Contributions to
Circumpolar Anthropology 4
National Museum of Natural History
Smithsonian Institution
2003
Arctic
C^enter
(Constructing (Cultures
^hen and !\]ow
(Celebrating f^ranz £)oa5 and the Jesup
North faclhc Expedition
Smithsonian
t ^ Institution
X^^ir^ Libraries
Gift of
IGOR KRUPNIK
ARCTIC STUDIES CENTER
Constructing Cultures Then and Now
Celebrating Franz Boas and the
Jesup North Pacific Expedition
Vancouver International Airport in Vancouver, B.C., greets passengers with two "Welcome Figures" created by
Salish artist Susan Point (1996). Photograph courtesy Bill McLennan.
(Constructing (^.ultures
~]~hen and i\jow
Celebrating Tranz 5oas and the
Jesup j\Jorth pacific Expedition
LAUREL KENDALL AND IGOR KRUPNIK, EDITORS
^.-Tw^^ Published by the
/^^^^k Arctic Studies Center
I
B^^'^B National Museum of Natural History
\jm^j^W Smithsonian Institution
— Washington, D.C.
©2003 by the Arctic Studies Center, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution
Washington, D.C.
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 0-9673429-4-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Constructing cultures then and now : celebrating Franz Boas and the
Jesup North Pacific Expedition / Laurel Kendall and Igor Krupnik,
editors.
p. cm. — (Contributions to circumpolar anthropology ; 4)
Revisions of papers originally presented at the conference
"Constructing Cultures Then and Now: Celebrating Franz Boas and the
Jesup North Pacific Expedition" held at the American Museum of Natural
History, New York City, in 1 997.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-9673429-4-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1 . Jesup North Pacific Expedition (1 897-1 902). 2. Ethnological
expeditions— Russia (Federation)—Siberia— History. 3. Ethnological
expeditions— Northwest Coast of North America— History. 4. Boas, Franz,
I 858-1942.5. Ethnology— Russia (Federation)— Siberia. 6. Indians of
North America—Northwest Coast of North America—Social life and
customs. 7. Siberia (Russia)—Social life and customs. 8. Northwest
Coast of North America— Social life and customs. I. Kendall, Laurel.
II Krupnik, Igor. III. Arctic Studies Center (National Museum of
Natural History). IV. Series.
GN635.S5C65 2003
305.8'00957—dc22
200301 5439
°°ThG paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard
for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials.
Technical editor: Kathryn A. Malm
Cover and series design: Anya Vinokour
Production editors: Iris Hahn and Elisabeth Ward
Printed by United Book Press, Inc., Baltimore, MD
This publication is Volume 4 in the Arctic Studies Center series, Contributions to Circumpolar Anthropology, produced by
the Arctic Studies Center, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.
THIS SERIES IS MADE POSSIBLE IN PART BY THE JAMES W. VANSTONE (1 925-2001) ENDOWMENT
Front cover; Franz Boas posing for exhibit group displaying Canadian Eskimo clothing and harpoon (AMNH 3220)
Back cover.' An elderly Chukchi lady and her granddaughter in front of the traditional Chukchi skin tent erected for the
local festival in the town of Tavaivaam, Chukotka, Russia. Photographer, Igor Krupnik, 1996
6f\l
(,3 5
'^0 3 y
/ \
( NOV 2 4 j
1CO
Contributors vii
List of Tables x
List of Figures xi
Abbreviations xiv
Note on Cyrillic Transliteration xv
FOREWORD XVll
INTRODUCTION: A CENTENARY AND A CELEBRATION
Laurel Kendall and Igor Krupnik 1
part One 1 00 Years of Jesup: The Intellectual Legacy ofthejesup Expedition
"THE AIM OF THE EXPEDITION . . , HAS IN THE MAIN BEEN ACCOMPLISHED":
WORDS, DEEDS, AND LEGACIES OF THE JESUP NORTH PACIFIC EXPEDITION
Igor Krupnik and Nikolai Vakhtin 1 5
THE SO-CALLED "ESKIMO WEDGE": A CENTURY AFTER JESUP
Don E. Dumond 3 3
FAILING AT BERING STRAIT? JESUP NORTH PACIFIC EXPEDITION AND
THE STUDY OF CULTURE CONTACT
Peter P. Schweitzer 49
DIFFUSION AND COLONIAL ANTHROPOLOGY: THEORIES OF CHANGE IN
THE CONTEXT OF JESUP 1
Molly Lee and Nelson H. H. Graburn 79
THE JESUP EXPEDITION AND ITS ANALOGUES: A COMPARISON
Stanley A. Freed, Ruth S. Freed, and Laila Williamson 89
part ~]~wo Anthropologies and Histories: Jesup Participants Then and Now
FRANZ BOAS AND THE MUSIC OF THE NORTHWEST COAST INDIANS
Ira Jacknis 1 5
BEYOND BOAS? RE-ASSESSING THE CONTRIBUTION OF "INFORMANT"
AND "RESEARCH ASSISTANT": JAMES A. TEIT
Wendy Wickwire 123
FRANZ BOAS AND AN "UNFINISHED JESUP" ON SAKHALIN ISLAND:
SHEDDING NEW LIGHT ON BERTHOLD L^UFER AND BRONISLAW PILSUDSKI
Koichi Inoue 1 35
LOUIS SHOTRIDCE AND INDIGENOUS TLINCIT ETHNOGRAPHY:
THEN AND NOW
Nora Marks Dauenhauer and Richard Dauenhauer
BILINGUAL/BICULTURAL INFORMANTS AND INTERPRETERS OF THE JESUP
EXPEDITION ERA
Sergei Kan
ree
165
185
People, Animals, and Land: A Jesup Theme Revisited
THE JESUP EXPEDITION AND THE MODERNIZATION OF NORTH PACIFIC NATURAL
HISTORY
Robert S. Hoffmann 201
THE LANGUAGES OF THE NORTH PACIFIC RIM, 1897-1997, AND THE
JESUP EXPEDITION
Michael E. Krauss 211
GENETIC PREHISTORY OF PALEOASIATIC SPEAKING POPULATIONS OF
NORTHEASTERN SIBERIA AND THEIR RELATIONSHIPS TO NATIVE AMERICANS
Theodore G. Schurr and Douglas C. Wallace 2 39
THE POST-JESUP CENTURY OF RESEARCH INTO THE PREHISTORY OF
NORTHEASTERN SIBERIA
Sergei A. Arutiunov 259
LIFE IN LOST VILLAGES: HOME, LAND, MEMORY AND THE SENSES OF LOSS
IN POST-JESUP KAMCHATKA
David Koester 269
fartTour Curators, Collectors, and Consumers
HERITAGE ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE "JESUP-2" ERA: EXPLORING NORTH
PACIFIC CULTURES THROUGH COOPERATIVE RESEARCH
William W. Fitzhugh
ALEUT ARCHAEOLOGY AND CULTURAL HERITAGE: THE LEGACY OF THE
JESUP NORTH PACIFIC EXPEDITION
Stephen Loring and Douglas W. Veltre
IN MEMORY OF VLADIMIR IVANOV-UNAROV, 1937-2000
Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer
THE REVITALIZATION OF THE TRADITIONAL CULTURE OF NORTHEAST
SIBERIAN PEOPLES: THE ROLE OF THE JESUP EXPEDITION
Vladimir Kh. Ivanov-Unarov and Zinaida I. Ivanova-Unarova
THE INVENTION AND PERPETUATION OF CULTURE: THE BOASIAN LEGACY
AND TWO 20"' CENTURY WOMAN TOTEM POLE CARVERS
Aldona Jonaitis
CONSUMERS, THEN AND NOW
Gloria Cranmer Webster
287
307
334
336
349
361
vi
contributors
Sergei A. ArMt/wMov works at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology in Moscow as Chair of the Depart-
ment of the Peoples of the Northern Caucasus. He is a leading Russian expert in ethnology of the Russian North and
Far East, as well as a specialist on Japan and South Asia, the archaeology of the Bering Sea region, and Eskimo art.
During the 1 980s, he was the Russian team leader for the Crossroads of Continents exhibit project.
Nora l\/larks Dauenhauer was born in Juneau, Alaska. She is internationally recognized for her fieldwork,
translation and explication of Tlingit oral literature. From 1983 to 1997, she was Principal Researcher in Language
and Cultural Studies at Sealaska Heritage Foundation in Juneau. She is married to Richard Dauenhauer, with whom
she has co-authored several volumes of Tlingit language and folklore material.
Richard Dauenhauer, born and raised in Syracuse, NY, has lived in Juneau, Alaska since 1969. Much of his
professional work has focused on applied folklore and linguistics in the study, materials development, and teacher
training in Alaska Native languages and oral literature. From 1 983 to 1 997, he was Director of Language and
Cultural Studies at Sealaska Heritage Foundation, Juneau.
Don E. Dumond is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Director Emeritus of the Museum of Natural History
at the University of Oregon, Eugene. For more than forty years he has focused on archaeological fieldwork in
southwestern Alaska. He has written widely on the prehistory of Alaska.
William W. Fitzhugh is Director of the Arctic Studies Center and Curator at the Department of Anthropology,
National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, DC. His interests include circumpolar
prehistory and archaeology, maritime adaptations, and culture contacts. He has organized several special exhibit
projects such as Inua; Crossroads ofContinents; Ainu; and Vil<ings.
Ruth S. Freed \s a Research Associate in the Division of Anthropology at the AMNH in New York. With Stanley
A. Freed, she has co-authored papers on the Washoe, Mohave, and Navajo as well as on thejesup Expedition (also
with Laila Williamson). She has taught at New York University and Seton Hall University.
Stanley A. Freed '\s Curator Emeritus in the Division of Anthropology at the AMNH in New York. A staff member
at the AMNH since 1960, he was in charge of North American ethnology. He has helped to create or renovate a
number of permanent and temporary exhibitions dealing with the Northwest Coast, the Arctic, the Plains, and the
Eastern Woodlands.
Nelson H.H. Graburn is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley and Curator of North
America at the Phoebe Hearst Museum. He has published extensively on art and culture in the North, on the
anthropology of tourism, and the anthropology of Canada and of Japan.
Robert S. Hoffmann is Curator Emeritus at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution in
Washington, DC, and specializes in adaptation and evolutionary biology of northern land mammals. Formerly the
vii
Director of NMNH and Provost of the Smithsonian, he has worked closely with North American, Russian, Mongolian,
and Chinese colleagues in the circumpolar and North Pacific regions.
Koichi Inoue is Professor of Ethnology at the Slavic Research Center of Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan.
He specializes in the ethnology of indigenous peoples of Siberia and of Northern Eurasia, in general. He did extensive
fieldwork in the Russian Far East and Siberia. His current research interests include indigenous reindeer economies;
theory of ethnos; and the life and work of Bronislaw Pilsudski.
Vladimir Kh. Ivanov-Unarov (1937-2000) was one of the leading Sakha/Yakut scholars of the cultures of
northern minority peoples of the Sakha Republic/Yakutia. He was a Department Chair in the Institute of the Problems
of the Minority Peoples of the North in Yakutsk, Sakha Republic, Russia. Between 1 992-97 he worked onjochelson's
Yakut, Yukagir, and Even collections at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and he initiated a
recent Russian translation ofJochelson's monograph on the Yukagir (1 926).
Zinaida I. Ivanova-Unamva is a professor at Yakutsk University in Yakutsk, Sakha Republic, Russia. Originally
from a northern Sakha village, she has written extensively on women master artists and on shamanic influences in
Siberian Native art. She authored several books on Sakha art and worked with her late husband, Vladimir Ivanov-
Unarov, on the Jesup Expedition collections in New York.
Ira Jacknis is Research Anthropologist at the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology, University of California
at Berkeley. His research interests include the art and culture of the Native peoples of Western North America, the
history of anthropology, museums, and photography. He is the author of The Storage Box of Tradition: KwakiutI Art,
Anthropologists, and Museums, 1881-1981 (2002).
Aldona Jonaitis, is Director of the University of Alaska Museum. Prior to her current position, she was Vice
President for Public Programs at the American Museum of Natural History. She has taught at the University of Alaska
Fairbanks, SUNY at Stony Brook, and Columbia University. She has authored numerous books, papers, and publica-
tions and exhibit catalogs on Northwest Coast Native art.
Sergei Kan is Professor of Anthropology and Native American Studies at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH.
Most of his publications deal with Tlingit culture and the history of Russian Orthodox Christianity in southeastern
Alaska. Recently he has been writing a book about Russian anthropologist Lev Shternberg discussing Shternberg's
relationships with Franz Boas and other members of the Jesup Expedition.
Laurel Kendall \s Curator of Asian Ethnographic Collections at the American Museum of Natural History. She is
best known for her writing on shamans, ritual life, and gender issues in Korea. Kendall was Project Director for the
AMNH Jesup Centenary celebration and co-editor of a catalog of the photographs of the Jesup Expedition, Drawing
Shadows to Stone (1 997), with Barbara Mathe and Thomas Ross Miller
David Koester '\s a cultural anthropologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a specialist in the peoples
of the circumpolar North. His publications, based on long-term fieldwork in Iceland and Kamchatka, Russia, have
focused on the ideological, social and material mechanisms associated with socio-cultural change and continuity.
Michael E. Krauss is the former director of the Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
He is a leading specialist in the preservation and survival of the Native languages of Alaska, Siberia, and the circum-
polar area. His latest contributions include a detailed map of Native language areas for the Inuit-Yupik-Aleut Region
and a report on the status of indigenous languages of the North for UNESCO.
Igor Krupnik, Arctic Ethnologist at the Arctic Studies Center, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, is
currently coordinator of various international projects studying the impacts of global climate change and the
viii
preservation of cultural heritage and ecological knowledge of Native peoples. He writes extensively on Arctic
peoples, modernization, and minority issues.
Molly Lee holds a joint appointment at the University of Alaska Fairbanks as Curator of Ethnology at the
University of Alaska Museum and Professor of Anthropology. She has written extensively on indigenous basketry
and art in the North, including most recently Eskimo Architecture (2003), with Gregory A. Reinhardt.
Stephen Loring is Museum Anthropologist with the Arctic Studies Center, Smithsonian Institution in Washing-
ton, DC. In addition to caring for the Arctic and Sub-arctic collections, he facilitates access to the collections for
visiting indigenous researchers and promotes Native community interests. He has conducted archaeological and
ethnohistorical research with Innu and Inuit in Labrador, and has worked in the Aleutian Islands, Peru, and Argentina.
Peter P. Schweitzer is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Since the mid-1 980s,
Schweitzer has focused his research activities on the Russian North, conducting fieldwork in Chukotka and the
Sakha Republic (Yakutia). His areas of interest include politics, kinship, history, and hunter-gatherer studies. Currently
he is writing a book on the history of Siberian anthropology
Theodore G. Schurr is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania. He
has researched the genetic prehistory of Asia and the Americas through studies of mtDNA and Y-chromosome
variation in Asian, Siberian and Native American populations. His current projects apply these techniques to mod-
ern Aleuts, indigenous peoples of south-central Siberia, and archaeological populations from the Lake Baikal region.
Nikolai Vakhtin, is a professor at the European University at St. Petersburg, Russia. He teaches courses in field
linguistics, sociolinguistics, and the cultural anthropology of Siberia. He has done extensive research on Native
languages and modern culture change among the minority peoples of northern Russia. He has written several
books and articles on the languages and cultures of the northern indigenous peoples of Siberia.
Douglas W. Veltre is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Alaska Anchorage. He has conducted field
research in the Aleutian and Pribilof islands since 1 971 . Much of his work has focused on prehistoric and historical
archaeology, but he has also researched contemporary and historical subsistence economies and oral history.
Douglas C. Wallace has conducted studies in human biology for the past 25 years. His pioneering work in
mitochondrial DNA genetics and biochemistry has led to numerous important insights into human origins and
migrations, including the peopling of Siberia and the Americas. He is currently Director of the Center for Molecular
and Mitochondrial Medicine and Genetics at the University of California, Irvine.
Gloria Cranmer Webster ^as born in Alert Bay, British Columbia, Canada. She is a member of the Nimpkish
Band of the Kwakwaka'wakw (KwakiutI). She founded the U'Mista Cultural Centre at Alert Bay, British Columbia in
1 980, where she served as Director and Curator. Her many cultural projects include the production of two docu-
mentary films and a series of Kwakwala language books and educational materials for local schools.
Wendy Wickwire is Associate Professor in the Department of History and School of Environmental Studies at
the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Her research interests include the oral traditions of the aboriginal peoples
of south-central British Columbia and the history of anthropology in British Columbia, most notably the work of
James A. Teit.
Laila Williamson is Senior Scientific Assistant for North and South American Ethnology at the AMNH in New
York. She is a specialist in North American collections and helped renovate permanent exhibitions of Northwest
Coast, Plains and Eastern Woodlands cultures at the AMNH. She has co-authored (with S.A. and R.S. Freed) several
papers on thejesup Expedition.
ix
ist of tables
Table 1 Selected Radiocarbon Ages for Bering Strait Sites 42
Table 2 Total Number of Recognized Land Mammal Species in Beringia at the End 20 3
of the Nineteenth Century
Table 3 Numbers of Shrews, Marmots, Ground Squirrels, and Grey Voles Recog- 204
nized in Beringia, End of Nineteenth Century
Table 4 Total Number of Recognized Land Mammal Species in Beringia, Mid- 20 5
twentieth Century
Table 5 Number of Shrews, Marmotines, and Grey Voles Recognized in Beringia, 206
Mid-twentieth Century
Table 6 Total Number of Recognized Land Mammal Species in Beringia, End of 207
Twentieth Century
Table 7 North American Languages Current Status, Sequenced from the Columbia 21 6
River toward the Bering Strait
Table 8 Northeastern Asian Languages Current Status, Sequenced from the Bering 2 1 7
Strait toward the Ussuri River
Table 9 Siberian Populations Analyzed for Genetic Variation 240
Table 10 Haplogroups in Native Siberian and East Asian Populations 241
Table 1 1 CR Sequence Sublineages in Siberian and Native American Populations 24 2
Table 12 Haplogroup Frequencies in Eastern Pacific Rim Populations 243
Table 1 3 Haplogroup Distribution in West Pacific Rim and Siberian Populations 244
Table 14 Sequence Divergence of Siberian and Native American Haplogroups 24 5
Table 1 5 Distribution of Haplogroup A,C, and D Sublineages in Siberian and Native 247
American Populations
X
I c:4" t^i I left I <^
Title: Susan Point's Welcome Figures, 1996 ii
1/ Jochelson's team traveling with the expedition collections, East Siberia, 1902 xvi
2/ "Woman's Potlatch " in Fort Rupert, British Columbia, June 1 898 xvlii
3/ Boas, Bogoras, and Shternberg at the 21 st International Congress of Americanists, 1 924 1 2
4/ Field of Proposed Operations of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, 1 898 1 7
5/ Northeast Asia and the adjacent northwesternmost section of North America 35
6/ Segment of the original map of the Jesup Expedition activities in the Bering Sea area 54
7/ Jochelson's first expedition camp at the village of Kushka on the Sea of Okhotsk Coast, 1 900 63
8/ The transport of the JNPE collections near Yakutsk, East Siberia, spring 1 902 64
9/ Waldemar Bogoras with the expedition freight at Mariinsky Post, Siberia, 1901 65
1 0/ Jochelson's reindeer team with the JNPE collections. East Siberia, 1 901 66
11/ Jesup Expedition Siberian collections displayed at the AMNH 67
1 2/ Example of old Eskimo twined basketry (pack sack) issran (Central Yup'ik), 1952 68
1 3/ Coiled willow-root basket. Sledge Island, Norton Sound, 1 878-81 68
14/ Closeup of grass-coiling technique 69
1 5/ Closeup of twined-grass technique 69
16/ IVIiner Bruce basket from Kotzebue Sound 69
1 7/ Early coiled beach-grass basket, northern Alaska, 1 887 70
18/ Coiled willow "tobacco basket", with attached sea-mammal hide bag, Pt. Barrow, 1881-3 70
1 9/ Eskimo in skin boats ready to trade with the passing ship, Port Clarence, Alaska, 1 899 71
20/ North Pacific-Siberian-Alaskan Trade Systems, circa 1797-1900 72-3
21/ Saint Lawrence Island coiled beach-grass tray, 1912 74
22/ Chukchi basket, JNPE collection, 1 900-1 74
23/ Beach at Port Clarence, Alaska, with several whaling ships anchored in the harbor, 1 899 75
24/ Koryak coiled grass basket, JNPE collection, 1900-1 76
25/ Koryak coiled willow root basket, JNPE collection, 1900-1 76
26/ Chinese tea basket, bamboo with porcelain tea cups, JNPE collection, 1 898-99 77
27/ Ainu basket from Hokkaido, 1901 77
28/ Koryak basket makers at work, 1900-01 78
29/ Dina Jochelson-Brodsky steps out of the expedition's winter headquarters, 1901 102
30/ KwakiutI Indians dancing at the Chicago Worlds Fair, 1893 143
31/ Franz Boas, with George Hunt and his family. Fort Rupert, B.C., 1894 144
32/ Musical notation by Franz Boas: Song of Ha'mshamtses 145
33/ Hamatsa skull rattle, Quatsino, B.C., 1 899 1 46
34/ Pit house, Spences Bridge, B.C., 1 897 1 46
35/ Wax cylinder machine: Edison Standard Phonograph with horn, circa 1900 147
xi
36/ Lucy Antko, wife of James Teit, 1 897 1 48
37/ James Teit and two friends in Lerwick, Scotland, prior to his departure to Canada 1 49
38/ James Teit's uncle John Murray in British Columbia, circa 1 888 1 49
39/ Spences Bridge, B.C., 1 887 150
40/ Spences Bridge, circa 1890 1 50
41 / Drying salmon on the beach on the north side of the Thompson River, B.C. 1 5 1
42/ James Teit and his wife Lucy Antko, 1 897 1 5 2
43/ James Teit in his cabin at Tswall Creek 1 5 3
44/ James Teit and George Tomaxkain on the banks of the Thompson River, 1 890 1 54
45/ James A. Teit and Harlan I. Smith's pack train, Spences Bridge 1 5 5
46/ Bronislaw Pilsudski, three "Oltchi" (Ulchi) men, and a local settler 1 56
47/ Sakhalin's Ainu bear festival 1 5 7
48/ Sakhalin Ainu women 1 57
49/ Sakhalin Ainu bear festival 158
50/ Tlingit dagger, with a sheath collected by Louis Shotridge in Sitka, 1918 171
51/ Yendaayank' - the last direct descendant of the Tlingit chief Eagle Head 1 71
52/ Sergei Kostromitinov, circa 1900 190
53/ A group of the "forest" Yukagir on the Yassachnaya River, fall 1 901 1 98
54/ Waldemar Jochelson, Norman Buxton, and Waldemar Bogoras in San Francisco, spring 1900 22 3
55/ Norman Buxton, a local Russian officer, and his secretary in Gizhiga, Siberia, spring 1901 224
56/ Buxton's cabin in Gizhiga, Siberia, spring 1 901 22 5
57/ Shestakova, a Koryak winter settlement at Penzhina Bay, Siberia, winter 1901 22 5
58/ Native dog-teams in Markovo, Anadyr River valley, winter 1901 226
59/ The town of Markovo, Anadyr River valley, winter 1901 226
60/ Mr. Nikolai Sokolnikov, commanding officer of the Anadyr District, in Markovo, winter 1901 227
61/ Dried salmon on the sled, used for both human and dog food, Markovo, winter 1901 2 27
62/ A group of Yakut (Sakha) children, 1 902 2 2 8
63/ A group of Maritime Koryak children, 1900 229
64/ Itelmen poet Anatoly Levkovsky, with his wife Tatiana and son Nikolai 2 30
65/ Itelmen elder and educator Tatiana Petrovna Lukashkina 231
66/ The village of Kovran in 1 994 from across the Kovran River 2 32
67/ Store closed, Verkhne Khairiuzovo, February 1994 2 32
68/ The remains of the Kovran clubhouse {dom kul'tury) 2 3 3
69/ The village of Verkhne Khairiuzovo, summer of 1 992 2 3 3
70/ Itelmen elder Tatiana Petrovna Lukashkina speaks to a group of children, 1 995 2 34
71/ Itelmen elders from Kovran, at an Itelmen gathering in 1995 23 5
72/ The site of the now closed village of Moroshechnoe as it appeared in 1996 2 36
73/ Aleksander Tolman in the once abandoned village of Kirganik, reoccupied in the 1 990s 2 3 7
74/ Afanasii Reshetnikov, one of Kirganik's elderly resettlers, in front of his house, 1 997 2 3 7
75/ Family of the Chief of the Tundra Yukagir band, winter 1 902 2 38
76/ Neighbor-joining tree for aboriginal Siberian and East Asian populations 248
77/ Neighbor-joining tree for aboriginal Siberian populations 249
78/ Neighbor-joining tree for Native Siberian and East Asian populations 251
79/ Map of Kamchatka, showing local communities and abandoned villages 2 74
80/ King Island Inupiat dancers perform at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, 1988 2 84
xii
81 / The American Crossroads of Continents team in St. Petersburg, Russia, 1 983 2 86
82/ Jim VanStone demonstrates a Tlingit war lielmet from the MAE collection, 1983 30 5
83/ Aleut laborers working for the Jochelsons excavate an Aleut barabara on Umnak Island 3 06
84/ George Tsaroff, soon after starting to work at the Smithsonian Institution, ca. 1 878 309
85/ Crossroads of Continents exhibit at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, 1 991 3 1 9
86/ Sergei Serov (1 940-1 992), Russian Crossroads exhibit coordinator 320
87/ The North American Crossroads team at the MAE in 1 983 3 20
88/ Andres Slapinsh, Latvian film producer, among the Evenk people in East Siberia 321
89/ The Mini-Crossroads team departing on its tour to Siberia from Nome, 1 990 321
90/ Mini-Crossroads exhibit being unloaded from a Russian Yak-40, Vladivostok, 1997 322
9] / Mini-Crossroads in Russia: school tours at the exhibit, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, 1997 322
92/ Jochelson s display of his Aleut collection at the Imperial Russian Geographical Society 32 3
93/ Aleut children photographed by Waldemar Jochelson 32 3
94/ Waldemar Jochelson with Aleut laborers on Umnak Island, 1 909 3 24
95/ Excavations at the Margaret Bay archaeological site dated to 3100 B.P. 324
96/ A portion of the village of St. Paul in the Pribilof Islands 32 5
97/ The Atka Dancers (Atxam Taliigisnikangis) at the Aleut Elders' Conference, Unalaska, 1 996 32 5
98/ Sakha/Yakut artisan, Anna Nikolaeva dressed in a fur coat or buuktaal<h son 326
99/ Same fur coat, back view 3 26
100/ Birch-bark container (woman's storage box). Made by Anna Nikolaeva 327
101/ Woman's fur coat. Created for characters in the Sakha/Yakut opera Nyurgun Bootur 327
102/ Musqueam house post purchased by Harlan Smith, 1898 328
103/ Susan Point's House Posts, 1997 32 8
104/ Masset village, Haida, 1879 329
105/ Alert Bay, Kwakwaka'wakw, 1910 3 30
106/ Ellen Neel (1916-1966), 1950 331
107/ Mungo Martin (1880-1962) 331
1 08/ Ellen Neel's Tbtem/anrfPo/e, 1950 3 32
109/ Matthias Joe Capilano's Thunderbird Dynasty Pole, Vancouver, B. C, 1936 3 32
1 10/ Susan Point (b. 1952), 1997 333
111/ Susan Point, Common Thread, 2000 3 3 3
I 1 2/ Vladimir Ivanov-Unarov (1 937-2000) 3 34
I I 3/ Sakha (Yakut) ysyakh festival at the village of Churapcha, May 1 902 3 3 5
1 1 4/ Susan Point's Spindle Whorl, Vancouver International Airport, 1 994 348
xiii
abbreviations
AMNH American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY
AlVINH-BTC American Museum of Natural History, Department of Anthropology Archives, Boas-Teit
Correspondence
AMNH-DA American Museum of Natural History, Department of Anthropology Archives
AFS American Folklore Society
ANB Alaska Native Brotherhood
ANCSA Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act, 1971
A/PIA Aleutian/Pribilof Islands Association
APS-BP American Philosophical Society, Franz Boas Papers
ARCA Alaska Russian Church Archives, Manuscript Division (microfilm). Library of Congress,
Washnigton, DC
ASC Arctic Studies Center, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution
BAAS British Association for the Advancement of Science
BAE Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, DC
BCPA British Columbia Provincial Archives,Vancouver, British Columbia
BIA Bureau of Indian Affiars, Department of the Interior, Washington, DC
GNPR Greater North Pacific Region
IREX International Research and Exchange Board
JNPE Jesup North Pacific Expedition, 1897-1902
LC Library of Congress, Washington, DC
MAE Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology (Kunstkammer), St. Petersburg,
Russia
NAA National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
NAGPRA Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, 1990
NEH National Endowment for the Humanities
NIMA National Image and Mapping Agency
NMAI National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
NMNH National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
NSF National Science Foundation
RAG Russian-American Company
RBCM Royal British Columbia Museum, Vancouver, Canada
SITES Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibit Service, Washington, DC
UBC University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
UPM The University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
xiv
note on CMnl ic
transiiterarion
Two coexisting systems are in use in the United States
for transliterating Russian Cyrillic letters into English:
that of the Library of Congress (LC), and that of the
National Image and Mapping Agency (NIMA, formerly
the U.S. Board of Geographic Names). The LC system is
used for bibliographic references; the NIMA system ap-
plies to geographic names (place names) and to most
ethnic names.
All Russian or Siberian geographic names are
transliterated here according to the NIMA system,
which uses ya, yu, and yo for Cyrillic >?, /o, and e
(Yakutsk, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, etc.). Throughout this
volume, Native Siberian ethnic names are transliter-
ated in accordance with the Peoples of the Soviet
Union map produced by the National Geographic
Society in 1989, which basically adheres to the
NIMA system (Yakut, Yukagir, Koryak, Nanay, etc.).
Most of these ethnic names are already established
in Western anthropological literature—thanks largely
to the Jesup Expedition's pioneering publications.
This system also results in names reminiscent of sev-
eral Native American group titles familiar to North
American readers: Yurok, Maya, Yup'ik, Eyak, Yokut,
Yakutat Tlingit, and so on. Furthermore, the NIMA-
based spelling of ethnic and geographic names is
similar to the Russian/Cyrillic transliteration system
adopted in England and Canada and to the one com-
monly used by modern Russian authors when writ-
ing papers in English. The NIMA-based system is also
applied here for transliterating a few Russian or
Native Siberian personal names, words, and ethno-
graphic terms in individual papers.
In contrast to the NIMA system, the Library of Con-
gress transliteration system uses ia, in, and io for the
Cyrillic fi, /o and e and an apostrophe for the Russian
soft sign (b). Because today's highly standardized elec-
tronic library catalog formats are based on the LC sys-
tem, names of Russian authors and all titles of items in
the bibliographic reference sections in this volume ad-
here to the LC system. Using two transliteration sys-
tems in a single book may be inconvenient, but every
effort has been made to adhere strictly to each of
these patterns in its designated application in order to
establish a high level of consistency for all future Arc-
tic Studies Center publications. For the convenience of
readers, an alternative NIMA-based transliteration of
Russian authors' names is sometimes provided in pa-
rentheses in those cases where such a pattern has been
established by earlier publications (for example, the
original Jesup Expedition series; Antliropology of the
North: Translations from Russian Sources). Despite all
our efforts, we may not have been able to eliminate all
potential cases of confusion or the occasional idio-
syncratic usage.
We are grateful to our colleagues Pavel llyin (U.S.
Holocaust Museum), Michael Krauss (Alaska Native Lan-
guage Center, University of Alaska), and Marjorie
Mandelstam Balzer (editor, Anthropology and Archeol-
ogy of Eurasia) for their advice on transliteration prac-
tices for ASC publications.
XV
I 7 2-jr
//Jochelson's team traveling with tlie expedition collections along the Tos-Khayakhtakh mountain range, East
Siberia, winter 1902 (AMNH 1725)
Iorc\Nor
This volume marks another important step in the on-
going international effort to explore the legacy of the
Jesup North Pacific Expedition of 1 897-1 902, referred
to by its participants as "Jesup 2". This book illustrates,
once again, the fruitfulness of broad partnerships when
pursuing North Pacific studies, a tradition that began
with Franz Boas' pioneering enterprise, and it demon-
strates how that has developed over the last 1 00 years.
If one were to seek for the roots of Jesup 2, it be-
gan in 1977, when the U.S. -Soviet ethnographic exhi-
bition, Crossroads ofContinents: Cultures ofAlaska and
Siberia, was first proposed. Over the past twenty-six
years, these efforts have progressed through a series
of exhibits, international conferences, workshops, re-
search exchanges, collection sharing programs, fellow-
ships, and publications. Overtime, the balance of these
activities gradually shifted from major museums and
research hubs in Washington, New York, Moscow, and
St. Petersburg to smaller museums and centers in the
North Pacific region. This shift also meant increased
participation by local North Pacific area scholars and
Native cultural activists in bringing objects, photo-
graphs, and knowledge recovered by the JNPE back
into the homelands where the project originated. Such
efforts helped make the Jesup Expedition familiar to
hundreds and thousands local residents in Siberia and
North America alike.
But the largest effort ofJesup 2, and the inaugural
event for this volume, was the Jesup Centenary Confer-
ence at the American Museum. I am greatly indebted
to Laurel Kendall and the American Museum of Natural
History in New York for creating, funding, and hosting
so skillfully and graciously this grand international con-
vocation that brought together many North Pacific area
scholars and representatives of Native Nations to cel-
ebrate the centenary of the Jesup Expedition in 1997.
I also wish to thank Igor Krupnik for his perseverance in
keeping the spirit of this venture alive by encouraging
and heartening its participants over the years.
The appearance of this volume—from the opening
of that conference to its appearance under the Arctic
Studies Center (ASC) series. Contributions to Circumpo-
lar Anthropology—took about the same length of time
to complete as it did for Boas to conduct the JNPE
fieldwork a century ago. All in all, it was not until the
proceeds from the recent Smithsonian exhibit catalog,
Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga, accumulated that it
became possible for the ASC to start a publication
series of its own. Here we found a fitting home for this
volume, in a series which began with another Jesup 2
conference collection. Gateways: Exploring the Legacy
ofthe Jesup North Pacific Expedition, 1897-1 902, based
on a panel held in 1 993 and published in 2001
.
