The rivalry between coasters and inlanders in the 19th and 20th centuries. The historical documents also show this to be the case in the 18th century. 8) An inside view of starvation inland away from the post. 9) The difficulties of shooting game with a musket; it b noisy, shoots late and not straight, and scares off the animals. The caribou were speared crossing rivers. 10) Techniques of bleeding people. The practice conducted by Europeans and Indians b mentioned in the 18th century records but thb b the first description of the methods em­ ployed. 11) The written records yield very few examples of violence against individuals. In the oral history records conjuring b shown as the means by which individuals sought revenge for a wrongdoing.

From thb lbting of oral hbtory accounts, it should be evident that the oral tradition b extremely rich in historic detaib, ones which harmonize well with the information from the archival records. Each serves the other very well. As the Cree hbtorical accounts come closer to the present, not only does the detail be­ come more focussed but it is also easier to date. The oral data I have drawn on here b a collection not specifically made for his­ toric purposes. If one were to interview the storytellers to fill out the written record, one can well imagine how much more historic information can be tapped. Conversely, the more oral tradition ORAL AND RECORDED HISTORY 185 that is collected according to the storytellers' own interests, the greater the historic range, in subject and time covered.

Validity

Until now I have not addressed the important issue of va­ lidity of the oral hbtories. It seems to me that from the data presented above, it is self-evident that they are factual and es­ sential. They provide us with insights into Indian life and events in the camps away from the post. Granted there were a number of post managers or even missionaries who knew something of Indian daily life. However, the journab and their correspondence to headquarters were not the forums for setting down such ­ servations. One also has to consider that such chroniclers were mere observers and not social scientists. Consbtency and ve­ racity were not their prime objectives; a good story was (see Morantz 1984). In writing hbtory one b supposed to attempt an objective por­ trayal. Relying solely on the written records does not achieve thb goal. Unlike the journals for James Bay, those for Fort Chimo in the 1830s are loaded with derogatory comments about the Naskapi (Cooke 1976: 13) . Erlandson writing in 1833 writes: "I shall simply say they are the most deceitful, lying, thievbh race of Indians I ever dealt with, proud, independent". Obvi­ ously this pride and independence irked Erlandson and others who wrote similarly. How objective are their statements? Thb b an extreme example of the data in the Hudson's Bay Company records but it serves to remind us that we must evaluate all such judgements—and what better way than to measure them against a people's own perception of their hbtory. Others (Day 1972; Helm and Gillespie 1981) have subjected sample oral hbtory narratives to a much more intensive scrutiny vis-a-vis the written hbtory than I have here. Each has shown, as in the words of Day (1972: 107) that "when the traditions show good internal coherence and congruence with. . . hbtor­ ical data. . . it seems to be a fair presumption that 1) the 186 TOBY MORANTZ

traditions are trustworthy and 2) they should be taken into ac­ count in our reconstructions of the past". I would add to thb statement that even when there b no hbtorical data to com­ pare it to, we have reached the point where oral tradition ought to be considered in itself trustworthy hbtorical material, sub­ ject only to the same tests of internal consbtency and credibility that we use for all hbtorical accounts. Recently Helm and Gille­ spie (1981) publbhed a paper in which they look at one event found in Dogrib oral history and show its validity by comparing it to the Hudson's Bay Company material. They analyzed each oral statement and supported it with the equivalent documented statement. Furthermore they collected thb particular story from no less than five informants and more general testimony for thb particular Dogrib period from an additional seven individuals. Thb kind of exacting testing of the data simply does not take place for the written records. In the mid-18th century there were a flurry of historical narratives produced by Hudson's Bay Com­ pany men who served at Churchill, York and Severn (see Isham 1949, Graham 1969 and Falconer 1768) . On reading them one b struck by the similarity, not only in subjects but abo in phrase­ ology so one forms the impression that rather than first-hand observation each one simply plagiarized the other. Furthermore in their ethnographic information all the cultural groups seem to be lumped together. Thb is true not only of these works but of much of the other Englbh and French writings of the period. Even the Jesuit Relations are not immune from thb crippling criticism. Thwaites himself, its general editor, cautions us in the introduction that the Jesuits did not understand the Indians, their minds being "tinctured with the scientific fallacies of their time" (Altherr 1983: 268) . Yet few ethnohistorians acknowledge such shortcomings in the documents.

