Indian Myths & Legends from the North Pacific Coast of America: A Translation of Franz Boas' 1895 Edition of Indianische Sagen von der Nord-Pacifischen Küste Amerikas
Franz Uri Boas was an American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology, who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology". His work is associated with the movement of anthropological historicism. He was the first professor of anthropology at Columbia University, an emeritus professor.
Background
Franz Boas was born on July 9, 1858, in Minden, Westphalia, Prussia (present-day Germany), into a Jewish family. He was of delicate health as a child and spent much of his time with books. His parents were free-thinking liberals who held to the ideals of the Revolutions of 1848.
Education
From the age of five Franz Boas took an interest in the natural sciences - botany, geography, zoology, geology, and astronomy. While studying at the Gymnasium in Minden, he became deeply interested in the history of culture. He followed his various intellectual bents in his course of studies at the universities of Heidelberg, Bonn, and Kiel, taking a Ph.D. in physics and geography at Kiel in 1881.
After a year’s military service Boas continued his studies in Berlin, undertook a year-long scientific expedition to Baffin Island in 1883 - 1884. Firmly interested now in human cultures, he took posts in an ethnological museum in Berlin and on the faculty of geography at the University of Berlin.
In 1886, on his way back from a visit to the Kwakiutl and other tribes of British Columbia (which became a lifelong study), he stopped in New York City and decided to stay. He found a position as an editor of the magazine Science.
Boas’s first teaching position was at the newly founded Clark University (Worcester, Massachusetts) in 1889. Next, he spent a period in Chicago, where he assisted in the preparation of the anthropological exhibitions at the 1893 Columbian Exposition and held a post at the Field Museum of Natural History. In 1896 he became lecturer in physical anthropology and in 1899 professor of anthropology at Columbia University. From 1896 to 1905 he was also curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; in that capacity he directed and edited the reports submitted by the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, an investigation of the relationships between the aboriginal peoples of Siberia and of North America.
Boas’s primary interests were the cultures of North American Indians, particularly the Pacific Northwestern Kwakiutl. He endured great physical hardships through his numerous trips to document Kwakiutl art, literature and language. As the result, he edited Handbook of American Indian Languages (1911). He also collected Indian folklore, and published a study of Tsimshian myth in 1916.
The 36 years that followed were no less productive, influential, or honoured. Boas established the International Journal of American Linguistics, was one of the founders of the American Anthropological Association, and served as president (1931) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Boas also published The Mind of Primitive Man, a series of lectures on culture and race. It was often referred to in the 1920s by those who were opposed to new U.S. immigration restrictions based on presumed racial differences. In the 1930s the Nazis in Germany burned the book and rescinded his Ph.D. degree, which Kiel University had in 1931 ceremonially reconfirmed. Boas updated and enlarged the book in 1937. Other books by Boas include Primitive Art (1927) and Race, Language and Culture (1940).
After his retirement in 1936, Boas responded to the Spanish Civil War and the steadily growing strength of the Nazis in Germany by putting his anthropological ideas about racism into popular journal articles, some of which were collected after his death in Race and Democratic Society (1945, reissued 1969). Franz Uri Boas died on December 21, 1942, of a stroke at the Columbia University Faculty Club, New York.
As a Jewish immigrant from Germany, and a scholar of many different peoples, Boas took a vigorous stand against racism. He insisted that culture, not heredity, be the basis for contemporary anthropological study. He believed that scientific means could bring a greater understanding of social problems.
Throughout his life, Boas remained skeptical of generalizations and theories, relying instead on concrete scientific observations. But he did rely on anthropological methods and previous finding to study social problems. Boas refuted the popularly held notion that heredity was the sole determinant of character and intelligence, insisting that one had to consider culture and variations of individuals within cultures.
Quotations:
"I object to teaching of slogans intended to befog the mind, of whatever kind they may be."
"The disease of mutual distrust among nations is the bane of modern civilization."
"In other words, we are interested in the anatomical and mental characteristics of men living under the same biological, geographical, and social environment, and as determined by their past."
"If we were to select the most intelligent, imaginative, energetic, and emotionally stable third of mankind, all races would be present."
Membership
National Academy of Sciences
,
United States
1900
Bureau of American Ethnology
,
United States
1901
International Journal of American Linguistics
,
United States
1910
American Association for the Advancement of Science
,
United States
1931
Connections
In 1887, Franz Boas married Marie Krackowizer in New York. The couple had six children together.