Matters 'anthropological' around the North Pa-
cific no longer inhabit the dark recesses of our mu-
seum archives and collection cabinets. Newly con-
served and stored, they are finding their rightful
places both as ideas and as cultural treasures. And
with the Jesup 2 effort in its third decade, we are
hopefully inching toward that enigmatic "Volume
1
2
" of Boas' original series, the expedition's "Sum-
mary and Final Results."
William W. Fitzhugh, Director
Arctic Studies Center
xvii
2/"VJoman's Potlatch" in Fort Rupert, British Columbia, June 1 898. Photographer, Harlan I. Smith (AMNH 42992)
xviii
introduction
/A C^entenart) and a (2,eiebration
LAUREL KENDALL
AND IGOR KRUPNIK
This volume examines the living legacy of the Ameri-
can Museum of Natural History's Jesup North Pacific
Expedition (1 897-1 902) and the work of Dr. Franz Boas,
the founding father of American anthropology. The
Jesup Expedition, as orchestrated by Boas, was a re-
search project of such scientific importance and geo-
graphical scope that some regard it as the most ambi-
tious venture in the history of American Anthropology.
Named after Morris K. Jesup, then the president of the
American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) and the
project's key sponsor, the expedition set out to inves-
tigate the cultural and biological links between indig-
enous peoples living in both the Old and the New
World—in order to prove that the first Americans had
once crossed over to North America from Asia. During
a span of more than five years, the expedition field
crews studied, recorded, and collected from several
Native nations across the Greater North Pacific Region.
Their efforts were focused upon a huge area, which
extends like a giant arc from the Northwest Coast of
North America to the Bering Strait and along the Pa-
cific Coast of Siberia to the cultural borderlands of China,
Korea, and Japan. The chapters in this volume began
as papers given at a conference held at the American
Museum of Natural History in 1 997 to mark the Jesup
North Pacific Expedition's Centenary. They reflect the
enormous scope of the original expedition in both their
breadth of geographic coverage and the range of is-
sues they tackle,
Franz Boas (1858-1942), a German-born natural
scientist, who became the leading American anthro-
pologist of the early 20th century, was a pioneer in
the study of culture, race, and ethnicity. His notion of
"culture," as distinct from "race" and "language," is pres-
ently taken for granted in contemporary American think-
ing. Indeed, culture has become a core concept of the
social sciences and an everyday word frequently in-
voked in public discourse. While anthropological no-
tions of "culture" have evolved over the intervening
century, popular understandings hew to a Boasian
notion of culture as the essential configuration of be-
liefs, social practices, and material and artistic prod-
ucts that define a people.
Today, most anthropologists regard culture as a
more mutable construct, anchored within rather than
above historical circumstance and mediated by the
particular experiences of gender, class, race, and the
unfolding of colonial and neo-colonial encounters. But
if the old Boasian notion now seems unfashionably
"essentialist" and "a-historical," it is worth recalling the
historical contingencies of its own construction. The
culture concept, which claimed relative worth for ev-
ery human society, was a radical departure from the
supremacist and social-evolutionary thinking of Euro-
American science in the late 19th and early 20th cen-
turies where hunters, gatherers, and herders—so-called
"primitive people"—were cast on the lowest rungs of
an evolutionary hierarchy (Sanjek 1 996).
1
Franz Boas saw anthropology as a holistic enter-
prise and the Jesup Expedition was conceptualized fol-
lowing his founding vision of the comprehensive an-
thropological survey as an integrated scholarly en-
deavor (Cole and Long 2001; see also Krupnik and
Vakhtin, this volume). A single trained fieldworker, or a
small crew of a few professionals, studied social life,
folklore, linguistics, prehistory, and biology while also
assembling museum collections and documenting sig-
nificant activities for reproduction as museum exhibits
(Miller and Mathe 1 997). Boas himself epitomized these
multiple endeavors in his own fieldwork as did several
otherjesup Expedition participants. Because Jesup sci-
entists encountered many Native peoples who had
been badly decimated by epidemics and were under
heavy pressure to assimilate to the customs and mo-
res of the Russians or Anglo-Americans, members of
the expedition believed that they were recording, col-
lecting, and preserving the last traces of vanishing cul-
tures. Boas enjoined expedition anthropologists to
make as comprehensive portraits of the peoples they
studied as could possibly be accomplished under lo-
cal conditions and using the recording technology
available to them at that time. Following his instruc-
tions, Jesup ethnologists documented local material
culture, observed daily life and social rites, reproduced
decorative patterns and artistic motifs, and recorded
songs, stories, and myths for linguistic and compara-
tive analysis. They took measurements of people, ob-
jects, and buildings, and collected artifacts. They also
took numerous photographs, literally hundreds ofthem,
in order to preserve an "authentic" image of people
they surveyed. This was, in its day, cutting-edge field-
work for a newly professional anthropology.
Returning from remote regions in Siberia and north-
ern North America (Figs.l and 2) to the American Mu-
seum in New York, expedition anthropologists brought
back their written observations as well as tangible
objects, visual images, and recordings of Native lan-
guages and on this basis, recomfrwcfet/ Native cultures
for scholarly and popular consumption. They produced
a shelf of ethnographies and folklore collections con-
sidered "classics" today. Their collections fill the Ameri-
can Museum's Hall of Northwest Coast Indians and
the Siberian section of the Gardner D. Stout Hall of
Asian Peoples. Thousands more objects are housed in
the Museum's storerooms and are now publicly ac-
cessible via the worldwide web. The Jesup Expedition
archives include participants' notes and diaries, letters
from the field, transcriptions of folklore texts, photo-
graphs, wax cylinders, and forms for physical mea-
surements.' Through such comprehensive documen-
tation. Boas and his colleagues constructed cukures as
theory, field sites, configurations of processed data,
topical monographs, and museum exhibits aimed at
reproducing an idealized pre-contact then, spurred on
by the mistaken belief that these cultures were rapidly
disappearing. With the irony of history, the JNPE
fieldworkers preserved invaluable cultural treasures,
such that one hundred years later (now) the Jesup
Expedition's legacy is an unsurpassed resource for
scholars as well as for peoples of the North Pacific
region who are actively engaged in reconstructing and
revitalizing their cultures in a meaningful present tense.
The Centenary: 1897-1997
The Greater North Pacific Region studied by the Jesup
Expedition—from northern Japan to the edges of Sibe-
ria at the Bering Strait to Alaska to the Northwest
Coast—has been a fertile area of cultural development,
innovation, and intercontinental exchange for thou-
sands of years. The JNPE teams intended to document
the biological and cultural links between northern
peoples, and to investigate the ecological and spiri-
tual relationship between these people and their harsh
environment as well as religious and artistic traditions
which defined them. All these issues are of crucial im-
portance today as the region copes with the outcomes
of reckless commercial exploitation of its natural re-
sources and acute environmental degradation during
much of the 20th century. Similarly, Native people on
both sides of the intercontinental and political divide
2 INTRODUCTION
at the Bering Strait's crossroads are seeking to revi-
talize their ethnic and spiritual identities after de-
cades of cultural suppression and forced assimila-
tion.
The collections, publications, and archives produced
by the Jesup Expedition offer a rich resource to ad-
dress these and related issues as part of a global sci-
entific and philosophical conversation. The Jesup Ex-
pedition team assembled by Dr. Franz Boas mixed edu-
cated academic professionals with new recruits, some-
times drawn from the local residents, and by including
people of Native and mixed origin, former political
exiles, and women. In this, as well as in many other
aspects of the Expedition's work, Boas's pioneer de-
sign laid the groundwork for the present-day multifac-
eted "Jesup constituency" that now includes scien-
tists from many disciplines and nations. Native schol-
ars, artists, cultural activists, film-makers, educators,
folk-art performers, museum workers, and a large
and diverse public audience. Much of this diversity
is reflected in the community brought together by
the centenary conference and whose work is repre-
sented in this volume.
Over the intervening century, all of the sub-fields of
anthropology envisioned by Boas as the tools of one
single discipline—ethnology, linguistics, archaeology,
folklore, biological anthropology, and museum collect-
ing and research—have become highly specialized. They
have introduced sophisticated new methods, and, in
many instances, have challenged the premises estab-
lished by Boas, perhaps nowhere more intensely than
around the core concept of "culture." New technolo-
gies and field techniques now dominate the field of
archaeology and physical anthropology. Some, like ra-
diocarbon dating, DNA research, and computer data
processing, were not even foreseen in Boas' time. New
knowledge, such as the biological anthropologists'
use of genetic data, paleoenvironmental research,
and the dating of hundreds of excavated prehis-
toric sites, altered profoundly the way we now study
ancient human migrations and construct cultural as
well as biological interactions. In a broader and more
philosophical sense, both North American and post-
Soviet anthropologists have spent the last several
years engaged in a thorough questioning of the
many established dogmas in their professional do-
mains; in one instance, reconfiguring a scholarly field
once intended to serve the interests of Soviet Marxist
doctrines, in the other—under rubrics broadly labeled
as "post-modernism"—challenging anthropology's truth
claims as a positivistic science. Native scholars and
political activists have leveled more fundamental
challenges to many core notions and practices of
anthropology, in some instances arguing that the
non-native observer is incapable of understanding
Native culture, in others that such observations are
themselves violations of basic human dignity. Disputes
over the proper domain of Native cultural properties
currently housed in museums have been particularly
contentious. For nearly two decades, critiques and
soul-searching have reverberated both within and
outside the academy. The Jesup Expedition Centenary
thus occurs at a particularly pregnant moment in an-
thropology where a backward glance at who we were
and how we have changed might contribute to the
larger debate over who we are now and what we
might become.
TheJesup Expedition centenary conference and this
resulting volume are among the products of a larger
initiative named Jesup 2 in honor of the initial Jesup
Expedition and aimed at encouraging coordinated re-
search activities in the Greater North Pacific Region.
Its critical goal is in the dissemination of new knowl-
edge, approaches, and perspectives in the study of
cultures through scholarly publications, museum ex-
hibits, academic symposia, and public programs.
Spearheaded by the Arctic Studies Center at the
Smithsonian Institution, these efforts have been car-
ried out since 1 992 by an informal consortium of schol-
ars and institutions (Fitzhugh and Krupnik 2001 :7-l 0;
see also AAAS 1992; AAA 1993; Fitzhugh 1996; Fitz-
hugh and Krupnik 1994; lARPC 1995: 22-24; Vakhtin
L. KENDALL AND I. KRUPNIK 3
1 993). Like the original expedition, Jesup 2 is a holistic
enterprise, now sustained by a scattered community
of international scholars who have come together to
address issues of common interest. Unlike the original
venture, the new Jesup 2 program does not have a
single sponsor but reflects the combined effort of sev-
eral institutions. The American Museum of Natural His-
tory (AMNH), as the major storehouse of the Jesup
Expedition's resources and of Franz Boas's legacy in
North Pacific research, has been a critical resource in
this effort.
Boas and his colleagues collected about half of
the American Museum's 1 6,755 Northwest Coast arti-
facts under the auspices of the Jesup Expedition. Al-
though the numbers themselves are noteworthy, it is
their diversity, comprehensiveness, and documenta-
tion that make the Jesup Expedition acquisitions so
valuable. The American Museum's Northwest Coast
collection is generally regarded as the world's stron-
gest, holding artifacts from every known group and
nation in this culture region. For over 100 years, this
collection has been studied by almost every anthro-
pologist, art historian, and historian engaged in research
of any magnitude on the Northwest Coast native cul-
tures. As a result of AMNH's first fruitful collaboration
with Russian scholars during the original Jesup Expedi-
tion, extensive ethnographic collections were also made
in Siberia. These are similarly considered among the
world's richest, particularly with regard to several
groups in northeast Siberia. Their value was subse-
quently boosted by several key scholarly monographs
on Siberian indigenous peoples published in a series of
jesup Expedition Publications/Memoirs ofthe American
Museum of Natural History as well as by many other
Jesup-based publications promoted by Boas and his
colleagues (see Krupnik 2001). These collections and
numerous archival materials and photographs now
housed at the American Museum of Natural History
constitute the single richest stock of museum resources
on Native Siberian cultures outside the Russian Fed-
eration, if not worldwide.
The role of thejesup Expedition collections in docu-
menting and preserving the legacy of Native Siberian
peoples is particularly noteworthy. For many years—in
fact, for almost all of the 20th century—Siberia was
closed to American researchers. Thus, for much of the
Soviet period, the Jesup Expedition's various collec-
tions and publications were the single largest body of
anthropological information on Siberian cultures avail-
able to Western researchers. While some hesitant con-
tacts with Soviet anthropologists resumed in the late
1 950s, it was the Smithsonian Institution's monumen-
tal 1 980s joint exhibit, Crossroads of Continents: Cul-
tures ofSiberia and Alaska that finally marked the col-
lapse of the barrier that had separated scholars and
Native people on both sides of the North Pacific
(Fitzhugh and Crowell 1988; Fitzhugh, this volume).
The exhibit, produced by a team of North American
and Russian curators, marked a new era of scholarly
cooperation and reawakened awareness of the value
of thejesup Expedition's resources, particularly for and
among Siberian indigenous people.
Since that time, the American Museum of Natural
History, the main depository of the JNPE legacy, has
been experiencing an unprecedented call on its col-
lections and archives. On a single memorable day in
1993, Nikolai Vakhtin from St. Petersburg was perus-
ing the Expedition's documented chronicle stored in
letters and diaries at the Museum archive. In another
room, Stephen Ousley, then from the University ofTen-
nessee, worked with the Jesup Expedition's biological
data; a Danish film-maker examined Yukagir materials
as background to a film project; and a scholar from
Japan researched the Nanay (Cold) and Nivkh (Cilyak)
collections from Sakhalin Island and the Amur River.
Native Siberian scholars have been prominent among
the researchers who have made their way to AMNH,
beginning with the Sakha ethnologists, Vladimir and
Zinaida Ivanov-Unarov from Yakutsk. Some of the re-
sults of these studies are contained in this volume and
elsewhere (V. Ivanov-Unarov and Z. Ivanova-Unarova,
this volume; Ousley andjantz 2001; Vakhtin 2001).
4 INTRODUCTION
The Celebration
Given these developments, it seemed both necessary
and appropriate to mark the centenary of the Jesup
North Pacific Expedition with a public acknowledge-
ment, assessment, and celebration. In the fall of 1 997,
the American Museum of Natural History in New York
hosted several public events, including an exhibit of
expedition photographs, Drawing Shadows to Stone
curated by Barbara Mathe and Thomas Ross Miller; a
program of public lectures; a Greater North Pacific Film
Festival; and performances by Native dance troops
from both sides of the Bering Strait. A catalog of sev-
eral dozen historical photographs by the JNPE team
members was published (Kendall et al. 1 997), followed
by many articles in popular and academic journals. But
the centerpiece of this celebration, in the spirit of broad
scholarly inquiry as embraced by the original expedi-
tion, was a five-day international conference. Construct-
ing Cultures Then and Now: Celebrating Franz Boas and
the jesup North Pacific Expedition. It brought together
an impressive team of over 50 internationally-acclaimed
scholars, museum curators, and Native cultural work-
ers who met face-to-face to discuss the history, cur-
rent prospects, and possible futures of the peoples of
the Greater North Pacific Region.
The conference, featuring the legacy of Franz Boas
and the Jesup Expedition, was held at the Museum in
November 1 997, to mark the 1 00-year anniversary of
the Expedition's first printed report from the field,
published in the October 1 897 issue of the journal
Sc/e/ice (Boas 1 897). The conference built upon Jesup
2 projects already initiated by the Smithsonian In-
stitution, the American Museum of Natural History,
the University of Alaska, the National Science Foun-
dation, and the National Park Service, in collabora-
tion with numerous partners in Russia, Siberia, Canada,
Japan, and Europe. Both the conference and related
centenary activities were amply covered by the press
and hailed by the professional anthropological com-
munity (Anonymous 1998; Graburn 1998; Kendall
1997; Lee 1998; Rexer 1997; Shute 1997).
The centenary conference was one product of a
joint effort by five anthropologists: Laurel Kendall
(American Museum of Natural History), Marjory Mandel-
stam Balzer (Georgetown University), William Fitzhugh
(Arctic Studies Center, Smithsonian Institution), Igor
Krupnik (Arctic Studies Center, Smithsonian Institution),
and Nikolai Vakhtin (European University, St Petersburg,
Russia). The team assembled a broad range of schol-
ars and local cultural experts who specialized in stud-
ies of peoples and cultures—both modern and prehis-
toric—and environments across the Greater North Pa-
cific Region. The diversity of their perspectives is re-
flected in the twenty conference papers assembled in
this volume.
This team of experts was asked to consider a num-
ber of issues in light of contemporary scholarship. Are
the "cultures" as described and consrrwcfet/by theJesup
Expedition participants relevant to the emerging new
identities of Native peoples in the region today? How
do modern culturally conscious peoples reconstitute
themselves, both politically and spiritually? Are the
records of ethnologists, folklorists, and linguists of a
century ago a valuable resource in this transformation?
Do museums and museum collections have a role to
play in this process? How do issues of environmental
exploitation play against local sovereignty and lo-
cal conceptualizations of the land and its resources?
These and other taunting issues necessarily include
the perspectives of Native people and the voices
of Native scholars. Intentionally designed to break
through international and interdisciplinary as well as
professional and political boundaries, this conference
provided one lively forum for dialogues that span the
Bering Strait.
Following Boas' founding vision of anthropology
as an integrated endeavor, the organizers adopted a
similar breadth of vision in defining the conference's
framework as well as in inviting topics for individual
presentations and focused panel discussions. We were
also keenly aware that in the intervening century, many
sub-fields once skillfully aligned by Boas have become
L. KENDALL AND L KRUPNIK 5
highly specialized, shifted their boundaries orchanged
their professional allegiances. The conference presen-
tations (recast as chapters in this volume) suggested
how new knowledge—such as the biological
anthropologist's use of genetic data, the vastly ex-
panded vision of archaeology and comparative his-
torical linguistics, or the anthropologist's attention to
the transcontinental colonial flows of goods, ideas,
and people
—
permitted new insights into questions
once posed by the Jesup Expedition. Several speakers
revealed how very often the work of newly-recruited
disciples in the science of anthropology, like Boas and
his counterparts, was dependent upon and conse-
quently enriched by the insights of local residents, who
acted as their field partners, knowledge experts, guides,
and interpreters. Many papers offered moving illustra-
tions of how scholars worldwide continue to use ma-
terials collected by the Jesup Expedition to pose new
questions. Of particular significance, scholars com-
mented on the value of the American Museum of Natu-
ral History's material and of the Boasian legacy as in-
digenous peoples ofthe "Jesup area" engage in projects
of cultural revitalization. The full saga of the confer-
ence has been described elsewhere (Graburn 1998).
The Volume
The 20 conference papers selected for this volume are
directly tied to the historical legacy of the Jesup Expe-
dition, either by way of centennial reevaluation and
critique of its scientific premises and results or as a
demonstration of how the Jesup Expedition's artifacts
and data are used today to new ends. We believe that
with the publication of this "centennial" volume—the
second volume to be published by the Arctic Studies
Center on the Jesi^ip 2 theme (cf. Krupnik and Fitzhugh
2001) and in conjunction with several other recent
monographs, collections, and catalogs featuring the
legacy of the JNPE and of Franz Boas (Cole 1 999; Fitz-
hugh and Chaussonnet 1994; Fitzhugh and Crowell
1 988; Jacknis 2002; Jonaitis 1 988, 1 991 , 1 995, 1 999;
Kendall et al. 1997; Krupnik 2000; Shternberg 1999,
etc.)—we have raised a significant milestone on the
ambitious Journey begun by Franz Boas and his team
over 1 00 years ago.
The volume is organized into four thematic sec-
tions. Papers in the first section, Om Hundred Years of
jesup: The Intellectual Legacy oftheJesup Expedition Era,
look back over a century to evaluate the Expedition
from the perspective of its impact on the anthropol-
ogy of the late 1 9th and early 20th century ("then") and
to re-evaluate its assumptions in light of today's un-
derstandings C'moiv"). The Expedition's multi-faceted re-
search agenda offers a stimulating and varied "menu"
for such a re-examination. The section opens with the
chapter by Igor Krupnik and Nikolai Vakhtin, who ex-
amine the saga of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition as
if it were a modern scholarly project. Though conceived
and executed in a manner consistent with the goals
and techniques of anthropological scholarship circa
1 900, the Jesup Expedition, according to Krupnik and
Vakhtin, meets most of the contemporary criteria of
successful interdisciplinary research by virtue of its well
thought out scientific design, consistent methodologi-
cal frame, publication and training agenda, and pro-
motion of international scholarly collaboration.
In a more critical vein, Don Dumond concludes that
the post-Jesup century of work in the archaeology of
the North Pacific does not, in the main, offer evidence
for one of the key pieces of Boas' ethnogenetic theory,
the so-called "Eskimo wedge" hypothesis that as-
sumed a late wedge-like intrusion of the Eskimo into
the chain of related cultures in the Bering Sea-Bering
Strait area. Under a similar revisionist agenda, Peter
Schweitzer queries why Boas' preoccupation with dif-
fusion and culture exchange, and his later interest in
local history never materialized into a focused ethno-
history of Native peoples residing at the critical junc-
tion of trans-Beringian contacts, the Bering Strait area.
Molly Lee and Nelson Graburn suggest that for Boas at
the time of the Jesup Expedition (then), the diffusion of
material and non-material cultural traits was as much
of an exciting intellectual paradigm as the concept of
6 INTRODUCTION
"transnationalism" is for students of global cultural ex-
change today (now). They argue that Boas' diffusionist
agenda erred in excising from his consideration the
impact of international commerce on cultural exchanges
within the region. Finally, the AMNH team of Stanley
and Ruth Fried and Leila Williamson compares theJesup
Expedition's logistics, planning, and research focus to
similarly monumental enterprises, such as the Lewis
and Clark Expedition (1 803-06), the U.S. Exploring Ex-
pedition (1 838-42), and the Cambridge Anthropologi-
cal Expedition to the Torres Straits (1898-99).
Part Two, Anthropologies and Histories:Jesup Mem-
bers TInen and Now, broadens our understanding of key
participants in the Expedition and related fieldwork. Ira
Jacknis illuminates an intriguing aspect of Boas' multi-
faceted personality, his musical skill and deep love of
music, which led him to undertake musicological re-
search in the field. Other chapters in this section reveal
many instances where the work of Boas and his coun-
terparts was dependent upon and consequently en-
riched by the insights of local people, both Native and
long-term local residents, thus broadening our under-
standing of such collaborations beyond the well-docu-
mented relationship of Boas and George Hunt who is
recognized today as an early Native anthropologist
(Berman 1 996). These papers suggest that today's an-
thropologists would benefit by more research and soul
searching as to how our scholarly predecessors had
typically incorporated the work of their local associ-
ates into their own academic publications. Wendy
Wickwire focuses on one of Boas' longest-standing and
most productive local collaborators in Northwest Coast
ethnography,James Teit, who—despite his voluminous
contributions to the JNPE research and publications
—
has been commonly regarded as merely Boas' "field
assistant." Koichi Inoue examines an uneasy narrative
of another contemporary "local" scientist, Bronislaw
Pilsudski, an enthusiastic and ethnographically astute
Polish exile living on Sakhalin Island whose brief career
intersected with the work of three members of the
Jesup Expedition team: Boas, Laufer, and Shternberg.
Nora Marks Dauenhauer and Richard Dauenhauer ex-
plore the legacy of Louis Shotridge, the first Tlingit,
and possibly the first Northwest Coast Native, with
training in linguistics and anthropology (primarily from
Boas). The first Native Alaskan to become a profes-
sional collector and museum curator, Shotridge made
invaluable and generally under-recognized contribu-
tions to the documentation of the Northwest Coast
cultures. Finally, Sergei Kan engages in ethnohistorical
detective work to retrieve a pattern of collaboration
between the late 1 9th-century ethnographers and lo-
cal Native American and "mixed-blood" (Creole, Metis)
interpreters, amateur historians, and informants. He
draws on his extensive research on Native-outsider in-
teractions in southern Alaska during the late 1 800s.
Part Three, People, Animals, and Land: AJesup Theme
Revisited, offers a selection of modern perspectives by
scholars whose disciplines span the major fields of the
Jesup Expedition's activities. Robert Hoffmann describes
the biological and natural history work of the JNPE as
an early example of the "correlated" multi-disciplinary
efforts that would characterize modern scientific ex-
peditions. He offers a sober assessment of biological
diversity in the Beringian region today, arguing that
such correlated efforts are urgently needed if the
region's endangered ecology is to be preserved.
Michael Krauss indexes shortcomings in the Expe-
dition's efforts to document North Pacific languages,
attributing this to a lack of interest on the part of Ex-
pedition scientists in either the documentation of lin-
guistic diversity or the last-minute salvage of dying
languages through extensive recording in the interest
of comparative linguistics or philological study. As
Krauss argues, only Boas appears to have given much
priority to that latter task, and even he mostly neglected
it during his briefJesup Expedition fieldwork.
Theodore Schurr and Douglas Wallace describe how
modern molecular genetic data obtained from aborigi-
nal populations provide an exciting cross-disciplinary
tool to test the old theories of the Jesup Expedition
era, a tool which could not have even been imagined
L. KENDALL AND I. KRUPNIK 7
by the original JNPE members. They argue that such
data can be used successfully to test the original JNPE
hypotheses regarding the origins and diversity of Na-
tive Siberians and their close evolutionary relationships
with Native Americans. The chapter by Sergei Arutiunov
records generational transitions within the Russian
school of Northeast Siberian prehistoric research; it also
offers some new insights on the scenarios of the earli-
est trans-Beringian interactions based upon methods
and approaches that were similarly not even envisioned
at the time of the Jesup Expedition (such as the study
of prehistoric adaptations; comparative historical lin-
guistics; and analysis of dental features of the prehis-
toric and modern populations). Finally, David Koester
deals with the traumatic consequences of history, un-
veiling the drama of involuntary relocations and forced
separation of indigenous people from their ancestral
lands during the "post-Jesup" era. "History" here is not
quantifiable molecular or archaeological data, sifted
from a perspective of distance, but the stuff of memory
and sentiment as revealed in the stories and poetry of
the "lost villages" of Kamchatka.
The last section of this volume. Curators, Collec-
tors, and Consumers, describes some of the ways in
which JNPE and other North Pacific museum resources
have become part of local efforts to sustain the cul-
tural heritage of the indigenous peoples of the Greater
North Pacific Region. William W. Fitzhugh brings to light
many memories, both sweet and sad, as well as the
intricacies of a 20 year-long effort in trans-national mu-
seum cooperation, publication, and outreach that cul-
minated in the exhibit Crossroads of Continents: Cul-
tures ofSiberia and Alaska (1 988-92) and its follow-up
traveling venture. Crossroads Alaska-Siberia {] 993-97).
Stephen Loring and Douglas Veltre share the same vi-
sion of the changing role of anthropology (and archae-
ology, in particular) in protecting and enhancing cul-
tural heritage, describing their own research contribu-
tions in the Aleutian Islands.
In the same collaborative spirit, two art historians
and ethnographers from Russia's Sakha Republic
(Yakutia), Zinaida Ivanova-Unarova and the late Vladimir
Ivanov-Unarov (1937-2000) offer a moving account
of a personal Journey undertaken from the Siberian
heartland to work with collections at the American
Museum of Natural History in New York and then share
the results of their study with Native artisans back
home. Their story demonstrates how materials col-
lected by the original Jesup Expedition offer invaluable
encouragement to the people engaged in cultural re-
vival and revitalization efforts today. Aldona Jonaitis
looks at many intricate aspects of a related process:
the reclaiming of a traditional cultural legacy by inno-
vative Native artists, including female artists, who are
constructing new cultural symbols. She uses the case
of a totem pole, the quintessential symbol ofthe North-
west Coast cultures, and the example of two contem-
porary female carvers to illustrate how the early an-
thropological notion of Native art's "timeless tradition-
alism" has been turned on its head by the creativity of
living Native cultures of today. In what could be read
as a coda to the entire volume, Kwakwaka'wakw an-
thropologist and curatorCloriaCranmer Webster writes
a highly personal essay as the granddaughter of George
Hunt whose collaboration with Franz Boas made an
important contribution not only to the ethnographic
record, but to the preservation of Kwakwaka'wakw
culture. She presents the story of a long friendship
between the Boas and Hunt families constructed
through Kwakwaka'wakw idioms of name-giving and
feasting, an evocation of important "grandfathers" and
the inspiration they offer future generations.
Acknowledgments
The Jesup Expedition Centenary Conference of 1997
was supported by The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc.,
The Ford Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The
Trust for Mutual Understanding, Wenner-Gren Founda-
tion for Anthroplogical Research, and the Chi-Mei Cul-
tural Foundation. Ann Fitzgerald coordinated the com-
plex logistics of an international conference, and AMNH
staff, including Ann Wright-Parsons and Alexia Bloch,
8 INTRODUCTION
then with the AMNH Department of Anthropology,
ensured that events ran smoothly. We are particularly
grateful to the many museum volunteers who offered
assistance before and during the conference and to a
team of tireless interpreters provided by the Transla-
tion Center, Columbia University.
The story of this volume's preparation offers an
illuminating lesson that the publishing difficulties the
JNPE team encountered 100 years ago still exist to-
day. It was also an example of a successful institu-
tional partnership, quite in the footsteps of the original
JNPE venture. Laurel Kendall spearheaded initial edito-
rial work on the volume at AMNH, following the 1 997
centennial conference. Kathryn A. Malm helped edit
this ambitious bundle of papers into a cohesive manu-
script. Eventually, the Arctic Studies Center (ASC) picked
up this collection under its recently established publi-
cation series, Contributions to Circumpoiar Anthropol-
ogy, that had previously featured another jesup 2 vol-
ume, Gateways. Exploring the Legacy oftheJesup North
Pacific Expedition, 1897-1902 (Krupnik and Fitzhugh
2001). The publication of both volumes was made
possible in part by an endowment from the late an-
thropologist James W. VanStone (1925-2001), who
was himself an inspiring symbol of partnership and in-
ter-disciplinary collaboration in Arctic and North Pa-
cific ethnological research.
At the ASC, Igor Krupnik and Iris Hahn carried on
the editorial work while Elisabeth Ward supervised
the process of layout and printing of the manuscript.
Marcia Bakry at the Smithsonian Institution's Depart-
ment of Anthropology and Tam Thompson offered
invaluable assistance with graphic artwork. This col-
lection follows a design pattern created by Anya
Vinokour for the ASC Contributions to Circumpoiar
Anthropology series and used for the preceding pub-
lications. We would like to commend all our volume
contributors for their trust, dedication, as well as for
patience during a seemingly interminable editorial
process. Special thanks go to Stanley Freed at the
AMNH, William Fitzhugh, the ASC Director, and to
Katherine Rusk for their helpful comments and editorial
suggestions to many volume papers at this final stage.
This book, as well as the preceding Jesup 2 volume
(ibid), is illustrated with numerous original photographs
from the Jesup Expedition era, including many taken
by the expedition field crews in Siberia and North
America. We are grateful to the expedition's host insti-
tution, the American Museum of Natural History, for
permission to reproduce the photographs and to Bar-
bara Mathe, Head of Special Collections at the AMNH
Library, for her truly heartfelt assistance with the im-
ages. Several more illustrations, including historical
photographs and images of ethnographic objects,
come from other collections, such as that of the
Smithsonian Institution's National Anthropological Ar-
chives, National Museum of Natural History, National
Museum of the American Indian; the University of Penn-
sylvania Museum, University of Alaska Museum, Alaska
State Library, American Philosophical Society, British
Columbia Provincial Archives, University of British Co-
lumbia Museum of Anthropology, Royal British Colum-
bia Museum, and others (see List of Illustrations). We
thank all institutions as well as the curators, collection
management staff, and archivists who granted us per-
mission and assisted in selecting and securing the illus-
trations for this second JNPE memorial volume.
Finally, over the years since the initial New York
conference of 1 997, we have lost one of the most
devoted members of the Jesup 2 team, the Sakha
(Yakut) ethnologist and art historian Vladimir Ivanov-
Unarov, who passed away in 2000. We regard this
volume as a special tribute to Volodya's legacy—which
is honored here by Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer—as
well as to other colleagues and partners who did not
live to see the Jesup Expedition's centenary and to
take part in its celebration.
Note
1
.
The original wax cylinder sound record-
ings produced during the Jesup Expedition were
eventually transferred to the Archives of Traditional
Music at the University of Indiana.
L. KENDALL AND \. KRUPNIK 9
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1991 Chiefly Feasts. The Enduring KwakiutI Potlach.
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INTRODUCTION
Miller, Thomas Ross, and Barbara Mathe
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L. KENDALL AND \. KRUPNIK
3/LevShternberg, Franz Boas, and Waldemar Bogoras at the 21" International Congress ofAmericanists, 1924.
Courtesy ofthe Museum Anthropologyand Ethnography, St. Petersburg, Russia (original in the MAE collection)
100 YEARS AFTER JESUP: THE INTELLECTUAL LEGACY
OF THEJESUP EXPEDITION ERA

"*y"he /\im of the Expedition...Mas in the
Main ^een /Xccompiishec!"
Words, [^eeJs, and Legacies of the Jesup |\jorti-i facific Expedition
IGOR KRUPNIK
AND NIKOLAI VAKHTIN
The Jesup North Pacific Expedition (JNPE), which took
place from 1897 to 1902, was a milestone event for
the entire domain of North Pacific/Siberian/North Ameri-
can research. To the field currently known as "Jesup-2
studies" (Fitzhugh and Krupnik 2001 ) as well as to the
expedition's host institution, the American Museum of
Natural History (AMNH), the Expedition's recent cen-
tennial and the many accompanying events offered a
remarkable opportunity to evaluate key components
of its legacy, and to review transitions in anthropol-
ogy and human sciences over the turbulent 20th cen-
tury.
