Ridington, Robin

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UCLAAmerican Indian Culture and Research Journal TitleOut of the North: The Subarctic Collection of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology. By Barbara A. Hail and Kate C. Duncan.Permalinkhttps://escholarship.org/uc/item/6vq248hnJournalAmerican Indian Culture and Research Journal , 15(1)ISSN0161-6463AuthorRidington, RobinPublication Date1991DOI10.17953Copyright InformationThis work is made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, availalbe at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital LibraryUniversity of CaliforniaReviews 103 sity Press), offering a thoughtful consideration of the McNickle papers and providing an invaluable resource that Native Ameri- canists will refer to and build upon. Hertha D. Wong University of California, Berkeley Out of the North: The Subarctic Collection of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology. By Barbara A. Hail and Kate C. Dun- can. Bristol, Rhode Island: Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropol- ogy, Brown University, 1989. 301 pages. $25.00 paper. In the years between 1888 and 1897, a teacher and journalist from Rhode Island named Emma Shaw Colcleugh visited Algonquian and Athabaskan communities in the central subarctic. In addi- tion to the accounts of her adventures that she wrote for news- papers in New England, Colcleugh also returned with samples of subarctic arts in the media of hide, bark, beadwork, and quill- work. The sixty-eight objects she brought back from her travels were purchased by Rudolf F. Haffenreffer, Sr. in 1930 and now form the core of a subarctic collection at the Haffenreffer Museum of Brown University. Objects from the Colcleugh collection are outstanding for their comprehensive representation of nineteenth-century subarctic de- sign. Many of them are ornately decorated in beads, silk, moose- hair, or quills. Out of the North is an outstanding tribute to the work of these largely anonymous aboriginal artists. The book is the result of collaboration between Barbara Hail, a curator at the Haffenreffer Museum, and Kate Duncan, an art historian who has worked extensively with Athabaskan material. Working with the Colcleugh collection led the authors to look for additional ma- terial from other collections to achieve a complete documentation of the major Algonquian and Athabaskan styles of ornament. Hail and Duncan realized that their understanding of subarc- tic technique and design would not be complete until they had done fieldwork with contemporary native artisans. Their trips, conducted between 1985 and 1987, followed the route taken by Colcleugh a hundred years before them. Their fieldwork also par- alleled hers in that they were searching for the continuing prac- tice of rare techniques such as hare-skin looping, porcupine-quill 104 AMERICAN INDIAN CULTURE AND RESEARCH JOURNAL weaving, and bark biting that they had identified in objects from the Colcleugh collection. The book, like the work it documents, is both utilitarian and lavish. Its utility lies in the solid scholarship with which the authors researched the objects and the people who made them. The book is lavish in its color plates, its splendid historic and con- temporary photographs of subarctic scenes and people, its hand- some design, and its cover and endpapers printed with the image of birchbark. Out of the North provides enough knowledgeable detail for use by serious students of material culture. It discusses questions such as the origins and diffusion of particular tech- niques and the role the artifacts played in domestic life and trade. A chapter on subarctic arts today is balanced by an introductory overview of the people, history, and art of the region. Historic photographs complement the text to explain how native and Eu- ropean traditions blended to produce a distinctively subarctic de- sign aesthetic. Out of the North tells multiple stories. It explains nineteenth- century anthropology and gender relations as much as it does ar- tistic syncretism in the subarctic. Emma Shaw Colcleugh was an ingenious travel writer as well as a collector. She was, in fact, an unofficial ethnographer, a professional writer, and an active ferni- nist. Hail and Duncan present her collection of subarctic pieces as the center of their book and, in doing so, bring this interesting woman's life and work into focus. Emma Colcleugh's writing takes the reader back to the northern scenes she experienced and from which she brought back the pieces now in the Haffenreffer Museum. Her account of a journey down the Mackenzie River from Athabaska Landing becomes almost cinematic in the way Hail and Duncan integrate it with powerful historic photographs. At the center of this book are fifteen pages of color plates illus- trating such rich and intricate nineteenth-century work as loom- woven porcupine-quill bands and a richly beaded woman's hood of blue felt trade cloth. The plates also show embroidered bark containers made in 1985 and examples of ornamented dog blan- kets made in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The final 260 pages of the book catalog the entire collection. Unlike ordinary catalogs, however, this one also includes informative essays on the materials, techniques, and designs being illus- trated. The description of quill weaving artfully includes an his- toric document written by Hudson's Bay Company factor B. R. Reviews 105 Ross in 1862. Elsewhere in the catalog, line drawings illustrate techniques such as quill folding and piping on moccasin seams. The catalog section of this book is also unusual in that it is writ- ten in a narrative style and is interspersed with historic and contemporary photographs of people and scenes relevant to the material being illustrated. Out of the North will certainly gladden the hearts and swell the pride of contemporary subarctic artisans. Not only is it a carefully researched investigation into the origins and survival of a major northern artistic tradition, but it also is a thing of beauty. Authors Hail and Duncan are to be congratulated for the intelligence and elegance with which they have done justice to the skills and aes- thetics of the northern people who made the objects now in the Haffenreffer Museum. In addition to being an essential and de- finitive source of information, the book is handsome enough to make a wonderful gift. Robin Ridington University of British Columbia Puerto del Sol: The Twenty-Fifth Anniversary (25th anniversary issue). Edited by Kevin McIlvoy. Las Cruces: Writing Center of New Mexico State University, 1988. 340 pages. Twenty-five years ago it was 1965. Twenty-five years before the 1988 publication of Puerto del Sol's anniversary edition, it was 1963. They were very good years. It was a very good era, al- though I'm sure no one quite knew then what the era was like. Certainly, when the first Puerto del Sol was published in winter 1960-61, no one likely knew what kind of decade was beginning. Sputnik. The Russians had leapt ahead in the space race. John F. Kennedy, with the lady America held gracefully in his fated arms, danced towards Camelot. Civil rights and freedom riders. In 1960, the dream for individual accomplishment was heady. In my first year in college, I heard the challenge of "I have a dream" intoned proudly by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. John Wayne still saved every wagon train and "killed every Injun" in Hollywood. Free speech. Vietnam was just over the napalm-lit horizon, al- though Americans did not have the vaguest notion of it yet. Hootenannies. Poetry. The Beat scene in San Francisco-Snyder, 

Out of the North: The Subarctic Collection of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology. By Barbara A. Hail and Kate C. Duncan.

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