A book review of
Laurence Nowry’s Man of Mana
Marius Barbeau EssayCONTENTS Chronology of a life lived in folklore Collecting (census taking?)
among the Tsimshians Barbeau’s Legacy: past
and future |
Chronology of a
life lived in folklore
Nowry’s book on Barbeau brings afresh this life lived by one of Canada’s great anthropologists. While he may be known more in central Canada for his work on the Huron and French Canadian folk art, the first decade of his professional fieldwork was spent on the North Coast documenting the “people of the totem poles”. An inveterate collector (“packrat”), he never seemed to synthesize his findings, perhaps for the better given his limitations[1] plus the ease which later researchers have used his material. |
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From ‘nice guy’
to showman
Barbeau seemed to have the knack of setting people at ease. Many were willing to divulge to him historical and cultural information others could not even guess at. Early on he got first CPR and then CNR to give him free railroad passes to visit the west. Implicit was his attempt to popularize natives along the route as tourist attractions[2]. Latter in his career it was Barbeau himself that became the center of attraction. |
Collecting (census taking?) among the Tsimshians
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Barbeau modesty-- In fact, I am the recorder of Tsimshian history, in particular
where I've been eight long seasons among them and I practically studied every
family |
Barbeau would have us write “Tsimsyan” as a better spelling of how the word was pronounced, but the world did accepted Franz Boas’ orthography as in Tsimshian Mythology (1916). Barbeau had a typescript of this latter work
while on his first visit to Port Simpson (winter of 1914-5). He reacted strongly against what he saw as unprofessional conduct of Boas’ Tsimshian informant Henry Tate, that one could argue it affected his subsequent career. Tate seems to have had access to mainly his own family’s stories, or some he had only overheard, and then from memory.
Barbeau set his standards higher. Transcripts were checked and rechecked. Plus he was thorough: he recorded over 2000 names belonging to about 100 houses and 100-200 crests among the nine tribes then living at Port Simpson that winter.
Barbeau did not collect songs this trip, the Edison wax cylinder recorder was used by on subsequent trips. A pattern emerges —meticulous, thorough documentation with Kodak photography and voice recordings when possible. By the end of the trip he had met William Beynon at Port Simpson who (armed with a new typewriter) was to be his chief collaborator for the next forty years.
Barbeau’s Legacy: past and future
Strange, what “we” collectively value in Barbeau is not all those crest histories, most remain
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Academics
panned Nowry A review
of this book in prestigious journal seemed to judge Nowry harshly because
he had written more a chronological biography than a anthropological critique.
Probably better for us he did as this way North Coast gets good treatment |
unpublished, but the many photos of totem poles taken during his trips to the north coast villages. We now know that much of the text in his numerous Tsimshian books was actually collected by Beynon. Barbeau’s ideas about when and how the coast was peopled have been shown to be unsupported. Ditto his belief totem poles arrived with the scrimshaw carvings of sea otter sailors. And we could go on. Still when the Canadian Museum thought about not republishing Barbeau books they were met by disbelief from native carvers who coveted these texts as the best source to Gitxsan, Nisga’a and Haida poles.
Still, there is something ironic in what our culture has chosen to forget. Barbeau is credited with saving for posterity many folk songs e.g., the Ian & Sylvia version of “Mary Ann”. Barbeau collected 255 of ‘Tsimshian’[3] songs. Our culture, perhaps driven by its printing technology has forgotten the aural and dramatic Tsimshian history. Thus when The Tsimshian: Their Arts and Music," Vol. XVII, Publication of the American Ethnological Society, was republished the Barbeau music section was left out, presumably to save printing costs. The wax cylinders are still there in some museum vault in Ottawa.
It is not only the first nations aural archives that remain untapped. In Quebec Danielle Martineau is working with the CBC to re-record the Quebecois folksongs Barbeau collected 75 years ago and re-release them on modern CDs. With the use of the internet or modern MP3 technology this is doable for the Tsimshian ones too.
Some Links to sources
The CMCC has a several pages of autobiography taken from Barbeau notebooks (as student) now retained in the Salle Barbeau collection (as Researcher and as Folklorist and advocate of the Arts where Group of Seven and emily Carr themes introduced). Lowry’’s text (for example the student years) follows these so closely that we can see his primary source for book was said notebooks. For me that is reassuring, though we might have expected more footnotes to that effect.
While not known for his films there are some still available at NFB; the “Saving the Sagas” 1927 film which includes footage of William Beynon will require more searching to retrieve. A record seems widely available of Barbeau
A recording of Barbeau doing his “act” as showman is captured on a widely available LP called My Life in Recording Canadian Indian Folklore seems widely available still for example (scroll down to Barbeau)
Here is link to just some of the Barbeau legacy for North Coast 1st Nations. I will review some of these in future.