By modern standards, JNPE was a pioneer scientific
venture. It initiated a new pattern of large anthropo-
logical/museum surveys, with 1 7 team members from
four countries (the U.S., Russia, Canada, and Germany)
working in various combinations over five years on
two continents.' The expedition's fieldwork was
matched by an equally ambitious publication program.
A preliminary JesL^p Bibliography compiled recently
(Krupnik 2001) lists about 200 publications produced
by JNPE participants over 50 years, including eleven
major volumes and dozens ofjournal articles, and col-
lections of folklore and language materials.
For 100 years following the JNPE, its design, out-
comes, and publications have been reviewed many
times (Freed et al. 1 988; Fitzhugh and Krupnik 2001
;
Kuz'mina 1994; Vakhtin 1993; Fitzhugh 1996). It has
been called "a grandiose, brilliantly conceptualized, and
masterfully orchestrated attack on one of the most
important problems in American anthropology" (Fitz-
hugh and Crowell 1 988: 1 4), one that initiated "a trans-
valuation of the entire field of anthropology, and hinted
at its development into the most humane of the hu-
man sciences" Conaitis 1988:213). But the JNPE was
also labeled a "remarkable failure," a "disappointment
for Morris K. Jesup and for his museum" (Cole 2001 :48)
or, at least, a "fiasco" in some of its fields of activities,
areas surveyed, and/or postulated hypotheses. These
conflicting perspectives are illustrated in many papers
in this volume.
Many shortcomings of the Jesup Expedition project
have been well addressed, since the JNPE team and,
particularly, its leader, Franz Boas, neither produced a
summary project monograph nor offered any extended
outline of cultural history of the North Pacific Region.
There are more than ample grounds for critique and
revisionism (see chapters by Dumond; Lee and Graburn;
Hoffmann; Inoue; Krauss; Schweitzer, this volume; also
Ousley 2000; Ousley and Jantz 2001 ). As a monumen-
tal initiative conducted by many strong personalities,
the Jesup Expedition can be judged from various per-
spectives, according to the often conflicting visions of
its organizers, sponsors, and individual team members.
Some of these visions were openly debated in papers
and letters; others have been personal and remained
hidden. While certain JNPE initial plans did materialize,
many more were abandoned during or after the field-
work was completed. In addition, the JNPE legacy en-
dured a long period of criticism during the 1 920s and
1 5
1930s, followed by decades of skepticism and aban-
donment (Krupnik I 998). It was not until recently that
the Expedition's legacy underwent a more balanced
judgment and a spectacular recovery (see various chap-
ters in Krupnik and Fitzhugh 2001).
This paper introduces a new framework to con-
sider the legacy of the JNPE project by testing it against
some basic evaluation criteria commonly applied to
large research initiatives in contemporary social sci-
ence. By no means do we aspire to assume the role of
present-day "peer reviewers" for a century-old venture.
Rather we would like to illustrate how the Jesup Expe-
dition agenda, its field logistics, and publication plan
accomplished then can be viewed now in a centennial
perspective. For this purpose, we have selected five
modern evaluation criteria: research integrity; contri-
bution to "basic science"; international cooperation;
education and training; and public outreach. These cri-
teria are familiar to every modern social scientist. By
applying today's standards to the original JNPE project,
we deliberately contemporize its entire context in or-
der to build a new vision of its legacy a century later.
Integrity of the JNPE Design
Despite the expedition's complex design and its nu-
merous achievements, it is clear that the JNPE project
put forth a somewhat confusing message from the
very start. It seemed to have been "packaged" and
presented differently to various constituencies and pro-
spective audiences. In his articles, statements, and let-
ters, Franz Boas, the project leader, delivered at least
three different perspectives on the general goals of
the JNPE, to say nothing of his many personal objec-
tives revealed through his private correspondence.
The first declared objective of the JNPE was its fo-
cus on extensive ethnographic surveys and collecting.
Boas advertised it as "[a] systematic exploration of
the cultures and languages of the peoples inhabiting
the coasts of the North Pacific Ocean between the
Amoor River [sic] in Asia and Columbia River in America"
(Anonymous 1 897:455; Boas 1 898a:4). This objective
was fulfilled with astounding success (Figs. 1 -2, 7-1 0).
One can feel the breadth of the JNPE efforts in Bogoras'
exuberant report on the outcome of his year-long field
work in Siberia (1900-01) as quoted by Boas:
[T]he results of this work are studies of the
ethnography and anthropology of the
Chukchee and Asiatic Eskimo, and partly of
the Kamchadal and of the Pacific Koryak.
These studies are illustrated by extensive
collections, embracing five thousand ethno-
graphical objects, thirty-three plaster casts
of faces, seventy-five skulls and archaeologi-
cal specimens from abandoned village sites
and from graves. Other materials obtained
include three hundred tales and traditions;
one hundred-fifty texts in the Chukchee,
Koryak, Kamchadal, and Eskimo languages;
dictionaries and grammatical sketches of
these languages; ninety-five phonographic
records, and measurements of eight hundred-
sixty individuals [the latter done mainly by
Mr. Axelrod in addition to some 770 photo-
graphs—I.K., N.V.]. I also made zoological
collection and kept a meteorological journal
during the whole time of my field-work (Boas
1903:1 1 5).
Despite a few gaps in the proposed itinerary and study
area, the expedition mostly followed its initial five-year
research plan as designed by Boas in 1897. This plan
was presented very early in a form of a map, "Field of
Proposed Operations of the Jesup North Pacific Expedi-
tion." It was enclosed to the Annual Report of the AMNH
President Morris Jesup on the activities of the museum
during the year 1 897 (Fig.4; Jesup 1 898; Krupnik and
Fitzhugh 2001 :xvi). This early blueprint for theJNPE five-
year field operation reveals a remarkable agreement
with the actual surveys conducted by the expedition's
teams between the years 1 897 and 1 902. The only
exception was the fieldwork in western and southern
Alaska (that never materialized) and on the Aleutian
Islands. The latter was undertaken several years later
by Waldemar and Dina Jochelson under a different
project, the Ryabushinski Expedition of the Russian
Geographical Society in 1909-1 1. The Alaska Yup'ik
and Inupiat Eskimo as well the Tlingit were dropped
from the initial research plan. According to Boas, this
was done deliberately, in view of the recently pub-
100 YEARS/ EVALUATING ACCOMPLISHMENTS
lished monographs or the then ongoing studies by
Edward W. Nelson, John IVlurdoch, and George T.
Emmons (Boas 1903:77).
However, several later surveys, such as John Swan-
ton's study of the Tlingit in 1 904, Harlan Smith's trip to
the Columbia River valley in 1 903, and the Jochelsons'
trip to the Aleutians and Kamchatka in 1 909-1 1 , were
conducted as direct extensions of the main exped-
scientific achievement, particularly if one considers the
distances and communication problems involved. One
has to acknowledge, however, that individual JNPE
surveys of certain areas and Native groups were quite
unequal in terms of the time invested and ethnographic
data collected (see critical reviews in chapters by Krauss,
Inoue, Schweitzer, and Wickwire, this volume; also Cole
2001; Krupnik 1996).
1897 1898 1900 1901
4/ Field of Proposed Operations of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, 1 898 (adapted from American Museum
of Natural History, Annual Report of the President for the Year 1 897)
ition's field operations of 1897-1902. With this, the
JNPE team members almost completed their announced
objective to cover the area "from the Amoor River in
Asia and up to Columbia Valley in North America." Al-
together, the expedition field crews suPv/eyed 1 7 Na-
tive nations on the Northwest Coast^ and 1 nations
in Siberia.^ The task of supervising and coordinating
this Joint field plan of many individual researchers
and field teams over several years was successfully
accomplished by Franz Boas, the JNPE's relentless leader.
It was and still remains an outstanding logistical and
As a result of these efforts, the map of Native na-
tions of Northeast Siberia and Northwestern North
America was significantly amended. The American
Museum of Natural History garnered fabulous ethno-
graphic and natural science collections that were
quickly put on display in its exhibit halls, which were
subsequently redesigned and expanded (Anonymous
1904a, 1904b; Jonaitis 1988; Fig. 11). Several ethno-
graphic objects were true masterpieces of Native art,
ceremonialism, and ritual practices (Jonaitis 1 988, 1 991 ).
The JNPE ethnographic and zoological collections (see
I. KRUPNIK AND N. VAKHTIN
Hoffmann, this volume) were matched by the invalu-
able folklore, linguistic, and anthropometric data as
well as by the unique historical photography of Native
people and local landscapes of Siberia and Northwest-
ern North America (Kendall et al. 1997; Willey 2001).
And finally, albeit not as quickly as originally adver-
tised, the JNPE did produce basic ethnographic mono-
graphs and the core folklore and linguistic data for
most of the Native nations of the North Pacific. Of those,
several Jesup Expedition volumes, like Bogoras' three-
part monograph on the Chukchi (Bogoras 1 904-9) and
Jochelson's study of the Koryak Oochelson 1908), re-
mained the most complete reference ethnographies
and folklore collections on these peoples over the en-
tire 20th century, despite generations of subsequent
anthropological research.
The JNPE was far less successful in its second de-
clared objective, "the [s]tudy of the early history of the
native races of the North American continent and their
relation to the Old World" (Anonymous 1 897:456; Boas
1903:91). This, we believe, was more a public-rela-
tions statement or an appealing project title, similar to
"the origins of the American race" (see Boas 1 898a:4-
5). Most probably, it was masterminded to attract public
interest and to generate funding and institutional sup-
port for the JNPE venture. Such a 'public-relations' task
was, in fact, splendidly achieved, at least during earlier
stages of the project (Vakhtin 2001:74-5). Nonethe-
less, the issue of the early peopling of the Americas
never fully engaged Boas or most otherJNPE members.
Boas himself disclaimed it quite frankly in some of his
private letters (e.g. Boas to McChee, April 12, 1897),
as he was quite skeptical about the utility of archaeo-
logical and osteological materials for any large-scale
reconstruction of prehistory (cf.Jacknis 1996: 203).
In fact, such an objective was all but impossible to
fulfill at that time due to the infancy of contemporary
archaeological research and to its very limited techni-
cal and analytical capabilities. The time depth of the
peopling of the Americas from Northern Asia, as well
as the chronological span of the prehistory of the North-
1 8
west Coast and Siberia, was still primarily guesswork.
No reliable chronology had existed for this part of the
world by the year 1900, nor was there any technical
means available to build such a chronology. William
Dall (1877:93-5) argued for a prehistoric crossing on
ice at the Bering Strait, presumably during the "Ice Age"
period. Several other contemporary scientists favored
migration or migrations over a land bridge during an
interglacial retreat sometime between 10,000 and
100,000 years ago (cf. Wilmsen 1965:1 77-8).
To make things worse, comparative archaeologi-
cal collections from both Siberia and North America
were all but missing, and the limited budget and dura-
tion of the JNPE was too modest, if not totally inad-
equate, for the task. Harlan Smith, who almost single-
handedly carried out JNPE archaeological surveys on
the North American side, found no evidence of distinc-
tive cultures dating to the time of the "original migra-
tion" (Thom 2001). His limited work, however, was re-
garded as "[p]atently inadequate to help to clear the
cause of Early Man in America" (Wilmsen 1 965: 1 78). A
JNPE archaeological survey in the Amur River valley in
Siberia provided even fewer results. No doubt, it was
declared a "failure" even by the very person, whom
Boas put in charge of it (Fowke 1 906:297). It came as
no surprise that theJNPE field operation produced hardly
any legacy for the study of early human migrations
from Asia to America and of the prehistory of the "(Na-
tive) American race," in particular.
Contribution to "Basic Science"
It was the third stated objective of the JNPE that gen-
erated major controversy, and it also contributed to
the bulk of later criticism aimed at Boas and the
expedition's overall accomplishments. Boas framed
this objective as "[exploring] what relations the native
tribes on the two sides of the North Pacific bear to
each other, and particularly what influence the inhabit-
ants of one continent may have exerted on those of
the other.. .[w]ith a view to discovering as much as
possible of their history" (Boas 1 903:76).
100 YEARS/ EVALUATING ACCOMPLISHMENTS
TheJNPE members advanced three basic concepts,
in this regard, during and after the expedition field-
work (see Boas 1903, 1910/2001), in developing the
general scenario of the peopling of the Americas from
Northeast Asia via the Bering Sea area. All three con-
cepts addressed the issue of similarities between cul-
tures on both sides of the North Pacific. These include:
1 . The so-called "Americanoid theory'thai claimed
an American origin of certain Paleoasiatic groups
in Northeastern Siberia, such as the Chukchi,
Koryak, Kamchadal (Itelmen), and the Yukagir (see
reviews in Ousley 2000; Ousley and Jantz 2001)
2. The "Eskimo Wedge" theory that suggested a
relatively late arrival of the Eskimo to the North
Pacific area that subsequently bisected the once
unbroken continuum of the Siberian
"Americanoid" and Northwest Coast American
Indian groups (see review in Dumond, this
volume).
3. The idea of a fundamental cultural and physical
gap between the North Pacific coastal ("salt-
water") nations and their inland neighbors, like
the Tungus, the Yakut (Sakha), and the Plateau
Indian groups (such as Thompson, Shuswap, and
others) in Siberia and North America, respectively.
These three paradigms were to become the pillars of
the JNPE and Boas' approach to North Pacific cultural
(pre)history. In fact, they were advanced very early in
the project, well before the entire corpus of the ex-
pedition's ethnographic, anthropometric, and linguis-
tic data was processed and published (Anonymous
1897:455; Boas 1 898a:4, 1902/1940:526-9, 1903:
115, 1905:98-9; Bogoras 1 902:579-80; Jochelson
1904:414,425; Ousley and Jantz 2001:264-5, 275).
Later field data and publications notwithstanding, these
hypotheses remained basically intact, and they were
recycled repeatedly over decades in many post-JNPE
papers (cf. Boas 1928, 1 933; Jochelson 1926, 1928).
By 1925, the rapidly growing body of new data
and theories challenged most of the old Jesup Exped-
ition's scenarios in Arctic/Eskimo/North Pacific prehis-
tory. The main challenge came from the progress in
Eskimo archaeology in the Bering Strait area and in the
Canadian Arctic (Krupnik 1998:203). New scenarios
for ancient cultural connections in the circumpolar area
became popular; they featured circumpolar rather than
the Beringian/trans-North Pacific venues of cultural in-
fluences and migrations. Renewed interest in more
southern lines of cultural exchange between the North-
west Coast and the Amur River area, including Japan,
China, and inner Asia has been expressed by younger
cohorts of scholars, including students of the original
JNPE team (Krupnik 1 998:203).
During the 1930s, criticism of the old JNPE para-
digms was mounting from many directions. It was,
however, the spectacular advance in North Pacific/Arc-
tic archaeology—the field that was the least devel-
oped at the time of the JNPE surveys of 1 897-1 902—
that eventually toppled its major theories in North Pa-
cific cultural origins and connections (see Dumond, this
volume). But it still gave the work of the expedition
approximately twenty to twenty-five years of "theo-
retical pre-eminence" in the field.
Nevertheless, the core Jesup Expedition vision of
the arc of the North Pacific coastland of Siberia and
Northwest North America as an integrated culture area
has endured for decades. This perspective was used in
many later studies of the mid-1 900s (e.g., Leroi-Gourhan
1 946; Heizer 1 943), and it has been revitalized in nu-
merous anthropological, archaeological, and
paleoenvironmental projects, publications, and major
museum exhibits of the last three decades under such
names as Beringia, The North Pacific Rim, The Greater
North Pacific Area, etc. (Fitzhugh and Crowell 1 988;
Fitzhugh and Chaussonnet 1994; Fitzhugh 1996; Fitz-
hugh and Krupnik 2001
;
Hopkins 1 967; Hopkins et al.
1 982; Krupnik and Inoue 2003; Michael and VanStone
1983; Turner 1988; West 1981, 1996). Similarly, the
cornerstone of the JNPE methodological approach also
sustained—matching data on Native customs, folklore,
languages, physical types, material objects, and un-
earthed archaeological remains—to prove the age-old
cultural connections.
I. KRUPNIK AND N. VAKHTIN
With its emphasis upon an interdisciplinary ap-
proach, the JNPE laid the foundation for the many domi-
nant patterns and paradigms in the Arctic/North Pa-
cific anthropology of the 20th century. Since "Jesup
times" it has become a deep conviction that the saga
of North Pacific cultural history could be successfully
unveiled only by the concerted teamwork of field and
museum ethnography, linguistics, physical anthropol-
ogy, and archaeology. The recent re-evaluation of many
of the expedition's outcomes, publications, and col-
lections will, we hope, rejuvenate certain components
of the JNPE legacy. Old theories often make a surpris-
ing comeback as new research technologies become
available to test and challenge earlier studies.
International Cooperation as the JNPE Legacy
One key field in which the JNPE made an unquestioned
and lasting contribution was international cooperation
in North Pacific fieldwork, academic contacts, museum
exchanges, and cultural research. By its very design,
the JNPE project pioneered a new format of coordi-
nated and simultaneous cross-boundary anthropologi-
cal and museum research by the nationals and institu-
tions of the U.S., Russia, Canada, and Germany. It also
established for the first time the now common prac-
tice of concerted and highly coordinated use of inter-
national gatherings as long-term meeting places, pre-
sentation, and publication venues. And finally, it pro-
duced a model for a publication series of several suc-
cessive volumes, with former team workers of differ-
ent origin, country of residence, and affiliation, who
delivered their contribution in a prescribed publication
format over several years.''
The JNPE operation in British Columbia in 1 897 was
started as a continuation of previous research and it
followed a shared program supported by the AMNH
and the British Association of the Advancement of
Sciences (Boas 1 898a:7-8). The five years of fieldwork
in Siberia (1898-1902) were carried out with the full
cooperation and direct involvement of the Russian
Academy of Sciences and of its Permanent Secretary,
Prof. Vasily Radloff. Radloff secured a Siberian travel
permit for Berthold Laufer in 1 898 (Cole 200 1 :36; Freed
et al. 1988) and he introduced Jochelson and, later,
Bogoras to Boas as prospective Siberian team mem-
bers, who, in turn, introduced Leo Shternberg to Boas
as a potential contributor to the JNPE publication se-
ries (Kan 2001 :225-7; Vakhtin 2001 :76-83). The offi-
cial backing of the JNPE operations in Siberia by the
Russian Academy and by Radloff, who also served as
the director of the Academy's Museum of Anthropol-
ogy and Ethnography (MAE) in St. Petersburg, was cru-
cial in many aspects, including permission for traveling
in the field, getting support of the local officials, and
shipping collections across and out of Siberia (Figs.8-
1 1 ). For these and several other reasons, Jochelson even
insisted that the Siberian team work under some sort
of Joint sponsorship by the American Museum, the
Russian Imperial Geographic Society, and the Russian
Academy of Sciences."^ Whereas Russian Government
support of the JNPE proved to be dubious at best (see
Freed et al. 1 988; Vakhtin 2001 :86-7), the Academy's
and Radloffs personal backing of the JNPE was abso-
lutely unequivocal.
The Russians also urged that any duplicate speci-
mens from the Jesup Expedition's Siberian collections
were to be donated to the MAE in return for their co-
operation (Anonymous 1907:68). When the Siberian
collections were finally sorted out in New York, Morris
Jesup presented approximately 300 specimens as the
American Museum's gift to the Tzar's family. These
objects were promptly turned over to the MAE collec-
tion (Anonymous 1907:68; Mikhailova and Kupina
2002). Boas' interactions with Radloff and the Russian
Academy during and after the JNPE began a long tradi-
tion of exchanges between the American Museum and
the MAE (Kupina n.d.).
The Jesup Expedition team's continuous use of the
International Congresses of Americanists as a meeting
and promotion venue for the 25 years following the
expedition is another illustration of the high value Boas
and his Russian partners—Jochelson, Bogoras, and
20 100 YEARS/ EVALUATING ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Shternberg—assigned to international academic con-
tacts. It also showed how strongly they tried to over-
come the drawbacks of artificial separation and isola-
tion caused by World War I and the political storms of
the 20th century (Kan 2000; 2001 ). Their professional
interactions forged during the preparation and field-
work of theJesup Expedition eventually developed into
personal ties, as Bogoras and Jochelson stayed for sev-
eral months in New York in 1 903-4 while working on
their Siberian collections and preparing their mono-
graphs for the JNPE volumes. This, in turn, contributed
to more professional cooperation and to the orches-
trated international promotion of the JNPE project. In
1904, Boas, Bogoras, Jochelson, and Shternberg deliv-
ered four Jesup-related presentations at the 1 4th Inter-
national Congress ofAmericanists in Stuttgart, Germany
(Krupnik 1998:205). The JNPE team members contin-
ued to use the Americanist Congresses as their main
international venue at several successive sessions,
including those in Quebec in 1 906 (Boas and Jochel-
son), in Vienna in 1 908 (Boas), and in London in 1912
Oochelson and Shternberg; see references in Krupnik
2001:300-7)
Personal contacts among the key Jesup Expedition
members, such as Boas, Jochelson, Bogoras, and
Shternberg, were rejuvenated at the 2 1 st International
Congress of Americanists in 1924 (Fig. 3), after a de-
cade-long gap created by World War I, two revolu-
tions, and the Civil War in Russia. It blossomed again at
the 23rd Congress of 1 928 in New York where Boas,
Jochelson, and Bogoras met personally for the last time.
Several papers in Arctic/Siberian ethnology were also
contributed to the New York Congress of Americanists
(1928) by younger Russian students of Bogoras and
Shternberg (Bogoras and Leonov 1930; Dyrenkova
1930; Ivanov 1930; Vishnevsky 1 930—see Krupnik
1 998:206), and by Bruno Oetteking, a Boasian disciple
at the American Museum. At this time it appeared that
the bonds that were fostered during the JNPE years
were about to be transmitted to a second generation
of students trained by members of the original Jesup
Expedition team.^ But a new partnership never materi-
alized, because Russian-American academic contacts
were severed after the years 1 936-38 due to political
purges in Russia and Bogoras' death. Soon much of
the Pacific Coast of Siberia became enmeshed in barbed
wire around GULAG labor camps and military installa-
tions, and the region became closed to international
research and cooperation for almost 50 years.
However, the JNPE legacy in North Pacific cultural
studies made a surprising comeback when academic
contacts and exchange visits were gradually reestab-
lished during the 1 960s and the 1 970s and new joint
studies were launched in prehistory, archaeology, eth-
nology, and museum studies of the North Pacific indig-
enous peoples (Laughlin 1975, 1985; Michael 1979;
Anonymous 1981; Michael and VanStone 1983; Fitz-
hugh and Crowell 1 988). Since that time Russian schol-
ars have often called the Jesup-era partnership "the
most productive international venture in Siberian/North
Pacific ethnography" (Gurvich 1979; Kuz'mina 1981;
Gurvic and Kuzmina 1985). In both the Russian and
North American academic tradition, theJNPE has a very
special image as a symbol and model of openness
and international collaboration (Fitzhugh 1994, 1996,
this volume; Fitzhugh and Crowell 1 988; Fitzhugh and
Krupnik 2001 ; Kuz'mina 1 994; Vakhtin 1 993).
This special aura of the Jesup-era partnership in
North Pacific cultural research was stressed repeatedly
in every new international exchange effort and research
cooperation, of which the Crossroads ofContinents ex-
hibit, the Mini-Crossroads exhibit tour in Alaska and Si-
beria (1 993-7), the Jesup 2 program, and the Jesup Ex-
pedition Centenary conference in New York in 1 997
were the most successful examples. In fact, the Cross-
roads of Continents project, both as an exhibit and a
publication, was promoted in the 1 980s as a "delayed
summary volume of Franz Boas' Jesup Expedition se-
ries" (Fitzhugh and Crowell 1988:15; Fitzhugh, this
volume). But more importantly, it was seen as a begin-
ning of a new era of cooperation, not a conclusion of
the one started by Boas and his team in 1 897.
I. KRUPNIK AND N. VAKHTIN
It was surely the charisma of the Jesup Expedition
field research and of its voluminous publications that
motivated so many Western anthropologists to dream
of field studies in Siberia for several decades after the
original JNPE surveys of 1897-1902. As soon as the
Cold War was over and the Ice Curtain in the Bering
Sea disappeared in 1988-90, scores of Western an-
thropology students flew to Russia to begin the first
new series of ethnological studies in Siberia in almost
a century. Several of these pioneers—students of stu-
dents of students of Boas—were among the partici-
pants of the Jesup Expedition centenary conference in
New York in 1 997. Their field studies were often con-
ducted with Russian partners who were similarly trained
by students of students of Bogoras and Shternberg or
were influenced byJNPE publications. This latter contri-
bution to the lasting JNPE legacy is certainly another of
its notable achievements.
Education and Training
Any large research project in the social sciences today
is also tested against such "outreach" criteria as dis-
semination of knowledge, education, and training. The
JNPE clearly scores high along these lines. Its outstand-
ing record of approximately 200 publications has been
already cited in this regard. What is more important.
Boas deliberately targeted certain periodicals, such as
Science, American Anthropologist, The American Museum
Journal, the AMNH Annual Reports, Proceedings of the
International Congresses of Americanists, and several
German scientific Journals, to build an extended series
of Jesup-generated publications. Other Jesup Expedi-
tion team members, particularly Laufer, Smith, Bogoras,
and Jochelson followed his lead. For the first time in
the history of anthropology, the outcomes of an inter-
national research project were printed, edited, trans-
lated, and consistently disseminated over several years
in three languages—English, German, and Russian
—
across linguistic and state boundaries. With this, a new
pattern in public outreach and concerted dissemina-
tion of scientific knowledge was created. Thanks to
the JNPE, this new multilingual format became solidly
established in Beringian/North Pacific research, and has
been successfully implemented in later efforts, includ-
ing the most recent "Jesup 2" program (see Fitzhugh
and Krupnik 2001).
The success of the JNPE in what is now called edu-
cation and training is all the more appealing. The origi-
nal expedition's field team was extremely diverse in
terms of its professional and educational background.
It included several young people in their early to mid-
20s, such as Smith, Dixon, Axelrod, Buxton; freshly-
minted Ph.D. graduates, like Laufer and Swanton; it also
featured far more seasoned Russians, who were former
political exiles with incomplete and aborted educa-
tions from decades earlier, such as Jochelson, Bogoras,
and Shternberg (and their wives), as well as self-edu-
cated local residents, like Hunt and Teit. The only per-
son with an academic status and established publica-
tion record in anthropology was Boas himself. Of course,
there was also the project's nominal leader, Prof. Frederic
W. Putnam, but he never went to the field and there is
hardly any evidence that Putnam played an active role
in the Expedition after 1 898. We know almost nothing
about his interaction with the JNPE members, other
than Boas and Smith. Hence, it was mainly up to Boas
to train his team members and to promote their scien-
tific careers.
With this in mind, the team's post-expedition record
in professional achievement is worth acknowledging.
Bogoras, Jochelson, Laufer, Smith, Dixon, Swanton, and
Shternberg built recognized academic reputations and
became world-class anthropologists of their time. Sev-
eral other Jesup Expedition participants had no less
prominent life stories, such as Livingston Farrand, who
was later the President of Cornell University and of the
American Red Cross, and DinaJochelson-Brodsky, who
became the first trained female North Pacific anthro-
pologist, with a German Ph.D. on the physical anthro-
pology of Native women in Siberia (1906). The out-
standing role of local JNPE participants, such as George
Hunt and James Teit, was not fully recognized until
]00 YEARS/ EVALUATING ACCOMPLISHMENTS
recently (see Berman 200 1 ; Wickwire, this volume). What
then had been started as merely an array of enthusias-
tic students and self-made local experts is now unani-
mously viewed as a team of professional "super-stars.
"
Over the years following the expedition, the JNPE
members also trained students of their own, and some
ofthese students built successful careers in expanding
and developing thejesup Expedition's legacy. The post-
Jesup students of Boas—from Kroeber to Coldenweiser
to Sapir to de Laguna—eventually became the single
most powerful intellectual cohort in the history of North
American anthropology (Darnell 2001 ). Their exposure
to, and enrichment by, theJesup-era experience of their
mentor, as well as his influence on the selection of
their Ph.D. research, has hardly been explored and re-
mains to be documented.
The educational impact of the Jesup Expedition
experience upon the later anthropological research in
Siberia was even more striking. Here, the scientific "ge-
nealogies" leading from Boas and his JNPE Russian part-
ners have been quite visible (Krupnik 1998:205-6).
During the 1920s, the two Russian members of the
JNPE project, Waldemar Bogoras and Leo Shternberg,
trained dozens of younger Russian anthropology stu-
dents, who followed the Boasian/Jesup Expedition in-
tellectual paradigm that combined ethnology, linguis-
tics, folklore and museum collecting within small and
well-defined research areas. These "post-Jesup" disciples
shaped the new face of Siberian ethnography. Many
were sent to the field to survey the areas and Native
groups once charted by their teachers from the first Je-
sup generation. Erukhim Kreinovich (1 904-84) took up
Shternberg's work among the Nivkh on Sakhalin Is-
land; Alexander Forshtein (1 904-68) was sent by Bogor-
as to study the Siberian Yupik in Chukotka; Sergei Steb-
nitskii (1906-42) worked among the Reindeer Koryak
once surveyed byJochelson; and Nikolai Shnakenburg
(1 907-4 1 ) studied the Chukchi of the northern Chukchi
Peninsula, who had not been reached in 1900-1 by
Bogoras on his JNPE tour (Krupnik 1998: 207). Others
surveyed the arctic and inland portions of Siberia.
Altogether, approximately 70-80 Russian schol-
ars were active in studies of the cultures, languages,
and prehistory of Siberian Native populations during
the 1 930s (Krupnik 1 998:207). Almost all ofthem were
born between the years 1895 and 1910; the pattern
of anthropological fieldwork and research they fol-
lowed was inspired, at least in some way, by the
Bogoras-Shternberg brand of field and theoretical an-
thropology (also known as the "Leningrad School" of
Siberian ethnography). Though never acknowledged
in Russia as a Boasian or a Jesup Expedition legacy, it
strongly influenced the field of Russian and Soviet Si-
berian studies for almost 40 years. Unfortunately,
most of these post-Jesup students of Bogoras and
Shternberg became World War II military and civilian
casualties, as well as victims of the earlier political
purges of the 1930s (Krupnik 1998; Reshetov 1994,
1995a, 1995b, 2002).
JNPE as an Archive of Native Cultural Re-
sources
The need to document Native cultures and to collect
pieces of this legacy before an anticipated demise under
the expanding industrial civilization (later called "sal-
vage anthropology") was clearly on the Jesup Expedi-
tion agenda. It was also one of the primary personal
concerns of its many individual participants. As Bogoras
bluntly put it, even the Chukchi, then the most vibrant
Siberian Native nation, could endure "[ojniy if left alone
by civilization. As soon as the latter comes too near,
the Chukchee must follow in the way of so many other
primitive tribes, and die" (Bogoras 1909:733).
The destructive impact of acculturation was report-
edly quite obvious to theJNPE researchers on the North
American Northwest Coast and in several places in
Siberia. By vigorously collecting Native specimens, ex-
cavating sites, casting and measuring human faces and
bodies, making photographs, and documenting folk-
lore and languages. Boas and other JNPE members es-
poused the pattern of "salvage anthropology" (see
Cole and Long 1999:236-7), which was framed
I. KRUPNIK AND N. VAKHTIN
according to the professional standards and positivis-
tic values of the time. Hence, the various artifacts of
Native legacies were to be collected, displayed, and
preserved first and foremost for the sake of expanding
academic knowledge. During the Jesup Expedition era,
which was so "obsessed with objects" (cf. Jacknis
1996:194), great museums like the AMNH and the
Smithsonian were seen as the main venues for the con-
struction of anthropological knowledge and for its dis-
semination to the public at large. The latter then re-
ferred to the urban educated American and European
populace. Native people were not considered as po-
tential users of the expedition's voluminous collections
and publications; at least we do not see any indica-
tions in this regard.
It took almost 1 00 years for the JNPE collections to
undergo a miraculous transition. Before our own eyes,
the expedition's various contributions are being trans-
formed from a "corpus of scientific data" into "objects
of bright pride" (Wardwell 1 978) and finally into a new
"cultural resource" for the Native nations of the Jesup
area. This transformation has been amply documented
by the Chiefly Feasts exhibit produced from the Jesup
Expedition Northwest Coast collections at the Ameri-
can Museum of Natural History Oonaitis 1 991 ). It is simi-
larly manifested in two recent catalogs of the travel-
ing Crossroads Alaska-Siberia exhibit (Chaussonnet
1995:7) and the AMNH centennial presentation of
the Jesup Expedition photography of 1897-1902
(Kendall etal. 1997).
This transformation, in fact, has resulted in an un-
precedented (and quite unexpected) increase in the
value of the expedition's data, publications, and mu-
seum collections. It was as if old papers and photo-
graphs, linguistic and folklore texts, archival manuscripts
and hundreds of anthropological data sheets acquired
additional meaning and found a new constituency. As
the JNPE materials become "new resources" inspiring
cultural revitalization of the area's Native nations, they
do not cease to be objects of anthropological and
museum science. Several papers in this volume explore
2 4
these new dimensions in the modern use ofJesup-era
ethnographic collections (see chapters by Fitzhugh;
Ivanov-Unarovand Ivanova-Unarova; Loring and Vettre;
and Webster, this volume). They offer an inspiring per-
spective on how present-day people read early de-
scriptions of their culture; how they enjoy century-old
photographs; and how the old folklore records and
museum artifacts are used to develop modern art,
school curricula, and educate children. This was some-
thing the JNPE team members then hardly had in mind,
but nevertheless, due to their dedicated work, it be-
came possible now, 1 00 years after their enterprise.
Conclusion
As these and other post-JNPE achievements are brought
together as parts of a single record, we believe we
have solid ground for a centenary celebration. But be-
yond the list of the Expedition's accomplishments and
shortcomings there is a certain lasting charisma to the
original JNPE project. It continues to inspire anthropol-
ogy professionals and local cultural enthusiasts much
in the same way it fascinated its prospective mem-
bers, sponsors. Boas' colleagues, and the public at large,
when the expedition blueprint was first unveiled more
than 100 years ago (Cole 2001; Vakhtin 2001).
