Jerome Rothenberg has posted a series of entries from his wife’s writing on the Seneca people, specifically her interviews of Harry Watt. Since I want to share this with several people, and he doesn’t provide a single convenient set of links, here are the four pieces of writing he’s posted:
Diane Rothenberg: Corn Soup & Fry Bread: A Reminiscence
Diane Rothenberg: The Economic Memories of Harry Watt (Part One)
Diane Rothenberg: The Economic Memories of Harry Watt (Part Two)
Diane Rothenberg: The Economic Memories of Harry Watt (Part Three)
This work is interesting as an example of ethnography and as an account of contact between “white” and “red” culture at two historical moments: that of the Rothenberg’s friendship with Watt and other Seneca and that of the late 18th-century attempt by Quaker communicants to whiten up the Seneca people by getting them to become property owning farmers with traditional gender roles. (Previously Seneca men had done work to generate some cash; Seneca women had done subsistence farming; and the whole community practiced gift exchange and sharing of resources, a practice the Quaker saw as encouraging “idlers.”)
It’s fascinating reading about something we don’t often hear very much about.
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