Book Review

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Book Review | The Journal of American History, 86.1 | The History Cooperative

The Potlatch Papers: A Colonial Case History. By Christopher Bracken. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. xii, 276 pp. Cloth, $40.00, isbn 0-226-06986-9. Paper, $16.95, isbn 0-226-06987-7.)

Along with the "totem pole," the "potlatch" is probably the most famous feature of the aboriginal cultures of the north Pacific coast of North America. Outlawed by the Canadian government from the 1880s until the early 1950s, potlatches remain important parts of most Native lives in this region. The potlatch is a gathering of people assembled by invitation for the purpose of receiving individual portions of the valuable property to be distributed by the host. Beyond this, it is not one kind of event or ceremony, but many, with considerable variation from community to community and occasion to occasion. It has attracted much attention from anthropologists and less, but significant, attention from historians, lawyers, and economists. 1

From the 1880s until the 1930s, the Canadian government actively tried to suppress the potlatch, and a lot of correspondence about the effort passed back and forth between Ottawa and coastal British Columbia. Much of this correspondence was between government officials and politicians, but missionaries, anthropologists, ordinary citizens, and aboriginal people themselves also made their contributions. Christopher Bracken, who teaches English at the University of Alberta, labels this material "an archive of postal literature," and his book analyzes some of the correspondence, both published and unpublished, along with a few nonpostal writings on the potlatch. . . .

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