“UNITED WITH THEM IN GOOD FEELING AND FRIENDSHIP”: (RE)LATING ARCHAEOLOGICAL BELONGINGS, COLONIALIST HISTORIES, AND INCORPORATED PEOPLES AMONG THE ONÖNDOWA'GA:' HODINÖHSÖ:NI'
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Settler narratives of Indigenous history tend to construct imaginary geographies—employing moments of violence, movement, and change to characterize Indigenous communities as annihilated or moving towards erasure. The dispersal and incorporation of the Wendat and other peoples from Southern Ontario by the Hodinöhsö:ni' in 1649 CE provides one such narrative, with incorporees often portrayed as enslaved and their host communities on a violent trajectory of decline. Paralleling these scholarly interpretations, archaeological material culture from Hodinöhsö:ni' sites following this moment of rupture and incorporation has been subject to extensive avocational collecting and remain isolated from their living communities and histories in institutional collections. Bridging a critique of the construction of history and the practice of archaeology, this dissertation presents a reassessment of the enslavement narrative of the Wendat and other Indigenous peoples among the Onöndowa'ga:' Hodinöhsö:ni' in the 17th and 18th centuries in what is now known as Upstate New York. I employ legacy archaeological collections held in the Rochester Museum and Science Center to untangle Indigenous processes from settler colonial narratives of decline and erasure. Drawing upon relational archaeologies and Indigenous geographies, I move beyond archaeological identifications of ethnicity to assess the relational dynamics within and among Onöndowa'ga:' sites occupied between 1630-1715 CE, encompassing the initial settlement of the Wendat and others and three subsequent community moves. Through the comparison of relational activity assemblages at these sites, I present a three-generation process of adoption and incorporation premised on placemaking and kin-making and the integration of difference into the Onöndowa'ga:' social landscape, replacing the existing scholarly narrative of enslavement and social death. To conclude, I describe the ongoing work of the Hodinöhsö:ni' Carved Antler Combs Project, a collaborative digital collection resulting from the critical assessment of archaeology and collections and the re-orientation of archaeology towards (re)lating belongings.