Anthony FC Wallace Papers

390 Pages·2013·0.77 MB·English

Anthony F. C. Wallace Papers
1920-2000
Mss.Ms.Coll.64a
American Philosophical Society
2/2003
105 South Fifth Street
Philadelphia, PA, 19106
215-440-3400
[email protected]
Anthony F. C. Wallace Papers 1920-2000 Mss.Ms.Coll.64a
Table of Contents
Summary Information .................................................................................................................................3
Background note .........................................................................................................................................4
Scope & content ........................................................................................................................................10
Administrative Information .......................................................................................................................12
Related Materials ......................................................................................................................................12
Indexing Terms .........................................................................................................................................12
Other Descriptive Information ..................................................................................................................17
Collection Inventory ..................................................................................................................................18
Series I. Correspondence.......................................................................................................................18
Series II. Research Notes and Drafts..................................................................................................118
Series III. Notecards............................................................................................................................222
Series IV. Works by Wallace..............................................................................................................225
Series V. Works by Others..................................................................................................................266
Series VI. Consulting and Committee Work......................................................................................271
Series VII. Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute.......................................................................303
Series VIII. University of Pennsylvania..............................................................................................315
Series IX. Indian Claims.....................................................................................................................325
Series X. Personal................................................................................................................................368
Series XI. Maps...................................................................................................................................372
Series XII. Graphics............................................................................................................................373
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Anthony F. C. Wallace Papers 1920-2000 Mss.Ms.Coll.64a
Summary Information
Repository American Philosophical Society
Creator Wallace, Anthony F. C., 1923-
Title Anthony F. C. Wallace Papers
Date [inclusive] 1920-2000
Call number Mss.Ms.Coll.64a
Extent 103.5 Linear feet
Location LH-SB-3-1; LH-B-25-5 (OS)
Language English
Abstract The Anthony F. C. Wallace Papers include correspondence to and
from 20th century anthropologists, ethnologists, historians, linguists,
and psychiatrists and provides a wealth of resources for the study
of technological and social change, American Indians, culture and
personality, revitalization movements, the anthropological study of
religion, and the cultural and biological bases of behavior. In addition
to Wallace's correspondence, research notes, and drafts, the collection
includes Wallace family correspondence and photographs, as well as
Wallace's writings from childhood through recent years.
Preferred Citation Cite as: Anthony F. C. Wallace Papers, American Philosophical Society.
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Background note
Anthony F.C. Wallace (1923- ) embarked on an anthropological career at a young age as a research
assistant to his father, ethnologist and historian Paul A.W. Wallace in the 1930s. After briefly studying
at Lebanon Valley College, Anthony enlisted in the U.S. Army, which assigned him to the 14th Armored
Division. On American soil for a good portion of his enlistment, the division served in the European
Theater and participated in the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp in 1945.
After his discharge, Wallace began a lifelong association with the University of Pennsylvania's
anthropology department, of which he eventually became chair. His initial, somewhat untraditional,
choice of undergraduate majors--history and physics--reflected his desire to combine humanistic studies
with scientific and technological approaches to the study of man, but the evolutionary perspective
of James Frazer's The Golden Bough later guided him toward the most interdisciplinary of the social
sciences--anthropology. Influenced by his father's work and his own interest in Indians, Wallace pursued
graduate studies of the Delaware and Tuscarora Indians under the guidance of A. Irving Hallowell, Frank
G. Speck, and Loren C. Eiseley, all direct intellectual descendants of Franz Boas. Speck had studied
with Boas at Columbia, where Boas taught both Speck and Hallowell in one seminar. Speck and Eiseley,
whom Speck had taught at Oberlin and brought to Penn, persuaded Hallowell, their former colleague, to
return to Penn after a period at Northwestern. As an heir to the Boasian ethnographic tradition through
Speck and Hallowell, Wallace inherited Boas' careful attention to methodology and his interdisciplinary
conception of anthropology as encompassing physical, psychological, linguistic, and cultural studies.
From his father and Speck, he inherited an interest in the rapidly disappearing cultures of the Northeastern
Indians and a personal commitment to his research subjects. Through Hallowell, one of the principal
figures in ethnopsychology, he learned to carefully describe behavior and psychological traits while
considering the cognitive and emotional structures of his subjects. All of these he synthesized to create
a unique blend of ethnology and history influenced by the social, behavioral, and biological sciences,
thereby becoming one of the pioneers in the development of ethnohistory as a distinct field.
