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Reviews
At Home with the Bella Coola Indians: T.F. McIlwraith's Field Letters, 1922–4
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Edited by John Barker and Douglas Cole
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University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver, 2003. Photographs, notes, bibliography, index. 224 pages. $85.00 cloth, $29.95 paper (Canadian).
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Reviewed by Deanna Kingston
Oregon State University, Corvallis
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| At Home with the Bella Coola Indians is primarily a compilation of T.F. McIlwraith's letters to his family, his employers at the Victoria Memorial Museum, and his professors at Cambridge University as he conducted fieldwork among the Bella Coola Indians (now the Nuxalk Nation) in 1922 and 1923–1924. The volume also contains an extensive introduction, endnotes, and references by editor John Barker, a reprint of a newspaper article written by McIlwraith about his research, and two unpublished manuscripts by McIlwraith on aspects of Nuxalk culture. |
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T.F. McIlwraith was educated at Cambridge University from 1919 to 1921 under A.C. Haddon and W.H.R. Rivers and is considered a pioneer in Canadian anthropology. After finishing his studies, McIlwraith was hired by Edward Sapir, then chief of the Anthropology Division at the Victoria Memorial Museum in Ottawa, Ontario, to carry out fieldwork among the Bella Coola Indians. His research was conducted in two different fieldwork seasons — March to July 1922 and September 1923 to March 1924 — and culminated in a two-volume ethnography titled The Bella Coola Indians. |
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McIlwraith wrote well, and his letters give rich descriptions of various Nuxalk people and of non-Natives he encountered. The letters also depict the nature of anthropological research in the early 1920s. At that time, anthropologists focused on what is now called "salvage anthropology," in which researchers were most concerned with the so-called traditional culture of groups prior to contact with European colonial cultures. McIlwraith's letters reflect this concern, as he ex-presses time and again his regret that so much of the "old" culture had disappeared. His letters also discuss his living arrangements (with non-Natives in the settlement), some of his observations of Nuxalk culture, and his relationships with the Nuxalk people. Finally, there are several references to employment forms that were sent to Sapir in order to pay informants for their time. Most importantly, the letters describe McIlwraith's incorporation into the Nuxalk community, which enabled him to witness and participate in their winter ceremonial season. |
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Editor Douglas Cole died in 1997, well before the book was published, and John Barker took over the project. Barker's introduction gives readers necessary context, including information on the Nuxalk, both in the past and today, as well as on McIlwraith's background and education. In addition, the editors describe how the letters were transcribed, why some parts were omitted, and where the originals are now located. Because the editors made transparent their changes to the letters, I am confident that the information in the book is reliable. Especially useful were Barker's and Cole's endnotes and cross-references to McIlwraith's two-volume ethnography on his research, which allow readers to check McIlwraith's research data themselves. I am also impressed with Barker's and Cole's knowledge of Nuxalk culture and their understanding of the context of both McIlwraith's life and anthropological research as it was conducted at that time. |
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Anthropologists, ethnohistorians, historians, and First Nations people in British Columbia and elsewhere will find this book interesting and useful for understanding how anthropological research was carried out in the past. Too often, anthropologists have been criticized for not giving something back to the communities where they conduct research. In this case, however, the book reports that informants were paid for their time and that McIlwraith filled an important role in the winter ceremonials, giving up time that he might have preferred to spend conducting interviews in order to help the Nuxalk singers perform their songs. The book also includes a foreword by Lawrence Pootlas, the contemporary hereditary chief of the Nuxalk Nation, who notes with appreciation the results of McIlwraith's research as well as the nation's gratitude to Barker and Cole for publishing McIlwraith's letters. |
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