IN 1956 WILCOMB WASHBURN REMINDED ONE OF THE EARLY GATH-
erings of ethnohistorians that "when one studies the contact of
two cultures, value problems--that is, moral problems-imme-
diately spring up to challenge the writer." ^* His audience needed
reminding -at the time, and so do most ethnohistorians today.

The past domination of the ethnohistorical enterprise by an-
thropologists and the current infatuation of historians in general
with the methods and mores of the "hard" social sciences have
tended to blind most ethnohistorians , new and old, to two ele-
mental facts. First, as Washburn suggested, ethnohistorians must
not only attempt to understand each culture in its own terms,
but when these cultures clash, they must come to interpretive
grips with the conflict without imposing the parochial standards
of their own day on the past. Second, ethnohistorians (who tend
to worship at the feet of "scientific detachment") cannot avoid
making an assessment of what the clash of cultural values meant
to contemporaries (and perhaps what it means for us) even if
they would like to. The richly normative character of our lan-
guage, not just the "colorful" words but all of it, prevents them.
In other words, morality is part of the subject matter of history,
and historians, perhaps especially ethnohistorians, are perforce
moral critics. To recognize and accept these facts, it seems to me,

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