At Penn, Wallace earned his BA, MA, and Ph.D. in rapid succession. From men not known to bestow
praise lightly, he received glowing recommendations that described him as a brilliant, yet humble,
scholar and one of the best anthropology students with whom they had ever worked. Weaving Hallowell's
psychological perspective into the study of Indian-white relations, his MA thesis examined the Delaware
Indians and their chief Teedyuscung from a psychological, as well as historical, perspective. The work
contained the seeds of Wallace's later work on revitalization movements, contrasting the demoralized
eastern Delawares who accepted the Christian teachings of Moravian colonists with the more powerful
western Delawares who developed a revitalized culture that rejected European influences. Published
only a year later, King of the Delawares: Teedyuscung drew the attention of national publications and
garnered largely favorable reviews. Francis Jennings, a frequent critic of Wallace's work, has opined that
Wallace allowed theory to influence his presentation of data and that he relied heavily on psychoanalytic
theory and biased historical accounts, perhaps overly so. Yet such tendencies often characterize the
work of young scholars, as Jennings explains, and in the case of Teedyuscung, they do not detract
significantly from its value as a work of anthropology. He also points out that Wallace's views toward
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the Quakers, quite harsh in Teedyuscung, later softened; in Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (1970), he
wrote approvingly of the positive teachings and role models presented by the Quaker missionaries.
For his dissertation, Wallace took his cue from Hallowell, who encouraged his students to use Rorschach
tests as a means of studying personality and culture, and Fenton, who had reviewed Hallowell's
work and suggested its applicability to the Iroquois, and began an ethnopsychological study of the
Tuscarora Indians. Wallace hoped to determine the personality type that occurred most frequently among
the Tuscaroras and thereby to study the interaction of personality and culture. Although the modal
personality occurred in only 37 percent of the population and thus did not represent the personality of
most Tuscaroras, the study provided insight into common personality characteristics found among the
Tuscaroras.
Indian research continued to occupy most of Wallace's time in the 1950s. In addition to an ongoing study
of Seneca history and culture that he incorporated into several monographs and books, he devoted much
of his free time from 1952 through 1959 to research, consulting, and testifying as an expert witness for
legal cases before the Indian Claims Commission. Initially hired by the Joint Efforts Group, led by Felix
Cohen, an attorney who initiated reform legislation affecting Indians during the Franklin D. Roosevelt
administration, Wallace worked for several Indian nations from the eastern Iroquois to the western Sioux.
The Justice Department team, headed by Erminie Wheeler Voegelin, included the Marxist anthropologist
Harold Hickerson. Most of the cases dealt with the federal government's legal jurisdiction and/or rights to
land (or lack thereof) in various Indian nations based on sovereignty granted to the nations in treaties of
the 18th and 19th centuries.
In the midst of his research for the Indian claims, Wallace became indirectly involved in the notorious
Joseph McCarthy hearings when McCarthy named Walter Lowenfels, the father of Wallace's assistant
Michal Lowenfels Kane, as one of the leading Communists in Philadelphia. Lowenfels, avant garde
poet of the 1920s and the editor of the Pennsylvania edition of the Daily Worker, was the oldest of the
"Philadelphia Nine," leaders of the local Communist Party arrested and convicted under the Smith Act
during a five-month federal trial. Despite her father's troubles and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's
refusal to admit her to their library, Kane continued to work with Wallace.
During this time, he also began nearly twenty years of research on the Seneca Indians that culminated in
the publication of Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (1970), perhaps his best known and most influential
work. Originally planned as a biography of the Seneca prophet Handsome Lake, the project expanded
into a detailed study of Seneca society, focusing on the prophet's role in "revitalizing" Seneca culture
following a tumultuous period of social and cultural change in the late 18th century. After a descent into
a personal maelstrom of alcoholism and near-madness that mirrored the turbulence in Seneca society,
Handsome Lake underwent a personal transformation in which he experienced a series of visions and
revelations. From these, he syncretized traditional Seneca religious beliefs with ideas of individual, social,
and agricultural reform inspired by Quaker missionaries into a new religion through which he sought to
revitalize his culture much as he had revitalized his personal life.
Wallace noted similarities between the psychological and physiological changes that accompanied
religious inspiration such as Handsome Lake's, psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, and the
personality changes associated with stress, social and cultural change, and disasters. Bringing an
anthropological perspective to the increasingly accepted psychiatric theory that schizophrenia resulted
from a genetic and/or biological predisposition awakened by psychological trauma, Wallace speculated
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that schizophrenia had both biological and cultural components, a theory he explored in "The Biocultural
Theory of Schizophrenia" and "Mental Illness, Biology, and Culture."
