Ephraim George Squier and the Development of American Anthropology (review)

Abstract

Ephraim George Squier and Development of American Anthropology. By Terry A. Barnhart. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. Pp. xvi, 425. Cloth, $59.95.)Ephraim Squier stands as one of most important figures in history of American archaeology and anthropology in era before both those fields, along with rest of American intellectual life, became professionalized. In history of anthropology, Squier has been seen as precursor rather than predecessor, footnote rather than founder. When he died in 1888 federal government's Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) had been up and running for nearly ten years. Squier had nothing to do with its founding or with its early work. By time John Wesley Powell took helm of BAE, Squier's important work was well behind him, and he had gone through nasty divorce and stint in an insane asylum.The purpose of Terry Barnhart's biography to recover Squier's career as serious student of Native America and to elevate his accomplishments beyond their usual assignment. Barnhart believes that Squier a transitional figure in history of American anthropology in many ways, and that he is indeed worthy intellectual ancestor (5).To make this case, Barnhart spends most of this book with Squier's own writings, published and unpublished. It an impressive-indeed, daunting-accumulation. Squier published widely during 184Os, 185Os, and 186Os, corresponding with most of major American researchers of Native Americans. Barnhart has assembled bibliography of Squier's anthropological writings that runs to nearly six pages.Squier received national attention in 1848 with publication of Ancient Monuments of Mississippi Valley, first volume in Simthsoman's Contributions to Knowledge. That book resulted from three-year collaboration with Edwin Davis exploring, surveying, and excavating Indian mounds that so fascinated Americans through Ohio and Mississippi River valleys.Ancient Monuments remains Squier's best-known book, but no sooner had it come out than Squier moved his investigations from Ohio to New York. There he worked to some extent with Lewis Henry Morgan, and result was his Aboriginal Monuments of State of New York, published in 1851. By time this book came out, Squier had accepted diplomatic posting to Nicaragua and wrote Nicaragua: Its People, Scenery, Monuments and Proposed Inter-Oceanic Canal, which first appeared in 1852 and was revised and excerpted several times. In midst of all this, Squier found time to collect his ideas about the origin and development of religious ideas and symbols (187) and publish them as The Serpent Symbol and Reciprocal Principles of Nature in 1851. By 1853 he was back in Central America; this trip yielded three more publications, in 1853, 1860, and 1861. Between 1863 and 1865, Squier served as U.S. claims commissioner in Peru. In 1877, as last major publication of his remarkable career, he issued Peru: Incidents of travel and Exploration in Land of Incas.Even this cursory listing of Squier's major works makes clear that he was thinking about Native America in hemispheric rather than strictly nationalistic terms. He wanted always to synthesize, compare, and draw connections between mounds of Ohio, earthworks of New York, constructions of Central America, and civilizations of Peru. …