open access

https://hdl.handle.net/2115/34539

Ainu Artifacts in The Field Museum, Chicago : Two Tekunpe and 1904 St. Louis World's Fair

日本語

2008-03-31

Center for Northern Humanities, Graduate School of Letters, Hokkaido University

Journal of the Center for Northern Humanities

1

41-54

More than a century ago, nine Ainu people visited St. Louis from Hokkaido for Anthropology display in 1904 World’s Fair and lived in two Ainu homes, Chise, for seven months. The anthropology display has been criticized for the ideological and political problems and the natives who visited St. Louis have long been regarded as victims of colonialism. As many researches, it is true that the anthropology display focused on the backwardness or singularity of native people, but the Ainu people were not mere victims who were displayed like things but active agents who engaged in practice, crossed boundaries of nation or ethnicity, and revised concepts and created hybrid artifacts. This paper first examines the possibility of using non literal artifacts for the historical research of native people, who were non literate or very little literal archives are left. As Japanese anthropologist Junzo Kawada says, artifact as historical record is situated between literal archive and verbal narrative and there is no essential difference among them. Showing the possibility of artifacts, photographs or other things, as historical resource of native people, this paper then examines the authenticity/constructed debates in social science study and the problems of both approaches in the history study, and proposes to situate the artifacts in the locus to be studied. In the latter part of this paper, two beautifully embroidered Ainu gloves, Tekunpe, in The Field Museum, is introduced and author shows from original slips and other records in the museum that the two gloves, one for male and the other for female, among 158 Ainu artifacts purchased from 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, were sold and possibly made by two Ainu people in the 1904 World’s Fair. Author’s research trip to USA in 2007 with Ms. Chikamori, the only narrator among the descendants of nine Ainu people, enabled us discover the two Tekunpe. She showed surprise at a glance when she saw the two gloves among many Ainu artifacts in the warehouse of The Field Museum,where the difference was obvious for her but not for me, as many anthropologists, not natives. Later author’s research, initiated by her surprise, revealed one of the two Tekunpe was sold by her grandfather, Goro Pete (Bete). Although further research is necessary for the detail of the design, skill or the material, they are obviously very rare hybrid artifacts, entangled object, possibly made by Ainu people in 1904, in far remote place of St. Louis World’s Fair, working among many other natives, Americans and Wajin, Japanese. This paper is a part of author’s research of early Ainu history situated in the locus, between past and present, and human and non human artifacts.

紀要論文

Version of Record

1882-773X

AA12313676