German Collections from the American Revolution

See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237090038 German Collections from the American Revolution Chapter · January 2007 CITATIONS READS 0 1,886 1 author: Christian Feest 163 PUBLICATIONS 237 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Ethnological Museums - Past and Present View project Native American smoking pipes View project All content following this page was uploaded by Christian Feest on 16 May 2014. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. German Collections from the American Revolution Christian F. Feest The second half of the eighteenth century was an impor- liable documentation), no less than about 250 artifacts tant period in the protohistory of anthropology as well as have been preserved of those collected in northwestern in the history of ethnographic collecting. After more than North America on Cook’s Third Voyage during a few two centuries of European expansion into other parts of weeks in the spring of 1778 (Feest 1992; 1993: 6–7; 1995a: the world, the enormous mass of observational data on 324; 1995b: 111–112). the manners and customs of a wide variety of peoples, The same period also saw far-reaching changes in the which had been accumulated more or less randomly, political and cultural map of northeastern North Ameri- begged to be compared, classified, and explained. In the ca. France lost its North American colonies at the end of short run, Joseph François Lafitau’s comparative ap- the French and Indian wars, and England some of its proach of 1724 was less influential (partly, no doubt, be- American possessions in the course of the American Rev- cause his book was not translated into English for nearly olution. This in turn led to the physical and political re- 250 years) than Carl Linné’s Systema naturae (1735), whose alignment of considerable portions of the Native popula- taxonomic scheme was adapted to the needs of a classifi- tion of the Northeast. A better understanding of these catory interest in peoples and their cultures. It was the cre- processes as they affected the indigenous peoples of this ation of terms descriptive of the subject matter (such as region will ultimately have to be based on an analysis of “culture”) and—in the context of a proposed Systema pop- the historical-ethnographic record of this period, the ulorum—of the discipline itself (i.e., “ethnography” and its knowledge of which is still far from adequate—and this equivalents) by German historians and lexicographers in notably includes the evidence supplied by artifacts. the 1770s, which ultimately established a quickly recog- The present paper will discuss artifacts collected by nized new field of discourse (cp., e.g., Vermeulen 1992). German mercenaries during the American Revolution On the three circumnavigations of Captain James within the framework just outlined. These Germans are Cook and on other voyages of the Enlightenment, the often collectively referred to as “Hessians,” because two Linnean principles were first applied to the collecting of thirds of the approximately 30,000 soldiers leased by King ethnographic data in general and of artifacts in particular. George III from impoverished and/or greedy German petty In the wake of this development, the old mode of the princes for the better protection of his American posses- Kunst- and Wunderkammer with its emphasis on the un- sions did in fact come from the two principalities of usual and its disregard for provenance and contextual in- Hesse-Kassel and Hesse-Hanau. Four other principalities, formation gave way to a new ethnographic paradigm of however, were also involved, with Brunswick sending near- collecting, in which peoples (and thus provenance) pro- ly 6,000 of its men, Bayreuth-Anspach 2,300, and both vided the primary taxa. These newly defined goals of collecting along with the establishment of separate ethno- Christian F. Feest is Director of the Museum für Völkerkunde, Wien, graphic collections (generally within natural history cabi- Austria. His published work on Native American history, anthropology, 2 nets) led to a rapid increase in the number of artifacts and art includes Native Arts of North America ( 1992), Indians and Europe (ed., 21999), Sitting Bull. “Der letzte Indianer” (ed., 1999), The Cultures of both collected and preserved. While there presently exist Native North Americans (ed., 2000), and Indian Times. Nachrichten aus dem just about 150 artifacts from North America definitively roten Amerika (ed., 2002). Author’s address: Museum für Völkerkunde, Neue Burg, A-1010 Wien, known to have been collected prior to 1750 (and perhaps Austria. an about equal number from the same period without re- E-mail: [email protected] 44 Fig. 2 Undated drawing (ca. 1780) from the troop diary of the Hesse- Hanau Riflemen Corps, depicting a French-Canadian sled “Carriole” with its thill (“Travail”), and an indigenous snowshoe (“Raquette”), pipe tomahawk (“Casse-tête”), and painted