From a modern perspective, one could see the JNPE
as a fascinating experiment in scholarly planning and a
scientist's once-in-a-lifetime dream. For the first (and
in fact, the only) time during his long career, Franz
Boas secured ample resources, an excellent team,
and the institutional support he needed to carry
out a research plan he could design, supervise, and
deliver almost exclusively at his discretion.' It also of-
fered him a unique opportunity to project his personal
vision of anthropology, the "Americanist" tradition, in
Regna Darnell's term (Darnell 2001 :1 0-20) on a multi-
year research enterprise, and to advertise that vision in
the international scientific arena. That was an appeal
of tremendous power. Today one can still feel the
project's magnetism as palpably as many people did
1 00 years ago.
100 YEARS/ EVALUATING ACCOMPLISHMENTS
However, even the best-designed dreams rarely
come true. The JNPE project eventually fell victim to
the intellectual battle Boas fought throughout his en-
tire academic career. Since his early professional years,
he argued fervently in favor of a clear-cut distinction
between two major approaches (or methods) in scien-
tific research—one advocating the search for general
laws and the other aimed at scrupulous adherence to
facts. In several of his papers Boas repeatedly called
this distinction an opposition between the "compara-
tive" and the "historical" method of inquiry (Boas 1 896,
1 940:2 7 1 -7), or the one between the "physicists" and
the "cosmographers" (Boas 1887, 1 940:642-^3; Jacknis
1 996:1 86-88; Stocking 1 996:5). And he made it clear
that he sought his own place firmly in the cosmogra-
phers' camp.
This vigorous academic partisanship was quickly
challenged by and tested against the very format of
the JNPE project. Boas was charged to design what
we would call today the "JNPE overall program," in-
cluding a project justification and fieldwork outline.
Toward this end. Boas the physicist offered promises
that were tempting to prospective sponsors and pub-
lic audience, because of the unprecedented general
implications of research he suggested (such as to "dis-
cover the origin and early history of the native Ameri-
can race"). Ironically, under the same scenario, Boas the
cosmographer was assigned to develop a field pro-
gram and to supervise the process of research, data
collecting, and publication down to the minute detail.
This worked well for the five years of field surveys and
for publication of the expedition's reports and its vari-
ous collected materials—until the cosmographer was
pushed towards his last challenge: project synthesis
and historical generalization.
For Boas this must have been a tormenting experi-
ence, since he was destined to overstep the very prin-
ciples he zealously advocated for almost two decades.
As he himself urged just one year before the Jesup
Expedition began and in citing the very Native cultures
of Alaska and Siberia it was supposed to survey, "[o]nly
when definite results have been obtained in regard to
this area [i.e., small and well-defined individual territo-
ries that form the basis of study—I.K., N.V.] is it permis-
sible to extend the horizon beyond its limits; but the
greatest care must be taken not to proceed too hast-
ily in this" (Boas 1896, 1940:277). With hindsight, we
must conclude that nothing in the expedition's volu-
minous data rendered any assurance that the results
obtained were "definite," that "extensions beyond the
horizon" were now permissible, and that any move
toward generalization would not be "too hasty."
On the contrary, each Native culture studied and
each area covered by the JNPE revealed its never-end-
ing story of cultural complexity and historical depth. It
is not surprising that Boas became increasingly reluc-
tant to jump into extensive comparative speculation
across the North Pacific area.* He did produce several
short summaries ofthe expedition's results and/or some
broad overviews of the North Pacific cultural prehis-
tory (Boas 1903, 1905, 1910, 1925, 1928, 1933). But
he continuously procrastinated and, as we believe,
finally abandoned the idea of a concluding general
volume for the Jesup Expedition series, which he had
promised to Morris Jesup as a key component of the
project (Cole 2001 :42-3,48).'' To Boas this was by no
means an intellectual failure but rather a deliberate
evasion, for he had once again realized that "[t]he solid
work is still all before us" (Boas 1896, 1940:280). He
simply left the task to those who might possess bet-
ter data and more extensive knowledge in the future
—
that is, to us.
Thus, the Jesup Centenary Conference of 1 997 and
this volume of proceedings marks just one more step
in the ongoing re-evaluation of the unique Boasian
design of the JNPE project. The very list of the confer-
ence participants, which included ethnologists, linguists,
physical anthropologists, archaeologists, folklorists,
natural scientists, and museum curators; Americans,
Canadians, Russians, Japanese, and Europeans; profes-
sional academics. Native researchers, cultural workers,
and community leaders, was a roster with a distinctly
I. KRUPNIK AND N. VAKHTIN
Boasian outlook. As their papers presented here re-
veal, there is hardly any present-day inquiry concern-
ing the peoples and cultures of the North Pacific area
that does not bear, in one way or another, an imprint
of the Jesup Expedition—whether it deals with Native
ethnic traditions, physical anthropology, myths, cul-
ture transformation, prehistoric relationships, cultural
objects, historical photography or museum collections.
Indeed, we have good cause to celebrate the cente-
nary of the Boas' Jesup North Pacific Expedition and a
memory of the person who introduced such a power-
ful model to anthropological science.
Acknowledgements
A shorter version of this paper was delivered as the
opening address to the Jesup Expedition Centenary
conference in 1 997. We are grateful to William Fitzhugh,
IraJacknis, Sergei Kan, Laurel Kendall, Julia Kupina, and
William Sturtevant for their critical comments and helpful
suggestions. This paper as well as earlier historiographic
studies of theJesup Expedition's legacy is an outgrowth
of the Jesup 2 program initiated in 1992.
Notes
1
.
The list of contracted (enlisted) partici-
pants on thejesup Expedition includes: Franz Boas
(1858-1942), Alexandr Axelrod (1879-1945),
Waldemar Bogoras (1865-1936), Norman C.
Buxton (1872-?), Roland Dixon (1875-1934),
Livingston Farrand (1867-1939), Gerard Fowke
(1855-1933), George Hunt (1854-1933), Filipp
Jacobsen, Waldemar Jochelson (1855-1937),
Berthold Laufer (1 873-1 934), John Swanton (1 873-
1 958), James Teit (1 864-1 922). Mrs. Sofia Bogoras
and Dina Jochelson-Brodsky (1 864-1 941 ) accom-
panied their husbands in the field and participated
in collecting and research activities; Dina
Jochelson's contribution was critical for the
expedition's success in physical anthropology and
photography in Siberia. Oregon C. Hastings, a pro-
fessional photographer from Victoria, made doz-
ens of photographs for the expedition in 1897;
Charles F. Newcombe, another Victoria resident,
participated in collecting and coastal surveys in
1 897 and 1 900. Frederic W. Putnam (1 839-1 91 5)
officially supervised the project at the AMNH dur-
ing the years 1897-98. Leo Shternberg (1861-
1927) and Bruno Oetteking (1 87 1 -1 960) joined
the JNPE publication program after the comple-
tion of fieldwork. Several people—local guides,
interpreters. Native informants, recruited dog-team
drivers, and local officers—accompanied JNPE team
members on their surveys across Siberia and North
America, though few are specially acknowledged
(see also Kan, this volume).
2. Haida, Tsimshian, KwakiutI (Kwak-
waka'wakw), Heiltsuk, Bella Coola (Nuxalk),
Chilkotin, Nootka (Nuu-chah-nulth), Lilooet
(Sta'atl'imx), Thompson (NIaka'pamux), Quileute,
Chinook, Chemakum, and Quinault, with the
later addition of the Aleut, Tlingit, Shasta, and
Maidu.
3. Chukchi, Yupik/Asiatic Eskimo, Koryak,
Even (Tungus), Itelmen (Kamchadal), Yukagir, Rus-
sian Creole, Nivkh (Gilyak), Nanay (Gold), and Sakha
(Yakut), with three more nations, Ainu, Orok (Uilta),
and Negidal visited on shorter trips.
4. Co-authored papers and volumes were the
only component of modern team work that was
missing in the JNPE publications, with the excep-
tion of two volumes of KwakiutI texts that had
both Boas' and Hunt's names on the cover, and a
few minor pieces by Boas incorporated into con-
tributions by Smith, Teit, and Jochelson. Even the
husband-wife field team of Waldemar and Dina
Jochelson did not publish anything under their two
names.
5. This can be seen from a letterhead printed
on several of Jochelson's letters and field reports
from Siberia (now at the AMNH): Siberian Depart-
ment of thejesup North Pacific Expedition fitted
out by the American Museum of Natural History
with the assistance of the Russian Imperial Acad-
emy of Sciences and the Russian Imperial Geo-
graphic Society.
6. The best known example was Julia
Averkieva's fieldwork with Boas among the
KwakiutI in 1930-31 (Averkieva and Sherman
1 992). Averkieva (1 946: 1 02) mentioned five Rus-
sian anthropology students who went on ex-
change fellowships to the U.S. in 1929. At least
three American anthropologists and anthropology
students—Roy Barton, Emanuel Gonick, a former
]00 YEARS/ EVALUATING ACCOMPLISHMENTS
student of Kroeber, and Archie Phinney, a Native
American student of Boas—were studying or worl<-
ing in Leningrad during the 1 930s on international
research fellowships arranged by Boas and
Bogoras (Krupnik 1 998; Willard 2000).
7. Thus, the Jesup Expedition has been rightly
credited as one of the stepping stones in what
was called "The Boasian Anthropological Survey
Tradition" (Cole and Long 1999:234). All postu-
lated tenets of this approach—anti-evolutionism;
the tilt toward diffusionist interpretations; the eth-
ics of salvage ethnology; the collection of folk-
lore and linguistic texts; the famous "four-field"
focus of fieldwork; and the primary role of trained
professionals (ibid:234-6)—were amply displayed
in the JNPE organization, fieldwork, and publica-
tions.
8. Regna Darnell (2001:43) made a similar
point in her evaluation of the general shift in Boas'
vision of anthropology that took place around
1905, obviously, or at least partly, as a result of
the JNPE experience. "Early in his career, perhaps
as a carry-over from his scientific training in phys-
ics and geography. Boas emphasized the possi-
bility, albeit at some unspecified future time, of
arriving at "laws governing the growth of culture"
(Boas 1 898b:2). [...]When laws analogous to those
of the natural sciences failed to emerge. Boas re-
treated to a deconstructionist rhetoric of what
he considered premature generalizations distort-
ing the increasing body of ethnographic data
against which potential "laws" could be tested
(see Boas 1906:642).
9. The plan to provide a summary report of
the JNPE surveys was first announced by Boas in
his paper delivered at the Thirteenth International
Congress of Americanists (1 902). According to his
plan, this would be accomplished as the final vol-
ume of the Jesup Expedition series. It was featured
several times as "Volume 12. Summary and Final
Results" on the cover pages of the subsequent
volumes under the Jesup Expedition series pub-
lished during the 1 900s and 1 91 Os. The last time
it was mentioned in 1930 as the "forthcoming
Pt.3 of Vol. 1 1" ("Summary and Final Results") on
the cover page of Volume 1 1 , Pt. 1 (Oetteking
1 930). This summary volume was obviously never
produced and probably never even started.
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Brand New Computers: Biological Data from theJesup
Expedition and the Paradox of the "Americanoid"
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1 994 Repressirovannaia etnografiia: liudi i sud'by
(Persecuted Ethnography: People and Their Destiny).
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Researchers ofthe Institute of Ethnography ofthe
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1995b Otdanie dolga. Pamiati sotrudnikov Instituta
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2002 Alexander Semenovich Forshtein (1904-
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Biographical Notes about a Purged Scientist).
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1 996 Introduction: Boasian Ethnography and the
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Thom, Brian
200 1 Harlan I. Smith's Jesup Fieldwork on the North-
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1 988 Ancient Peoples of the North Pacific Rim. In:
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1 6. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution
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Vakhtin, Nikolai B.
1993 Jesup-2: Novaia programma sotsial'no-
anthropologicheskikh issledovanii na Severe Gesup-
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in the North). Kunstkamera. Etnograficheskie tetradi
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200 1 Franz Boas and the Shaping ofthe Jesup North
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1 930 Contribution to the Anthropology of North-
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1996 American Beginnings. The Prehistoryand Palaeo-
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University of Chicago Press.
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A Review of the AMNH Photo Collection. In: Gate-
ways. Exploring the Legacy of the Jesup North Pacific
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2000 American Anthropologists on the Neva:
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1 965 An Outline of Early Man Studies in the United
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I. KRUPNIK AND N. VAKHTIN

Ti^e 5o-Ca!!ec] "Hski'mo Wedge":
/\ (^enturtj after Jesup
DON E. DUMOND
A central accomplishment of the Jesup North Pacific
Expedition was the demonstration of systematic cul-
tural similarities among Asian and American peoples
around the northern coastline of the Pacific Ocean.
Folklore, in particular, suggested a continuity from
Northwest Coast Indian groups on the east to Paleo-
Asiatic Siberian people such as Chukchi, Itelmen, and
Koryak on the west—but a continuity seemingly inter-
rupted by Eskimo in Alaska and around Bering Strait.
Bogoras (1902:670) and then Jochelson (1908:359-
60) were evidently the first to use the term "wedge" in
inferring a late intrusion of these Eskimo people to split
apart a formerly unbroken chain of the North Pacific
peoples, and both continued in this conception (e.g.,
Bogoras 1 925:225-26; Jochelson 1928:53-4).
Whoever actually originated this vision. Boas (e.g.,
1 905:98-9) found it to harmonize with his own previ-
ously expressed conviction that the Eskimo people
had moved to the Bering and Chukchi seas from a
place of origin farther east in North America (Boas
1 888:39). Thus, he remarked that:
So far as the available material allows us to
judge, it would seem that the similarities
between the Eskimo and the North Pacific
Coast Indians are unimportant as compared
to the similarities between the Koryak and
Chukchee and these Indians. We must infer
from these facts that the Eskimo are new
arrivals on the Pacific side of America, and
that they interrupted, at an early period, the
communication between the Siberian and
Indian tribes (Boas 1905:98-9).
And the theme was set.
Bogoras (1 925:224-34) and Jochelson (1 908:358-
9) were more noncommittal with regard to a point of
origin for this "Eskimo wedge." Nevertheless, the cus-
tom of arguing over American versus Asian origins of
the Eskimo and related Aleut peoples is an old one
(see, for example, summaries in Collins 1937:1-13,
1 95 1 :423-25) that has continued into recent decades.
At the same time, there is a shared opinion that the
historic Eskimo possessed the most successful of all
aboriginal adaptations to the winter-frozen seas lying
between northeast Asia and northwestern North
America. Bogoras, the ethnographer, for instance, be-
littled both Itelmen (Kamchadal) and coastal Koryak
when contrasted with Asiatic Eskimo in that regard
(Bogoras 1925:217, 226).
The notion of a wedge-like movement of Eskimo
to Bering Strait, however, was arrived at by Jesup re-
searchers not only without direct field study of Alas-
kan Eskimo people, but also in the complete absence
of any archaeological information pertaining to the Es-
kimo region of Siberia and America. To cast light on
the development of Eskimo culture and of this postu-
lated "wedge," I examine presently available archaeo-
logical evidence both of ancient linkages across the
northernmost extension of the Pacific and of the de-
velopment of that northern maritime adaptation which
the Eskimo people so well exemplified.
The Terminal Pleistocene
As is well known, there is no consensus regarding the
time and circumstance of the initial peopling of the
3 3
New World
—
generally presumed to have been by way
of the Pleistocene-age Beringian land platform that
united Asia and America when seas were lower. There
is more agreement that by sometime before 10,000
radiocarbon years ago,' when the Beringian platform
began to flood by rising waters that would form the
Bering and Chukchi seas (Elias et al. 1992; Fairbanks
1989), terrestrial hunters of pronouncedly Asian cast
were present in what is now Alaska. These chippers of
blades, of bladelets ("microblades") pushed from small
wedge-shaped cores, and of a few bifaces or spear-
point-like implements, have been referred to as the
American Paleo-Arctic cultural tradition (Anderson 1 968,
1970), and in central Alaska to the Denali complex
(e.g., West 1 967, 1 996:546-7). In Northeast Asia (Fig.
5), the technological analog has been most commonly
termed the Diuktai culture, which was well represented
in the Lena River drainage a number of millennia before
10,000 years ago (Mochanov 1977; Mochanov and
Fedose'eva 1 984, 1 996), and at partly concurrent times
as far east as the territory of Russian coastal Primorye
[Far Eastern Maritime Region - ed.] (Larichev et al. 1 992),
as well as Hokkaido (Aikens and Higuchi 1982),
Sakhalin Island (Larichev et al. 1 992; Vasil'evskii 1 996),
Kamchatka Peninsula (Dikov 1977, 1996) and the
Chukotka (Chukchi) Peninsula (Dikov 1 993).^
In both Northeast Asia and Alaska this stage was
followed by, or developed into, another stage in which
somewhat broader blades were derived from less for-
mally restricted cores, and bifaces were normally lack-
ing (Ackerman 1 992; Mochanov 1 977; Mochanov and
Fedose'eva 1984). In Siberia this Sumnagin culture is
dated as early as 1 0,000 years ago (Mochanov and
Fedose'eva 1984). In America the comparable mani-
festation is present by 8000 years ago, and perhaps
some centuries earlier, at which time it would appear
that communication with Asia was continuing. People
of this stamp and perhaps their microblade-making
predecessors were present along the shores of the
North Pacific in what is now southeastern Alaska
(Ackerman 1 992, with many references). Although fau-
nal remains are scarce, one of the sites there has yielded
remains of mollusks and of both ocean and freshwater
fishes, in levels dated about 8200 years ago (Ackerman
et al. 1985).
By this time, also, there were people occupying
the Anangula Blade site, located on what is now an
islet near the coast of present Umnak Island, one of
the two largest of the Fox group of the eastern Aleu-
tians (Aigner 1 978; Laughlin 1 975). It has been argued
that this location was already insular at the time of
occupation (Black 1 974). Although that view has been
challenged (Thorson and Hamilton 1 986), the site was
clearly positioned at the ocean edge on either an is-
land or a salient peninsula. Again, significant faunal re-
mains are lacking, but the extreme edgewater loca-
tion alone is enough to suggest subsistence attention
to the seacoast.^
In Asia, however, sites of the same period appear
to have been oriented consistently toward terrestrial
resources. Although trade in obsidian from Hokkaido
through Sakhalin Island developed to its highest
point after the two land masses were separated by
the flooding of the strait between them (Vasil'evskii
1996), suggesting an ability to make serious use of
watercraft well before 7000 years ago, there is no
locational or faunal evidence of any serious focus on
marine resources (Yaroslav V. Kuz'min, personal com-
munication, 1 997).
Whatever the case for communication between
Asia and America in the two or three millennia follow-
ing the end of the Pleistocene, by about 6000 years
ago paths between Alaska and Chukotka (Chukchi Pen-
insula) were closed by rising seas that established
ocean currents in substantially their present pattern
through Bering Strait. At this date the earliest Neo-
lithic cultures of Siberia (Mochanov and Fedos-e'eva
1984) show no resemblance to what, in the then
deglaciated northwestern America, is called the
Northern Archaic tradition (Anderson 1968), or to
the Ocean Bay tradition of the north Pacific shore
around Kodiak Island (D. Clark 1979).
100 YEARS/ THE "ESKIMO WEDGE"
Nevertheless, at this same time there are clear indi-
cations of an improved adaptation to the coast of the
North Pacific in Asia as well as in North America. Sig-
nificantly, in both cases such advances occur south of
the region in which sea ice forms in winter. In North-
east Asia, the best information proceeds from the north-
ernmost Japanese island of Hokkaido, where shell-
mounds that may date as early as 7000 years ago
6000 years ago (David Yesner, personal communica-
tion, 1 997), although comparable sites are not known
to be numerous in the region for another two millennia
(Yaroslav V. Kuz'min, personal communication, 1997;
see articles in Vostretsov 1 998). All ofthese Asian sites,
however, are south of 45° north latitude and more than
3000 km from the nearest point in Asia that was oc-
cupied by historically known Eskimo.
yield vertebrate fauna including sea lion, fur seal, dol-
phin, and whale (Nishimoto 1988; Okada 1998). By
6000 years before present some Hokkaido people
were deriving as much as 50 percent of their dietary
protein from marine sources (Minagawa and Akazawa
1992). The great majority of relevant Hokkaido sites
are on coasts open all year, although one or two lie on
the northern shore, which is icebound in winter. On
the perennially open coast of Primorye [Russian Far
Eastern 'Maritime Region' - ed.] near Vladivostok, the
site of Boisman 2 (Popov et al. 1 995) has yielded a
substantial marine fauna possibly dated as much as
In America, the southern limit of icebound coasts
lies much farther north. Near Kodiak Island, at latitude
57", seas are open all winter, and sites dating shortly
after 6000 years ago have yielded not only plentiful
barbed harpoon heads, but faunal remains of harbor
seal, porpoise, sea otter, and Steller sea lion, as well as
shorebirds, waterfowl, and albatross, and fishes such
as cod, salmon, and halibut (C.H. Clark 1 977; Dumond
1998a). By 5500 years ago or shortly thereafter, an
analogous complex was present along the open-wa-
ter seas of the eastern Aleutians, at both Umnak and
Unalaska Islands of the Fox Island group, with remains
D. E. DUMOND
of seal, cod, and halibut at the latter (Davis 2001;
Knecht and Davis 2001; Knecht et al. 200); Yesner
and Mack 1998). In contrast to contemporary mari-
time-related sites in Asia, these are some ten degrees
and a thousand kilometers farther north, and both are
within the region occupied by Eskimo-Aleut people at
the time of first contact with Europeans in the 18th
century.
Further, according to evidence now available, the
period following those first unmistakable indications
of maritime proficiency saw the peopling of the Aleu-
tian Islands west of the Fox Islands group. This is indi-
cated by a substantial body of radiometric dates, in-
cluding many obtained by the U.S. Bureau of Indian
Affairs in the course of investigations pursuant to the
Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. The pattern de-
veloped is one of human passage into the island chain
from east to west. After dates from the Fox Islands of
5500 years ago and earlier, multiple dates from
Amchitka in the Rat group of islands indicate occupa-
tion probably well before 4000 radiocarbon years ago,
on Agattu and Shemya in the Near Islands by about
2600 years ago (Dumond 2001:301-2).^ The material
culture of all islands sampled is characterized by a va-
riety of sea-hunting artifacts of organic materials in-
cluding both barbed and toggling harpoons, many
with chipped stone insets; it also includes lip orna-
ments or labrets, oil-burning lamps, and many other
implements chipped from stone (e.g., McCartney 1 984).
In short, this was a culture with unmistakable affinities
to that of the ethnographically known Aleut people,
as well as with many parallels with the lifeway of Es-
kimo people farther north. Whatever the case with the
earliest inhabitants of the Umnak region 8000 years
ago, for at least the past 4500 years the record of
continuity in the Aleutian Islands is unmistakable.
In summary, it seems evident that even the Near
Islands were reached no less than 2600 radiocarbon
years ago, and perhaps considerably earlier. Despite
the lack of extensive faunal remains in small collec-
tions derived from a number of these tests, such re-
3 6
mains from the more extensive investigations, together
with the isolated insular character of the western Aleu-
tians, confirm a mature maritime subsistence.
Behind the Ice-Fast Shores of Asia
North of the southern limit of sea ice, however, progress
toward full utilization of the seacoast was slower. In
Asia, between 5000 and 3000 radiocarbon years ago
various Neolithic peoples had begun to move closer
to the coasts on Sakhalin Island and around the Sea of
Okhotsk, including the lower reaches of the Amur River,
and they spread into the interior hinterland ofthe north-
western coast of the Bering Sea south of the Chukchi
Peninsula. These various "Neolithic" peoples, some of
whom now used ceramics while others did not, were
characterized by subsistence pursuits that emphasized
river fishing or the hunting of terrestrial animals. Whereas
some of these folk did visit the seacoast, their use of
marine resources was evidently seasonal and sporadic,
forming no major focus of subsistence effort (Dumond
and Bland 1995, with references).
It was several centuries after 3000 years ago that
these seasonally ice-bound Asian regions first saw
peoples who made more serious use of the ocean
shore, establishing permanent settlements by the sea,
using implements such as toggling harpoons, and de-
pending significantly on sea mammals and ocean fishes,
although in many cases being still seasonally interested
in the interior. The newer coastal peoples included
those of the Susuia culture of southern Sakhalin Island
(Shubin and Shubina 1 984; Vasil'evskii 1 996), which is
seen by some researchers as an initial stage of the
maritime Okhotsk culture, by others as a local prede-
cessor; and they included those of the Tokarev culture
of the northern Okhotsk Sea (Lebedintsev 1990), and
of the Early Lakhtin culture of the Bering Sea coast
(Orekhov 1 987). The appearance of these cultures was
fairly closely contemporary, between about 2700 and
2500 years ago. By 2000 years ago or not long after,
they were followed, respectively, by the Ozersk stage
of the Okhotsk culture, by the Old Koryak culture, and
100 YEARS/ THE "ESKIMO WEDGE"
by the "Paleometal" stage of the Lakhtin culture, all of
which involved still more developed adaptations to
the coasts that freeze in winter (for tabulations of rel-
evant dates, see Dumond and Bland 1995).
Nevertheless, as with the ethnographic Itelmen and
Koryak referred to by Bogoras, even those further de-
velopments fell short of the Eskimo adaptation to the
icy coasts. For instance, of even the closest Lakhtin-
culture neighbors of the Eskimo, Dikov (1 979:256) re-
marked that the bone and ivory technology was not
as a rule comparable to that found in early Eskimo
sites of the Bering Strait region. And on the coasts of
the Chukchi Peninsula later occupied by identifiable
Eskimo people, he found no indications of any pre-
Eskimo occupations exhibiting a maritime adaptation
comparable to those farther south just mentioned (Dikov
1993; see also Dumond and Bland 1995:430-4, with
references).'^
And the Frozen Coasts of America
In America, an analog of the a-ceramic Neolithic cul-
tures of the east Russian interior appeared as the Arc-
tic Small Tool tradition, which by 4000 years ago had
spread across northernmost Canada to Greenland.
These first people to inhabit the immediate hinterland
of the northernmost American coastline made use of
river and lake fish and terrestrial animals—especially
the caribou—and made seasonal visits to the coast,
for example for spring sealing (Maxwell 1 985:84-90).
Long known by researchers in Alaska as the Denbigh
Flint complex dating from times no earlier than 4200
years ago, recent work on the Seward Peninsula has
produced apparent Arctic Small Tool occupations
dated about 4700 years ago (Harritt 1 994:21 2, 217).
The specific place of origin of these newly appearing
people is not yet known, but the evidence presently
available strongly favors immigration from Asia. Al-
though without ceramics, the stone assemblage of
the Denbigh Flint complex includes nothing that is
unknown in various northeast Asian Neolithic cultures
(see, for instance, Irving 1 970), and it has been com-
pared especially to elements of the Bel'kachi Neolithic
of the Lena River basin in northeastern Siberia (e.g..
Powers and Jordan 1 990). At the very least, then, the
Arctic Small Tool tradition appears to represent the
beginning of a second period in which contact be-
tween Asia and America is attested. And this time,
with the rise in seas that had covered the former
Beringian land bridge, where currents move steadily
from south to north at a speed sufficient to disrupt
winter ice and render travel across it hazardous, the
contact must have been largely through open water.
In regions near the coast, this American culture van-
ished or was superseded by 3600 years ago in the
northwest, 500 years later in the southwest (Anderson
1984; Dumond 1984), although vestiges appear to
have persisted for several centuries in some inland Alas-
kan locations (e.g., Irving 1 964; Kunz 1 977). It was not
long after this disappearance in the north that the first
evidence of a people with an unmistakable marine sub-
sistence focus is found in the Kotzebue Sound region.
On the beach numbered 53 at Cape Krusenstern on
the northern shore of the sound, a single settlement
yielding remains of a culture termed "Old Whaling" is
dated at about 3200 years ago. Five semi-subterra-
nean houses and five more superficial camp or house
traces are interpreted as winter and summer dwellings
occupied for a short period, perhaps no more than a
single year. Chipped stone implements, stone lamps,
two pieces of polished slate, and a single toggling
harpoon head occur with seal bones, walrus ivory, and
a few bones of caribou. Whale debris is plentiful in the
vicinity (Ciddings and Anderson 1986, chapter 12);
whether the people of the little settlement were them-
selves whalers or whether the whalebone in and around
the houses represents scavenged animals is not cer-
tain, but clearly they were deriving the bulk of their
subsistence from the sea (see Mason and Cerlach 1 995).
The origin of the people represented in this short-
term settlement is undetermined. Although their arti-
facts have been compared by some researchers to
the much smaller collection from the site known as
D. E. DUMOND
Chertov Ovrag or Devil's Gorge, on Wrangel Island in
the Siberian sector of the Chukchi Sea (e.g., Ackerman
1984), which also yielded a single toggling harpoon
head and is dated at almost exactly the same time
(Dikov 1 988; Shilo et al. 1 979), no other Asian analog
is known. Rather, the only area anywhere in the vicin-
ity of the Bering and Chukchi seas that at this date
was demonstrably home to a significant population
of humans with specialized dependence on the sea-
coast is the Aleutian Islands and the adjacent northern
Gulf of Alaska. As indicated earlier, by this date the
Aleutians were certainly settled as far west as the Rat
Islands, and ancestral Aleut people may already have
reached the Near Islands. And as noted elsewhere
(Dumond 2000), contemporary stone assemblages of
the eastern Aleutian Islands and of the Old Whaling
settlement are not so dissimilar as to rule out a source
of the latter somewhere in these same Aleutians Is-
lands. Of significance here, also, is the conclusion of
the linguist Knud Bergsland (1986) that the length of
separation between Aleut and Eskimo languages is
not more than about 3000 years. In other words, the
linguistic separation occurred at approximately the time
the Old Whaling settlement appeared.
Three thousand to 2700 years ago also dates the
appearance of the Choris culture, again known princi-
pally from the region around Kotzebue Sound, but with
possible outliers as far east as the Mackenzie River
delta in northwest Arctic Canada (Sutherland 1 997).
The largest site collections include not only plenti-
ful chipped stone implements, but other artifacts
strongly reminiscent of open-coastal Alaska to the
south: stone lamps, labrets, barbed harpoons, and
a modicum of ground slate. A few forms are com-
parable to those of the Old Whaling predecessors at
Cape Krusenstern (Ciddings and Anderson 1 986, chap-
ters 1 0, 1 1 ). The south Alaskan characteristics of these
two earliest of the maritime-focused people of north
Alaska, coupled with evidence of continuity in the
Aleutians and the Kodiak region and the relationship
between the two language families, Aleutian and
Eskimoan, seem to argue for a largely American ori-
gin for the later Eskimo.
But during this Choris period the first ceramics ap-
peared on the American coast. Impressed on the sur-
face with a paddle wrapped with cords or scored with
parallel linear grooves, these are clearly Asian in stimu-
lus and reminiscent of ceramics reported from late
Neolithic sites of eastern Chukotka dating after 3000
years ago (Dikov 1993:1 51-2). Thus, although a clear
suggestion of southern Alaskan derivation appears in
this successor to the Old Whaling culture, there is evi-
dence at least equally clear of contact across Bering
Strait. Meanwhile, as mentioned earlier, aspects of the
Arctic Small Tool tradition apparently continued in in-
land Alaskan regions to the east.
Not long after 2500 years ago, and thus essen-
tially contemporary with the earliest Okhotsk, Tokarev,
and Lakhtin cultures of the Asian shore, the Alaskan
coast north- and eastward from the Alaska Peninsula
at least as far as the present western border of Canada
(MacNeish 1 956) had become territory of people of
Norton culture, who in northwestern Alaska have also
been referred to as Near Ipiutak (Larsen and Rainey
1948). These people used linear- or check-stamped
ceramics still of northeast Asian type, as well as tog-
gling harpoon heads of bone or antler; stone lamps for
burning sea mammal oil, lip ornaments, and polished
implements in the plentiful inventory of stone tools are
particularly reminiscent of southern Alaska. In all, char-
acteristics of their sites show their strong interest in
the seacoast both as a subsistence area and as a
location for settlements, while they nevertheless still
harvested interior resources such as caribou and fresh-
water fish (Dumond 1 982, 1 984). In this, they provide
an obvious analog to the contemporary and semi-
maritime Tokarev and Lakhtin cultures of the Bering
and Okhotsk seas south of the Chukchi Peninsula, but
a much less close similarity in settlement and subsis-
tence to those more landlocked contemporary Chukot-
kans whose sites have been reported thus far from
that peninsula itself.
100 YEARS/ THE "ESKIMO WEDGE"
In the Alaskan northwest, not long after 2000 years
ago Norton or Near Ipiutak gave way to the Ipiutak
culture, of a seasonally coastal people with utilitarian
artifacts reminiscent of those of Norton culture, but
who did not use either ceramics or oil lamps, and who
are known especially for their elaborate art of appar-
ent Asian affinity (Larsen and Rainey 1948). In south-
western Alaska, on the other hand, later stages of
Norton culture endured until nearly 1 000 years ago
(Dumond 1982, 1984). In both north and south, how-
ever, a significant proportion of the tool productions
of Norton people, like those of the Ipiutak site, have
been compared to artifacts included within the Arctic
Small Tool tradition. In the north, indeed, Anderson
expands the classificatory Arctic Small Tool tradition
to include not only the local Denbigh Flint complex,
but succeeding Choris, Norton-Near Ipiutak, and Ipiutak
as well (e.g., Ciddings and Anderson 1986:292-300).
Although such expansion has seemed unnecessary in
the south, typological continuity there is evident (e.g.,
Dumond 1 981 :1 83). Suffice it to say that the Norton-
related cultures in their development drew evidently
from the Arctic Small Tool tradition as well as from
prototypes on the Alaskan Pacific coast and in Asia.
This is what one can reasonably term a continuation
and development of the second period of prehistoric
contact across Bering Strait.
