Plains Indian Studies - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

NUMBER 30 19
cused on archeology. The number of jobs was
even smaller and funds for research nearly nonexistent.
Perhaps even more important, with regard
to the Plains, was the fact that current
anthropological wisdom suggested there was no
significant archeology to be done there. Instead,
the widespread conviction existed that before the
horse and gun, the Plains was virtually uninhabited.
However, having already worked with
Strong at Signal Butte, in the Loup River Valley
and eastern Nebraska, Wedel realized this was a
false viewpoint; Indians had occupied the Plains
for centuries. He made up his mind that he
wanted to learn more about these Plainsmen and
how they adapted to the changing Plains environment.
It was Carl Sauer, geographer at the University
of California, who stimulated Wedel to recognize
the need for a long-term commitment to problems
in the Plains. Wedel tells us (1977a: 7):
To be a regional specialist demanded not only a patiently
acquired familiarity with the current landscape, but also
learning how it was under past conditions and, most importantly,
how it wa5 perceived by the now-vanished peoples of
another culture who were coming under study. I was prepared
to accept what Sauer said of the historical geographer
with regional specialization in mind—"Such work obviously
cannot be done by sample studies ranging widely, but may
require a lifetime given to learning one major context of
nature and culture .... The human geographer cannot be
world tourist, moving from people to people and land to
land, and knowing only casually and doubtfully related
things about any of them."
Wedel's determination to concentrate on archeology
in the Plains area, along with his marked
ability and a great deal of empathy for the Plains,
has placed him in a position of preeminence in
that field for decades. No one has matched his
contributions over the years and he has no heir
apparent.
Wedel's undergraduate work, commenced at
Bethel College in North Newton, Kansas, was
completed in 1930 at the University of Arizona
under Dean Byron Cummings. At that time no
university in the Plains offered a graduate degree
in anthropology, so Wedel chose Arizona. Even
before going there, he purchased and read A.V.
Kidder's Introduction to Southwestern Archaeology, a
volume which greatly impressed him, particularly
for its presentation of the continuity between
prehistory and the present. In addition to serving
on a crew excavating a prehistoric site in Arizona
during his undergraduate days, Wedel had the
opportunity to visit the Hopi pueblos. With regard
to his Arizona experience, Wedel (1977a:3)
writes:
For me, as it has been for countless others from regions
with lesser monuments of antiquity, the archeology of the
Southwest—its cliff dwellings, casas grandes, irrigation
works, etc.—were wonders indeed. So were the Hopi pueblos,
to which the Dean's summer field parties were taken as a
reward for their season of unpaid labor in the pits at Turkey
Hill Pueblo near Flagstaff. A heavy rain shower had just
pEissed over the Hopi mesas, and drenched rabbit-fur robes
and other textiles had been hung on lines to dry. Along with
the nearby wet garbage dumps, these lent a peculiar pungency
to the otherwise clean fresh desert air—perhaps something
like Henry Brackenridge experienced during his visit
at the Leavenworth Arikara village in 1811.
A few years later at the urging of A.E. Kroeber,
Wedel participated in an ethnographic field
school directed by Ralph Linton among the Comanche
in Oklahoma. In focusing on material
culture, Wedel discovered for himself that artifacts
like those he had found in prehistoric Nebraska
sites (Wedel, 1977a:4) were still made and
used by modern Indians. Through both his academic
training and his field experience, cultural
continuity became a reality in his thinking.
The year 1936, when Wedel's doctoral dissertation
"Some Historical and Ethnic Aspects of
Nebraska Archeology" was accepted, was a vintage
year for anthropologists. That year Harold
Driver received his doctorate, also from California;
Clyde Kluckhohn and David Mandelbaum
received theirs from Harvard and Yale, respectively;
and James Griffin received his from the
University of Michigan.
Although Wedel has worked at archeological
sites outside the Plains, namely, in California at
Buena Vista Lake (1941a), in San Francisco Bay
shell mounds, and elsewhere; at La Venta, Tabasco,
Mexico (1952), and in the Virginia area
(Stewart and Wedel, 1937; Wedel, 1951), his