Ephraim George Squier and the Development of American Anthropology

May 30, 03:52 AM

Current Headlines: By Gallivan, Martin

Terry A. Barnhart. Ephraim George Squier and the Development of American Anthropology. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. 425 pp. Cloth, $59.95.

When Ephraim George Squier partnered with Edwin H. Davis in 1845 to survey prehistoric earthworks and mounds in the Ohio River Valley, detailed and systematic archaeological survey was almost nonexistent in the Americas. "Ethnological" inquiry in the early nineteenth century frequently involved efforts to link Native American societies to Biblical genealogies. However, by the end of Squier's life in 1888, the Bible no longer served as the ultimate source of information on the ancient American past. An explosion of archaeological and ethnographic knowledge provided the foundations for the Victorian evolutionism and comparative method central to anthropology, particularly in its pre-Boasian mode. American anthropology was on the verge of becoming an institutionalized discipline.

Terry A. Barnhart's thorough and engaging intellectual biography, Ephraim George Squier and the Development of American Anthropology, details the substantial role Squier played in this pivotal era. Squier and Davis's Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley ushered in the systematic collection of archaeological data in 1848 even as the scientific racism of the day led the authors to dismiss the historical ties between North American Indians and the mounds. Barnhart's analysis of Squier's research, including his influence on the American school of ethnology, illustrates the considerable intellectual legacy of nineteenth-century archaeology that often goes unrecognized. Squier mastered an array of archaeological, ethnographic, ethnohistoric, linguistic, and biological evidence as he grappled with issues of identity, social change, culture history, migration, and symbolism that remain pertinent today. While much post-Boasian anthropology has been a reaction to the stifling racism and nave evolutionism of the nineteenth century, Barnhart's work demonstrates that Squier's legacy is more complicated than this.

Barnhart's intellectual biography seeks to address the origin and development of ideas in American anthropology as they were embodied in Squier's publications and his correspondence with colleagues. The biographer pays particular attention to Squier's little-known writings after Ancient Monuments concerning the origins, migrations, and religious symbolism of American Indian societies. Barnhart also examines the public and private spheres of Squier's life to illuminate an ambitious personality driven in large part by self- promotion. The reader is treated to a skillfully crafted narrative that weaves together the salient themes of Squier's life: strident nationalism, scientific racism, and romanticism. As these are, for better or worse, key elements in the foundations of American anthropology, Squier's life bears close scrutiny.

Barnhart begins with Squier's early days as a journalist and advocate for workers' rights. Squier had little formal education and no training as an archaeologist when he stumbled upon Hopewell sites along the Scioto River in Ohio. Upon moving to Chillicothe in 1845, Squier became fascinated by the region's mounds and earthworks, partnering with Davis, a physician, an avid collector of Indian artifacts, and an avowed "moundologist." The two accurately surveyed a large number of mounds, excavated several, and assembled other researchers' site plans to create the most comprehensive study of American archaeology yet. The results of this survey were published as the inaugural volume in the Smithsonian's Contributions to Knowledge series. Though it is now common to refer to "Squier and Davis" as a shorthand for this research, Barnhart documents a contentious history behind the production of Ancient Monuments that resulted in Squier's estrangement from Davis even before the volume appeared in print. Squier and Davis's editor at the Smithsonian, Joseph Henry, patiently arbitrated Squier and Davis's squabbles, most of which resulted from Davis's sense that his contributions to the study were not properly acknowledged. Most importantly, Henry deserves credit for the overwhelmingly descriptive (as opposed to speculative) tone of the text and for excising some of the more "theoretical" (i.e., racialist) portions of the original manuscript. Several of Squier's later publications suffered in the absence of Henry's editing.

The remainder of Barnhart's study assesses Ancient Monuments and Squier's other writings on American Indian archaeology and ethnology; traces Squier's years as a diplomat and travel writer in Nicaragua, Honduras, and Peru; and evaluates Squire's contributions to the lively discourse of the American school of ethnology. Squier was influenced by Morton of the American school in his belief that the Ohio mound builders were "Toltecs" who subsequently migrated south to create the high civilizations of Mesoamerica. By contrast, Squier's subsequent study of burial mounds and earthen enclosures in western New York correctly concluded that these sites were produced by the forebears of historic tribes present in the region. Based on a cautious empiricism and a growing understanding of the North American archaeological record, Squier's assessment led to disagreements with Lewis Henry Morgan, who assigned these sites to a "lost" and civilized people. Barnhart turns next to Squier's transcription and assessment of the Walam Olum manuscript of Constantine Rafinesque, purportedly a record of a Lenape migration tradition. Squier concluded that the document was likely not a fake, an assessment at odds with many modern researchers. Squier's subsequent study of American Indian religious symbolism in The Serpent Symbol represents perhaps the earliest comprehensive study of American Indian religious principles. It is also exemplary of the rather undisciplined use of the comparative method common during the late nineteenth century, when assumptions regarding mankind's "psychic unity" were ascendant. Barnhart notes that while Squier's reputation was built on the careful data collection of his early work, much of his later writing departed from such discretion.