Drawing from biological and cognitive psychological theories, he hypothesized that perhaps similar
symptoms could arise in any individual undergoing psychological and physiological stress, a theory
that developed into the concept of mazeway resynthesis. He noted that when individuals encounter
experiences that challenge the "mazeways" through which they perceive and understand their worlds,
their minds often become overwhelmed by conflict, resulting in cognitive dissonance, a state of
psychological and (often) physiological turmoil. Applying Hans Selye's concept of general adaptation
syndrome to the human mind, Wallace argued that attempting to exist in such discomfort often
precipitates physical or mental illness. To resolve such conflicts, individuals must modify their mazeways
to accommodate new, formerly troubling, elements, a process he termed "mazeway resynthesis." In more
extreme cases involving prophets and psychiatric patients, Wallace believed that the altered physiological
milieu resulting from stress engendered not only the process of psychological mazeway resynthesis but
also the accompanying visions or hallucinations.
During this time, Wallace also developed his theory of revitalization movements, which in many ways
extrapolates the concept of mazeway resynthesis to the larger society. He described five typical stages,
which roughly correspond to the process of mazeway resynthesis, but at the social and cultural level. He
theorized that revitalization movements, which he defined as "deliberate, organized, conscious attempts
by some or all of the members of a society to construct for themselves a more satisfying culture." were
more likely to occur in societies undergoing rapid and/or devastating social change. Most involved
prophets who had experienced personal declines similar to that of Handsome Lake, which culminated
in psychological states resembling schizophrenia, often accompanied by visions. Following these
experiences, the prophets underwent personal transformations, communicated their visions and new
insights to others, and synthesized old and new beliefs into new religions or ways of living that revitalized
their cultures.
The intertwining themes of mazeway resynthesis and revitalization movements recurred throughout
much of Wallace's work during this time, most notably in the first three books in a series of works
that perhaps unintentionally fell into trilogies by subject matter. The first trilogy included Religion:
An Anthropological View, Culture and Personality, and Death and Rebirth of the Seneca, all of
which focused on the psychological, physiological, and cultural aspects of religion, the interaction
of personality and culture, and the revitalization of individual personalities as well as cultures. In
Religion, he eschewed a strictly critical view of religion in favor of an analytical approach that drew from
historical, anthropological, psychological, and physiological sources. He particularly emphasized the
ways in which religion and rituals serve as routes through which people achieve a sense of purpose and
meaning that most people find difficult to achieve through their daily lives and as means of resolving
conflicts that could threaten the existence of their cultures. With the rise of a more scientific and secular
society, he foresaw a concomitant waning of institutionalized religious belief and its replacement with
a non-deistic philosophy of concern for humanity. Religion moves beyond ethnological, historical,
theological, and psychological theories and provides a thorough examination of the psychological and
physiological aspects of ritual and religious belief.
Wallace's scientific analyses of religious beliefs and experiences, which disavowed supernatural
influences and drew parallels between religious inspiration and schizophrenia, may not have endeared
him to the more religiously inclined, but they did challenge previously held assumptions with regard
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to both religion and schizophrenia. Through his examination of the psychological, physiological, and
cultural aspects of religious experiences and schizophrenia, Wallace raised vital questions regarding the
role of religion in society and scientifically explained the ways in which individuals and societies react to
change.
Breaking with the earlier cultural anthropological tradition of pure ethnographic description without
historical context, Wallace advocated studies of cultural evolution that emulated the approach of
evolutionary biology. In Culture and Personality, a scientific and at times quantitative analysis, he
examined cultural evolution, the psychology of culture change, and the ways in which cultures provide
cognitive frames of reference through which their members perceive and interpret events. . Using the
relatively new method of componential analysis, Wallace and other anthropologists such as Floyd
Lounsbury and Ward Goodenough used linguistic analysis, particularly in relation to kinship terminology,
to study and describe cultures from the perspectives of those cultures rather than the perspectives of
Western anthropologists.
