William T. Vickers Papers
Scope and Content
The William T. Vickers Papers collection contains the lifetime research of anthropologist Dr. William T. Vickers (1942-2016). Dr. Vickers earned his doctorate in 1976 at the University of Florida and dedicated his life to the study of the Siona and Secoya people of northeastern Ecuador. The collection contains more than 8,000 slides, 700 35mm negative strips, 200 printed images, more than 50 field notebooks, as well as books, articles, and other documents pertaining to the Siona and Secoya. The collection also includes Dr. Vickers extensive genealogical history of the Siona and Secoya, as well as resources about the Siona-Secoya language.
The collection is arranged thematically, chronologically, and alphabetically, in five series.
Series 1: Books and Booklets – includes nineteen Secoya language materials such as volumes 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 of the Secoya language series Secoya Coca/Cartilla Secoya, published by the Instituto Linguístico de Verano (Summer Language Institute) that contain a Spanish vocabulary section at the end of each booklet. Other booklets include some written by Secoya writers like Celestino Piaguaje, Luis Payaguaje, Marcelino Lucitande, and Ramón Piaguaje. In Ñama, Yaiohua/I Cui'ne Cutihue Cou El, El Venado, los Tigres y la Tortuga, with illustrations by Alfredo Payaguaje, the story is told by Secoya elders are written in multiple languages (Paicoca, A'ingae, Shuar chicham, Quichua, Awapit, Cha'palaachi, Tsafiqui, Castellano), to “preserve and share the Secoya culture and traditions with other indigenous nations of Ecuador. Other notable items from this series include Huajëcohua'ipi Pa'iye Mai Aitsoe Ayena Satsiojañu'u (Salud y Vida: Familiaricémonos con Nuestra Cultura/Life and Health: Get Familiar with our Culture), written by Alfredo Payaguaje and Jonathon Miller, and Gramática Secoya, by Orville Johnson and Stephen H. Levinsohn. Books in this series include Dr. Vickers doctoral dissertation Cultural Adaptation to Amazonian Habitats: The Siona-Secoya of Eastern Ecuador, as well as several of his books.
Series 2 – Documents and Publications – this series consists of unpublished documents, such as correspondence and research, as well as published articles and essays by Dr. Vickers and others relevant to his research. The series includes documents about the creation of the Yanomami Indian Park, as well as a Secoya Communitarian Tourism calendar pamphlet from 2007.
Series 3 – Field Journals – this series contains forty-seven field research journals where Dr. Vickers wrote detailed notes about his work. The journals are handwritten and are very detailed. Of particular interest is the journal titled Cuaderno de Pai Coca Pëpë (Libro del Idioma de la gente/Book of the language of the people), written in someone else’s hand, it records life stories and anecdotes of Ricardo Payaguaje, Celestino Payaguaje, Ramón Piaguaje, Luis Payaguaje, Ricardo Payaguaje, M. Carmen Piaguaje, and Marcelino Lusitande. The book is handwritten by the same (unknown) person, but each story and anecdote names the person who told it. Childhood memories and dreams are some of the elements discussed in these life stories. There is a journal dedicated to kinship terminology, hunting and fishing yields.
Series 4 – Genealogy – items in this series consist of an extensive and detailed genealogical history of the Siona-Secoya, including kin history, charts, genealogical relationships, and the code devised by Dr. Vickers for his research.
Series 5 – Photographs, Negatives, Slides - This series contains approximately 720 35mm negative strips, 8,800 slides, and more than 200 printed photographs. The "FS" album is an album of negatives titled FS by William Vickers and ordered sequentially from 1 to 52, and some additional unnumbered pages; some pages with negatives are missing from the numerical sequence within FS. The folders in the collection contain each page of negatives and follow the original order of Dr. Vickers, and many include notes written on original negative re-order forms detailing the content of the negatives. Where necessary, all handwritten notes made by Dr. Vickers were transferred onto the archival sheets to preserve his original order and intent. There is a great number of images in this series, including many portrait style images. One folder contains two polaroid photographs of a large group of people, possibly family members, with their names. There are many images not digitized or printed in the negative strips, of historical, cultural, and social significance for the Siona-Secoya.
