Tomah Joseph and the Significance of Passamaquoddy Birchbark Art
by Allyson LaForge
Receiving a Decorative Arts Trust Research Grant enabled me to conduct research on a Passamaquoddy birchbark artist, Tomah Joseph (1837–1914), whose leadership and artwork conveyed ongoing Passamaquoddy presence in Maine and New Brunswick in the face of settler colonialism. My doctoral research at Brown focuses on Indigenous material culture as a source of knowledge production and transmission. These belongings serve as powerful agential beings with implications in the past, present, and future. Joseph disseminated his birchbark art alongside Passamaquoddy stories to ethnographer Charles Godfrey Leland to resist the myth of Indigenous disappearance in Maine. He also gifted and sold his work to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Roosevelt family on Campobello Island. Joseph’s birchbark art conveyed Passamaquoddy stories using illustrations and alphabetic text in both Passamaquoddy and English. By crafting birchbark art, narrating Passamaquoddy stories, and making clear his role as Governor for the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Peter Dana Point (Motahkomikuk), Joseph communicated the ongoing political existence of the Passamaquoddy in Maine and New Brunswick. I argue that his work constitutes a significant Passamaquoddy archive that reveals histories of Indigenous resistance and political continuance.
I traveled to four sites with collections of Joseph’s birchbark art: the Passamaquoddy Cultural Heritage Museum in Motahkomikuk, ME (Passamaquoddy Indian Township Reservation); the Waponahki Museum & Resource Center in Sipayik, ME (Passamaquoddy Pleasant Point Reservation); the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, ME; and the National Museum of the American Indian’s Cultural Resources Center in Suitland, MD. I examined Joseph’s artwork at each site to engage deeply with his oeuvre.
Figure 1. Allyson LaForge viewing birchbark wall pocket by Tomah Joseph, c. 1900, Maine, USA. National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution (104353.000). Photograph by Christine Oricchio.
I am grateful for the guidance of Donald Soctomah (Passamaquoddy), Dwayne Tomah (Passamaquoddy), Aaron Miller, and Christine Oricchio at each respective location. At the Passamaquoddy Cultural Heritage Museum and Waponahki Museum & Resource Center, Donald Soctomah and Dwayne Tomah shared information about Joseph’s history and significance as a Passamaquoddy artist who worked to preserve and transmit knowledge to future generations, including his descendants, many of whom are also artists. The stories Joseph illustrated through etching the top layer of birchbark built on traditional practices of wikhikon, or birchbark writing. I also learned about multiple amalhuwikhasutik, or sites where petroglyphs are located, which are currently being 3D-imaged and mapped by the Passamaquoddy. Joseph drew from these petroglyph traditions to convey stories, political messages, and the Passamaquoddy language.
Figure 2. Birchbark wall pocket by Tomah Joseph, c. 1900, Maine, USA. National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution (104353.000). Photograph by Allyson LaForge.
At the Abbe Museum, I also researched the work of David Moses Bridges, a Passamaquoddy artist and canoe-builder who studied Joseph’s birchbark etchings. Bridges’s archive reveals how Joseph transmitted knowledge to subsequent generations of Passamaquoddy people and continues to animate the present and future of Passamaquoddy material culture.
At the National Museum of the American Indian, I analyzed a piece of Joseph’s artwork that he not only signed, but inscribed with two of his signature phrases: kolelemooke, or good luck, and mikwid hamin, or remember me. Joseph also illustrated and labeled Mikamwes, an other-than-human being that features in Gluskap stories, and illustrated Kokokas, his signature owl. This rare object illustrates how Joseph composed artwork that combined Passamaquoddy lessons with alphabetic text that preserved the Passamaquoddy language and benefitted future generations.
Figure 3. Birchbark picture frame by David Moses Bridges, 2000, Sipayik. On loan from Patricia Ayala Rocabado to the Abbe Museum. Photograph by Allyson LaForge.
Studying Joseph’s work enhanced my understanding of his technique and impact and will shape my future scholarship on Wabanaki wikhikon and other material texts.
Allyson LaForge is a PhD Candidate in the Department of American Studies at Brown University.
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