Wallace's interests in anthropology, cognitive psychology, and biology found a home at the Eastern
Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute (E.P.P.I.) as the federal government and private foundations increased
funding for interdisciplinary research in the 1950s and 1960s. As a consultant and later Director of
Clinical Research at E.P.P.I., Wallace researched physiological, genetic, social, and cultural aspects
of psychiatric disorders, particularly schizophrenia, arctic hysteria (piblokto), and disorders relating to
nutritional deficiencies such as hypoglycemia and hypocalcemia. Applying anthropological concepts of
linguistics and culture to psychiatric research, his work included studies on the terminology of emotions
and the relation of hospital staff consensus to patient disturbance. During this time, Wallace also helped
to develop a code of ethics for research with human subjects, following the lead of the National Institute
of Mental Health, which in turn had followed guidelines established as a result of the Nuremberg War
Crimes trials.
Through his affiliation with various committees during the 1960s and 1970s, Wallace continued his
interdisciplinary work through studies of the psychological effects of disasters and the association
between television viewing and social behavior. His influential study Housing and Social Structure,
published by the Philadelphia Housing Authority, explored the negative psychological impact of living
in high-rise public housing years before widespread popular criticism of such structures. Wallace also
presciently argued against the popular psychological conception of homosexuality as a mental illness
during the 1960s when he served as a consultant on the National Institute of Mental Health's Task Force
on Homosexuality.
Throughout his years of psychiatric and sociological research, Wallace remained rooted in
anthropological modes of analysis while maintaining a strong interdisciplinary perspective. As president
of the American Anthropological Association in the early 1970s, he sought to bring related organizations
under its umbrella and to resolve ethical conflicts such as the controversy sparked by federal efforts to
recruit anthropologists for counterinsurgency missions in politically volatile nations such as Thailand.
Following the 1970 publication of Death and Rebirth, Wallace moved away from American Indian
studies for several years and turned to the study of technological and social change in white America
during the 19th century from an anthropological perspective. This served as the theme of his second
trilogy of works, which included Rockdale, The Social Context of Innovation, and St. Clair. Inspired
by his rural Delaware County, Pennsylvania surroundings, Wallace began to explore the area's history in
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local historical societies and courthouses, where he found a wealth of information on early 19th century
textile mills and Delaware County families. From public records, county histories, and collections of
personal papers, he created an evocative portrait of the Rockdale area, which he combined with an
analysis of the development of industrialization into the detailed ethnohistorical study Rockdale: The
Growth of an American Village in the Early Industrial Revolution (1978). Rockdale examined the
paternalistic relationship between the evangelical Christian proponents of early industrial capitalism
and their employees, their conflicts with freethinking radicals or "infidels," and the ultimate triumph of
Christian capitalism in Delaware County, a microcosm of the larger American society. Although one
might be tempted to assume that the industrialists cynically dosed their workers with religious opium as
a means of subduing incipient labor troubles, Wallace demonstrates through his careful analysis of their
words and actions that the textile mill owners and operators did, for the most part, live exemplary lives
that reflected their belief in hard work and personal salvation.
Shortly after completing Rockdale, Wallace pursued a work that he considered its companion study, one
that would study the effects of a less successful model of industrialization in American society. St. Clair:
A Nineteenth Century Coal Town's Experience with a Disaster-Prone Industry (1985) explored how coal
operators' disregard of geologists' warnings regarding Pennsylvania coal region geology and their failure
to apply new technological innovations led to inefficient mining techniques, poor mine ventilation, and
frequent accidents and explosions. Despite a thriving economy fueled by the 19th century demand for
coal, the Pennsylvania coal region eventually deteriorated into economic and social disaster, replete with
mining accidents, ethnic conflicts, and violence against coal operators and mine supervisors. Financially
troubled small coal operators often blamed accidents not on their own failures but on Irish laborers bent
on retribution against the mining companies. This developed into the true yet semi-legendary story of the
Molly Maguires, whose crimes, trials, and executions became the episodes for which the coal region is
perhaps best known. In St. Clair, Wallace not only analyzed the region's most prominent coal operators
and the economists and industrialists who influenced them, but also painted a vivid portrait of life in
the coal towns and mine patches. Although St. Clair lacks some of the warmth and familiarity that
characterizes Rockdale, perhaps because of his relative distance from its subject, as Francis Jennings has
noted, Wallace's work remains one of the few detailed and well-researched accounts of Pennsylvania coal
region history.
Between these two massive studies, Wallace sandwiched a shorter study, The Social Context of
Innovation (1982), which incorporated his research on the textile industry with his then in-progress study
of the coal region. In Social Context, he described the interrelationship of technology and culture during
the Industrial Revolution and the ways in which technological innovation arose from as well as resulted
in social change, contrasting the Darby family's successful model of industrialization in Coalbrookdale,
England with the unsuccessful examples found in Pennsylvania's coal region.
