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• 1 media/1024px-FEWKES,_J._WALTER_DOCTOR_LCCN2016859703_(crop).jpg 2022-05-18T03:38:38+00:00 Jesse Walter Fewkes (1850 - 1930) 28 This is a short biography of Jesse Fewkes's work in the field of ethnography specifically with the Passamaquoddy Tribe in present day Maine. plain 2022-06-07T20:11:42+00:00

  Jesse Walter Fewkes (1850 - 1930) spearheaded the use of the phonograph in the “research” of Native American cultures. Fewkes focused his work on capturing Native American sounds through audio recording devices, such as the phonograph. He is credited with being the first person to record with a phonograph in the field during a trip to Maine where he worked among the Passamaquoddy and recorded one of his largest collections of wax cylinders (Hough 1932). The trip was a test of the technology before embarking on more extensive “expeditions” in the southwest. His work amongst the Pueblo Indians, including the Zuni, became his focus (1890). 

  His “research” focused on collecting songs, celebrations and other events that could be recorded on a phonograph. Fewkes's work would inspire other significant figures in the movement of preserving indigenous cultures such as Benjamin Ives Gilman,who analyzed the use of intervals outside Euro-American tunings in Fewkes's recordings. However, Fewkes conducted “research” in a colonizing manner that wrought epistemic violence upon the musics he encountered. This epistemic violence can be found in the erasure of Indigenous  musical contexts and epistemologies.

  Prior to engaging in the field of ethnology, Fewkes's main area of study was zoology; he spent four years in Leipzig, Germany studying zoology from 1871-1875. Fewkes’s previous areas of study influenced heavily his work in Ethnography. In his writings about the Passamaquoddy tribe in Maine, he often refers to the “dying out” of their “language, manners and customs” (Fewkes 1890a: 688). His writings and articles describing the Passamaquoddy tribe’s culture deny coeval existence of settlers and indigenous people. This practice of ethnologists publishing writings documenting Native American life as if it were in the past was very common in  the late 1800’s to early 1900’s. As Sterne points out, this effect feeds the practice of “othering” Indigenous Peoples (Sterne 2003). The denial of coeval existence is defined by the colonialist attitude of refusing to acknowledge Indigenous groups as existing at the same time as a “modern,” settler society. This is done through setting Indigenous groups as “others” who belong to the past within a linear idea of evolution. 

  Fewkes's background in zoology undoubtedly had a significant effect on his research of the Passamaquoddy tribe. Although he recorded a prolific number of Passamaquoddy voices, he chose to accompany each recording with a transcription and his own observations and interpretations as if they are fact. Take the Passamaquoddy “Snake Song,” for example. In the description of the “Snake Song” recording, Fewkes says, “While there is nothing to prove that it is a remnant of an ancient snake worship, still it is natural to presume that such is the case” (Fewkes 1890b: 270). Much of Fewkes’s work is similar to the game “telephone,” passing through other ethnographers such as W. Wallace Brown, an agent for the Passamaquoddy tribe based in Calais, Maine. Information became distorted and thus likely to be inaccurate to the original person. 

  To attempt to understand Native American cultures, Fewkes utilized western rhetoric to find analogues between EuroAmerican culture and Native American culture. In other words, Fewkes analyzed indigenous practices through his EuroAmerican  lens. Another assumption Fewkes publishes noted that “it may be presumed that it (the Snake Dance of the Passamaquoddy) originally had a religious importance similar to that of the Snake Dances of the Southwest, since the extent of the worship of the snake among North American Indians is known” (Fewkes 1890b: 278). In his writings, Fewkes conflates cultures, denying the individuality of different tribes. In addition, he used analogues to western faith structures in his analysis, but also compared traditions from tribes of the southwestern United States for the study of the Passamaquoddy in New England (Hough 1932: 261-267). Such qualifications and presumptuous descriptions tied to cultural practices, stolen from the original owners, besmirches the meaning and heart of the original owners, erasing their identity and ownership and incurring epistemic violence.