Dates
- Creation: 1963 - 2016
Creator
- Vickers, William T., 1942-2016 (Person)
Access
The collection is open for research.
NOTE: Some materials in this collection are only available digitally. Please consult with the archivist to access these materials.
Biographical/Historical Note
William T. Vickers (1942-2016), was Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Florida International University in Miami. He received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Florida in 1976. He first became interested in anthropology while serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador in 1964-65, where he worked on rural community development projects in Cotopaxi and Tungurahua Provinces. In 1972 he initiated a program of field research among the Siona and Secoya peoples of northeastern Ecuador and his relationship with these communities continued until his death in 2016. Dr. Vickers’ research focused on the human ecology of native communities, land and civil rights, and frontier development. He was particularly interested in studying the relationships between people, nature, and culture and how these evolve through time. His research interests included the use of forest and aquatic resources in Amazonia, ethnobotany, shifting cultivation, and the sustainability of hunting. He wrote extensively on frontier expansion and how it affects indigenous societies, including their social and political responses to national and regional development. In the 1980s Dr. Vickers served as a consultant to Ecuador’s Ministry of Agriculture on the demarcation of lands for Siona, Secoya, and Cofán communities in the Sucumbíos Province. In 1995, the Catholic University of Quito invited him to serve as an international observer in the Shuar border communities in the Morona-Santiago Province that were impacted by the Cenepa War between Ecuador and Perú.
Professor Vickers books include Los Sionas y Secoyas: Su Adaptación al Ambiente Amazónico; Useful Plants of the Siona and Secoya Indians (co-authored with Timothy Plowman), and Adaptive Responses of Native Amazonians (coedited with Raymond B. Hames). His articles have appeared in journals such as Science, American Ethnologist, Human Nature, Human Ecology, Interciencia, Law and Anthropology, Cultural Survival Quarterly, Studies in Third World Societies, Latin American Research Review, Latin American Anthropology Review, and Reviews in Anthropology. Professor Vickers was a Fulbright Fellow in Ecuador, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fé, New Mexico, a Doherty Foundation Fellow, and visiting professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica in Quito, Ecuador. In addition, the State University System of Florida presented Dr. Vickers with awards for excellence in teaching and in research.
Extent
8.17 Linear Feet (17 Boxes, 6 Oversized folders)
2.5 Gigabytes
Language of Materials
English
Spanish; Castilian
South American Indian (Other)
Abstract
Extensive primary resource and research materials about the Siona and Secoya of Ecuador, including field journals, Secoya language resources, photographs, slides, genealogical research, books, articles, and correspondence.
Arrangement
The collection is arranged in five series, Books and Booklets, Documents and Publications, Field Journals, Genealogy, and Photographs, Negatives, Slides. Within each series, the collection is arranged chronologically and alphabetically. The original order of the creator was preserved accross the series within the collection.
Location
University of Florida Smathers Library Building
Other Finding Aids
This guide is available in Spanish at https://www.uflib.ufl.edu/findingaids/Spanish/mss0610.pdf.
Acquisition Information
The collection was donated by Edite Vargas de Souza Vickers in 2022.
Processing Information
NOTE: AV materials in this collection are currently not listed, because they are being reformated/processed.
Subject
- Vickers, William T., 1942-2016 (Person)
- Summer Institute of Linguistics (Organization)
- Organización Indígena Siona Secoya del Ecuador (Organization)
- Title
- A Guide to the William Vickers Papers
- Status
- Completed
- Author
- Finding aid created by Martha Kapelewski
- Date
- August 2024
- Description rules
- Finding Aid Prepared Using Dacs
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
- Language of description note
- Description is written in English.
Repository Details
Part of the Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida Repository
George A. Smathers Libraries
PO Box 117005
Gainesville Florida 32611-7005 United States of America
352-273-2755
special@uflib.ufl.edu