A Rejoinder to Donald Mitchell's Review of Indian Petroglyphs of the Pacific Northwest

Abstract

Professor Mitchell's assessment of Indian Petroglyphs of the Pacific Northwest in EC Studies No. 28 is unbalanced and unjust. He writes: the introductory chapters and appended material are not central to the purposes of the volume, little will be said about them here. Informed readers will recognize the shortcomings of the very brief and selective discussion of Northwest culture, while others will find their desire for background information better served by consulting the much larger, more balanced picture provided by Philip Drucker's Cultures of the North Pacific Coast Professor Mitchell is wrong. The introductory chapters are important because the book was written not for him, but primarily for the people who pay his salary and support his ivory tower — the ordinary people. It was therefore necessary to include a simplified and condensed account of the prehistory of the coast, an extremely difficult chapter to write. I discussed these preliminary chapters with professional anthropologists and am satisfied that they serve their purpose. Surely Professor Mitchell would not expect a first survey of coastal petroglyphs to also provide the detailed historical survey he himself has not yet given us. It was my hope also that the interested readers would be led to studies of greater complexity, and to this end I referred to Drucker at least nine times in the text. I cannot agree with Professor Mitchell that a book of petroglyphs is the place for a full discussion of the Archaeological Sites Protection Act, I have brought the Act into the relevant places in the book (9, 18, 88, 173), a more readable way of emphasizing the importance of protection. The presentation of the Act in the Addenda is incidental. As for his specific complaint ( For each site . . . there should be a location map), I am surprised that a member of the Archaeological Sites Advisory Board should fail to be aware of the board's view that the publication of specific site locations endangers the sites. Perhaps Professor Mitchell should consult the A.S.A.B. files to read my letter of February 8, 1974 to the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, with copies to the Provincial