The Appearance of Eskimo Maritime Culture
It is in this milieu that the heavily sea-mammal-oriented
Eskimo culture of the Bering Strait region appeared,
and this in turn had a decisive impact on the character
of all later Eskimo people. At present date, no direct
progenitor is recognized to have been spread through-
out the portion of the Bering Strait region that was to
come under Eskimo occupation. On the Seward Penin-
sula of the American side of Bering Strait there is evi-
dence of the one-time presence of bearers of Norton
culture (e.g., Ciddings and Anderson 1986; Harritt
1 994), although no large sites on that peninsula north
of Cape Nome (Bockstoce 1 979) have been seriously
excavated. Nor is there a clear indication there of an
actual transition between Norton people and the later
maritime Eskimo, despite the designation of Ipiutak
and related folk as "Paleo-Eskimo" (e.g., Larsen and
Rainey 1 948: 1 82-3, using the term "Palae-Eskimo"). Ty-
pological continuity between Norton and later sites
has been claimed in regions bordering the southern
Bering Sea (Dumond 1 98 1 : 1 84), and overall continuity
and a transition between them is indeed demonstrated
with seeming conclusiveness in the low-lying lands be-
tween the Kuskokwim and Yukon River mouths (Shaw
1 983); but these are well south of Seward Peninsula.
On the eastern Chukchi Peninsula, as well as on the
major islands in and near Bering Strait, no sites analo-
gous to those of the semi-maritime Norton have been
reported. And yet this is where the maritime-oriented
Old Bering Sea and Okvik cultures seem to have ap-
peared full-blown. However, my own recent examina-
tion of the material from the original Okvik site on one
of the small Punuk Islands located a short distance off
the east coast of St. Lawrence Island, showed five of
the sixty-three potsherds recovered to be of standard
Norton check-stamped type, the remainder plain or
bearing the expanded linear-stamp markings charac-
teristic of the Old Bering Sea culture as it is known
from St. Lawrence Island. These few Norton potsherds
may suggest contact or a one-time Norton presence
on the island, although the evidence of either is mar-
ginal, to say the least.
With regard to the version of Norton culture that
was so plentiful on the Bering Sea coast of Alaska,
there is reason to suggest that its early stages were
not directly ancestral to the ensuing early Eskimo cul-
ture of St. Lawrence Island or, presumably, of that of
the nearby Chukotka littoral. Significantly, the deco-
rated ceramics of the early Old Bering Sea and appar-
ently the Okvik cultures, confined to the Bering Strait
islands and along the nearby Asian coastal fringe, are
stamped with linear impressions somewhat broader
than, but reminiscent of, Choris and Near Ipiutak
pots, as well as of some early Norton linear-stamped
D. E. DUMOND
ceramics of the typesite of Norton culture located on
the shore of Norton Bay (Ciddings 1 964; Giddings and
Anderson 1 986; Larsen and Rainey 1 948)—that is, sites
generally north of the major Norton heartland of south-
west Alaska. Apparently similar also are some ceram-
ics of late Neolithic sites of the Chukchi Peninsula inte-
rior (Dikov 1 993: 1 5 1 -52). Lip ornaments or labrets, so
common in Norton collections from the American coast
of the Bering Sea but possibly somewhat less so north
of Bering Strait, are lacking entirely in the early Old Bering
Sea-Okvik collections, notwithstanding the interpreta-
tion of Dikov (1979:1 70) that some Okvik anthropo-
morphic carvings illustrate the wearing of labrets in
addition to facial tattoos. These characteristics, like
evidence for some use of iron in Okvik-Old Bering Sea
and Ipiutak collections (Arutiunov and Bronshtein 1 993:
67-8; Collins 1 937:1 46; Cusev and Zhilin 2002; Larsen
and Rainey 1 948:83; Semenov 1 964), suggest an axis
of connection that ran through Bering Strait between
Chukotka and northwestern Alaska, placing the early
St. Lawrence Island and some Asian coastal people
somewhat closer in material culture to northern than
to southern Alaska, despite linguistic classifications that
appear to align them more closely to Eskimoan Yupik
speakers of the Alaskan south (e.g., Woodbury 1 984).
Regarding the chronology of the developed Bering
Strait cultures—that is, those to which the term "wedge"
has been especially applied—there has been disagree-
ment concerning the temporal relationship of Okvik
and early Old Bering Sea, with some researchers as-
signing temporal priority to Okvik (e.g., Dikov 1979:
1 75; Giddings 1 960), others denying it (e.g., Alekseev
et al. 1 972; Arutiunov and Sergeev 1 990; Rainey and
Ralph 1959; but see also Arutiunov and Bronshtein
1993; and Bronshtein and Plumet 1995), in apparent
opposition to claims linking Okvik to the Hillside site
on St. Lawrence Island and to what Collins (1937)
termed the Old Bering Sea I decorative style. My own
study of the St. Lawrence Island collections at the
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and
my examination of the sites around Gambell, at the
northwest extremity of St. Lawrence Island, indicate
to me that some cultural elements excavated by
Collins from two houses at the Hillside site are the
oldest of the materials he assigned to Old Bering Sea.
In significant part these predate the Mayughwaaq
(Collins's Miyowagh) site which produced the largest
corpus of his Old Bering Sea material.
This conclusion rests especially on typology of
ceramic and stone artifacts, and to some extent on
geographic position. The Hillside site near Gambel, St.
Lawrence Island, while located on a geomorphically
earlier formation than the Mayughwaaq site, is physi-
cally so close to it that occupation of the latter would
almost surely have deposited material on the former.
Understanding of the culture of the Hillside site has
been complicated by the course of research there. In
1939, J. L.Giddings excavated a third house, which
then became crucial to the conclusion of Rainey (1 941
)
that Hillside was a site of the Okvik culture (then known
chiefly from a collection from one of the Punuk Islands);
although this third prehistoric house was not then pub-
lished in detail. In any event, the artifact assemblage
from this Hillside House 3 of Giddings, which I ana-
lyzed in 1 994 and published recently (Dumond 1 998b),
sets it apart from the bulk of culture represented by
the Mayughwaaq site and places it firmly with the
Hillside Houses 1 and 2 of Collins, from which it differs
only in the uneven survival of decorations on harpoon
heads—five heads having been recovered from House
3, virtually none from floor associations of the Collins
Houses 1 and 2. One can further assert that the deco-
rative style of House 3 is apart from, and hence possi-
bly earlier than, other elements of the Old Bering Sea
style as known from St. Lawrence Island, and that it
has at least some (but not total) stylistic affinity to
certain artifacts illustrated for the Punuk Island Okvik
collection (Rainey 1941). Last of all, excavations at the
site in 1 973 by Swiss archaeologists evidently cleared
one house (designated House 5 in Table 1 ) that yielded
definitively Okvik-style artifacts (Blumer 2002:86-7),
though results have not yet been widely disseminated.
40 100 YEARS/ THE "ESKIMO WEDGE"
The absolute dating of the Hillside site has unfortu-
nately not been without problems. As is generally
known, the first application of the radiocarbon method
to the Hillside site produced a determination of 2258
± 230 years before present (C-505), but later re-dating
of a sample of the same piece of wood by presum-
ably improved technology in a different laboratory
placed it at 1420 ± 230 B.P. (P-70). None of the other
Hillside determinations run by that second laborator\'
were in excess of 1641 ±65 years ago (Ralph and
Ackerman 1961). A few years later, H.-C. Bandi
(1969:67) reported having tested a fourth house at
the Hillside site, from which he obtained a C-1 4 age of
1 370 ± 60 years; again, no full description of the exca-
vation has been published. His subsequent dating of
graves in the Gambell area that he believed on stylistic
grounds to be early does not resolve the issue (Bandi
1984; see Table 1). Finally, materials from House 5,
which yielded certain Okvik-style harpoon heads, have
been dated between about 1 800 and 1 500 years ago.
In general, determinations from this and other sites
yielding material identified as Old Bering Sea have sel-
dom exceeded 1 700 years before present. Notable
exceptions are dates returned on material subject to
the carbon reservoir effect of the seas and thus dating
anomalously early—sea-mammal bone or ivory, or hu-
man remains that because of heavy dietary depen-
dence on sea mammals are subject to the same skew-
ing factor.*" And because the Bering Strait region is
generally treeless, wood used by humans in either struc-
tures or as fuel can be expected to have been ob-
tained as driftwood, and hence to be older than its
actual use.
Table 1 shows all Old Bering Sea age determina-
tions of which I am aware that exceed about 1 700
years, together with some other newly obtained de-
terminations. The human bone elements of sea-mam-
mal-eating people from the Ekven site (SI-671 7, lEMAE-
705, SI-671 8, Table 1) must stand in need of correc-
tion for the reservoir effect for at least 500 years or so.
That such a move is reasonable is suggested by the
series of 27 determinations from human bone of the
Ekven site listed by Dinesman et. al. (1 999, Appendix
2), of which only three are in excess of 2000 radiocar-
bon years, which when corrected suggest nothing
earlier than 1800 years before 1950, and perhaps a
century or so later. The only determinations in present
Table 1 not evidently suspect because of the reservoir
effect and that substantially exceed 1 800 B.P. are
those shown from two sites on the north Chukchi Pen-
insula: at Seshan, about 100 km northwest of Cape
Dezhnev, and from Cape Dzenretlen, some 200 km
northwest of the same point. Whether these two de-
terminations from charcoal actually indicate the pres-
ence of Old Bering Sea people on the north shore of
the Chukchi Peninsula earlier than elsewhere, or whether
additional dates would fall more in line with those from
two other sites on the same coast, like the Uten site
(MAG-354), 50 km northwest ofCape Dezhnev, or Cape
Vankarem (MAG-352, which wants correction for res-
ervoir effect), 350 km northwest of the cape, cannot
now be answered. At least I am not aware of any
other evidence that would support such an early de-
velopment along the northern Chukchi Peninsula.
When I analyzed the material from the Ciddings
House 3 at the Hillside site, I was able to date three
uncataloged samples of wood stored with the arti-
fact collection. One problem here is that deficiencies in
the documentation prevent one from ascertaining
whether these samples came from an integral place in
the house itself, from overburden, or even from the
exploratory trenching that led to discovery of the house
floor (Ciddings 1 967: 1 70-2). Only one of the three dated
older than, or even as old as, 1 700 years (Beta-782 1 3,
Table 1 ). At about the same time, Michael Lewis, of the
University of Alaska Museum, obtained determinations
on two pieces of walrus ivory included in the House 3
(Ciddings) collection, as well as on two ivory pieces
from the Punuk Island Okvik collection that he identi-
fied as bearing Okvik-style decorations (Table 1). Fi-
nally, in work with the Collins Hillside site collection at
the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in
D. E. DUMOND
Table // Selected Bering Strait Radiocarbon Ages"
SiteMaterial Age Lab. Number Reference
St. Lawrence I.
Beach burials:
Burial 26 ('Okvik') wood 1410 + 60 B-3205 Bandi 1984:61
wood 1310 + 60 B-3206 Bandi 1984:61
Burial 34 ('Okvik') whale bone- 2450 ± 40 B-2877 Bandi 1984:61
Hillside site:
1 930 excavations:
House 1 wood 1 640 1 06 P-95 Rainey & Ralph 1959
nouse J wood Libby 1951
wood 1420 230 P-70'' Ralph & Ackerman 1961
1 973 excavations:
House 5 wood 1460 + 50 B-2871 Blumer 2002
wood 1470 + 80 B-2872 Blumer 2002
wood 1 750 + 50 B-2867 Blumer 2002
wood 1810 + 50 B-2873 Blumer 2002
1994 analysis:
House 3 willow 1 1 00 + 70 Beta-782 1 4 Dumond 1998b
UIILII/cHUcI 1 ? 1 n OV_/ Rpt;D.aS4Q 1DcLd OOH^I Dumond 1998b
willow 1 oUU yu beta- 1 OCX i Dumond 1998b
1995 analyses:
House 1 grass 1 770 40 Beta-931 60 Dumond 1998b
walrus ivory* 2500 + 50 Beta-1 13814 Dumond 1998b
walrus ivory* 2480 + 50 Beta-1 13815 Dumond 1998b
House 2 grass 1680 + 40 Beta-91 359 Dumond 1998b
walrus ivory* 21 30 + 60 Beta-1 13812 Dumond 1998b
walrus ivory* 2240 50 Beta-1 13813 Dumond 1998b
House 3 walrus ivory* 2560 50 Beta-81 492 M. A. Lewis, pers. com.
walrus ivory* 2660 + 50 Beta-81491 M. A. Lewis, pers. com.
Mayughwaaq site:
1 930 excavations wood 1630 230 P-71 Ralph & Ackerman 1 961
wood 1 700 + 1 50 P-93 Ralph & Ackerman 1 961
Punuk Islands
Okvik site:
1 993 analysis walrus ivory" o ^ ^ n + bU Beta-o 1 4o9 M. A. Lewis, pers. com.
walrus ivory lk:> / U — DU Beta-o 1 nyu M. A. Lewis, pers. com.
Asian Mainland
Uten charcoal 1600 + 100 MAC-41 7 Shilo et al. 1979
Chini, burial 5 wood, fur 1605 + 40 MAG-228 Dikov 1977:161
Chini, burial unknown baleen?* 1670 + 40 MAC-360 Shilo et al. 1977
Uten, burial 1 wood 1 750 + 100 MAC-354 Dikov 1 977:1 79
Cape Vankarem baleen* 1840 + 100 MAC-352 Shilo et al. 1977
Dzhenretlen charcoal 1990 + 190 MAG-233 Dikov 1977:194
Ekven, burial 143 human ribs* 1 745 + 75 SI-671 7 W. Fitzhugh, pers. com.
Seshan charcoal 2022 + 100 MAG-104 Dikov 1977:185
Ekven, burial 121^ human bone* 2153 + 110 IEMAE-705 Bronshtein & Plumet, 1995
Ekven, burial 63 human ribs* 2220 ± 65 SI-671 8 W. Fitzhugh, pers. com.
^ Determinations suggesting a so-called conventional age of I 700 years or more for clearly identified Old
Bering Sea or Okvik, plus recently communicated determinations. Omitted are most previously published C-14
determinations suggesting ages of less than I 700 years (6 from the Hillside site, 5 from Mayughwaaq, 4 from
the Asian mainland).
* Materials marked with an asterisk are deemed subject to the marine reservoir effect and thus date too early.
'° Two determinations from a single sample. See text.
^ Burial number reported by Dinesman (1999, Appendix 2), context by Bronshtein and Plumet (1995).
4 2 100 YEARS/ THE "ESKIMO WEDGE"
1995, I identified two samples of grass cataloged as
recovered in 1 930 from between the floor stones of
houses 1 and 2 of the site, which were then dated by
the AMS method (Beta-931 59, -93160, Table 1). And,
as something of an afterthought regarding the magni-
tude of the marine reservoir effect in the Bering Sea, I
later was permitted to date bv the same method a
pair of samples of walrus ivory from each house floor
(Beta-113812 through Beta-113815) that could be
compared directly with the results of the determina-
tions on grass from the same excavation units.
Table 1 illustrates the uncertainties that derive from
the various factors just mentioned. First of all, I believe
that the two determinations on grass, which must be
a local product of both the vicinity and time of occu-
pation, are the least ambiguous dates for the Hillside
site. Given that House 3 on stylistic grounds stands
apart not only from the Mayughwaaq site but to a
lesser extent from the two houses of the Hillside site
excavated by Collins, from which it varies only slightly
in certain frequencies of the more common artifacts, I
had come to accept that House 3 and, by extension,
at least portions of the collection from the Okvik site
of the Punuk Islands, were slightly older than houses 1
and 2. This supposed sequential relationship is sup-
ported by the radiocarbon determinations on walrus
ivory from houses 1,2, and 3 of the Hillside site, and
by one of the dates from the Okvik site (Table 1 ). On
the other hand, given the magnitude of the reservoir
effect suggested by the mixed suites of dates from
the floors of houses 1 and 2 (500 to 700 years; see
Dumond and Griffin 2002), there seems no reason to
suppose that any of the units of these sites exceeds
2000 years in uncorrected radiocarbon age (see also
Blumer 2002). This conclusion, of course, provides a
relatively young age for the Hillside site and by impli-
cation for Old Bering Sea, which has been frequently
estimated to be at least as old as 2500 years (e.g.,
Arutiunovand Bronshtein 1993; Arutiunov and Fitzhugh
1988; Bronshtein and Plumet 1995; Giddings 1960). I
note, however, that this later dating accords well with
the archaeological sequence from southwestern Alaska
as I perceive it.
Concluding Discussion
What, then are the present conclusions as they relate
to those of researchers of the lesuo Exoedition?
Foremost is the finding that the Eskimo population
forming the so-called "wedge"—once postulated by
Bogoras and Jochelson—was a fully autochthonous
development of the territories adjacent to the Bering
Strait region. This population developed linguistically
from American progenitors but clearly sharing with Asia
important artifacts and cultural practices. So far as ar-
chaeology can show, there was no late and intrusive
"Eskimo Wedge." In fairness to Boas, however, one must
recognize that in later writings, while not repudiating
the idea of such a wedge, he did note linguistic evi-
dence that Eskimo and Chukchi had long been neigh-
bors (Boas 1933:369). And long before, even as he
expressed his enthusiasm for the notion of a late and
intrusive arrival of Eskimo people at Bering Strait, he
had accepted the possibility "that a more thorough
investigation of the Alaskan Eskimo may correct our
present conclusions as to the role that this tribe played
in communicating Asiatic culture to America, and
American culture to Asia" (1905:99-100). This tenta-
tive prediction has proven true, not only as demon-
strated by archaeology but through reconsideration
of the body of myth, especially Raven myth, on which
the ethnographers of the Jesup Expedition relied most
heavily, together with the exploration of specifically
Alaskan Eskimo conceptions (e.g., Chowning 1962;
Meletinskii 1 979, 1 983). The lack of field study of Alas-
kan Eskimo societies by researchers of the Jesup Expe-
dition must thus be accounted a serious omission that
contributed heavily to their erroneous postulation of a
recent wedge-like movement of Eskimo people into
the Bering Strait region, a notion that persisted (and
confused) well into the mid-twentieth century.
D. E. DUMOND
Secondarily, and not in special opposition to Boas,
for whom the "late" date of the Eskimo appearance
around Bering Strait was relative rather than absolute,
but in opposition to later commentators who have
ascribed absolute dates to the Eskimo development:
the Eskimo way of life developed fully no earlier than
2000 years ago, many centuries later than semi-
maritime peoples had appeared on both sides of
the Bering Sea. And among these latter, in differing
ways and degrees, were the various cultural, ge-
netic, and linguistic ancestors of the historically
known Eskimo people.
Acknowledgments
I thank the University of Alaska Museum for the loan
of collections from the Hillside site, and the Depart-
ment of Anthropology of the National Museum of Natu-
ral History, Smithsonian Institution, for facilitating study
of their collections in 1995 with support of a
Smithsonian Senior Research Fellowship. I am grateful
to both for agreeing to my requests to allow dating of
items of their collections by the radiocarbon method.
Notes
1. Herein I use only uncalibrated radiocar-
bon ages.
2. I omit consideration of so-called "Alaskan
Paleoindian" remains, which appear to date from
about 10,000 years ago, appearing somewhat
later than traces of the early and apparently Asia-
related peoples although in part contemporary
with them. These "Paleoindian" sites are charac-
terized both by the absence of microblades and
the presence of lanceolate projectile points
strongly reminiscent of roughly contemporary ar-
tifacts of terrestrially focused peoples of conti-
nental America to the south (see pertinent articles
in Bever and Kunz 2001). Harking south and east
to the American interior, rather than west across
Bering Strait, the assemblages appear irrelevant
to the present discussion.
3. Sites of similar age and affinity recorded
more recently in the Unalaska Bay area of nearby
Unalaska Island (also of the Fox group) are thus
4 4
far known only from elevations of 20 m or more
above modern sea level, higher than ocean-edge
sites of later date in the region (see Knecht and
Davis 2001).
4. A single determination of about 3400 years
ago from Shemya, cited previously as a possible
indication of occupation by that time in the Near
Island (Dumond and Bland 1 995, Table 2), has been
learned to be from material subject to a marine
reservoir effect (see note 5, below) and must be
considered younger than the measured age.
5. The coastal site of Naivan, located near
the southern tip of the Chukchi Peninsula, has been
concluded to represent people who devoted
some time to fishing and has been dated to 8000
years or more ago (Gusev 2002)—as have some
other sites reported by Dikov (1993) from east-
ern Chukotka—but displays no evidence of a mark-
edly maritime adaptation.
6. Over the earth as a whole, the surface wa-
ters of the ocean preserve older carbon so that
organisms inhabiting them yield "'C ages about
400 years greater than terrestrial materials of the
same true calendar age, but in certain regions a
much greater excess of apparent age is imparted
because of upwelling of still more ancient carbon
from greater sea depths. This necessitates an ad-
ditional correction; although a specific additional
factor for the Bering Strait region has not yet been
announced, data reported from other North Pa-
cific locales entail a further correction of from 1 00-
300 years, for a total of 500-700 years that must
be deducted from '''C ages to bring them into line
with those from terrestrial samples. See Dumond
and Griffin (2002); Stuiver and Braziunas (1 993).
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48 100 YEARS/ THE "ESKIMO WEDGE"
flailing at ^ering^trait?
~]~ine Jesup j\jorth facific [^-Xpedition and the ^tudtj of (^.uiture (^^ontact
PETER P. SCHWEITZER
In 1 908, Franz Boas—the organizer of the Jesup North
Pacific Expedition ONPE)
—
presented an overview of the
main results of the expedition, six years after its con-
clusion (Boas 1908; see Boas 2001:17-24). Despite
its unimpressive length of 1 6 pages, this report—deliv-
ered as the Opening Address at the 1 6th International
Congress of Americanists in Vienna—was Boas' final
and most extended presentation of what he consid-
ered to be the scholarly fruits of a monumental en-
deavor that lasted for five years (1 897-1 902), costed
at least $100,000, and involved almost 20 research-
ers. According to Boas, the expedition's goal was to
resolve the question of cultural relations between the
Old and New World (Boas 1 908:4). Bering Strait, the
area where the two regions under consideration actu-
ally meet and through which most of the supposed
movements of people, objects, and ideas must have
passed, should thus be considered of prime relevance
to the research questions and targets of the JNPE. How-
ever, the place name "Bering Strait" was mentioned
exactly three times throughout Boas' final JNPE presen-
tation. One of those references was purely locational;
the second one referred to Boas' conviction that Es-
kimo societies were late arrivals at Bering Strait (the
so-called "Eskimo Wedge theory"; see Dumond, this
volume); and the third was in conjunction with the
distribution of reindeer herding in Northern Eurasia (and
its absence in the Americas). This last reference is in-
triguing, since it uses the argument of "lively interac-
tion between Asia and America in the Bering Strait
area" (Boas 1 908:1 7) to argue for the late transition to
reindeer herding in northeastern Siberia. Alas, the ex-
cited reader does not learn anything more about this
"lively interaction" in Boas' final address.
During the years 1 993-96, Evgenii Colovko and
myself have conducted a multi-site oral history study,
entitled "Traveling Between Continents" which was
funded by the U.S. National Park Service, Alaska Re-
gion. Our primary goal was to document the legacy of
inter-continental Native travels between Alaska and
Chukotka (Chukchi Peninsula) during the first half of the
20th century (more specifically, until 1948, when all
official travel across Bering Strait was halted by Cold
War politics). Since our project was situated on the
Asiatic and American sides of Bering Strait, we dealt
intensively with many Chukchi, Inupiaq, and Naukan
Yupik communities and individuals. Although we were
unable to conduct fieldwork on St. Lawrence Island
and in the southeastern section of the Chukchi Penin-
sula, various references to Siberian Yupik societies from
these areas are contained in our data. Situated at mul-
tiple cultural and linguistic boundaries, "Traveling Be-
tween Continents" provided us with ubiquitous in-
stances of culture contact. We learned of social visits,
feuds, long-distance economic endeavors, marriage ties,
exchanges of personal names and songs, between
social units of different cultural and linguistic affiliation.
Since we have provided more detailed discussions of
our results elsewhere (Schweitzer 1997; Schweitzer
and Colovko 1995a, 1995b, 1997a, 2001), I will
present here the project's brief summary only, as it
pertains to the character of culture contact in the Bering
Strait area. This will lead us to the issue of why those
very contacts among the North Pacific Native groups
have surprisingly eluded the interest of many of the
JNPE researchers a century ago.
"Traveling Between Continents" in the
Bering Strait Area
Most of the culture contact processes we encoun-
tered can be interpreted as exchange transactions. In
the first place, the economic realm provides a number
of excellent examples: reindeer herders from the inte-
rior Chukchi Peninsula exchanged their products for sea-
mammal products with coastal communities on the
Asiatic and American sides of Bering Strait, whereas
transactions between maritime communities on differ-
ent sides of the strait focused on goods not locally
available, some of which were acquired through long-
distance trade. Beyond the obvious utilitarian aspect
of exchanging goods, there were also instances of
transactions that defy a simple supply-and-demand
model (for example, wolverine furs were reportedly
traded in both directions across Bering Strait). Thus, a
major element of "traveling" was the creation and
maintenance of social ties. Marriage was a logical ve-
hicle to this end, but so were adoption, formalized
partnership, informal friendship, the migration of indi-
viduals, and personal naming practices. The social links
that were established through these means were a
necessary precondition for any kind of visit that was
not based purely on negative reciprocity (such as raids
and other warfare activities). Since the equivalent of
having no recognized ties in a particular community
was being considered a stranger and, thus, an enemy,
kinship and other links had to be established across
community, language, and ethnic boundaries.
The structure of inter-community contacts was in
no way arbitrary. Geographic and social proximity de-
termined the frequency of social links between indi-
vidual communities. Whereas most of these exchange
5
relations were balanced, there were also instances
of dominance by one side. This was most clearly
expressed in the relations between the reindeer herd-
ers and coastal communities, whereby the herders
generally considered themselves to be superior. A
good example of such unequal relationships was
the spread of the Chukchi language among Yupik
(and, to a much lesser degree, Ihupiaq) speakers,
while there were hardly any instances of Chukchi
being able to speak Yupik or Ihupiaq.'
After 1920, nation state politics of both Russia
and the United States gradually began to exert a domi-
neering influence over these links by encouraging some
(those inside the country) and discouraging other ("in-
ternational") connections. Euro-American group and in-
dividual interests were, nothing new to the area under
consideration. Ever since the first Russian boats had
sailed through Bering Strait in the mid-1 7th century,
the demand for foreign goods had contributed to the
structure of economic relations. Until the mid-1 9th
century, the Asian side of Bering Strait was much closer
to the supply of Russian goods, which provided its
inhabitants with more favorable exchange conditions.
Subsequently these conditions were reversed, first by
Yankee commercial whalers after 1850 and later by
traders operating from Seattle. In the early 20th cen-
tury, the Alaskan Seward Peninsula (i.e., the town of
Nome) became the supply center of imported goods,
while the Chukotka residents were primarily contribut-
ing raw materials or goods of Native production, such
as old ivory, reindeer and fox skins, reindeer fur parkas,
and skin-boots.
As we have argued elsewhere (Schweitzer and
Colovko2001), historic warfare in the Bering Strait area
was a syncretistic product of traditional social organi-
zation (more or less autonomous social units with shift-
ing alliances) and outside pressures (in a nutshell, the
encroaching "World-System"). These outside pressures
led to competition over access to Euro-American goods
and indirectly contributed to the rise of Chukchi rein-
deer herding, which in itself triggered tremendous
100 YEARS/ BERING STRAIT CULTURE CONTACT
changes within the regional network of social relations.
However, warfare was as much an expression of the
social fabric that linked different communities, as were
marriage, economic transactions, or social visits (see
Burch 1 998). Similarly, the conduct of warfare activi-
ties did not exclude those other activities. Since all
those forms of culture contact could appear beyond
(as well as within) ethnic and linguistic boundaries, "cul-
ture change"—that is, the exchange and spread of "cul-
ture elements"—was an almost necessary result of "trav-
eling between continents."
One of the most obvious effects of culture contact
is in the realm of language. Instances of bi- and multi-
lingualism were quite common throughout the Bering
Strait area. As mentioned above, some forms of bilin-
gualism were an expression of one-sided relations;
however, in many other cases (e.g., between the Alas-
kan Inupiat and Siberian Naukan Yupiit Eskimo) there
were approximately equal levels of bilingualism, which
reflected more balanced social relationships. In addi-
tion, all the languages of the area display a fair number
of borrowings in vocabulary and grammar. The exist-
ence of previous "trade jargons" is likely, albeit poorly
documented (cf. De Reuse 1994). Specific language-
related exchanges took place in the realms of the be-
stowal of personal names and the performance of
songs. Inupiaq and Yupik personal names in the Bering
Strait area are "recycled," that is, they are bestowed to
a newborn after the death of its previous bearer; in
addition, each person can have multiple names, some
of which stem from other communities. One specifi-
cally interesting aspect of this regional system of nam-
ing is the high frequency of Chukchi personal names
that is found among the Naukan Yupiit Eskimo (and, to
a lesser degree, among the Bering Strait Inupiat and St.
Lawrence Island Yupik people). The preponderance of
Chukchi personal names in the Naukan name pool is
not the result of Chukchi social dominance, but of the
structural properties of Chukchi and Eskinx) naming
systems, which are distinct but compatible (Schweitzer
and Golovko 1997a). Songs and dances in the Bering
Strait area are "owned" by the individuals and com-
munities who created them. They are, nevertheless,
widely exchanged throughout the region, and songs
are generally performed in their original language. In
contrast to personal names of "foreign origin," the
source of received songs and dances is generally well
remembered and usually acknowledged (see also
Kingston 2000).
While language-related exchanges and borrowings
are easier to detect, those in the realms of social orga-
nization, religion, and material culture are often less
visible. Nevertheless, there are several well-documented
cases in these spheres too. They range from the adop-
tion of reindeer herders' dwellings by the coastal com-
munities of the Chukchi Peninsula and St. Lawrence
Island' to the disintegrating effect of Inupiat bilateral
kinship organization on the clan system of Naukan
Yupiit. Other examples include the adoption of syncre-
tistic religious practices (e.g., a "revitalization move-
ment" in Naukan in the 1 920s) and the abandonment
of others (e.g., the absence of "messenger feasts" on
Little Diomede Island). The above-mentioned forms of
culture contact allude to several distinct processes of
incorporating "foreign elements." We have argued
elsewhere for a preliminary model describing ideal-
types of cultural exchanges in the Bering Strait area
(Schweitzer and Golovko 1 997b). This model proposes
to take particular note of whether a certain cultural
practice is recognized as borrowed or not. Here it is
sufficient to state that even in the early 1990s, after
almost 50 years of suspended direct contacts, the ef-
fects of culture contact were ubiquitous in the Bering
Strait region.
Returning to Boas and theJesup Expedition, it seems
difficult to grasp why a huge joint effort interested in
cultural relations between Asia and America had so
little to say about the Bering Strait region, a multi-eth-
nic arena of diverse forms of culture contact and its
effects. Most of the forms and effects of culture con-
tact across Bering Strait were at least as visible at the
turn of the nineteenth century as they are today (and
p. p. SCHWEITZER
some of them would then have been much easier to
document). The remainder of this paper will shed some
light on why the very crossroads between the Old and
New World proved to be of marginal interest to the
organizer of the JNPE. First, though, it is necessary to
break down this general question into at least two
components. The first is whether Boas, who never vis-
ited the Bering Strait region, slighted the area in his
summary reports or whether this deficiency was an
unfortunate by-product of the organization and logis-
tics of theJNPE fieldwork in the area during 1 900-1
.
Secondly, what was the relationship between the
collected (and published) field data and the interpre-
tations that Boas and other members of the Jesup Ex-
pedition drew from them?
For analytical purposes, I will discuss the JNPE field-
work monographs separately from the interpretations
based on them. However, since there has never been
(and never will be) a neat demarcation line between
data and interpretation, this should not be misunder-
stood as a naive form of positivism. First, I will briefly
review the published monographs that resulted from
(and, in one case, preceded) the JNPE. As a second
step, I will survey the interpretational tools Boas and
his collaborators used to arrive at their conclusions.
Finally, I will tackle the title question whether Boas and
the JNPE, in general, failed at the task of confronting
culture contact in the Bering Strait region.
The Published Field Data
The first thing to be mentioned is that the JNPE teams
did not conduct any fieldwork on the Alaskan side of
Bering Strait nor hardly anywhere else in Alaska (see
Krauss, this volume). Boas justified this circumstance
by referring to other available publications for the re-
gion, such as those by Nelson (1 899), Murdoch (1 892),
and others (Boas 1 908:9).^ For the Alaskan side of Bering
Strait, he certainly had first and foremost Nelson's "The
Eskimo About Bering Strait" in mind, which was pub-
lished in 1 899, during the early phase of the JNPE." Thus,
I will begin this section with a brief review of the book
5 2
that was seemingly considered an adequate substi-
tute for extensive new fieldwork by Boas and his JNPE
crew.
Edward William Nelson (1855-1934) was a natu-
ralist who took on a four-year assignment with the U.S.
Army Signal Service in St. Michael, Alaska, in 1877.
Although his main task was to provide meteorologi-
cal observations, he agreed to collect ethnological in-
formation and specimens for the Smithsonian Institu-
tion in exchange for logistical and publication sup-
port. Between 1877 and 1881, Nelson was able to
travel extensively in the Yukon-Kuskokwim River Delta,
the southern part of the Seward Peninsula, and into the
Indian country along the Yukon River. In addition, in
1 881 he took a trip on the Revenue Cutter Corwin to
St. Lawrence Island, the Chukchi Peninsula, Wrangel Is-
land, and Northwest Alaska as far as Point Barrow
(Fitzhugh and Kaplan 1 982:32). Upon his return to Wash-
ington, D.C., in the fall of 1881, he began to prepare
the publication of his journals and notes; but ill health
delayed the process considerably. Finally, in 1 899, his
monumental monograph, 'The Eskimo About Bering
Strait" appeared in the Eighteenth Annual Report of
the Smithsonian Bureau of American Ethnology for the
years 1896-97.
