Description:

Native American


From Cattaraugus Reservation "in my savage home" Female Ethnographer Writes Admiring Letter to New York Journalist John Swinton


ERMINNIE A. SMITH, Autograph Letter Signed, to John Swinton, October 3, [1880], Cattaraugus Reservation, New York. 2 pp., 7.75" x 9.75".  Expected folds; very good.



This letter by field ethnographer Erminnie A. Smith to Scottish-American journalist John Swinton shares details of the publication of her recent presentations to the Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston in The New York Times and promises to read his recently published book John Swinton’s Travels: Current Views and Notes of Forty Days in France and England. She wrote this letter form the Cattaraugus Reservation in western New York, where she was conducting ethnographic research for the Smithsonian Institution.


Complete Transcript
      Cattaraugus Reservation Oct 3rd
Mr. Swinton
Dear Sir – Some “good spirt” was it yourself? has sent me here in my savage home, your delightful article containing the sights you have seen in forty days and your ideas ect.- Thanks-for this episode in my busy life. Perhaps my forty or rather 120 days experiences if I could but wield your pen might prove if not as classical, quite as unique If you will invest six cents in the New York Times dates August 29th Sept 2nd and 3rd you will find accounts of the results of my summers work. The papers which I read at Boston before the “Ass for Advancement of Science I have had some novel experiences but it is becoming too cold here now for one accustomed to “modern conveniences” so I return to my home in Jersey City and the first thing I shall do will be to invest 25 cents in “John Swintons travels” as I have received a postal announcement of its appearance. As I am more than half European (the other half Indian) it will be of great interest to me. Hoping to receive a call from you on my return I remain-
      Ka-tei-tei-stakwast
       or
      The “Widow Bedott”
“Full forty dollars would I give / If we had continuered apart / For tho’ hese made my Spirit live / He’s surely bust my heart.”

In this Postscript, Smith quotes from The Widow Bedott Papers by Frances M. Whitcher (1811-1852), first published serially in the Saturday Gazette in 1846 and 1847 and then in book form in 1855. It is the last stanza of a song, the fictional character Widow Bedott sings:
 Full forty dollars would I give,
If we’d continnerd apart—
 For though he’s made my sperrit live,
He’s surely bust my heart!



Erminnie Adele Platt Smith (1836-1886) was born in New York and graduated from Troy Seminary in 1853. She married Simeon H. Smith (1834-1916) in 1855, and they had four sons between 1857 and 1865. She spent four years in Europe with her sons, studying science and language and graduated from the School of Mines in Freiberg, Saxony. In 1876, she founded the Aesthetic Society of Jersey City as an association of young women for “the cultivation of a taste for the beautiful in literature, science, and art,” and the society held monthly receptions for a decade. In 1877, she was elected the first female member of the New York Academy of Sciences. In 1878, she undertook ethnological work for the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of American Ethnology and classified over 15,000 words of the Iroquois dialects. She has been called the first woman field ethnographer, and her Iroquois-English dictionary was in the course of printing at the time of her death.


John Swinton (1829-1901) was born in Scotland and emigrated with his father to Illinois at a young age. After his father died, Swinton became an apprentice to a printer at age 13. Two years later, he moved to Montreal. In the 1850s he attended schools in Massachusetts and New York City but did not complete a degree. He became an abolitionist but moved to South Carolina to take a job as a printing compositor. While there, he taught illegal literacy classes to black South Carolinians. In 1860, he returned to New York City and accepted a job writing editorials for the New York Times, eventually become the chief editorial writer. He worked as a freelance journalist from 1870 to 1875, and wrote extensively for Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune. Swinton also became active in the trade union movement. In 1875, he became an editorial writer for the New York Sun, a position he held until 1883, when he launched John Swinton’s Paper, a weekly newspaper that espoused his radical ideas about labor to a national audience. He exposed the exploitation in the convict labor and contract immigrant labor system, leading to legislative changes, but his newspaper ceased in 1887. He returned to paid journalism for others, including editorial work for the New York Sun from 1892 to 1897.


This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.


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