Conclusions

We have been using all these written materials uncritically while at the same time subjecting the Indian folk history to extraordinarily rigorous testing or in most cases have simply ig- ORAL AND RECORDED HISTORY 187 nored it. Geoffrey Barraclough (1979: 55-57), a noted hbtorian, has acknowledged the contributions of anthropology and sociol­ ogy to hbtory in providing alternative ways of looking at the evidence, of demonstrating to historians that regional and lin­ guistic groups have a cohesion of their own. It seems to me that we have a responsibility as anthropologists and Algonquianbts to go further and actively guide hbtorians towards the use of oral hbtory as equally important sources of historical informa­ tion. Surely the information coming from the Indians themselves b more representative of their life than that written by outsiders. The fact that ethnologists seem to feel it necessary each time to prove the trustworthiness of the Indian folk hbtory b a strong indication that it is not yet acceptable. Not helping our task any b Vansina, the man most responsible for demonstrating the ex­ istence and richness of oral hbtory. In his notable work, first publbhed in 1961, he makes the following damning pronounce­ ment: The history of micro-societies—that is, societies in which there is no social group larger than the extended family, or several extended families (a camp) —is pretty well non-existent. Traditions are carelessly transmitted, do not go far back and are always of a folk nature (1965: 172). One ought to measure thb statement against the review of the oral hbtories presented above. There is another reason to be vigorous in our defence and promotion of the oral tradition: for the sake of the Indian peo­ ple themselves. The modern form colonialism takes evidently extends to their conception of their own hbtory. In a recent is­ sue of Cree Ajeemon, a Cree produced journal, I was dismayed to find in an article on the Chibougamau Crees that the Cree writer cites my hbtorical work, based on specially commissioned research in the archives, as evidence of their past existence as a band. However he has omitted any reference to the testi­ mony of the Couchees, Bosums, Blacksmiths, Mianscums, Ca- passisits, Marks and Huskys who make up this band. Thb new phenomenon of land claims negotiations, the rules of which are set by the government and courts, b dbcrediting their hbtorical accounts and forcing them to find evidence in the documentary 188 TOBY MORANTZ record. Thb has already been going on for years in the school setting where the Indian child has been forced to learn of his region and people through a hbtory formulated for a very different people, purpose and perspective. I undoubtedly need not but will re­ mind the reader of how perspective, like beauty, b in the eye of the beholder. I think as anthropologists and ethnohistorians we have a responsibility to help repatriate the Indians' past in the form of their oral history. As one writer has remarked, in "giving a past it also helps them toward a future of their own making" (Thompson 1978: 226) . Such an axiom is also true of our under­ standing of Indian hbtory. The presenting of a more balanced reconstruction of the Indian past to Canadians and Americans helps us toward our devbing and/or permitting a more promis­ ing future for them.

NOTES

The research for and writing of thb paper were carried out under the auspices of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of postdoctoral fellowship. I am much appre­ ciative of this support. I also wbh to acknowledge the past sup­ port I have received from the Ministere des Affaires culturelles of Quebec for the earlier archival work and analyses on which thb paper draws. Similarly, as in the past, I wbh to thank the Hud­ son's Bay Company for its kind permission to consult and quote from the microfilm collection on deposit at the Public Archives of Canada. It b as a novice that I now begin my investigation into Cree oral hbtory and am most grateful to the following colleagues for sharing with me their greater knowledge in thb area: Sylvie Vincent, Jose Mailhot, Richard Preston and John Murdoch. ORAL AND RECORDED HISTORY 189 REFERENCES

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