It is not the purpose of this chapter to provide a
full analysis of Nelson's anthropological results (see
Lantis 1954; Fitzhugh 1983). Instead, I will focus on
the issue of culture contact, which Nelson had ample
opportunities to experience first-hand. Using just broad
linguistic labels of today, he dealt with various Central
Alaskan Yup'ik, Siberian Yupik, Naukan Yupik, and Inup-
iaq groups and had additional short encounters with
Reindeer and Coastal Chukchi in Siberia, as well as with
Athapaskan groups in interior Alaska. Using the nar-
row concept of "traditional societies" (Burch 1 980), he
had data from more than 20 such groups. His location
at St. Michael was ideal for observing real-time culture
contact among them; however, that was not what
Nelson was interested in. Except for the Athapaskan
and the Chukchi, all other Native societies of the
] 00 YEARS/ BERING STRAIT CULTURE CONTACT
region he covered were reduced in his publication to
one label, namely the "western Eskimos." While Nelson
was aware of some of the linguistic and social bound-
aries in the region he surveyed (Nelson 1 899:24-6), he
interpreted them as merely dialect and tribal variations
of one ethnic group. Thus, the first chapter of his mono-
graph starts out with the following statement:
The lives of these people adjacent to the
Tinne [Athapaskan - P. S.], as well as those of
the Siberian coast who are in constant
contact with the Chukchi, have been some-
what modified by their surroundings, al-
though in their language and customs they
are still unmistakably Eskimo (Nelson
1899:23).
It is a pity that 'Nelson did not expand on this mysteri-
ous phrase, "have been somewhat modified by their
surroundings." These are exactly the forms and results
of culture contact we are so interested in. There are,
however, a few short sub-chapters, where he provided
us with some information about the functional rea-
sons of some forms of culture contact. His three-and-
a-half-page account of "Trade and Trading Voyages"
(Nelson 1899:228-32) offers a good review of the ex-
tent of trade networks throughout the region at the
time. Similarly, his short account of "Wars" (Nelson
1899:327-30) is a useful summary of traditional alli-
ances and hostilities in the Bering Strait area. However,
neither in those chapters nor in the rest of his book did
he try to account for the local cultural differences and
their relation to culture contact. Most of the time, his
generalizing statements about "western Eskimo" cul-
ture mirrors mainly the Central Alaskan Yup'ik area with
which he was most familiar.
In the final analysis I have to agree with Margaret
Lantis' assessment that "about 250 pages of the
[Nelson's] text are essentially an annotated museum
catalogue" and that "his presentation of the museum
collection of about 1 0,000 specimens still is unequaled
among Alaska Eskimo ones" (Lantis 1 954:1 3). The re-
sults of Nelson's sojourn and monograph are stron-
gest in the field of material culture, as in the case of his
fellow Smithsonian affiliate, John Murdoch (1 892). Thus,
William Fitzhugh's comment that "Nelson's collections.
. . can be used for scholarly study of interaction and
change across the ethnic, linguistic, and cultural bound-
ary in eastern Norton Sound" (Fitzhugh 1 983:34), nev-
ertheless, cannot be fully executed outside the realm
of material culture.
The two scholars who conducted fieldwork in north-
eastern Siberia for the JNPE were Waldemar Jochelson
(Vladimir lokhel'son, in Russian) and Waldemar Bogoras
(Vladimir Bogoraz). While Jochelson worked mainly
among the Koryak people in northern Kamchatka and
among the Even, Yukagir, and Sakha people of the
contemporary Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) and the
Magadan Province, Bogoras conducted his field sur-
veys mainly in Chukotka, including several locations at
Bering Strait. Waldemar Bogoras (1865-1936) was a
Russian revolutionary whose first acquaintance with
Siberia and its Native people was involuntary: he was
exiled to the mouth of the Kolyma River during the
years 1890-8. Like several of his fellow narodniki ex-
iles, he began collecting ethnographic and folklore ma-
terial from the Chukchi and other peoples, with whom
he was in contact (see more in Vakhtin 2001 :78-82).
The linguistic competence and ethnographic experi-
ence acquired during those years made him an excel-
lent choice for the JNPE Siberian team. In addition,
Bogoras had already participated in a large ethno-
graphic expedition to Yakutia, sponsored by the rich
gold miner and philanthropist Innokentii Sibiriakov in
the years 1895-97.
The fieldtrip for JNPE was conducted by Bogoras
and his wife, Sofia Bogoras, over 1 2 months during the
years 1 900-1 . Unfortunately, Bogoras had to cover an
unreasonably broad area. As Igor Krupnik has recently
noted
,
"he [Bogoras - P.S.] was mainly on the move. .
. . he surveyed an area from the Bering Strait to
Kamchatka Peninsula, over a distance equal to a round
trip from London to Sicily" (Krupnik 1 996:40). Thus,
when Bogoras finally reached the shores of the Bering
Strait during the last months of his Siberian sojourn, he
p. p. SCHWEITZER
was unable to visit all the coastal villages as planned.
Especially unfortunate was the fact that he did not
make it to the areas closest to the Alaskan mainland,
particularly, the villages of Naukan, Uelen, and their sur-
roundings, as he originally proposed to Boas (Vakhtin
2001 :83). However, it is worth mentioning that Bogoras
conducted that trip ("traveling half-way between con-
tinents") in the "Native way".
The major result of Bogoras' JNPE participation was
his three-part monograph TheChukcheeiBogoras 1904-
9). Despite its mono-ethnic title, the massive work also
provides significant information about the Siberian Yupik
ROUTE-MAP, Jt&UP WORTH PAOIPIC EXPtOITION
The red lines show the princijxvl rouies irnverx*?! Iiy iwirtie* in «he field (row 1S97 li> i(/>2 inclusive. In Nurlh America the juumey« of the
diUcrtnt parties have w)t hwn inriitaltd strsiaratel)', the coumry having been coveretl in m> many diri-ctions : in Asia the ilnt-and-da.'ih line shows the
course followed hy the Bogoras party ; the broken Sine, ihit of the Jochetson party ; the iolicl liiic. that of the Laufer jiarly.
6/A segment of the original map of tine Jesup Expedition activities, 1 897- / 902, showing the routes of
Bogoras' andJochelson's parties in the Bering Sea area (Adapted from Boas / 903:72)
was able to reach St. Lawrence Island from the south-
eastern coast of the Chukchi Peninsula. He traveled by
Native skin-boat from Cape Chaplin to Cambell, on St.
Lawrence Island in May 1 901 and he spent a few days
on the island, before coming back by the same boat.
That made Bogoras the only early ethnographer who
(whom Bogoras called Asiatic Eskimo) and, to a lesser
degree, the Koryak, Yukagir, Even, and Russian Creole.
In accordance with other major "base-line ethnogra-
phies" of the turn of the century, Bogoras managed to
touch upon almost everything anthropologists were
supposed to be interested in: from fishing implements
54 100 YEARS/ BERING STRAIT CULTURE CONTACT
to funeral ceremonies, from shamanism to dog-breed-
ing, and from children's games to Native customary
law. Unlike his Alaskan predecessors Nelson and Mur-
doch, he thus succeeded in providing a more holistic
portrait of the society he studied and not an account
biased primarily towards its material culture. His long-
term experience in the area and his fluent knowledge
of the Chukchi language surely contributed to the truly
impressive scope and quality of his work. In retrospect,
one of the few major shortcomings of his monograph
was also related to his prolonged stay in western
Chukchi territory, among the reindeer herders of the
Kolyma River area. Throughout his book, there is a
marked preponderance of information about the Rein-
deer Chukchi, while the Maritime Chukchi (and Siberian
Yupik) are generally treated with much less attention.
As Krupnik has mentioned, Bogoras continued through-
out his career to look at Siberian Native life through a
Reindeer Chukchi lens (Krupnik 1 996:43). In addition,
Krupnik has aptly criticized Bogoras for representing
Maritime Chukchi (and Siberian Yupik) social organiza-
tion as much less structured than it proved to be by
later research (Krupnik 1 996).
However, recognizing that shortcomings are quite
inevitable in a work of the scope of The Chukchee, in-
stead, I want to focus on the most notable achieve-
ments of the book. To me, those are the already men-
tioned multi-ethnic focus and the extensive use of his-
toric documents, both of which lend a truly diachronic
quality to Bogoras' volume. It should be remembered
that the predominant format of ethnographic mono-
graphs at the time—including Boas' vision of the JNPE
publication series—was to treat a single ethnic group
as an isolated phenomenon that could be described
without much mention of other groups. The Chukchee;
to the contrary, was characterized by an unusual
amount of historical information. For example, Bogoras'
50-page chapter, "Contact of the Chukchee with the
Russians," has few equals in early 20th century eth-
nographies. Bogoras did not limit his diachronic ap-
proach to accounts of "colonial history," but applied it
to a variety of topics, such as the "origin of reindeer
breeding" or issues of shamanism.
In addition, Bogoras constantly challenged the nar-
row confines of single-ethnic monographs. He not only
referenced inter-group and inter-ethnic relations in the
abstract; but he also contributed hundreds of concrete
illustrations of such relationships. For example, in dis-
cussing "Mixed Marriages" (Bogoras 1904-9:591-5),
he did not merely state that Chukchi men sometimes
married Tungus (Even) women. Instead, he provided
intricate details about how the problem of distinct mar-
riage presentations (bride-service vs. bride-price) was
solved. Similarly, his sections about "Trade" (Bogoras
1 904-9:53-69) and "Warfare
'
(1 904-9:645-59) abound
in specific details of interethnic conduct. In sum. The
Chukchee is not only a "world-class monograph" but
one that provides ample concrete data about culture
contact in areas adjacent to Bering Strait.
Bogoras published several other volumes resulting
from his participation in theJNPE. However, these were
mainly collections of folklore (Bogoras 1910a, 1913,
1917, 1 9 1 8) or linguistic sourcebooks (Bogoras 1 949).
In addition, he wrote a huge assembly of articles; since
most of them address specific topical problems and
use his JNPE materials mainly as illustrations, they will
be discussed in the following section.
Interpretations by Boas and Bogoras
At the turn of the twentieth century, the battle be-
tween evolutionists and diffusionists was the defining
moment in anthropological debates (see Lee and
Graburn, this volume). Boas was among the most vo-
cal and influential critics of evolutionism, which had
dominated the generation of scholars preceding him.^
His article, "The Limitations of the Comparative Method
of Anthropology" (1 896; abbreviated hereafter as "The
Limitations"), remains a textbook example of the "his-
torical method" which dismisses approaches that treat
all similar phenomena as the results of the "uniform
working of the human mind." Boas was, however, from
the beginning a "moderate diffusionist." Already in "The
p. p. SCHWEITZER
Limitations" he demanded that the historical method
is applied to a "well-defined, small geographical terri-
tory" and that "continuity of distribution as one of the
essential conditions for proving historical connection"
be observed (Boas 1 982 [1 940]:277). This caveat was
directed at more radical diffusionists, many of whom
were strongly influenced by the German
anthropogeographer Friedrich Ratzel (as was, in fact,
Boas himself). At the same time, Boas did not exclude
the possibility of "independent invention," nor did he
reject the "comparative method" entirely. Instead, he
was calling for careful historical investigations before
building any sweeping models that rested on evolu-
tion or diffusion.
This was very much Boas' mindset during the orga-
nization and conduct of the JNPE. The plan for the ex-
pedition can be seen as an attempt to apply the his-
torical method, by selecting a well-defined geographi-
cal territory and looking for continuities and discont-
inuities of culture element distribution. As Boas stated
after the completion of the expedition, "if we approach
the problem of culture parallels from a purely psycho-
logical and purely evolutionistic point of view, an in-
vestigation or a problem, as the one before the Jesup-
expedition, would seem unsolvable" (Boas 1908:5). In
other words, the JNPE would have never been designed
nor undertaken by an ardent evolutionist.
According to Harris (1968:278-80), around 1910,
Boas began to change his general views about the
possibilities of finding general laws regarding cultural
development. He became more skeptical about the
predictability of cultural processes and maintained that
there is no necessary correlation between the devel-
opmental stages of different aspects of culture. This
theoretical development of Boas is important for our
purposes. As mentioned above, his final report regard-
ing the results of theJNPE was presented in 1 908. How-
ever, at that time a significant portion of individual
monographs stemming from the expedition was not
yet published. It took until 1 926 for the final portion of
the expedition field data Gochelson's final delivery of
5 6
his Yukagir monograph) to appear in one of the last
issues undertheJesup Expedition series (whereas Jochel-
son's JNPE Yakut materials were only published in 1 933
and outside of the expedition series). At that point in
his career, Boas had entirely abandoned every aspect
of the comparative method, devoted himself to "his-
torical particularism," and became more interested
in individual rather than in group processes (Harris
1968:280-1).
It is also noteworthy that the final volume of the
JNPE series (vol. XII, to be entitled "Summary and Final
Results"; Boas 1 905:94) was never published. In a sense,
the full interpretation of Bogoras' (and Nelson's) results
was never accomplished by Boas. It could be argued
that Boas' JNPE program reflected primarily his early
theoretical preoccupations (as outlined in The Limita-
tions"). By the time all the results were finally assembled.
Boas' interests had significantly changed and, thus, a
detailed summary and interpretation of data collected
under a "past paradigm" was no longer desirable.
The question remains as to which aspects of the
original program might have become obsolete for Boas.
Since we have no direct evidence from him on the
subject, I cannot make more than informed guesses.
By reading through Boas' early reports about the JNPE,
I was quite struck by the sheer spatial and temporal
scope of the problems he intended to address. Far
from staying within the "well-defined geographical ter-
ritory" of the North Pacific region. Boas addressed ques-
tions of culture history ranging from the southern tip of
South America to Europe and from the Paleolithic to
the recent past. If this is the "historical method," it surely
is history on a macro-scale. Boas was dealing with
questions such as the when and where of the origin of
Eskimo culture; he compared the peoples of the Arctic
and Northwestern North America to those ofthe south-
ern part of North America; he hypothesized about
Mesoamerican influences in North America; he tried to
assess the relative ages of different culture areas; he
classified the languages of northeastern Siberia in rela-
tion to North American languages, etc. (Boas 1 908).
100 YEARS/ BERING STRAIT CULTURE CONTACT
These questions seemed more appropriate in the writ-
ing of an ardent diffusionist rather than of a moderate
advocate of the "historical method."
It might well be that the initial program of the JNPE
was in reality much more ambitious than Boas' cau-
tionary theoretical prescriptions. Somehow, the stra-
tegic location of the JNPE must have tempted Boas to
address the "big questions" of culture history, such as
the peopling of the Americas. While his JNPE master
plan can be said to fit with his theoretical writings of
the time, it also made room for much more far-reach-
ing issues. One thing that even Boas' theoretical oppo-
nents admit is that he held very high methodological
standards (see Harris 1 968). It is easy to imagine that
Boas realized that, however tempting the "big ques-
tions" might be, the JNPE data did not provide more
than food for speculation. More in accordance with
his (especially, later) views, he eventually abandoned
the grand synthesis project. Instead, he went to prac-
tice in the field of "historical particularism." However,
either because of time constraints or lack of regional
interest, he did not work with all the data compiled by
the JNPE. In fact, he primarily worked with materials on
Northwest coast societies, where he tried to recon-
struct detailed historical sequences. The Bering Strait
material never received a similar treatment by Boas.
In contrast to Boas, Bogoras was for most of his
career an outspoken (although not always conscious)
evolutionist. Traces of this approach can easily be found
in most of his writings, including "The Chukchee." There,
before presenting materials on Chukchi religion, he pro-
vides us with his views on the five "developmental
stages of primitive religious concepts" (Bogoras 1 904-
09:277-90). The model suggested by Bogoras dis-
plays an eclectic mix of influences ranging from Charles
Darwin to Herbert Spencer to Edward B. Tylor. Although
those pages contain interesting ethnographic informa-
tion, its presentation suffers from the straightjacket
approach of constructing a unilineal sequence of reli-
gious concepts: from animism (a label he rejected) to
supernatural beings. In addition, Bogoras provided a
short comparative treatment of religious ideas among
the Koryak and Itelmen, as compared to the Chukchi
(Bogoras 1 904-9:290-1 ). While the similarities between
Koryak and Chukchi concepts seem to strengthen
Bogoras' evolutionistic argument, his final paragraph
of that section indicates an implicit argument for diffu-
sion. He pointed out that Chukchi and Eskimo folklore
showed strong resemblances, while Koryak and Itelmen
stories were closer to those of the American North-
west coast (Bogoras 1904-9:291).
Other instances of evolutionistic leanings in The
Chukchee can be found in Bogoras' treatment of social
organization. For example, regarding the Chukchi "family
group"—a group of kindred families—he suggests that
it "may perhaps be called an embryo of a clan" (Bogoras
1904-9:541). However, despite the usage of such
terms as "group-marriage," The Chukchee, for the most
part, stays free of putting Chukchi social organization
into an evolutionary framework. Such a framework was
to be found in Bogoras' last publications, when Marx-
ist evolutionist line demanded that his views fit into
the ruling dogmas such as "pre-clan" and "clan soci-
ety" (see Bogoras n.d.: 292-6). His views about reli-
gion, on the other hand, were consistently phrased in
developmental terms (see Bogoras 1906, 1910b).
It has already been indicated that Bogoras was
not opposed to explaining the distribution of culture
elements through diffusion and migration. This is espe-
cially evident from a number of his articles published
after the completion of the JNPE. For example, his
Russian article "Ancient Migrations of Peoples in North-
ern Eurasia and America," (Bogoras 1927) reads like a
compendium of speculative population movements
throughout the northern parts of Eurasia and North
America. While Boas and Bogoras seem to meet in this
respect, there was a temporal hiatus between their
macro-historical contributions. When Bogoras issued
his major statements on the subject during the 1 920s
(e.g., Bogoras 1 924, 1 927), Boas had already long aban-
doned the search for the "big picture" of human cul-
tural history.
p. p. SCHWEITZER
After reviewing Boas' and Bogoras' general ap-
proaches, we still need to look at several specific as-
sumptions that informed their work. One of them is
the already-mentioned "Eskimo Wedge theory," which
can be called a direct result of the JNPE (Dumond, this
volume; Freed et al. 1 988:32). According to Boas' view
(which was shared by Bogoras), Eskimo cultures origi-
nated in Canada and were late arrivals to Alaska, where
they "interrupted, at an early period, the communica-
tion between the Siberian and Indian tribes" (Boas
igOSigS-g)."^ unfortunately, this view of Bering Strait
culture chronology disqualified the various Eskimo so-
cieties of the region from being considered an intrinsic
part of the regional cultural network. Another specific
assumption that informed Boas' (but not Bogoras')
approach has at least to be mentioned, being that for
Boas "culture contact" was limited to contact among
Native societies. He had no interest in the dramatic
cultural processes that were taking place before the
eyes of thejesup Expedition members in the field. This
aspect of Boas' views —which is so difficult to grasp
—
has rightly been questioned by several other papers in
this volume (see Krauss, this volume; Lee and Craburn,
this volume). Here it must suffice to state that Boas'
concept of the relationship between science and poli-
tics was ambiguous. While he is rightly remembered as
a courageous enemy of racism, Boas always consid-
ered his "political" views as being entirely "scientific."
Thus, there was no room for a moralistic position, which
would have been an almost inescapable precondition
or consequence of analyzing contemporary Native/
non-Native interactions.
Conclusions
Let me now attempt at a preliminary synthesis of the
arguments developed above. There is no reason to
suggest that Boas' lonely fieldworker on the Russian
side of Bering Strait—^Waldemar Bogoras—failed the
task of documenting culture contacts in the region.
On the contrary, his major account of theJNPE-trip, The
Chukchee, contains many excellent descriptions of such
5 8
processes. After almost ) 00 years, this work contin-
ues to be a "treasure chest" of information for scholars
interested in the subject.
Unfortunately, things were different for the Alas-
kan section of the region. Nelson's material culture-
focused monograph could in no way match Bogoras'
lively account. With the possible exception of tracing
culture contact through objects of material culture,
we are left today with few usable clues. It has to be
stated, however, that Nelson's "job description" nei-
ther at the time of his Alaskan fieldwork (1 877-8 1 ) nor
during his writing for the Smithsonian (in the 1880s
and 1 890s) included what we would want to see most
in his monograph these days. Thus, to a certain de-
gree, the "blame" should rather be put on Boas who
assumed that Nelson's' work in progress could/would
become a valid substitute forJNPE fieldwork in Alaska.
He seemed to have sensed that after the completion
of the Jesup Expedition, when he stated that "unfortu-
nately our knowledge of the Alaskan Eskimo is not
thorough enough to permit of a definitive statement
in regard to their culture" (Boas 1 905:98). However,
we at least have to consider the institutional and po-
litical pressure Boas was facing while lobbying for "his"
expedition (Freed et al. 1988). It might well be that
keeping good rapport with the Smithsonian Institu-
tion, which had financed Murdoch's and Nelson's re-
port, led him to abandon plans for independent field-
work in Alaska.'
Although Bogoras and Boas are often portrayed
as having belonged to mutually exclusive camps of
anthropological theory (evolutionism and historical par-
ticularism, respectively), most of their synthesizing writ-
ings on the subject adopt a strangely similar perspec-
tive. Both show a particular interest in "grand culture
history," which leaves no room for the study of con-
crete culture history. In Bogoras' case, his interest in
the details of how neighboring groups interact seems
to have been satisfied by the completion of his JNPE
monographs. Further micro-historical analysis was
seemingly not a major concern to him. For Boas, macro-
100 YEARS/ BERING STRAIT CULTURE CONTACT
history held its fascination until around 1 908; after that,
he devoted much of his energies to local and detailed
accounts of historical processes. Unfortunately, the
Bering Strait region was never able to attract consider-
able attention from this outstanding scholar. The "Es-
kimo Wedge" theory created and defended by Boas,
Bogoras, and others, certainly did not contribute to
the study of culture contact phenomena in the area
under consideration. Since the Eskimo societies around
Bering Strait were considered to have "messed up the
puzzle" of culture history, instead of being interpreted
as an intricate part of it, the heuristic value of the re-
gion became negligible. Viewed from their "macro-
scale" perspective of history, Bering Strait appeared
too "narrow" as to allow a sweeping statement to be
applied to the North Pacific Rim.
Finally, Bogoras' detailed descriptions of Native/
non-Native interactions in the Bering Strait region did
not attract Boas' analytical curiosity, since the latter
thought them outside of the anthropologists' goals.
Thus, another chance at understanding the mechanisms
of culture contact and change was passed over.
The question phrased in the title of this paper
—
Failing at Bering Strait?—has yet to be addressed.
While it is evidently quite easy to point out certain
shortcomings some 1 00 years after the completion
of the JNPE, I concede that it would be inappropri-
ate to speak of "failure" regarding the expedition's
accomplishments in the Bering Strait region. After
all, the research questions and interests of Boas,
Bogoras, and the others who contributed to the
mega-size endeavor of the JNPE were shaped by
the dominant theories and paradigms of their time.
Thus, we cannot condemn them for the fact that
they did not pose or answer then many of our key
questions of today. In the final analysis, there is noth-
ing more telling than the fact that we are still de-
bating their field data and theoretical positions and
will probably continue to do so for at least another
1 00 years. Few of us can hope for a similar interest
by succeeding generations of anthropologists, who
will perceive the shortcomings of our approaches
all too plainly.
Acknowledgments
This article is a follow-up to a joint paper by Evgenii V.
Colovko and myself presented at the conference "Con-
structing Cultures Then and Now: A Centenary Confer-
ence Celebrating Franz Boas and the Jesup North Pa-
cific Expedition, 1 897-1 997," November 1 997, in New
York City. I hereby want to acknowledge the input
Evgenii Colovko has provided on my anthropological
perspectives, especially within the context of our joint
research project "Traveling Between Continents." I also
want to thank Stacie Mcintosh and Igor Krupnik for
editorial assistance and advice.
Notes
1 . However, in the few villages with a mixed
Chukchi and Yupik population, such as Kiwak and
Uelen, Chukchi fluent in Yupik were quite common
(see Krupnik and Chlenov 1 979).
2. To be more specific, coastal residents
adopted certain architectural principles of the
yaranga, the traditional skin-covered dwelling of
the Reindeer Chukchi. As its tundra precursor, the
coastal yaranga was an above-ground structure
which featured an inner chamber (polog). In con-
trast to the reindeer herders' dwelling, it was more
solid and not designed for frequent moves. This
architectural shift only became possible once the
coastal residents received a steady supply of re-
indeer skins (to cover the polog and other parts of
the yaranga) from the tundra (Igor Krupnik, per-
sonal communication, November 1998).
3. According to a map of proposed expedi-
tion operations published in 1 897, fieldwork was
also planned in Western Alaska and the Aleutians
(see Fitzhugh and Krupnik 2001 :xvi; Krupnik and
Vakhtin, this volume).
4. In addition, he might have had John
Murdoch's "Ethnological Results of the Point Bar-
row Expedition" (1 892) in mind, which was already
published by the time JNPE was in the planning
stage. However, Murdoch's monograph is not only
situated outside of our geographic range of inter-
P. p. SCHWEITZER
ests, but has hardly anything to offer on issues of
culture contact.
5. Since I am here primarily interested in Boas'
treatment of culture change in the Bering Strait
area, I cannot provide an in-depth review of Boas'
general contributions to anthropology. For recent
contributions to this vast body of literature see
Baker (1998), Cole (1999), Darnell (1998, 2001),
as well as several contributions in Stocking (1 996)
and Krupnik and Fitzhugh (2001).
6. Frederica de Laguna's statement (1 994:1 2)
that Boas' views on the problem were already for-
mulated in his famous early monograph "The Cen-
tral Eskimo" (1888) can be extended. It could be
argued that his general views on the homogene-
ity of Eskimo culture, formed as they were by his
Central Inuit field experience, made him uncritical
of Nelson's field data.
7. Boas had a long-standing but complex re-
lationship with the Smithsonian National Museum.
In 1887, Boas had a protracted dispute with the
museum's Otis Mason about how to properly dis-
play museum artifacts (Cole 1995 [1985]:1 12-8).
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p. p. SCHWEITZER

I7/Jochelson's first expedition camp at the village ofKushka on the Sea of Okhotsk Coast, summer 1900. Dina
Jochelson-Brodsky is sitting in the middle; a tall man standing to her left is Norman Buxton (?) (AMNH 4 1 88)
63
8/ The transport oftheJNPE collections near Yakutsk, East Siberia, spring 1902. Photographer, WaldemarJochelson
(AMNH 1755)
64
9/ Waldemar Bogoras, with the expedition collection freight ready for shipping out of Novo-Mariinsk, summer
1901 . Note the label on one of the crates: "Jessup (sic!) Expedition. Jochelson. Vladivostock via Nagasaki." Other
crates carry label "Anadyr" (in Cyrillic) and a Russian double-head eagle imperial seal (AMNH 22332)
/ 0/Jochelson's reindeer team with the JNPE collections, East Siberia, 1 90 1 (?) (AMNH4206)
66
/ //Jesup Expedition Siberian collections displayed at the AMNH. Photographer, R.E. Dahlgren (AMNH 3 1 003)
6 7
1 2/ Example of old Eskimo twined basketry (pack sack) issran (Central Yup'ik). Collected by
James W. VanStone on Nunivok Island, 1952 (UAM 554-5446)
68
14/Closeup ofgrass-coiling technique
(Reprinted from: Otis Mason 1902, Fig.] 31).
/ 5/ Closeup oftwined-grass technique
(Reprinted from: Otis Mason 1902, Fig.] 52)
] 6/ Miner Bruce basi<et
from Kotzebue Sound. Pho-
tographer, Aniba] Rodriguez
(AMNH cat. #60-2324)
/ 7/ Early coiled beach-grass basket. Collected by Lt. CM. Stoney on Putnam or Kobuk River,
northern Alaska, 1887 (NMNH cat. #1 27891
)
70
19/ Eskimo in skin boats (umiaks^ ready to trade with the passing ship. Port Clarence, Alaska, 1899. Harriman
Expedition (NMM P-l 1078)
7 1
RUSSIAN
.TRADE
..GOODS
\
Sakha/Yakut
160
/
- Reindeer skins
^ Maritime products: sea mammal
oil, seal and walrus skins, ivory
;
^ Land peltries:sable,fox (Siberia);
fox, beaver, lynx, marten (Alaska) /
Manufactures, etc.: clothing,
pipes, bowls, beadwork, dogs,
berries, wood, jade, chert
O Major trade centers
180
Yukagir
Evenk \
Nizhnekolymsk
East Siberian Sea I
Wrangel Is.
In**'
Yukagir
,
Okhotsk^
'Evenk
/
Even //
ll
/J.
Chukchi
Markovo
Anadyri
/
50 / Ncgidal TSakhalin
AlbazinV?. r"'"^^''^''' ^"^"f'"V lirn,V'tof,
f It'elmenJ
jizhic
Chukchi
Qulfof
^
Anadyr '^i^
Koryak
Nizhne Kamchatsk
AMERICAN
WHALERS
Bolsheretskf
Petropavlovsk
Ci. Aleut
Kuril Is.
PACIFIC OCEAN
20/ North Pacific-Sibehan-Alaskan Trade Systems, ca. / 775-1900. Adapted from Fitzhugh and Crowell 1 988:236-37, with
revisions.
72
140
Commercial trade
goods: Russian traders (tobacco,
break tea, beads, iron implements,
firearms, clothing); Chinese and
Japanese traders ( tea, beads, porcelai
firearms, l<nives, clothing); Hudson Bay
Company (blankets, tobacco, firearms,
knives, and axes); American whalers
(alcohol , firearms, ammunition,
woodem boats, tobacco, clothing).
Limit ofpolar ke
Trade goods moved from east to west, and north to south, creating a crossroads oflinked cultures across the Bering Sea area.
7 3

20/ North PadPc-Sibehari-Alaskan Trade Systems, cc. 1775-1 900. Adapted from Fitzhugh and Crowell 1 98S:236}1
•
Tr.de goods moved from east to west, and north to south, creating a crossroads oflinked
cultures across the Bering Sea area.
72
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2// Sfl/V/f /.OM/rence Island coiled beach-grass tray. Collected by Dr. Riley D. Moore, 1912
(NMNH cat. #280637)
22/ Chukchi basket. Collected by
Waldemar Bogoras, Jesup North
Pacific Expedition, 1 900-0 1 . Pho-
tographer, Am'bal Rodriguez (AMNH
cat. #70-7952)
7 4
75
24/ Koryak coiled grass basket. Collected by Waldemar and Dina Jochelson, Jesup North
Pacific Expedition, 1900-01. Photographer, Antbal Rodriguez (AMNH cat. # 70-3932, 70-3352)
25/ Koryak coiled willow root basket. Collected by Waldemar and Dina Jochelson, Jesup North Pacific
Expedition, 1 900-0 1 . Photographer, Am'bal Rodriguez (AMNH cat. # 70-3 1 95)
76
26/ Chinese tea basket, bamboo with porcelain tea cups. Collected by Berthold Laufer, Jesup North Pacific Expedi-
tion, 1898-99. Photographer, Anfbal Rodriguez (AMNH cat. # 70-2638)
27/Ainu basket (ter\k\). Collected
by Bashford Dean, in Hokkaido
Shikiu, 1901 (AMNH cat. #70-
4091 A&B)
7 7
28/ Koryak basket makers at work. WaldemarJochelson (Dina Jochelson-Brodsky?), photographer, 1 900-0 1 (AMNH
1576)
78
[diffusion and (^.oionial /\ntl-iropo!ogL):
"J^heones of CZ-hange in the (^ontext of Jesup 1
MOLLY LEE
NELSON H. H. GRABURN
The centennial of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition is
a fitting occasion on which to reexamine the construct
of diffusion, which has lain dormant since the grand
theories of the 19th century fell from anthropological
grace. Without question, one of Franz Boas' main inter-
ests in verifying the Asian origins of North American
indigenous cultures was to chart the distribution of
cultural elements across Siberia and into Alaska (Boas
1 903:73). Nevertheless, Jesup Expedition publications,
and those by Boas himself, map the spread of such
elements among the Native cultures of Siberia, but are
uniformly unenlightening on links across Bering Strait.
The overarching argument of this paper is that dif-
fusion theory never reached its full potential in Jesup
Expedition publications because the Boasian model
used by its investigators failed to incorporate the
agency of World System Theory (Wallerstein 1 974).
Their perspective ignored hybrid cultural forms emerg-
ing from the cross fertilization of the North Pacific in-
digenous peoples with the world system into which
they were linked by the fur trade, the Yankee whaling
industry, and the other forms of commerce that esca-
lated across the North at the turn of the 20th century.
Whereas Boas and his contemporaries discussed in
some detail Native-Native contacts, they bracketed
out the trans-Beringian connection, a route largely con-
trolled by Western traders and whalers, because at
that time, Native-Western interactions did not fall within
the scope of anthropology (see also Schweitzer, this
volume). We use a case study of the transmission of
two hybrid forms of coiled basketry across Siberia
and Alaska through the agency of the world sys-
tem to illustrate our point.
The World System and the Spread of Coiled
Basketry across Siberia and Bering Strait
The hypothetical spread of coiled basketry across Si-
beria from two different sources, the Chinese border
and the Kamchatka Peninsula, underscores the pivotal
role of the world system in the diffusion of cultural
traits in the areas studied by the Jesup Expedition. It
also makes clear the contribution that material culture
studies can make to our understanding of culture his-
tory. In an era when most branches of anthropology
have abandoned the search for relationships between
the cultural forms of one group and another, material
culture studies and archaeology have retained this ap-
proach, not out of any belief that it might lead to the
discovery of "Ur-forms," but because the cultural di-
mensions of material objects can only be understood
by charting their variants through time and space. Our
research into the spread of coiled basketry across Si-
beria and into Alaska, for example, illustrates how the
failure to take non-Native agency into consideration
created an artificially static picture of culture change
in the North when the reality was both complex and
infinitely protean.
Aboriginally, Alaskan Eskimo people from Bristol
Bay to Barrow made basketry and matting in the
twined technique (Fig. 12). Between 1878 and 1881,
79
however, Edward W. Nelson collected two types of
coiled basketry in the region of Bering Strait (Fig. 1 3)
for which there was no archaeological precedent (Lee
1995:58; Nelson 1899:202-5). Coiling is completely
different from twining. Twining involves twisting two
flexible weft strands around a set of rigid warp ele-
ments. Coiling, by contrast, consists of overwrapping
a foundation of one or more fibers with a weft strand
and at the same time securing one revolution of the
coil to the next (Figs. 14, 1 5).
