History, Narrative, and Temporality: Examples from the Northwest Coast

Abstract

This paper outlines an approach to historical narratives that replaces the atomism of actor and event with a model that stresses the integration of event, narrative, and historical practice. The notion of contact as an event is addressed in the context of the Northwest Coast. A Heiltsuk English narrative dealing with contact is analyzed in the light of Heiltsuk cultural data. The analysis centers on Jakobson's distinction between metaphor and metonymy and leads to the conclusion that for the Heiltsuk, contact with Europeans resulted in the acquisition of a linear historicity. Finally, notions of temporality are examined with respect to historical practice and North American Indian cultures. The Nature of Historical Understanding Expressed in Narrative Within the discipline of ethnohistory, a question commonly asked of historical narratives concerns their relation to real history. This is by no means a simple or simplistic question, but it is one to which several sorts of answers suggest themselves. If by real history is meant European historical accounts, that is, European historia rerum gestarum-and this is indeed what is frequently meant-I would answer that there is no necessary reason for there to be a correspondence. I believe native accounts to be as inherently valid and of the same epistemological status as any other historia rerum gestarum. This is not simply a matter of principle. Rather, it is vital to recognize that native historical accounts express fundamental truths about historical processes and as such constitute an important expression of culture. Historical narratives are inherently inferior neither to European accounts nor to more traditional Indian narrative. If, however, the question is one of the relation to res gestae, the events themselves, then we have entered more difficult philosophical territory. The problem is, as Ricoeur describes in volume I of Time and NarraEthnohistory 35:2 (Spring I988). Copyright ? by the American Society for Ethnohistory. ccc ooI4-I80o/88/$I.50. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.217 on Tue, 06 Sep 2016 03:57:57 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms