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Franz Boas: The Early Years, 1858-1906 (D&M $45)
'The father of modern North American anthropology', Franz Boas was a graverobber who pilfered skeletons and artifacts for profit. SFU's Douglas Cole spent 17 years working on Franz Boas: The Early Years, 1858-1906 (D&M $45) but he died while making final revisions. Boas has been the subject for two previous studies but Cole's is the first to draw on the large collection of Boas family letters at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.
It was Boas' meeting with a troupe of nine Bella Coola dancers in Berlin in 1885 that changed the ethnological direction of his work and drew him towards North America. Originally a geographer, Boas had done field work for a year on Baffin Island in 1883 and 1884 but the 'severe sobriety' of the Inuit failed to impress him. On the other hand, the artistry and 'wealth of thought' contained in the dances and masks of the Bella Coola immediately enchanted him. In Berlin Boas spent all his free time with the 'dear Indians' at their lodgings near the Reichstag, recording their songs and studying their language.
Boas was eager to return to America to his fiancée and better career possibilities. The next year he made the long, slow journey to the West Coast, planning to finance his research trip by buying Native artifacts cheaply and selling them at a profit to German and American museums.
When he reached Victoria in 1886, he had two surprises. He found that his own photographs of the troupe were everywhere, having been reproduced by an 'Indian trader', and that two members of the Berlin troupe were in Victoria. Boas' two friends introduced him to other Natives who were impressed that he could already speak some of their language. After three weeks in Victoria, Boas took a steamer north to Alert Bay, returning by way of Quamichan, Comox and Nanaimo. En route, he saw potlatches, gathered stories and witnessed a shaman healing. Boas' aims were both scholarly and commercial. While he was chiefly concerned with language and myth, he also amassed artifacts in order to pay for his research and educational expenses. He bought masks, commissioned women to weave blankets and baskets, and collected skulls by robbing graveyards.
Boas returned to B.C. eight times in the next 15 years. He realized that the construction of the railway would bring collectors to the area and he hurried to beat out rivals for the riches. It is said that by 1930 there were more Kwakiutl artifacts in Milwaukee than in Mamalillikulla, more Salish artifacts in Cambridge than in Comox.
Boas emerges as a likeable person, loyal to friends and devoted to his family. It is not difficult to muster sympathy for someone so passionate about his work, who suffered endless setbacks in his early years. But however much Cole resists judging 19th century behaviour by late 20th century standards, Boas appears totally unscrupulous in pursuit of his scientific goals. His lapses of sensitivity are not excused by time. One of these lapses provided an incident both comic and sinister. After he realized that his career prospects in Germany were hopeless, Boas moved to America and took a job at Clark University in Massachusetts. There, as part of his research into anthropometrics (the statistics of bodily measurement) he conceived a plan to measure the thighs of Worcester schoolgirls. The public outcry was both loud and nasty. The local paper expressed outrage that someone who had 'fooled around with the top knots of medicine men and toyed with the warpaint of bloodthirsty Indians' would be feeling their children's bodies.
Boas himself became the victim of cross-cultural double-standards when the paper ridiculed the 'barbaric' duelling scars on his face, sustained during his student days in Heidelberg. It declared that these 'would make a jailbird turn green with envy' and were unknown 'outside the society of the criminal classes.' Boas carried out other dubious activities uncensored and unabashed. He apparently had no scruples about deceiving his friends and acquaintances among the First Nations when he was pilfering graveyards. He noted it was 'repugnant work', it gave him nightmares, but 'someone had to do it'.
Besides, the skeletons were worth money.
Perhaps the shabbiest episode involved a group of Greenlanders brought to New York. When one died, Boas was party to staging a mock funeral for the benefit of the young son. The boy learned only years later that his father's corpse had been whisked away for scientific analysis. Such activities appear all the more reprehensible when compared with Boas' sacramental attitude to the grave of his own daughter. Her burial site was treated as hallowed ground which he visited regularly.
Cole's account of Boas' early scientific work is important for anthropologists and the references to Boas' field work are of special interest to B.C. readers. But this biography also paints a vivid picture of life in the Jewish communities of German provincial towns, it describes Boas' education at leading German universities and it recounts how and why Boas settled in New York as part of the German expatriate society there.
Like all magisterial biographies, Franz Boas: The Early Years successfully depicts one man's life against the backdrop of his historical period. Although it's regrettable that Cole's projected second volume on Boas can never appear, this is a satisfying and important follow-up to Cole's Captured Heritage: The Scramble for Northwest Coast Artifacts, published in 1985. Douglas Cole's research is now housed in the Royal British Columbia Museum. 1-55054-746-1
[Joan Givner / BCBW WINTER 1999]
It was Boas' meeting with a troupe of nine Bella Coola dancers in Berlin in 1885 that changed the ethnological direction of his work and drew him towards North America. Originally a geographer, Boas had done field work for a year on Baffin Island in 1883 and 1884 but the 'severe sobriety' of the Inuit failed to impress him. On the other hand, the artistry and 'wealth of thought' contained in the dances and masks of the Bella Coola immediately enchanted him. In Berlin Boas spent all his free time with the 'dear Indians' at their lodgings near the Reichstag, recording their songs and studying their language.
Boas was eager to return to America to his fiancée and better career possibilities. The next year he made the long, slow journey to the West Coast, planning to finance his research trip by buying Native artifacts cheaply and selling them at a profit to German and American museums.
When he reached Victoria in 1886, he had two surprises. He found that his own photographs of the troupe were everywhere, having been reproduced by an 'Indian trader', and that two members of the Berlin troupe were in Victoria. Boas' two friends introduced him to other Natives who were impressed that he could already speak some of their language. After three weeks in Victoria, Boas took a steamer north to Alert Bay, returning by way of Quamichan, Comox and Nanaimo. En route, he saw potlatches, gathered stories and witnessed a shaman healing. Boas' aims were both scholarly and commercial. While he was chiefly concerned with language and myth, he also amassed artifacts in order to pay for his research and educational expenses. He bought masks, commissioned women to weave blankets and baskets, and collected skulls by robbing graveyards.
Boas returned to B.C. eight times in the next 15 years. He realized that the construction of the railway would bring collectors to the area and he hurried to beat out rivals for the riches. It is said that by 1930 there were more Kwakiutl artifacts in Milwaukee than in Mamalillikulla, more Salish artifacts in Cambridge than in Comox.
Boas emerges as a likeable person, loyal to friends and devoted to his family. It is not difficult to muster sympathy for someone so passionate about his work, who suffered endless setbacks in his early years. But however much Cole resists judging 19th century behaviour by late 20th century standards, Boas appears totally unscrupulous in pursuit of his scientific goals. His lapses of sensitivity are not excused by time. One of these lapses provided an incident both comic and sinister. After he realized that his career prospects in Germany were hopeless, Boas moved to America and took a job at Clark University in Massachusetts. There, as part of his research into anthropometrics (the statistics of bodily measurement) he conceived a plan to measure the thighs of Worcester schoolgirls. The public outcry was both loud and nasty. The local paper expressed outrage that someone who had 'fooled around with the top knots of medicine men and toyed with the warpaint of bloodthirsty Indians' would be feeling their children's bodies.
Boas himself became the victim of cross-cultural double-standards when the paper ridiculed the 'barbaric' duelling scars on his face, sustained during his student days in Heidelberg. It declared that these 'would make a jailbird turn green with envy' and were unknown 'outside the society of the criminal classes.' Boas carried out other dubious activities uncensored and unabashed. He apparently had no scruples about deceiving his friends and acquaintances among the First Nations when he was pilfering graveyards. He noted it was 'repugnant work', it gave him nightmares, but 'someone had to do it'.
Besides, the skeletons were worth money.
Perhaps the shabbiest episode involved a group of Greenlanders brought to New York. When one died, Boas was party to staging a mock funeral for the benefit of the young son. The boy learned only years later that his father's corpse had been whisked away for scientific analysis. Such activities appear all the more reprehensible when compared with Boas' sacramental attitude to the grave of his own daughter. Her burial site was treated as hallowed ground which he visited regularly.
Cole's account of Boas' early scientific work is important for anthropologists and the references to Boas' field work are of special interest to B.C. readers. But this biography also paints a vivid picture of life in the Jewish communities of German provincial towns, it describes Boas' education at leading German universities and it recounts how and why Boas settled in New York as part of the German expatriate society there.
Like all magisterial biographies, Franz Boas: The Early Years successfully depicts one man's life against the backdrop of his historical period. Although it's regrettable that Cole's projected second volume on Boas can never appear, this is a satisfying and important follow-up to Cole's Captured Heritage: The Scramble for Northwest Coast Artifacts, published in 1985. Douglas Cole's research is now housed in the Royal British Columbia Museum. 1-55054-746-1
[Joan Givner / BCBW WINTER 1999]
Submitted on July 22, 2003 in By David.