Nelson's findings of the newly appearing coiled
basketry around Bering Strait were soon joined by those
of others, such as Miner Bruce on the northern edge of
the Seward Peninsula (Fig. 16) and Murdoch at Point
Barrow (Murdoch 1892:326-7; VanStone 1980:50-
1 ). The first type of coiled basketry to appear in Alaska
was made of beach grass {Elymus mollis), and spiraled
from the center of the base in a technique known as
bundle coiling (Fig. 1 7). The other, made of willow-
root, is constructed in the single-rod, non-interlocking
coiling technique (Fig. 18; see Mason 1904/1972:
247c). The only ethnic group near the Eskimo people
to use any form of coiling was the Athabaskan Indi-
ans, who made single-rod willow-root baskets in the
same technique as those in the Nelson collection; how-
ever, none is known to predate them (Lee 1995:59).
Given the constant flow of traffic, both Native and
non-Native, across Bering Strait during the whaling and
trading era of the late-nineteenth century (Fig. 1 9), the
next logical place to look for the sources of the two
types of Eskimo coiled ware is in Siberia.
Trade Routes between Siberia and Alaska
Establishing a connection between Alaskan Eskimo and
Siberian coiled basketry depends on demonstrating
technological similarities between them and a pos-
sible means of their transmission. In a global sense,
Alaska was the final meeting point of the world-encir-
cling capitalist trading system linking Europe and Asia.
By 1 750, Russian fur traders and commercial hunters
had moved across Siberia as far south as Kamchatka,
as far north as Chukotka (the Chukchi Peninsula), and
as far east as Alaska (Fisher 1 943). At the same time,
the North American arm of the fur trade, in the form of
the Hudson Bay Company, was approaching Alaska
from the East, reaching British Columbia by 1 843 and
Fort Yukon in the interior Alaskan Arctic by 1 847 (Fig.
20).
More immediately, Alaska was directly connected
to Siberia by Native and western commerce by the
late nineteenth century. As Dorothy J. Ray has put it,
the waters of Bering Strait functioned as "an intercon-
tinental highway, its coastal fringes occupied by
peoples who had more or less the same way of life"
(Ray 1 975:1 0). In the ice-free summertime, both people
and commodities moved back and forth by this route
in large skin boats known as umiaks. European trade
goods had reached the coast of Alaska via Siberia
well before the arrival of the first white explorers (Ray
1975:197). Thus the presence of Europeans and the
proliferation of imported goods they brought along
served to stimulate—but not initiate—a pre-existing
practice of tapping into a world system of trade.
Certain groups in the Bering Strait region were cen-
tral to trans-Beringian trade, notably the Chukchi on
the Asian side and in Alaska, the Eskimo people of the
coastal settlements along Norton and Kotzebue
sounds and the strategically located St. Lawrence, King,
Big and Little Diomede, and Sledge islands (Bogojav-
lensky 1969; VanStone 1980:10). By 1900, further-
more, Siberian Yupik Eskimo and Chukchi, were cross-
ing the strait every summer in skin boats to participate
in the trade fairs that had become annual events on
Kotzebue Sound, Port Clarence, and at other locations
(Burch 1988:234-40; 1998:151-62). Here, as many
as 2000 Native people congregated to trade.
Though there was exchange of indigenous prod-
ucts such as reindeer and sealskins, the trade also
included imported Western goods. At this time, Bering
Strait was the locus of both indirect and direct
Native-Western trade. After 1848, Yankee whalers
also acted as middlemen and took on Eskimo crew
80 100 YEARS/ THEORIES OF CULTURE CHANCE
members on the Alaskan side before they crossed to
Siberia (Bogoras 1 904-9:64; Jochelson 1908:808).
Sailors from the whaling ships also participated in the
Native trade fairs, and later, when the baleen market
faltered, many whalers became traders, exchanging
western goods for furs on both sides of Bering Strait
(Fig. 23; see Bockstoce 1986:180-204). It seems safe
to conclude, then, that Natives on both sides of Bering
Strait participated in a turn-of-the-century version of a
world system and that this system provided a well-
established route by which artifacts, including baskets,
could have traveled from Siberia to Alaska. (Ray 1 975:
97-9; VanStone 1980:9-11).
Coiled Basketry
Both bundle-coiled grass and single-rod coiled willow-
root baskets were made by the Siberian Yupik, Chukchi,
and Koryak people of this region. These baskets share
similarities in shape, decorative designs and other tech-
nical features with their Alaskan counterparts.
Bundle-coil grass baskets were commonly made
by the Siberian Yupik people of St. Lawrence Island
(Moore to Ales Hrdliaeka, 21 December 1912, NAA-
NMNH 55962; Moore 1923:361), by the reindeer and
maritime Chukchi (Bogoras 1 904-9:225,228), and the
Koryak Qochelson 1908:636). According to today's
St. Lawrence Yupik elders, baskets there were undeco-
rated. The few known examples are made with an even-
ness of stitch characteristic of trade baskets sold
around Bering Strait at the turn of the twentieth cen-
tury (Fig. 2 1 ). Three grass baskets securely documented
to the Chukchi are known, all reminiscent of Alaskan
Eskimo coiled ware. One, collected by Bogoras, serves
as a base for a leather drawstring bag, as do early
grass and willow-root baskets on the Alaskan side
(Bogoras 1 904-9:224-8). The basket is decorated with
simple geometric designs also reminiscent of Alaska
(Fig. 22). Two later Chukchi grass baskets share ovoid
and rounded shapes similar to Alaskan Eskimo ex-
amples. Koryak grass baskets are considerably more
accomplished. Jochelson (1908:631) reports only
M. LEE AND N. H.H. CRABURN
indigenous uses for them; but the repetitive designs
and mass-produced quality on fifteen examples in the
American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) collec-
tion suggests that they were almost certainly made to
sell to outsiders, a practice that was already common
at that time (Fig. 24).
Sources ofSiberian andAlasl<an Coiled Basketry
The distribution of the two types of coiled basketry
among the Siberian Yupik, the Chukchi, and the Koryak
people suggests that these techniques were probably
not much older on the eastern side of Bering Strait
than on its western shore. Furthermore, the archaeo-
logical record of northeastern Siberia parallels that of
Alaska: twined ware appears but coiling is absent
(Sergei Arutiunov, personal communication to M.L.,
1 994). What explanations can be found for the sud-
den appearance of coiling? Certainly, the broadest
answer is that the various northeastern Siberian groups
were all interlinked through trade. The Chukchi are
known to have traded with the Koryak, Yukagir, and
Even (Antropova and Kuznetsova 1964:803). Chukchi
women apparently had only recently picked up bas-
ketmaking from Russianized Natives at trade fairs
(Bogoras 1904-9:228). Most northeastern Siberian
groups also bartered directly or indirectly with West-
erners and others from outside the region (Stepanova
et al. 1 964:792-3). Assuming that knowledge of these
two coiled basketry techniques could have been in-
troduced from elsewhere, the historical record sug-
gests that they may have arrived in Siberia from two
different localities to the South. Moreover, the impetus
for their appearance is intimately linked to the spread
of non-Native goods through trade and commerce.
Willow-Root Basketry and the Culture of Tea
The two known Koryak willow-root baskets with
stepped lids and stick starts show strong affinities with
lidded willow baskets collected elsewhere in Siberia
(Fig. 25). Bogoras collected a basket from Russianized
Natives living along the Anadyr River valley, north and
8 1
east of the maritime Koryak that is strikingly similar to
the Koryak willow baskets. Woven in the same single
rod, non-interlocking coiling, the lozenge-shaped,
stepped-lid was collected with tea-cups and tea para-
phernalia inside. Possibly, the Koryak willow-root bas-
kets were also used for this purpose. The Koryak were
known to value porcelain teacups, which were "pre-
served as treasures in special boxes " Cochelson 1 908:
580). Moreover, using similarly shaped and woven
baskets for the storage of fragile tea ware seems to
have been widespread in Siberia. Among the Khanty
people in Western Siberia, for example, single-rod wil-
low baskets were similarly used for storing tea ware
(Popov 1955:106, Plate 20).
There is a possible outside source for this practice.
During the 19th century the Chinese exported porce-
lain tea sets in coiled baskets (Fig. 26). That Siberian
peoples would have seen the Chinese type, or one
deriving from the Chinese type, is certainly possible.
Bundle-coiled Crass Basketry
The coiled grass basketry that appeared in Alaska and
northeastern Siberia at the same time as willow-root
baskets seems to have a related source. Its closest
affinity is with the few known examples of Ainu coiled
basketry (Craburn and Lee 1 999; Saito 1 995). The strik-
ing similarities between the twined basketry of the
Ainu, the northeastern Siberians, and the Alaskan Es-
kimo have long been noted (Mason 1904:402;
Lawrence Dawson, personal communication to ML and
NC, 1986); but a careful analysis of relationships be-
tween Ainu and northeastern Siberian coiled grass ware
is the subject of future research.
The few examples of Ainu coiled ware that are
known closely resemble Koryak baskets in technique,
shape, and decoration (Fig. 27). The historical literature
attests to frequent contacts between Kurile Ainu and
Kamchatka peoples. It documents trade links between
Koryak and Kurile Ainu (but not between the Kurile
and Hokkaido Ainu), but disagrees on whether coiled
basketry might have traveled by this route. In the fu-
8 2
ture we plan to focus on this complex problem.
Discussion: Boasian Models of Change
What, then, does the example of the sporadic spread
of coiled basketry across the North Pacific area, from
Siberia to Alaska, suggest about Boas's theories of
diffusion? Let us step back for a moment to consider
theories of culture change as expounded by Franz Boas,
the leading anthropological organizer and theoretician
of the Jesup Expedition.
Early in his career. Boas was very open to the "prin- •
ciple of the theory of evolution. . . [which] opens the
vast field of natural sciences to the historical method"
(Boas 1889, in Stocking 1982:67). Thus, he claimed,
the understanding of a people not only required knowl-
edge of their history, but of the history of their ances-
tors, so that there is a "continuity of inventions and
ideas from the level of primitive people up to our own
time." Furthermore, he asserted at the time, because
the histories of any one area are undoubtedly in-
complete, any approach to local history would al-
ways have to rely on the comparative method, that
is, to draw its conclusions with the aid of data from
other areas assumed to be at comparable evolu-
tionary levels.
As further ethnological data became available, it
grew increasingly difficult to uphold the integrity of
these evolutionary levels and their strict placement in
a universal evolutionary hierarchy. For instance, Boas'
own data on the family system of the Inuit people of
Baffin Island (Boas 1888), confirmed the anomalous
finding that their kinship-terminology system placed
them at the same "level" as Euro-Americans. Thus, in
his famous article, "The Limitations of the Comparative
Method of Anthropology" (Boas 1896), he rejected as
unscientific the possibility of both completing the evo-
lutionary history of mankind and the search for ulti-
mate origins of social customs and technologies. In its
place, he privileged historical particularism, stressing
detailed knowledge of local ethnological histories, to
be gathered from the fast-disappearing Native elders
100 YEARS/ THEORIES OF CULTURE CHANCE
in the rapidly changing milieu of Indian and other tribes
under the imperial sway.
While carrying out his own detailed ethnographic
fieldwork on the Northwest Coast, and being aware
of the equally detailed work of others in the region
(Emmons 1 903, 1 991 ) and further north (e.g. Murdoch
1892; Nelson 1899), Boas foresaw the possibility of
putting together these local histories—these individual
pieces of the ethnological jigsaw puzzle—into larger
regional histories. In the North Pacific area. Boas planned
the Jesup Expedition as such a large-scale research
project by choosing those pieces of this geographical
puzzle that required fitting in place. In the first volume
of the JNPE publications (1898) that is, after only one
season of expedition fieldwork, he placed the effort
within a larger universal frame by stating, "We must, so
far as we can, reconstruct the actual history of man-
kind, before we can hope to discover the laws under-
lying that history." (Boas 1898:1). In other words, in-
stead of using the laws of the comparative method to
fill in the gaps in reconstructing local histories, it should
be the other way round, with the construction of com-
parative laws being the end point of all human histori-
cal research.
As to specific methods for construction of particu-
laristic and regional histories. Boas was unfortunately
rather unclear both in defining and assigning the rela-
tive importance of migration versus diffusion, and about
relating actual field data to either proposition. In this
firstjesup Expedition volume, he generalized "In short,
historical changes of far-reaching importance took place
long before the tribes became known to history. They
imply mixture of blood, as well as exchange of cultural
achievement" (Boas 1 898:6).
In 1903, in his overview article in the American
Museum Journal about the results of the jesup Expedi-
tion, after the fieldwork had been conducted. Boas
essentialy plagiarized himself. Apart from adding de-
scriptions of the later field seasons, the article is other-
wise word for word identical with his 1898 introduc-
tory piece, with the exception that "Franz Boas" has
become "Prof. Franz Boas" or "Professor Boas." (1 903:78,
82). His preliminary conclusions, which highlight the
importance not of diffusion but of invasive migration
and gradual differentiation (akin to linguistic drift?) due
to slow spreading migration, are:
The unity of the race was much greater in
former times than it is now; that the invasion
[migration] of eastern tribes in America, such
as the Eskimo, Athapaskan and Salish, and of
the western and southern tribes in Asia, such
as Yakut and Tungus, have disturbed the
former conditions [i.e. of the contiguity of
the Chukchi, Koryak, Yukagir, and the Indians
of the American northwest coast]. Neverthe-
less, enough remains to lead us to think that
the tribes of this whole area must be consid-
ered as a single race or at least that their
culture is a single culture [changed by
'gradual differentiation'?]. Thus the jesup
Expedition seems to have established the
close relationship between the peoples of
Asia and America (Boas 1 903:1 1 5).
The following year, in a major address on "The His-
tory of Anthropology" (1 904), Boas was more explicit.
He differentiated between "the historical method,
which endeavors to reconstruct the actual history of
mankind; and the other, the generalizing method, which
attempts to establish laws" (ibid:514). He related how
these two had come into conflict, how they are funda-
mentally opposed, and how "all scientists were equally
guilty of premature theories of evolution based on
observed homologies and supposed similarities"
(ibid:516). He then considered the "psychic causes" of
men's propensity to evolve through a fixed evolution-
ary sequence of stages, as well as "the influence of
geographical environment . . . [where] the main stress
is laid on the causes which bring about modifications
of the fundamental and identical traits" (ibid:51 7). He
contrasted "independent origins [i.e., evolution of the
same stages and associations in different places—ML,
NC] . . . and transmission from one part of the world to
another" while warning readers about Ratzel's claim
that "all sameness of cultural traits must be accounted
for by transmission." He concluded that "it requires
actual investigation into the individual history of such
M. LEE AND N. H.H. CRABURN 83
customs to discover the causes of their present distri-
bution" (ibid:519) and that "the grand system of the
evolution of culture, that is valid for all humanity, is
losing much of its plausibility" (ibid:522).
In later publications touching on the results of the
Jesup Expedition, Boas concluded "many of the cul-
tural elements that are widely spread in the Old World
have found their way to America" (Boas 1 925:22-3). In
another paper, he was even more vague: "what is com-
mon to the two Americas [in comparison with 'funda-
mental traits of Old World culture'—ML, NG]," he wrote,
"may be due as well to diffusion as to antiquity. Fur-
thermore, most generalized traits of culture may have
developed independently in most areas" (Boas
1 933:363). Few of Boas' observations on Old and New
World connections as we have seen, are closely rea-
soned enough to see him testing theory against data.
Of interest in light of the subject of this paper, Boas
declined to consider the distribution of any form of
basketry out of the misconception that it was unknown
to the Eskimo people: "Less certain," he says, "are the
conclusions to be drawn from the distribution of weav-
ing, which is present in all parts of the Old World, but
seems to be absent among the Eskimo" (Boas 1 925:24).
Boas and his contemporaries did not focus on the
actual mechanisms of diffusion. This came up a gen-
eration later in anthropological theory, particularly in
the acculturation literature (Redfield et al. 1 934; Schweit-
zer, this volume). In the North Pacific area, various mecha-
nisms of "pre-capitalist" exchange had been recorded,
including "silent trade," armed exchange, begging, and
boasting (Burch 1 988:234-8). By the beginning of the
nineteenth century, trade had become more routin-
ized, with regular trade fairs, units of currency, credit,
and so on, all of which were known to the Jesup Expe-
dition researchers. It is probably true that tea drinking,
tea sets, coiled baskets for tea sets, and the technique
of coiling itself followed these well-worn routes.
At the turn of the twentieth century, it was ac-
ceptable in American academic circles to seek expla-
nations, whether diffusionary or evolutionary, only
among cultures having "pure" Native culture elements.
The assumption was that such cultures were on the
edge of extinction; thus it was they who demanded
scientific attention. As a result, Boas for the most part
studiously ignored evidence of Native-Western trade
and of hybrid forms and said little about the hybrid
(Creolized) peoples who produced and transmitted
them; the one exception was his early interest in the
music of urban Indian songs in Vancouver, performed
in Chinook jargon (see Jacknis, this volume). In fact,
turn-of-the-century American collectors of material
culture, for instance, the American Museum of Natural
History and the Smithsonian Institution, boasted that
they had rejected genres that bore any evidence of
contact with the outside world (Craburn 1996:12-3).
We must draw a line, however, between Boas the
theorist and organizer, and his seasoned though rela-
tively untrained and politically idealistic Russian exile
field workers, Bogoras and Jochelson. These Russians
were critical of the Tzar's administrative policies in the
area and were well aware of the negative impact of
colonialism. Their detailed ethnographies mentioned
hybrid cultural forms without placing them in an evolu-
tionary or diffusionary framework; however they did
not give too much detail on the multi-cultural commu-
nities—Native, white, or mixed—that grew up in the
wake of colonization and trade. Bogoras made many
references to the Creole/mixed population in the Anadyr
River valley, and he described its role in intercultural
transmission. In the case of coiled basketry, for ex-
ample, Bogoras referred to the Chukchi willow root
weaving: "One or two of the Chukchee . . . make bet-
ter baskets of willow-roots, but the style is wholly
copied after the work of Russianized natives" (Bogoras
1 904-9:228). Jochelson avoided Creole people and
mixed cultural traits in his Koryak work (Fig. 28); but in
his volume on the Yukagir (1 926) he focused on Sibe-
rian Native groups whose culture was deeply disrupted
by Russian contact, Christianization, language loss, ma-
terial culture change, and population decline through
disease. Boas organized the Jesup Expedition publica-
84 100 YEARS/ THEORIES OF CULTURE CHANCE
tions so that these "historically contingent" matters
were included in the regional reports; but he paid little
or no attention to them in his explanatory models of
trans-Beringian flows, even though such contacts were
evident to all.
It was only decades later that American anthro-
pologists began to study Western-influenced Native
material cultures (cf. Craburn 1 976). Therefore, it is not
surprising to discover that more recent paradigms, such
as transnationalism, have considerable relevance to the
study of hybrid cultural forms such as the coiled bas-
ketry of the Circumpolar North. According to Lavie and
Swedenburg (1996:9), for example: "Hybrid products
are thus results of a long history of confrontations be-
tween unequal cultures and forces. . . . The hybridiza-
tions we encounter therefore are not just the product
of entirely 'new,' epochal postmodern conditions [but
also resemble the old conditions]." This observation
could apply equally to the hybrid cultural forms such
as the coiled basketry of the North Pacific Rim during
thejesup Expedition era. Indeed, we believe that the
so-called post-colonial model proposed by Lavie and
Swedenburg (1 996), Appadurai (1 990, 1 991 ), and Inda
(1996) is productive for the analysis of colonial con-
texts under discussion here.
Appadurai (1 990), for instance, argues that migrat-
ing populations impact state and local politics, carry-
ing with them new mechanical and informational tech-
nologies, bringing along with them transnational in-
vestments and new political ideologies; all of these
could characterize Siberia of the mid-nineteenth cen-
tury. In contrast, the evolutionary and diffusionary para-
digms informing Jesup Expedition research were not
only inadequate for the colonial context but can be
better seen as hypothetical models conceived for imag-
ined but unobservable past.
To return to the title of our paper, we would argue
that diffusionism was not a satisfactory model for an-
thropology of the colonial period, and that the
transnationalist model developed for the anthropol-
ogy of the post-colonial period furnishes a more ad-
M. LEE AND N. H.H. CRABURN
equate lens through which to consider the hybridity
that defined it.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to extend their gratitude to the
organizers of the Jesup Centennial Conference for their
invitation to participate and for the stimulation the oc-
casions and the ensemble of participants presented.
They would particularly like to acknowledge the edi-
torial guidance of Igor Krupnik.
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M. LEE AND N. H.H. CRABURN

*~["he Jesup Expedition and jts /\naiogue5:
/\ (^.omparisoi
STANLEY A. FREED, RUTH S. FREED,
AND LAILA WILLIAMSON
Several great expeditions of the 1 9th century have an
aura of melodrama about them. They bring to mind
hero-explorers operating in rugged country with little
logistical support from a distant homeland, overcom-
ing obstacles by ingenuity, courage, and persistence.
The men who organized and led their own expedi-
tions were resolute entrepreneurs with a strong inter-
est, often tantamount to an obsession, in some scien-
tific problem. The leaders of expeditions under gov-
ernmental aegis were frequently military officers. They
were experienced commanders, adept at leading small
companies of men in difficult, sometimes dangerous
circumstances. Leaders of both types of expeditions
often carried out some of the expedition's scholarly
work; more commonly they acted as the principal sci-
entists of the personally organized expeditions.
Some expeditions of the 19th century have be-
come legendary scientific endeavors, the Jesup North
Pacific Expedition (JNPE) among them. What accounts
for the enduring fascination of the Jesup Expedition? It
was a great adventure story, which is perhaps the chief
reason; but it had other less obvious features. They are
best seen when the Jesup Expedition is compared to
other famous expeditions of the 1 9th century. We have
chosen three well-known expeditions for comparative
purposes, the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1 803-6), the
U. S. Exploring Expedition (1 838-42), and the Cambridge
Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits (1 898-9).
The first two were American, the third one British.
The Jesup North Pacific Expedition
(1897-1902)
Franz Boas (1 858-1 942), a young assistant curator in
the Department of Anthropology of the American Mu-
seum of Natural History (AMNH), conceived and orga-
nized the North Pacific Expedition in 1 896-7, to study
the relationship between Native peoples of Northeast
Asia and North America. Boas was keenly aware that
the wealth of the American Museum's trustees and
friends could be used to support research and collect-
ing, and he lost no time in Joining with Frederic Ward
Putnam (1839-1915), the head of the Department of
Anthropology, to seek the support of Morris K. Jesup,
the AMNH President, for a research project of extraor-
dinary scope and ambition. Putnam and Boas presented
Jesup with a six-year project for research on both sides
of the Bering Strait.
Putnam's participation was vital, because Boas was
a new employee of the Museum, who had yet to prove
himself to Jesup. Despite Putnam's role as catalyst and
some press reports that Putnam was in charge', the
expedition was cleady Boas' idea (Vakhtin 2001:74).
Jesup liked big projects and important problems. Putnam
and Boas played on this aspect of Jesup's personality,
arguing that their project would settle the intriguing
question of the origin of the first people to enter the
New World from Northern Asia. After an unsuccessful
effort to raise money from his fellow philanthropists,
Jesup vowed to fund the project personally.
8 9
The estimated field expenses of the expedition have
been variously reported as from $10,000 to $40,000
per year. The New York Times {March 12, 1897: 12) gave
a figure of $60,000 or $10,000 per year. Kennedy
(1 968:1 42), citing correspondence between Jesup and
Boas, said, "[Jesup] agreed to underwrite the expenses
of the expedition for six years, at an estimated cost of
$40,000 a year." Boas unsuccessfully suggested a four-
year extension of the expedition at a cost of $ 1 00,000,
which indicates an annual cost of $25,000 (Kennedy
1 968: 1 44). There were also later expenses of publica-
tion (Cole 2001:39-41). The final cost of the expedi-
tion will probably never be known with any precision.
The Jesup Expedition, announced in March 1897,
generated considerable interest in the popular press.
The origin of the American Indians is "the biggest of
the unsolved anthropological and ethnical problems"
and "alive with human and historic interest," stated The
New York Times in an editorial of March 1 4, 1 897. Sci-
ence, the bellwether American scientific journal, pub-
lished a four-page unsigned article [presumably writ-
ten by Boas—eds.] about the expedition a few months
after the departure of the first field party (Anonymous
1 897). The following summary of theJNPE activities is
based upon our earlier papers (Freed et al. 1988a,
1988b, 1997), as well as upon other review publica-
tions that appeared in recent years (Cole 1 999, 2001
;
Vakhtin 2001).
The expedition's research on the Northwest Coast
of North America was carried out by young profes-
sionals, supplemented by a few local amateurs under
Boas' direction and close supervision. Harlan I. Smith
(1872-1940), who served at the American Museum
until 191 1 and eventually became Chief Archaeolo-
gist of the National Museum of Canada, excavated
sites in British Columbia and Washington State. While
Boas was not impressed with him intellectually, he
nonetheless considered him to be a reliable person
who could be successful with direction. Indeed he was;
Smith contributed five volumes to the Jesup North Pa-
cific Expedition series, and made important collections.
John R. Swanton (1873-1958), who joined the Bu-
reau of American Ethnology Just after receiving his
doctorate in 1 900, was seconded to the Jesup Expe-
dition for about a year to study the Haida people of
the Queen Charlotte Islands. The Bureau paid his salary
($50 per month) and received all the lexical and gram-
matical material that he collected, whereas the Jesup
Expedition paid his traveling and field expenses. All
ethnological material, including texts, thus became the
property of the American Museum (Boas to W.J. McCee,
1 Oct. 1900, AMNH-DA; Jonaitis 1988:197-201).
Livingston Farrand (1 867-1 939), then professor of
psychology at Columbia University, was a member of
Boas' first field party, which left New York in late May
1897 for Spences Bridge, British Columbia. Boas,
Farrand, and Smith, the third member of the team, met
James Teit, a local resident, who became their field
guide and the fourth member of a small party (Wickwire,
this volume). The group then left for Bella Coola. Farrand
dropped out when the team reached the Chilcotin;
there he remained for a disappointing month collect-
ing sparse ethnographic information and trying to
measure heads. The next summer, 1 898, he worked
with indifferent success among the Quileute and
Quinault Indians of Washington State. He published
only three slim papers in the JNPE series but collected
some outstanding artworks Oonaitis 1988:191).
George Hunt (1854-1933) and James Teit (1864-
1 922), local residents and amateur ethnographers who
straddled Euro-Canadian and Indian cultures, were two
of the most important and productive members of
Boas' team. Hunt was raised in Fort Rupert, British Co-
lumbia as a Kwakwaka'wakw (KwakiutI), spoke their
language fluently, was literate in English, and was a
steady and reliable worker. The association of Hunt
and Boas began in 1 886, during Boas' first trip to the
Kwakwaka'wakw. Boas taught Hunt to write the
Kwakwaka'wakw language while Hunt was assisting
him with his work for the World's Columbian Exposi-
tion in 1893. Hunt was truly a remarkable man. Boas
recognized his potential, helped him to develop it, and
90 100 YEARS/ COMPARISON OF EXPEDITIONS
acknowledged his accomplishments by making him
collaborator and coauthor of numerous publications.
"|T|he Boas-Hunt relationship was one of the most pro-
ductive and enduring ever to exist between an anthro-
pologist and a member of another culture. [It] was
based upon mutual interest, respect, and affection"
(Codere 1966:xxviii; see also Berman 2001).
James A. Teit, a Scotsman who lived among the
NIaka'pamux (Thompson) Indians, authored two sub-
stantial monographs on the Thompson and another
on the Lillooet Indians for the JNPE series; he also col-
lected some exceptionally fine Salish artworks (Wick-
wire, this volume). After the Expedition, Teit worked
on behalf of Indian rights. "The British Columbian na-
tives had immense respect and admiration for, and
trust in, this man, whom they asked to accompany
them to meetings with government officials. . . .Teit
served as translator, sometimes working simultaneously
in four or five different languages" Gonaitis 1 988: 1 90).
The Siberian operations of the Jesup Expedition
began a year later than the North American research
and covered an area many times as large under condi-
tions much more difficult than on the American side.
Fieldwork on the Siberian side was an ordeal mainly
because of the hostile environment.-^ Climate, terrain,
illness, insects, and the vast distances that had to be
covered by horse, reindeer sled, dog sled, boat, and
raft, or on foot made research a dangerous adventure.
It called forth a toughness that is rarely required in the
present age of modern transport and communication.
Moreover, the Russian government made trouble. The
Canadian and American governments took no interest
in the activities of Boas and his team, and would help
if asked. The Russian government took a definite and
hostile interest in the three principal JNPE investigators
in Siberia, Berthold Laufer (1874-1934), Waldemar
Bogoras (1 865-1 936), and WaldemarJochelson (1 855-
1937). The former happened to be a foreigner and a
Jew; the latter two were former Russian political exiles,
who spent several years in Siberia for their anti-govern-
ment activities (Freed et al. 1997:12).
S. A, FREED, R. S. FREED, AND L. WILLIAMSON
Three teams carried out the Asian fieldwork. Laufer's
team surveyed along the Amur River and on Sakhalin
Island in the southern section of the Siberian Pacific
region, whereas Bogoras' and Jochelson's parties cov-
ered northeastern Siberia. The Amur River team of Laufer
and amateur archaeologist Gerard Fowke was first into
the field. Laufer arrived on Sakhalin Island on July 10,
1 898, where he remained until March 21,1 899, study-
ing the Cilyak (Nivkh), Evenk (Tungus), and Ainu. He
crossed to the mainland on March 25, and settled in
Khabarovsk on the Amur River to study the Nanay
(Gold). When navigation opened in late May, he de-
scended the river, visiting Nanay and Gilyak villages
on the way. Although he had a taste for fieldwork and
for the most part stoically endured its hardships, his
endurance was sorely taxed by some frightening ill-
nesses and accidents, among them a two-and-a-half
month siege of influenza and pneumonia, and a plunge
through weak ice into frigid water that would have
been fatal had not his guide saved him.
Laufer's published account in the Jesup North Pa-
cific Expedition series was disappointing, especially
when compared to the classic ethnographies produced
by Bogoras and Jochelson. His only JNPE volume was a
slim, well-illustrated monograph on the art of the Amur
River peoples (Laufer 1 902). He was especially fasci-
nated by the art of the Nanay and their neighbors, and
he collected many of their superb artworks for the
American Museum (Kendall 1 988:1 04). After the Jesup
Expedition, Laufer Joined the Field Museum of Natural
History in 1 908, where he spent the remainder of his
scholarly career. For many years he was easily the out-
standing American Sinologist.
Gerard Fowke (1855-1933), Laufer's fleeting and
often grudging team partner (Cole 2001 :36-7), was a
largely self-taught itinerant adventurer who was drawn
to archaeology by his love for outdoor life and taste
for exotic customs. He worked at various occupations
for about 1 5 years, schoolteacher among them. When
he was 30, he abandoned teaching for research in ar-
chaeology and geology. For his Siberian research of
9 1
1 898, he recruited two local companions and set out
in a large open boat to explore the Amur River from
the village of Verkhne-Tambovsk to the town of Nikol-
ayevsk, about 330 miles downstream at the mouth of
the river. From there he traveled out into Tartar Strait,
along the coast to the Sea of Okhotsk, and back to
Nikolayevsk. They found nothing of any interest; Fowke
himself acknowledged that his work was a "dismal
fizzle." Boas considered him to have been a mistake
and permitted him only one season in Siberia. Un-
daunted, Fowke continued his archaeological research
in the United States well into his seventies.
On the recommendation of Professor Vasily V. Rad-
loff, the Secretary of the Russian Academy of Sciences,
Boas entrusted fieidwork in northern Siberia to Walde-
mar Jochelson and Waldemar Bogoras. Both were al-
ready veterans of several years of Siberian field research
when they joined the Jesup Expedition team. Friends
and colleagues, they were Russian intellectuals and
revolutionaries who in their youth were exiled to Sibe-
ria where they became ethnographers. The theme of
loss through exile and recovery through science gives
the lives ofJochelson and Bogoras a special piquancy.
A young American, Norman C. Buxton, was charged
with zoological collecting of behalf of the AMNH; he
was added to the group when Jochelson and Bogoras
passed through New York on their way to Siberia
(Hoffmann, this volume). Jochelson also engaged Alex-
ander Axelrod, a Russian emigre student from Zurich,
as a general assistant, particularly for carrying on geo-
graphical work (Boas 1903:101).
The team of Waldemar Bogoras and his wife Sofia
(later to be Joined by Axelrod) arrived at Mariinsky Post
at the mouth of the Anadyr River in July 1 900. They
spent three months with the local Chukchi. At the end
of October 1 900, Bogoras went on a long journey to
northern Kamchatka for an arranged meeting with Joch-
elson's team. Traveling mostly by dog sled, he was on
the move for the rest of his twelve and a half months
in Northeast Asia. He generally remained no more than
a few weeks in any location. Terrain and illness made
9 2
the trip an ordeal. While her husband traveled, Sofia
Bogoras stayed in the small local town of Markovo on
the Anadyr River and at Mariinsky Post, making collec-
tions for the American Museum.
Bogoras published five contributions for the JNPE
series, most prominently on the Chukchi. He and Sofia
Bogoras collected ethnographic data, linguistic notes
and 150 texts, 4,500 ethnographic artifacts, skeletal
material, plaster casts of faces, archaeological speci-
mens, 95 phonographic records, and somatological
measurements of some 860 individuals. No modern
anthropological couple has collected such a diversity
of data. After the Expedition, Bogoras had a distin-
guished career in Russia, engaging in scientific and lit-
erary work. In 1 932, he established the Museum of the
History of Religion of the Russian Academy of Sci-
ences and he was its first director until his death in
1936.
