Translating Yonnondio by Precedent and Evidence: The Mashpee Indian Case

Duke Law Journal VOLUME 1990 NUMBER 4 SEPTEMBER TRANSLATING YONNONDIO BY PRECEDENT AND EVIDENCE: THE MASHPEE INDIAN CASE GERALD ToRR-s* KATHRYN MILUN** I. A song, a poem of itself-the word itself a dirge, Amid the wilds, the rocks, the storm and wintry night, To me such misty, strange tableaux the syllables calling up .... -Walt Whitman, Yonnondio As part of the "sacred text," the land-like sacred texts in other traditions-is not primarily a book of answers, "but rather a principal symbol of, perhaps the principal symbol of, and thus a central occasion of recalling and heeding, the fundamental aspirations of the tradition." 1 Copyright © Gerald Torres and Kathryn Milun 1990. * Gerald Torres is the Julius E. Davis Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School. Kathryn Milun co-authored the original draft of this essay and participated in its presentation to an international philosophy conference at Notre Dame in 1988. Since that time, the essay has changed in significant ways. She is not, of course, responsible for any mistakes I have made. Special thanks are due to Kevin Paul for his exemplary research assistance. For their support, criticism, and insight I would also like to thank Melissa Johnson, Carol Chomsky, Betsy Baker, Richard Delgado, Joe Singer, Gary Peller, Philip Frickey, and Frances Nash. I also want to express my special thanks to Diane Gihl for the exemplary support she has provided in this project and with my work in general. ** Kathryn Milun is a graduate student in the Comparative Literature Department at the University of Minnesota. 1. Pommersheim, The Reservation as Place: A South Dakota Essay, 34 S.D.L. REV. 246, 269 (1989) (quoting M. PERRY, MORALrrY, PoLrrics & LAW 137 (1988)). Although Pommersheim's article deals specifically with the Lakota, a Great Plains Tribe, his insight extends to other indigenous peoples, including the Mashpee Tribe of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, whose 1976 land claim action is the focus of this essay. Given the length of time the Mashpee have had to deal with assimilation pressures from the outside, non-Indian community, perhaps the insight is actually more appropriate to the eastern Tribes than to those of the American west. DUKE LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 1990:625 When Walt Whitman wrote his poem Yonnondio2 for the collection Leaves of Grass, he added the following parenthetical explanation under the title: "The sense of the word is lamentfor the aborigines. It is an Iroquois term; and has been used for a personal name."' 3 In fact, Yonnondio also is the title of a long narrative poem by William H.C. Hosmer published in 1844 with the subtitle Warriorsof the Genesee: A Tale of the Seventeenth Century.4 That poem, Hosmer wrote, is a description of "the memorable attempt of the Marquis de Nonville, under pretext of preventing an interruption of the French trade, to plant the standard of Louis XIV in the beautiful country of the Senecas." 5 In a note following the poem itself, Hosmer explained that "Yonnondio was a title originally given by the Five Nations to M. de Montmagny, but became a style of address in their treaties, by which succeeding Governor Generals of New '6 France were designated." 2. Yonnondio [The sense of the word is lament for the aboriginea It is an Iroquois term; and has been used for a personal name.] A song, a poem of itself-the word itself a dirge, Amid the wilds, the rocks, the storm and wintry night, To me such misty, strange tableaux the syllables bailing up; Yonnondo-I see, far in the west or north, a limitless ravine, with plains and mountains dark, I see swarms of stalwart chieftains, medicine-men, and warriors, As flitting by like clouds of ghosts, they pass and are gone in the twilight, (Race of the woods, the landscapes free, and the fallsl No picture, poem, statement, passing them to the future:) Yonnondiol Yonnondio!-unlimn'd they disappear;, To-day gives place, and fades-the cities, farms, factories fade; A muffled sonorous sound, a wailing word is borne through the air for a moment, Then blank and gone and still, and utterly lost. W. WHITMAN,Yonnondio, in LEAVES OF GRASS 524 (S. Bradley & H. Blodgett eds. 1958). Yonnondio-a lament, but also a proper name--cannot be translated without damage to the word itself and to the cultural structure of meaning that gives identity to the translatable content and to the name. We incorporated Yonnondio into our title, to bring to mind just this problem. Thanks to Jerry Creedon for reminding us of the poem and Wlad Godzich for suggesting we look at the Masbpee case. As Clifford Geertz has put it in the anthropological context: "Translation," here, is not a simple recasting of others' ways of putting things in terms of our own ways of putting them... but displaying the logic of their ways of putting them in the locutions of ours; a conception which again brings it rather closer to what a critic does to illumine a poem than what an astronomer does to account for a star. C. GEERT-, LOCAL KNOWLEDGE: FURTHER ESSAYS IN INTERPRETIVE ANTHROPOLOGY 10 (1983). 3. W. WHITMAN, supra note 2. 4. W. HOSMER, YONNONDIO, OR WARRIORS OF THE GENESEE: A TALE OF THE SEVEN- TEENTH CENTURY (1844). 5. Id at v. 6. Id at 218. Vol. 1990:625] TRANSLATING YONNONDIO It is easy to understand that Whitman took "Yonnondio" to signify7 "Lament for the Aborigines"; if "Yonnondio" was indeed the word the Iroquois used to address the state, then as Whitman says in his poem, its mere mention "is itself a dirge." For the Iroquois, "Yonnondio" itself took on new meaning as the relation to which it referred shifted. Even as the word became a greeting, its meaning was different for the Iroquois than for the French and other Europeans with whom the Iroquois had contact. This cascade of meanings reflects the highly volatile system of relations produced by contact between the Iroquois and the various Europeans intent on "opening up" or "claiming" the "New World." One still hears the Iroquois language, Onondaga, in place names derived from it: Ohio ("Great River") or Ontario ("Great Lake"). Indian history indeed is inscribed on the land of North America. Its inscription, however, has faded for most Americans because the inscription exists without any tie to the proper names that give these words significance. The remnants of language attached to real places prompt romantic images of America's pre-European past.8 The telling of this past (history), like all stories, is replete with meanings, and as with most narratives, its very telling is an expression of power. 7. "Signify" is used here in both the technical and popular senses. "Signify" means the relationship between the sign "Yonnondio" and its referent. The sign may have several referents: the proper name, the representative of the state, the loss of tribal autonomy. As Jonathan Culler notes, the potential existence of a vast array of referents "does not mean that the notion of sign could or should be scrapped: on the c (...truncated)