Squier's studies that coincided with diplomatic stints in Central America are less well-known and more charged with colonialist rhetoric than his earlier work in North America. Squier railed against the "mixing" of races he witnessed in Nicaragua and Honduras and touted the immigration of more whites as the only curative to the region's troubles. As a diplomat, he worked tirelessly to promote America's imperial "manifest destiny" in the region, while as an archaeologist he invested some of his spare time locating and shipping antiquities back to the United States. In Peru Squier found evidence of what he viewed as the superior race of American Indian societies who produced North America's mounds and earthworks. Despite this erroneous conclusion, his use of Native oral traditions, Spanish chronicles, and archaeological evidence to trace the histories of the complex societies in the region represents an impressive effort.

In the end, Squier emerges from Barnhart's biography as a bright, talented, and complicated man. He was a tireless collector of data whose vision of American Indian culture was influenced strongly by the scientific racism of Morton and his students. Squier, in turn, provided ammunition for these men by documenting evidence of an ancient and "civilized" North American past thought to be at odds with the abbreviated chronologies and monogenetic principles of biblical ethnologists. Squier's publications sometimes comprised thoughtful syntheses of American Indian social histories and at other times amounted to romantic travel writing tinged with an ugly racism.

Barnhart's biography seeks to develop a historical sociology of anthropological knowledge by viewing Squier's life apart from present-day concerns, interests, and agendas. He does this most effectively by demonstrating, contrary to some histories of anthropology, that nineteenth-century archaeology represents more than a dead end in anthropological thought. Barnhart documents the influence on Squier's writing of nationalist and essentialist ideas that dominated the social theory of his day. One might add that these ideas continue to play a role in modern social thought. Barnhart throws new light on the avocational roots of American archaeology as well as on the holistic approach to American Indian social history pursued during a time when anthropology's subdisciplines were less carefully bounded.

At times, though, it appears as if Barnhart succeeds a little too well in his efforts to distance himself from a broader history of social theory and more recent discourse in archaeology and anthropology. His tight narrative gaze provides a nuanced account of Squier's life and of his conversations with influential nineteenth- century thinkers, yet the consequences of these discussions for the later history of American anthropology are less well developed. At the end of Squier's professional life, Lewis Henry Morgan, Edward Tylor, and Herbert Spencer began to publish social evolutionary treatises that greatly influenced th\e discipline, but Barnhart does not delve into connections between these studies and Squier's earlier research. We learn little of archaeological studies that preceded Squier's Ohio mound survey and less still of the subsequent efforts that drew from Squier's fieldwork. Squier's pioneering efforts at archaeological survey and the construction of cultural chronologies are never paired with a rigorous assessment of this research that draws from modern archaeological studies.

Perhaps this runs contrary to Barnhart's efforts to avoid presentism, yet it is also clear that the author is more comfortable delving into nineteenth-century source material on Squier's life than he is with more recent archaeological and anthropological literature shaped in part by Squier's work. Other historians of archaeological thought, notably Bruce Trigger (A History of Archaeological Thought, 1989) and E. Gordon Willey and Jeremy A. Sabloff (History of American Archaeology, 1993), generally evoke a broader frame of reference for assessing Squier's significance in American archaeology. David Meltzer's introduction to the reissued Ancient Monuments (1998) evaluates the author's field methods, classification, and chronology construction from the vantage of modern archaeology, adding an authoritative perspective on the publication's significance. A mastery of this part of Squier's legacy is not in evidence in Barnhart's biography.

Barnhart's discussion of Squier's place in the development of American anthropology involves a similarly limited focus. The contrast between Squier's holistic vision of American Indian history and the general absence of such a perspective in contemporary anthropology, sociology, or history is remarkable, though this contrast goes largely unnoticed in Barnhart's biography. The implications of the complex and intertwined notions of race, nation, and culture as they entered Squire's thought and a nascent anthropology also could have received greater attention. Barnhart tends to dismiss this as the "least useful" part of Squire's work and accounts for some of it as symptomatic of the era's imprecise use of the term "race." I am less convinced than Barnhart that some of the more problematic parts of Squier's research, and of American anthropology in general, would be improved by better terminology.

However, Barnhart has succeeded at his stated task as a biographer to remain close to his subject with this comprehensive account that remains lively and interesting throughout its four- hundred-plus page length. Barnhart's study of Squier adds a critical chapter to the University of Nebraska Press's uniformly strong Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology series. In its entirety this series thoughtfully addresses the recurrent themes and changing angles of vision that shape anthropology today.

Martin Gallivan, College of William and Mary

Copyright University of Nebraska Press Spring 2007

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