The third trilogy of works consisted of Prelude to Disaster: The Black Hawk War of 1832 (1990) The
Long Bitter Trail: Andrew Jackson and the Indians (1993) and Thomas Jefferson and the Indians: The
Tragic Fate of the First Americans (1999), all of which focus on Indian-white relations, and particularly
government policy toward the Indians. With these works, Wallace resumed his study of American Indians
but with an emphasis on their relations with the United States government and with a more pessimistic
flavor than his earlier Indian research. Prelude to Disaster and The Long Bitter Trail developed out of
Wallace's research for Indian claims cases and examined, respectively, the tragedies of the Black Hawk
War and Andrew Jackson's Indian removal policies. Originally published as the introduction to Ellen
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Whitney's compilation Introduction to the Black Hawk War, 1831-1832, this brief (51-page) work traces
the course of Indian-white relations in Illinois that culminated in the Black Hawk War. The Long Bitter
Trail: Andrew Jackson and the Indians details the misguided and often racist policies that led the federal
government to drive the southeastern Indians from their land to reservations in Oklahoma. Thomas
Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans, his most recent work, explores
Jefferson's often-conflicted relationship with the American Indian. Wallace believes that Jefferson viewed
the Indians as a noble yet doomed race, whose history and language he sought to preserve while pursuing
policies that ultimately would destroy their way of life.
Since his 1987 retirement, Wallace has remained an active and influential scholar, as evidenced by the
three works described above and by his recent talks on the benefits and limitations of local history, which
incorporate materials he used for his studies of Rockdale and St. Clair.
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Scope & content
The voluminous Anthony Wallace Papers contain a wealth of material for scholars of anthropology,
history, and psychiatry. At first glance, the collection appears quite eclectic, yet common themes of
technological, social, and cultural change unite the seemingly disparate subjects, providing a broad range
of source materials for the study of technological and social change, American Indians, personality and
culture, revitalization movements, the cultural and biological bases of behavior, and Pennsylvania history,
particularly that of Delaware and Schuylkill Counties.
Along with Wallace's correspondence to and from such anthropologists as Frank G. Speck, A.
Irving Hallowell, William N. Fenton, Floyd Lounsbury, and others, the collection includes extensive
correspondence with knowledgeable local historians, reflecting Wallace's awareness of the benefits as
well as the liabilities of their homegrown knowledge. There is extensive correspondence from Merle
Deardorff of Warren, Pennsylvania and Robert Scherr of Schuylkill County; Deardorff's correspondence
in particular provides a wealth of information on Iroquois history and traditions as well as the occasional
sharp and uncompromising criticism of Wallace's work.
Wallace's research notes, drafts of his works, and photocopies of primary source material from various
repositories and reprints of secondary sources comprise the majority of the collection. His assemblage
of 19th century census and tax records, church records, and local histories for the Pennsylvania towns
of Rockdale and St. Clair provides researchers with a centralized resource of materials from various
repositories. Card files of information collected on various families of Delaware and Schuylkill Counties
represent a valuable resource for scholars of Pennsylvania history as well as genealogists. The reprints, on
topics ranging from social and technological change, personality and culture, and psychiatric research to
Indian history and Pennsylvania coal region history appear in the subseries related to these subjects.
News clippings and magazine articles related to Wallace's work appear throughout the collection. The
most significant include articles on federal efforts to recruit anthropologists for counterinsurgency and
other politically-motivated missions, particularly in Thailand, and the Kinzua Dam controversy, when
the state of New York built a dam that flooded much of the historic Cornplanter Grant on the Allegany
Reservation. The collection also contains extensive materials on the Indian land claims cases of the 1950s,
in which Wallace served as an expert witness.
Notes and research materials for Wallace's works since 1990 are not currently included in the collection,
but Series IV, Works by Wallace, does include the original manuscript draft of his 1999 work on Thomas
Jefferson and the Indians under the working title Logan's Mourner.
In addition to documenting the Wallaces' professional careers, the collection documents the personal side
of their family through correspondence, photograph albums, and histories dating from the 1920s that also
describe 19th century people and events. The family albums include three histories compiled by Paul
A.W. Wallace; two histories compiled by Paul Wallace's father, clergyman Francis Huston Wallace; 19th
century images of Wallace ancestors, homes, and the Wallace family library; photographs of Anthony
Wallace and his brother David from childhood through adulthood; and Anthony Wallace's World War II
scrapbook of photographs from his military service, which includes original photographs of Germany in
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