bison skin (“Peau de Buffle”). After Auerbach (1996: 319). Fig. 1 “The Indian Warrior.” Engraving after a drawing by Major August Wilhelm. Du Roi in Zimmermann (1804: frontispiece). The war- tivities in the St. Lawrence River valley (Eelking 1863, rior is identified as a Sioux, the figures in the background as a Mohawk Lowell 1970). and a French-Canadian peasant (Zimmermann 1804: 381). While the published diaries of the mercenary soldiers reflect a general interest both in the indigenous and Waldeck and Anhalt-Zerbst 1,200 each.1 Of these various French-Canadian population and their material culture troops, the contingents from Hesse-Kassel and Bayreuth- (including some drawings2 of persons and artifacts; see Anspach had few if any direct contacts with Native peo- Figs. 1, 2), they provide only limited evidence for the ac- ples, while the Waldeckers had mostly rather transient en- tual process of collecting in the field. Baron von Closen, counters with Creeks, Chickasaws, and others during for example, describes a gift exchange in 1780 with a del- their sojourn in Florida and Louisiana. Close to 10,000 egation vom Kahnawake, in which in return for “blankets, soldiers from Brunswick, Hesse-Hanau, and Anhalt-Zerb- knives, and other objects of hardware, ... they left us ... st, however, were exposed to sustained contacts with a va- their sandals, belts, and many other trinkets, also some riety of local and foreign Native peoples during their ac- scalps” (Acomb 1958: 39). A less ceremonial manner of appropriation is described by Anton Adolf Du Roi of the Brunswick regiment of Col. Specht; upon their first land- 1. In addition, a German contingent from Zweibrücken (Deux-Ponts) fall at a Micmac village in New Brunswick, temporarily de- was involved in the American Revolution from 1780–1783 as part of the French expeditionary force under General Rochambeau (Acomb 1958). serted by its inhabitants, the soldiers saw “baskets and 2. The drawing, upon which the engraving in Fig. 1 was based, is now drinking vessels artificially made of birchbark, which not missing from a set of drawings of military uniforms by A. W. Du Roi in the Stadtarchiv Braunschweig. Other drawings of ethnographic interest to take with us we were unable to refrain from because of include two “Canadian Indians” drawn on 29 August 1780 in Newport, their rarity” (Teuscher 1983: 88). In 1778, Capt. Johann Rhose Island, by Baron Ludwig von Closen of Zweibrücken (Acomb Heinrichs of the Kassel Riflemen reported the loss of his 1958: 265), and “An Indian of the Stockbridge Tribe” (1779) by Johann Ewald of the Hesse-Kassel Riflemen Corps (Tustin 1979: 149). Al- baggage, including “an Indianbow, arrows, a net for catch- though captioned in German, a watercolor drawing of a Huron man ing birds, scalp dagger, knife, etc, and other curiosities. and an Abenaki woman now in Brunswick (Harrison et al. 1987a: 69), was part of a series of French-Canadian drawings produced in the 1770s. That I was exceedingly displeased with this mishap, you 45 Fig. 3 Burden strap with moosehair false embroidery, St. Lawrence River valley, ca. 1775. HLMD cat.no. 1842.200. Photograph: C. F. Feest (courtesy of Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt). This piece is unusual because it is the only one of more than fifty examples of this type on record that is edged with white imitation wampum—a characteristic feature of artifacts of the period of the American Revolution. Linked pairs of diamonds are more commonly found in wampum and imitation wampum work (cp. Fig. 11; but see Stephenson 2007: fig. 1, ex Sotheby’s 1982: lot 100, ex K. Schindler coll.). may easily imagine, because I intended enriching the Cab- Ledermuseum, Offenbach. They include two burden- inet of our celebrated Dr. Dolten with my acquisitions. straps with moosehair false embroidery (Fig. 2 and Völger Still I have a few curiosities remain with me” (Heinrichs 1976: no. 4.30.21; cp. note 4 below), two canoe models 1898: 144–145). (Fig. 3), a toboggan and a cradle board model, an “Iro- Significant ethnographic collections, whose ultimate quois headdress” (Fig. 12), three pairs of moccasins, and fate largely remains to be reconstructed, were thus assem- a quilled knifecase (Völger 1976: no. 4.20.34). The earli- bled in the course of these encounters. Some of the ma- est documentary record for most of them are catalog num- terial quickly entered the cabinets of the local princes, bers assigned in 1842. While they are here attributed to which were then on the verge of becoming public muse- the time of the American Revolution on the basis of their ums. A few pieces appear to have enriched the recently es- style, it should be noted that the collection included other tablished ethnographic collection of the Academic Muse- early objects from North America (such as Naskapi cloth- um at the University of Göttingen3—the place were the ing), which cannot be linked to the Hessian mercenaries.

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