  Fewkes had  a heavy influence over the sonic colonization and appropriation of several Native American tribes such as the Zuñi and Hopi tribes, not to mention the Passamaquody. These living peoples and their cultural practices were pronounced dead, and their definitions and identities changed in the western eye over the course of ethnographer's “research” over them.

  
  Works Cited:

  • Fewkes, Jesse Walter. 1890a. “On the Use of the Phonograph Among the Zuni Indians.” The American Naturalist 24(283):687-691.
  • Fewkes, Jesse Walter. 1890b.  “A Contribution of Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore” The Journal of American Folklore 3(11): 257-280.
  • Hough, Walter. 1932. “Biographical Memoir of Jesse Walter Fewkes.” National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Biographical Memoirs. Volume XV - Ninth Memoir. 261-267.
  • Sterne, Jonathan. 2003. “A Resonant Tomb” in The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction. Duke University Press. 287-333. 
• 1 2019-12-18T02:09:01+00:00 Glossary Terms 7 A list of terms used throughout the site plain 2022-05-21T16:09:27+00:00 Click on the links to reveal the definition of the terms below. 
  • Arrangement
  • Arrivant
  • Community-based repatriation
  • Culture
  • Decolonizing
  • Denial of Coeval Presence
  • Epistemicide
  • Ethnomusicology
  • Hemenway Southwestern Archaeological Expedition
  • Indigenous
  • Mary Hemenway
  • Orientalism
  • Primitive
  • Repatriation
  • Salvage Ethnography
  • Settler
  • Settler Colonialism
  • Social Darwinism
  • Transcription
• 1 media/Densmore Sketches.jpg 2019-12-21T21:52:29+00:00 Critical Perspectives on Densmore's Approaches 3 plain 2022-05-28T18:36:44+00:00

  
  It would be easy to glorify her for her life-long commitment to her career, but I think it is important to address serious concerns in her approaches. We can give credit to Densmore’s commitment to her work without overlooking the power dynamics between settlers and Indigenous peoples that she exploited and perpetuated.  This is imperative when teaching or learning about Densmore, because we do not want to overlook or perpetuate these imbalanced power dynamics. 

  • Densmore did not study Indigenous peoples’ music in order to help or benefit them. Even in wanting to save Indigenous customs before they disappeared, she did not practice salvage ethnography so that Indigenous people could be connected to their heritage. She published and archived the materials she collected on behalf of and for other settlers and colonialist institutions, such as the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress. This is why it’s imperative that these recordings now take on a new life that serves their original bearers.Densmore, like many early ethnologists, was steeped in Western Art Music. She carried her rigorous classical music training from Oberlin Conservatory (1884-1886) into how she wrote down (transcribed) and analyzed Indigenous music. 
  • Despite noting the limitations of staff  notation developed for Western Art Music, she did not abandon it because she wanted to find generalizable patterns and not hone in on specifics. 
  • Densmore superimposed not only the theoretical framework designed for Western Art Music, but its valuing of analysis onto the Indigenous music she was studying. She methodically dissected, categorized, tagged, and theorized about the Indigenous music that she transcribed and recorded. She chose to do this over treating and appreciating the music in the ways that Indigenous people did. She also did not take on ethnomusicological approaches that were developed later, such as learning to play the music, learning the language, or immersing herself in the cultural context for a long time. 
  • Despite learning about their significance, she still recorded sacred music such as those of the Midewiwin (Grand Medicine Society). In doing so, she prioritized her scholarly interests and her analytical relationship to music over what the music means to Indigenous people. 
  • Densmore approached Indigenous people as “other” and started her studies and writings with a romanticized notion of how Indigenous people lived and thought at the time of her work. 
  • Densmore saw elements of music as representative of relative levels of evolution and operated with an attitude that denied coeval existence of the Indigenous peoples she worked with. 
  • She grouped together Indigenous musics and practices in her attempt to study them. Instead of focusing on an individual group of people, she fell into the colonialist trope of homogenizing various Indigenous groups. 
  • Densmore muddied consent in her practices. She transcribed Indigenous peoples’ music before they started giving her permission. Even when Indigenous people gave Densmore permission, they may have been pressured through her negotiations and the power that she had as a white, settler.
   

   

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