[Rarebooks] FS: Arts of Diplomacy- Lewis & Clark's Indian Collection

[Joslin Hall Rare Books]

TITLE: “Arts of Diplomacy. Lewis & Clark's Indian Collection”

By Castle McLaughlin.
Published in Cambridge by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology
and the University of Washington Press in 2003.

DISCUSSION: "When Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led the Corps of
Discovery on their epic journey across the American West, they were acting
not only as territorial explorers, but as diplomatic emissaries from the
young United States to the Native American peoples they encountered.
Castle McLaughlin's fresh examination of the Native American objects
related to Lewis and Clark's expedition brilliantly challenges the
conventional wisdom about these men and their mission as scientists,
collectors, and explorers and places their journey in the context of a
complex process of mutual discovery between representatives of very
different cultures. In "Arts of Diplomacy", Native Americans are revealed
as active participants in the outcome of the expedition, selecting objects
of significance to bestow as gifts or use in trade, and skillfully
negotiating their own strategic interests in their dealings with the
exploring party. McLaughlin makes it clear that Lewis and Clark were not
acting as "collectors" of exotic material culture, but rather were dealing
on a much more even playing field with cultural representatives whose
goodwill - and goods - were critical to the success of their enterprise.

"The vehicle for this innovative and illuminating analysis is the
collection of late-eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Native
American objects from the Prairie, Plains, and Pacific Northwest at the
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University. The
magnificent objects in the Peabody Museum's collection, presented in
lavish color photography, are analyzed in detail and traced through
documentation to their probable sources - both tribal makers and users and
likely collectors. Long thought to be the only remaining ethnographic
items collected by Lewis and Clark, the objects are here exposed to
intense scrutiny by a team of anthropologists, art historians, and
material culture specialists.McLaughlin's interpretation is a model for
how, through informed contextual analysis, objects can be used to tell
stories. Her text gives voice to the calumets, buffalo robes, and basketry
pieces that served as items of gifting and exchange in cross-cultural
encounters. Contemporary Native American voices are heard here as well, in
essays by and about Wasco fiber artist Pat Courtney Gold, Mandan-Hidatsa
flute player Keith Bear, Hunkpapa Lakota painter Butch Thunder Hawk,
Lakota quillwork artist Jo Esther Parshall, Mandan-Hidatsa community
activist Mike Cross, and others."

DESCRIPTION: Softcover. 9"x11", 359 pages, color and black & white
illustrations.

CONDITION NOTES: Some minor soil and light wear, but otherwise clean and
nice, with a tight binding.

PRICE:  $65

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