While the Bogorases were occupied with the
Chukchi and the Siberian Yupik (Eskimo) in the North,
Jochelson, his wife Dina Jochelson-Brodsky, and their
associates, Axelrod and Buxton, made another JNPE
Siberian team that studied the Koryak and Tungus (Even)
along the Sea of Okhotsk, and later, the Yukagir and
Sakha (Yakut) of the interior Northeast Siberia. On Au-
gust 1 6, 1 900, they arrived in Kushka, a small village
at the mouth of the Cizhiga River. Thejochelsons then
made a difficult journey to the villages of the Maritime
Koryak in Penzhina Bay, where they spent the first half
of the winter of 1 900 living most of the time in native
underground dwellings. Conditions were almost intol-
erable. Lice were the greatest torment. "As long as we
remained in these dwellings we could not escape these
insects, which we dreaded more than any of the priva-
tions of our journey" (Boas 1 903:1 04).
The Jochelsons made comprehensive studies ofthe
Koryak, Even, Yukagir, and Sakha people. They col-
lected about 4,400 ethnographic specimens, 41 face
casts, measurements of 900 individuals, 1 ,200 photo-
graphs, phonographic cylinders, skulls and archaeo-
logical specimens, and a small zoological collection.
100 YEARS/ COMPARISON OF EXPEDITIONS
Jochelson published three ethnographic monographs
for the American IVluseum; his wife Dina, who later
earned a degree in medicine, handled all the anthropo-
metric work and most of the photography. She pub-
lished several papers and a Ph.D. thesis on Native
women of Northeast Siberia.
After the JNPE, Jochelson led the Aleut-Kamchatka
Expedition of the Imperial Russian Geographical Soci-
ety in 1909-1 1. DinaJochelson-Brodsky, again, joined
him as a field partner. From 1912 to 1922, he was
division curator of the Museum of Anthropology and
Ethnography of the Russian Academy of Sciences in
St. Petersburg/Petrograd; from 1922 until his death in
New York fifteen years later, Jochelson was associated
with the American Museum and the Carnegie Institu-
tion of Washington.
The Jesup Expedition confirmed the close relation-
ship of the Native populations of northwestern North
America and northeastern Asia and strongly supported
the view that the ancestors of the American Indians
came from Asia. Boas, Jochelson, and Bogoras tried to
go beyond these currently accepted points but their
analyses have not gained favor. From the data col-
lected by the Jesup Expedition, Boas discerned a close
cultural affiliation between eastern Siberia and the re-
gion of Southern Alaska and British Columbia, a cul-
tural "break" between the east Siberian tribes and the
Eskimo, and a "fundamental break" between the north-
east Siberian tribes and the Tungus and Yakut to the
west. He wrote, the "Chukchee, Koryak, Kamchadal
(Itelmen), and the Yukaghir must be classed with the
American race rather than with the Asiatic race." In
brief, the JNPE postulated an assumed reverse migra-
tion ofAmerican Indians to Siberia; Jochelson later gave
the name "Americanoids" to the people descended
from these hypothetical reverse migrants (Ousley 2000).
The Americanoid theory never gained serious atten-
tion and is considered today a historical curiosity.
Today, a century after theJesup Expedition, its pub-
lished ethnographies and museum collections retain
their importance; but the contributions of the Expedi-
tion to solving the problem of the origin of the ancient
Native Americans have been far superseded by later
research. Just before Boas and his party left for the
Northwest Coast in 1 897, The New York Times wrote
that the origin of the American Indians is "the biggest
of the unsolved anthropological and ethnical problems"
and "alive with human and historic interest." That com-
ment is as true today as it was 1 00 years ago. In those
days, the issue was purely scientific, and anthropolo-
gists were the only players. There were few theories to
be tested and the question lacked the political nu-
ances that it has since acquired. Technology was simple
and before the Jesup Expedition data sets were sparse.
Today, high technology (like radiocarbon dating and
DNA studies) provides the key arguments, whereas
ancient and surprising skeletal finds, and newly dis-
covered archaeological sites indicate that the ques-
tion of the origins of the First Americans is much more
complex than imagined a century ago. The next "Jesup
Expedition" will probably explore the problem prima-
rily in modern laboratories rather than in the Siberian
wilderness.
The Lewis and Clark Expedition (1 803-6)
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Presi-
dent Thomas Jefferson initiated the Lewis and Clark
Expedition. Though perhaps the most famous of the
great American expeditions, it owes its birth and
later fame more to political and historical circum-
stances than to any enduring scientific legacy. At
this point in history, negotiations between France
and Spain over the Louisiana Territory were heading
in a direction potentially dangerous to the interests
of the United States. Fortunately for the Americans,
Napoleon was in need of money and he eventually
sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States on
May 2, 1803. Anticipating the inevitable American
occupation of the territory, President Jefferson had
initiated preparations for an exploring mission to
the region before its purchase. The priority of the
expedition enhanced its fame. It was the first overland
S, A. FREED, R. S. FREED, AND L. WILLIAMSON
expedition to the Pacific coast and back (Ambrose
1996:71-3, 101-2).
The Lewis and Clark Expedition has an extraordi-
nary hold on the American imagination. Time maga-
zine devoted its cover and a major, 43-page multi-
authored article to the Expedition to mark American
Independence Day, 2002, and to anticipate the cel-
ebration of the Expedition's bicentennial, beginning in
January 2003, when the 1 1 states touched by the ex-
plorers plan to commemorate and to re-create the 3-
year journey. Trying to explain the American fascina-
tion for the Expedition after 200 years. Time noted its
practical side, "When they launched their wooden boats
up the Missouri [River] and into the wilderness, Lewis
and Clark were charting the future of America." There
had to be a mystical element as well, and Time made a
stab, "[At that time] the young nation already had a
constitution, but it lacked an epic. It had a govern-
ment but no real identity. Lewis and Clark helped in-
vent one." (Kirn, 2002:38-9)
Captain Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809) and Lieu-
tenant William Clark (1770-1838) led the expedition.
Lewis, a confident, strong, and self-reliant member of
the Virginia gentry, ran his family's large plantation at
the age of eighteen. He and Thomas Jefferson were
neighbors. When Jefferson became president he
chose Lewis as his secretary and groomed him for
leadership of a dangerous exploratory mission to the
Pacific. Lewis invited Clark, another Virginian, to share
command. Lewis and Clark had served together in the
same company and had become friends and mutual
admirers. At 33 years of age, Clark was the oldest man
on the expedition.
Lewis and Clark selected their men with great care
during the summer of 1 803. Many men applied, prob-
ably for the adventure, but they also were well paid
after the expedition. Each man received a land grant
and double pay (Ambrose 1996:414-5). The explor-
ers, initially about 40 mostly young unmarried men,
were organized as a military unit. Many of the men
were from the army and all but 10 were enlisted as
privates. All were outdoorsmen and good hunters; spe-
cialties critical for a long and enduring journey—from
carpentry to gun-smithing to iron-working to boat han-
dling, and translating—were well represented.
President Jefferson instructed Lewis and Clark to
explore the Missouri River to its headwaters and from
there, the rivers leading to the Pacific to find the most
direct and practicable water communication across
the continent for purposes of commerce. Prospects
for agriculture and settlement were almost as impor-
tant a motive as commerce, and Jefferson wanted in-
formation about plant and animal life, soil, mineral re-
sources, and climate (Ambrose 1996:94-5). Knowl-
edge of Indian tribes was important. As befits an ex-
pedition of exploration, they were expected to make
detailed maps.
The party traveled the Missouri River in three boats.
Lewis and party left Pittsburgh in late summer 1 803
and, after wintering near St. Louis, the three boats set
out for the upper Missouri in the spring of 1804,
reaching the villages of the friendly Mandan Indians
in today's North Dakota where they spent the win-
ter of 1 804 through early 1 805. The next spring, the
party continued up the Missouri, crossed the continen-
tal divide on horseback, and descended the Columbia
River in canoes. They reached its mouth and the Pacific
shore in late fall 1805, and passed the winter there.
The party arrived back in St. Louis in September 1 806,
to great excitement.
The journals of Lewis and Clark and shorter diaries
by other members of the expedition are interesting
narratives of exploration, spiced with accounts of
menacing encounters and perilous mishaps: Indian
hostilities, accidents, difficult terrain and climate, ill-
ness, and dangerous animals. Yet only one encounter
with Indians was fatal: Lewis and his men killed two
Blackfeet Indians. A member of the expedition died of
illness, several were dismissed, and one man was court-
martialed and given 1 00 lashes (Moulton 1 986, 2:7-8,
60). The journals contain much important information
that was new at the time. "Clark's great map of the
94 100 YEARS/ COMPARISON OF EXPEDITIONS
west . . . would in itself have justified the expedition"
(Moulton 1986, 2:5). However, complete publication
of the journals was long delayed, and Lewis and
Clark lost some credit for their discoveries (Ambrose
1996:470).
After the Expedition, Lewis and Clark went on to
successful careers, not in science, as the members of
the Jesup Expedition had done, for they were not sci-
entists, but in politics. Jefferson named Lewis governor
of the Louisiana Territory in 1 807. It was a difficult role,
and his life was complicated by personal financial prob-
lems. He also suffered from mental and physical prob-
lems
—
possibly hypochondria and depression, or even
from manic-depressive illness (Ambrose 1 996:466-7).
In less than two years, he committed suicide. Clark
later served as superintendent of Indian affairs in Loui-
siana Territory and as governor of Missouri Territory.
The Lewis and Clark and Jesup Expeditions were so
different ventures as to be almost separate species.
The purpose of Lewis and Clark was as much political
and commercial as scientific. It brought knowledge
about a vast new territory and helped open the West
to settlement. Politics and the expedition supported
one another. By contrast, the Jesup Expedition had no
political goal. A purely scientific venture, the JNPE dealt
with the most intriguing scholarly issues of the day,
such as the problem of American Indian origins and
the relations of Native tribes living on both sides of the
Bering Strait. Lewis and Clark's mission featured no sci-
entific problem or hypothesis, although the idea of an
easy water passage across the continent was still in
the air. Lewis and Clark laid that myth to rest.
The two expeditions were also organized very dif-
ferently. The Lewis and Clark group stayed together. It
had a command structure of a military unit with offic-
ers and enlisted men. There were further distinctions
based on crafts. The Jesup Expedition had almost none
of this structure. Expedition personnel were widely dis-
persed in tiny units. Sometimes even couples were
separated; the Bogorases worked separately for most
of their time in the field. Technical specialization de-
pended on incidental training and interests. Mrs.
Jochelson, a medical student, took care of physical
anthropology and photography, particularly of the
women; Mrs. Bogoras did most of the couple's ethno-
graphic collecting. Basically, the Jesup Expedition fea-
tured investigators working independently and re-
sembled more closely the later style of independent
fieldworker than the classic government-sponsored
research expedition represented by Lewis and Clark.
The U. S. Exploring Expedition (1 838-42)
The U. S. Exploring Expedition dwarfs the other three
expeditions in size, scope, drama, and later institutional
effects. Yet it had drifted into relative obscurity for al-
most a century until William Stanton's comprehensive
account (1975) and, especially, until the Smithsonian
Institution portrayed it ten years later in a major ex-
hibit and book entitled Magnificent Voyagers {\/'\o\a and
Margolis 1 985). Coming at a time when the American
scientific community was tiny and its resources were
minuscule, the "Ex. Ex.," as it is often called, was manna
from heaven. There was a rush to win places on the
expedition, for scientific reputations were there to be
made (Baatz 1986:1020; Stanton 1975:45).
As a large-scale project of science and exploration
sponsored by the U. S. Government, the Ex. Ex. set a
precedent that continues to the present day and is
best compared to today's outer space program. It was
the first such project of the U. S. Navy, and served as a
model for some fourteen subsequent American naval
exploring expeditions before the Civil War. It included
a corps of civilian scientists, which was a novelty for
the United States. The nine selected expedition's
"scientifics" were winnowed from a projected corps
of twenty-five. Several of them became giants in their
fields. Their scientific qualifications were equal to those
of the members of the Jesup Expedition and far ex-
ceeded the modest scientific training of Lewis and Clark.
"James Dwight Dana, the most gifted of the group . .
.
became one of America's most distinguished scien-
tific leaders" (Viola 1985:10).
S. A. FREED, R. S. FREED, AND L. WILLIAMSON
The civilian scientists worked chiefly in geology,
botany, zoology, and philology. Most of the physical
sciences
—
geography, hydrography, astronomy, study
of terrestrial magnetism, meteorology, and cartogra-
phy—were assigned exclusively to naval officers. The
charter of the Ex. Ex. emphasized the promotion of
commerce and navigation, and so the work of the
"scientific gentlemen" was seen as less essential to the
success of the expedition than the task of exploration
and mapping. The scientific character of the expedi-
tion was not lessened by the secondary role played
by its civilian scientists; in retrospect, their research
and collecting turned out to be as scientifically impor-
tant as the work of the naval officers.
Lieutenant Charles Wilkes commanded the expedi-
tion. Born in New York City, he attended various board-
ing schools, and his well-to-do father had him tutored
privately. He was drawn to the sea at the age of 1 5.
After several voyages as a sailor, he received an ap-
pointment at the age of 1 9 as midshipman in the U. S.
Navy (Leonhart 1985:189-91). Later he studied sur-
veying, advanced mathematics, triangulation, geomag-
netism, and hydrography. After several officers had
been given command of the expedition and then were
relieved of duty, Wilkes was offered the post and his
appointment approved when he was 40. There were
forty other naval lieutenants at the time, and thirty-
eight had more sea service (Stanton 1 975:6 1 ). How-
ever, Wilkes "respected science" and had scientific
qualifications.
Wilkes was an autocrat, much more so than Lewis.
He represented the "old navy" where flogging was freely
used to maintain discipline. Described as contentious,
opinionated, brooding, aloof, arrogant, conceited, rude,
a strict disciplinarian, and always fearful of cabals and
mutiny, he cultivated the image of a martinet, because
it invoked authority and obedience (Stanton 1975:1 39).
Although Wilkes was not loved, he certainly was re-
spected. James Dwight Dana valued Wilkes highly: "I
much doubt if, with any other commander ... we
should have fared better or lived together more har-
moniously, and I am confident that the Navy does not
contain a more daring or driving officer" (Viola 1 985:23).
Six ships set sail from Hampton Roads, Virginia, in
August 1 838. During the fouryears of intensive survey
of the Pacific Ocean region, the fleet crossed the Pa-
cific three times extending explorations from Tierra del
Fuego to Polynesia to Antarctica to New Zealand, Fiji,
and to the North Pacific Coast of North America. Two
of the smaller ships were lost in rough seas, one with
its 1 5-man crew. The Expedition returned to the United
States by way of the Cape of Good Hope. The sailors
were young "iron men" in the era of wooden ships;
hard work was required and heroics were expected.
The Ex. Ex. was the last great circumnavigation of the
globe under sail (Kassel 1 985:257).
The scientific results of the Ex. Ex. were published
in 19 volumes of reports and atlases (originally, 28
were planned). There were also large collections of
plants, animals, ethnographic specimens, gems, fos-
sils, and corals. The collections eventually came to the
fledgling Smithsonian Institution and helped determine
its development toward a museum institution that be-
came the National Museum of the United States, and
away from the national research institute that was a
real alternative in the 1840s and 1850s Gackson
1 985:450; Viola 1 985:9). The publications were prob-
ably the expedition's most remarkable achievement.
The reports were the grandest scientific production to
come out of the U. S. until that time and they had an
acknowledged international impact. Much of the sur-
vey was still incorporated in nautical charts a century
later Cackson 1985:455). That the work of the Ex. Ex.
was mostly published was due to the tireless efforts
of Wilkes, who bullied the scientists into completing
their reports and battled the Government to ensure
publication. Without publication and "Without Wilkes'
incredible energy and Byzantine mind, the Expedition's
achievements might have been no more lasting than
the wake of its ships upon the waters of the world"
(Stanton 1975:363).
The Ex. Ex. resembled Lewis and Clark's mission in
96 100 YEARS/ COMPARISON OF EXPEDITIONS
its funding and military organization, and the Jesup Ex-
pedition in its emphasis on science. All three expedi-
tions operated in difficult and dangerous regions, and
the participants were tough men and women. All three
had extraordinary leaders, bold, determined men, with
enormous energy. However, the exploration of un-
charted regions was by far the main purpose of the
two military-style expeditions, with additional strong
political and commercial motives. The JNPE, lacking
both, was an entirely scientific venture.
The Cambridge Anthropological Expedi-
tion to Torres Straits, 1898-9
The Torres Straits Expedition, organized by Alfred C.
Haddon (1855-1940), was, like the Jesup Expedition,
a pure scientific enterprise. Haddon and his team left a
lasting mark on British anthropology just as Boas fixed
his stamp on American anthropology (Kuklick 1998:
1 58-9; Rouse 1 998:50, 73-6). However, Torres Straits
lacked the grimness of theJNPE's grueling fieldwork.
Melanesia was no bed of roses—there was one
uncomfortable and dangerous voyage of about a week
on a crowded small ketch—but it was nothing com-
pared to East Siberia. Writing to Boas from Khabarovsk
on the Amur River, Laufer observed, "Nothing is free
here except death, which you can have in this coun-
try at special bargain rates." By contrast, W. H. R.
Rivers decided to join the Torres Straits Expedition
because he was feeling run down and "much in need
of a holiday," and Charles Myers spoke of his Borneo
sojourn as "a delightful way to spend a holiday"
(Stocking 1995: 109, 111). Torres Straits was seri-
ous business, but it also had the unmistakable air of
college boys on a lark.
Haddon came from a family initially in comfortable
circumstances: his father owned a printing firm and
wanted his son to enter the business (Quiggin 1 942:4);
but the son's interests, encouraged by his mother, were
in science. Clearly not cut out for the business world,
he was sent to Cambridge to study physiology and
zoology. In 1 880, he obtained the chair in zoology at
S. A. FREED, R. S. FREED, AND L. WILLIAMSON
the Royal College of Science in Dublin. Stocking (1 995:
99) describes him as gentle and emphatic by nature.
He had wide interests, inexhaustible energy, and was
deeply religious, impetuous, and devoted to natural
science, especially zoology (Quiggin 1942: 10,64).
Haddon and Boas were alike in some ways. They
both had backgrounds in the natural sciences, Haddon
in zoology and Boas in physics. They both had experi-
ence in their areas of interest before organizing their
expeditions. Both saw their earlier fieldwork partially in
terms of professional advancement. Boas hoped that
his multi-year field research in British Columbia on be-
half of the British Association for the Advancement of
Science (BAAS) would help establish him as an
Americanist, thus opening the door to permanent em-
ployment and a successful career in the United States.
Haddon wanted to escape the dead end of a provin-
cial professorship. He was "perishing for want of re-
search" and opined that "the Department here is played
out" (Quiggin 1 942:77). In 1 888 Haddon went to Torres
Straits to study coral reefs and saw opportunities for
ethnographic work in the region. Back in England, he
turned to anthropology and obtained a post as Lec-
turer in Physical Anthropology at Cambridge in 1 895.
In 1 897 he decided to return to Torres Straits to gather
more information for an ethnography that Cambridge
University Press had agreed to publish.
Haddon selected six investigators, his ideal num-
ber, by specialization. His concept of anthropology
included psychology, for "a successful investigator must
have a true insight into the minds of the investigated
and understand their reactions and ways of thought"
(Quiggin 1942:95). He began with two experimental
psychologists, Charles S. Myers and William McDougall,
both students of W. H. R. Rivers. When Rivers asked to
be included, three of the six investigators on the
expedition's team were experimental psychologists
who studied such faculties as vision, hearing, smell,
touch, and reaction time (Rivers 1901:1-2). Although
Haddon felt that the psychological side was rather
overweighed, he was pleased to have Rivers. More-
9 7
over, Myers was an accomplished musician, thus filling
one of Haddon's limitations. The other limitation that
Haddon felt keenly was linguistics, and he was fortu-
nate to recruit Sidney H. Ray, the only available English
specialist with an excellent knowledge of Melanesian
languages. Anthony Wilkins, an undergraduate, joined
the group as anthropological trainee and photogra-
pher. Charles G. Seligman, a medical pathologist with
leanings toward anthropology, was the final addition.
Haddon completely neglected archaeology and paid
relatively little attention to physical anthropology.
The anthropological work of the Jesup Expedition
—
compared to the Torres Straits expedition—featured
less individual specialization by discipline. Boas selected
his two key Siberian investigators Gochelson and
Bogoras) because of their previous work with the tribes
he wanted studied. On the other hand, he recognized
archaeology as a special field, and he put two archae-
ologists on his expedition team (Smith and Fowke), in
addition to a mammal specialist (Buxton) who collected
about 500 mammal specimens. The rest of the per-
sonnel, especially on the Siberian side, were expected
to take care of everything: ethnography, linguistics,
and physical anthropology and a little archaeological
and zoological collecting as well. It all worked out
very well, mainly because of the competence of the
fieldworkers.
Unlike Boas, Haddon pieced together his funding
from several sources: Cambridge University, the gov-
ernments of Britain and Queensland, and several scien-
tific societies. Nonetheless, he did not have enough
money, and the six anthropologists had to pay their
own way. Unexpectedly, Charles Hose, a district offi-
cial, on learning of the expedition, persuaded the Ra-
jah of Sarawak to invite the group to Sarawak all ex-
penses paid, which resulted in several additional months
of fieldwork on Borneo (Stocking 1995:109).
The group arrived at Thursday Island on April 22,
1 898. From there, the seven anthropologists split into
two groups and sailed east. Rivers, Myers, and
McDougall spent four months on Mer (Murray) Island,
"carrying out the first extended series of psychologi-
cal and physiological tests ever performed on native
populations." (Stocking 1995:109). The other men
toured the southeastern coast of New Guinea. Later,
part of the group went to Sarawak, and the others
toured along the western shore and among the is-
lands of the Gulf of Papua. The last members of the
expedition left for England in April 1 899.
The veterans of the Torres Straits Expedition, like
those of the Jesup Expedition, had distinguished and
influential later careers. Haddon did more than any other
man to establish anthropology at Cambridge. He had
a strong sense of fieldwork and placed it at the heart
of what it means to be an ethnographer. He published
enormously until the year of his death. Seligman and
Rivers, veterans of the Torres Expedition and two of
the great anthropologists of the day, are credited with
providing the ethnographic core of the "Cambridge
School" of anthropology (Stocking 1 995:1 15. 117;
Kuklick 1998:158-9). Myers and McDougall became
influential in psychology.
Conclusion
Why are these four expeditions famous? First, the tim-
ing was favorable. They all were the earliest of their
kind, and their scientific work was important at the
time. Some of it is still quite valuable today, especially
the collections, the ethnographies of the Jesup and the
Torres Straits expeditions, and River's development of
the "genealogical method," an indispensable tool in
ethnography.^ Second, publication of the scientific re-
sults of all the expeditions was massed in a set of
volumes rather than dispersed in scattered individual
publications, which considerably increased the scien-
tific impact of the work. Boas was certainly aware of
this effect. His agreement with his researchers stated
that all publications would appear in the museum's
series, with certain exceptions but only with museum
approval. Coordinated publication is not easily
achieved. The leaders of the expeditions had to cajole
authors to submit manuscripts and to supervise the
98 100 YEARS/ COMPARISON OF EXPEDITIONS
process of publication long after the fieldwork was
done. On the contrary, neither Lewis nor Clark took the
pains to publish the journals of their expedition. Other
editors prepared them for publication, the first ap-
pearing in 1814.
Thirdly, the investigators—Boas,Jochelson, Bogoras,
Laufer, Haddon, Rivers, Seligman, and Dana—were
among the greatest scientists of the day. Boas' ideas
influenced anthropology in the United States for de-
cades; Haddon built anthropology at Cambridge. There
were effects on museums as well as on universities. At
the American Museum, the Jesup Expedition was to
some extent the model for the next major effort, the
study of the Plains Indians, although Clark Wissler did
much more theoretically with the Plains project than
Boas did with the Jesup Expedition material (Freed and
Freed 1983:808-9). The Ex. Ex. was important in the
history of the Smithsonian; Baatz (1986:1020) also
credits it with catalyzing "the creation of a national
scientific association, which appeared a few years later
with the genesis of the AAAS [American Association
for the Advancement of Science] in 1848." Quiggin
(1 942: 1 42-3) credits Haddon during his brief curator-
ship at the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and
Ethnology with arranging related objects to tell a story
and thus to make the collections essential factors in
ethnographical and geographical work.
A century after two strictly scientific expeditions,
Jesup North Pacific and Torres Straits, the people of the
regions that were studied recognize the importance
of the work done by visiting ethnographers. Although
with some reservations, they are thankful that a record
of their lives was made before their cultures had irrevo-
cably changed. Kwakwaka'wakw who came to New
York for the opening ofthe Chiefly Feasts, the Enduring
Kwal<iiitl Potlatch exhibit at the American Museum in
1991, commented, "Thank God for Hunt and Boas.
Without them we would have no culture." The current
chief of Thursday Island, Ephraim Bani, on a trip to
European museums in 1 997, said that when Haddon
visited Thursday Island he had found its culture disin-
tegrating and was "on a rescue mission." Chief Bani
now found "his culture preserved" in the Cambridge
Museum, where Haddon had brought his Torres Strait
collections (Merrison and Calvert 1 997). In an editorial
comment about Drawing Shadows to Stone, a photo-
graphic exhibition based on the work of the Jesup Ex-
pedition on the Northwest Coast and in Siberia, The
New York Times wrote, "[l]t is impossible to look at
these photographs . . . without sensing that their sub-
jects were collaborating with the anthropologists
among them to devise a new, and still evolving, form
of survival" {The New Yorl< Times, 29 Jan. 1998:A22).
Such collaboration is the key to ethnography that has
lasting value.
The chief reason for the fame of the expeditions
for the general public is that all four ventures were
spellbinding adventure stories. The Ex. Ex., the Jesup
Expedition in Siberia, and Lewis and Clark, especially in
the Bitterroot Mountains, were dangerous, and full of
hairbreadth escapes. Torres Straits was less hazard-
ous, but in those days just being in Melanesia was
adventure enough for Europeans. The Ex. Ex. took pride
of place with its generous measure of treachery, flog-
gings, hostage taking, shipwreck, and pitched battles.
Some 100 lives were lost. All of this would be enough
to ensure the enduring fascination of the expeditions.
But there is something else. The expeditions fore-
shadow major historical trends. Lewis and Clark and
the Ex. Ex. are full of optimism and self-confidence, the
product of a new strong country fulfilling its "manifest
destiny" from ocean to ocean and beyond its borders.
Torres Straits was different, as Haddon came face to
face with the results of western colonialism. He was
not at all sure that its real and alleged benefits were
worth the damage it caused to Native peoples.
The Jesup Expedition has a curious foreboding qual-
ity. Bogoras and Jochelson were former underground
political conspirators who had spent time in prison
and lived for years in exile, both abroad and in Siberia.
The Russian government maintained a secret surveil-
lance over their field activities during the JNPE mission.
S. A. FREED, R. S. FREED, AND L. WILLIAMSON 99
Laufer had considerable trouble obtaining Russian per-
mission even to get to Siberia, because he was Jew-
ish—as were the two other key Siberian investigators
(Freed et al. 1 988a: 1 2-3). Their lives seemed to herald
the murderous political, ethnic, and ideological con-
flicts that convulsed Europe during the twentieth cen-
tury. Participants in all four expeditions faced uncom-
fortable, sometimes dangerous, conditions in the field;
but only the JNPE groups working in Siberia had to
contend with governmental suspicion if not hostility.
In view of this circumstance, Boas wrote tojesup, "the
full success of their investigation deserves the highest
praise."
Acknowledgmerits
Our thanks are due to Laurel Kendall for inviting us to
contribute an essay to this volume. We thank Alicia
Carmona for research assistance.
Notes
1 . The New York Times reported, "The expedition
will be backed by Mr. Jesup from his private resources.
Prof. F. W. Putnam. ..will conduct the expedition and
with him will be the anthropologist Dr. Boas" (1 2 March
1 897: 1 2). In fact, Putnam never went into the field with
the expedition, and Boas directed and supervised the
whole enterprise.
2. As Bogoras wrote to Lev Shternberg, a fellow
political exile, "Kolymsk [in Siberia] is a different planet,
even less connected with Earth than the Moon, com-
pletely alien to Earth, a block of ice cast out into space
and suspended there above the emptiness, where ev-
ery accidental spark of life freezes down and suffo-
cates" (20 June 1894, quoted in Vakhtin 2001:79).
3. Another methodological innovation that came
from the Torres Straits Expedition was a system of
recording string figures. Haddon had a longstanding
interest in string figures, and, in 1898, he and Rivers
invented a method for recording them (Quiggin
1942:128-129; Rivers and Haddon 1902). Although
later simplified terminologies have been developed,
the precise anatomical nomenclature of Rivers and
Haddon is still preferred 1 00 years later (Averkieva and
Sherman, 1 992:xxii, xxviii, 5).
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S. A. FREED, R. S. FREED, AND L. WILLIAMSON
29/ Dina Jochelson-Brodsky steps out of the expedition's winter headquarters at the village ofKamenskoye, 1901
.
Photographer, Waldemar Jochelson (AMNH 4 1 71-6729)
ANTHROPOLOGIES AND HISTORIES:
JESUP TEAM MEMBERS THEN AND NOW

f^ranz £)oa5 and the fvlusic
of the j\jorthwest (^oast jndians
IRA JACKNIS
Franz Boas' research strategy for the Jesup Expedition
was broad, relying on a wide range of documentation.
In addition to casts and measurements of body parts,
ethnographic and archaeological artifacts, observers'
field notes, linguistic texts in Native languages, and
photographs, Boas and his team collected music in
the form of notation and sound recordings. A pioneer
in so many areas of anthropology. Boas was also a
leader in the field of ethnomusicology, generally, and
the study of Northwest Coast Indian music, specifi-
cally. This essay summarizes and contextualizes Boas'
musicological contribution by reviewing his research
and writing on the topic during the two decades
surrounding the Jesup Expedition, 1 886-1 906. It also
offers a more detailed examination of his most ex-
tended Jesup research: his recording of Thompson
Indian songs in 1 897.'
As part of his broad education in mid-nineteenth
century Germany, Franz Boas (] 858-1 942) studied
European art and music, and learned to play the
piano (Liss 1996:160). According to his biographer,
"Music . . . formed an important part of his life. He had
begun to learn the piano early, and his enjoyment of
Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach increased as he
grew older" (Cole 1999:32). As Cole makes clear,
though, this musical education came informally; that
is, Boas acquired it as an avocation. Partly because of
the specialization demanded by the German educa-
tional system, he never studied music in his secondary
or university classes. His older sister Toni was a great
influence, an accomplished pianist with whom he
played four-hand piano arrangements (Liss 1 996: 1 62).
As a student in Bonn, he sang in a choir and formed a
trio with two of his friends. Throughout his life Boas
made an effort to live with a piano, frequently attended
classical concerts, and hung pictures of Mozart and
Beethoven in honored places in his home (Cole 1999:
46-7,139). Classical music was often a presence for
him on his field trips far from home: He "yearned for
Beethoven" during his first fieldwork, among the
Baffinland Eskimo in 1 883-84 (Liss 1 995: 1 22), and on
his British Columbia field trips played the piano and
organ at the request of local residents (Rohner
1969:67ff, 141-2). While he clearly derived pleasure
from this music, the aim of his piano-playing was not
so much to be a practiced performer but more to un-
derstand the music and the performances of others: "I
want to learn only in order to understand and, of course,
to listen. I want to learn the playing of music only in so
far as it allows me to appreciate" (F. Boas to Toni Boas,
6 October 1 876, in Cole 1 999:32; cf. Liss 1 996: 1 62).
This remark makes clear his scholarly or analytic ap-
proach to music, and it was these substantial musical
abilities that formed the foundation for his subsequent
anthropological research on the subject.
From his first field trip to his last, Boas documented
Native music. Although his fieldwork among the Baffin-
land Eskimo (Inuit) of 1 883^ was conducted primarily
to determine Native perceptions of the environment,
he transcribed folk tales and songs, published in a
1 05
series of later articles (Boas 1887a, 1889a, 1894a,
1 897b) and in his monograph. The Central Eskimo (Boas
1888c). His first exposure to Northwest Coast Indian
music came in January 1885, when he worked with a
troupe of Bella Coola visiting Berlin. Struck by their
"unique music," he transcribed four of their songs, which
he sent to Carl Stumpf (Cole 1 982: 11 9, 11 7). Stumpf,
a German psychologist who was one of the founders
of comparative musicology, had studied the songs of
the Bella Coola party a few months earlier, when
they visited Halle (Stumpf 1886). In the fall of 1886,
Boas made his first visit to the Northwest Coast. Here
he studied Chinook songs in Victoria and Vancouver,
and KwakiutI song and dance in the villages of north-
ern Vancouver Island.
Music thus lay at the very inception of Boas' North-
west Coast research, and he continued to study the
subject in the years leading up to the Jesup Expedi-
tion. During the Chicago World's Fair in 1 893, he again
documented Native music in a displaced setting—this
time using the phonograph to record songs of the
visiting group of KwakiutI (Jacknis 1 99 1 a: Fig. 30). On
his next field trip, he was able to greatly extend his
study of the tribe's music in its ceremonial setting, this
time over several weeks in the fall of 1 894 at Fort
Rupert (Fig. 31). The first season of the Jesup Expedi-
tion marked an important advancement in Boas' musi-
cological research; for the first time he was able to use
the phonograph in the field. In June 1 897 he recorded
Thompson Indian music with the assistance of James
Teit in Spences Bridge, B.C. These sessions also proved
to be his most extensive musicological research for
the expedition. He was in the field only once more
during the Jesup Expedition years; on that second trip
of 1900 he focused on KwakiutI material culture and
language, rather than on anything specifically musical.
Although Boas traveled periodically to the North-
west Coast after 1 900, he did little musicological field-
work until his last trip, in 1 930-1 , when he again worked
with the KwakiutI of Fort Rupert and Alert Bay. This, at
the age of 72, was actually his most intensive study of
Native music. He recorded 1 56 cylinders and exposed
about an hour's worth of 1 6-mm film of dance, crafts,
and gesture. On this trip he attempted to gather mate-
rial that would allow him to delineate tribal, genre, and
individual styles, and also to clarify the rhythmic rela-
tions of texts and dance movements. Even then he did
not stop, recording KwakiutI Daniel Cranmer on ac-
etate-coated aluminum disks when Cranmer visited
Boas in New York in 1 94 1 , the year before Boas' death.
Boas' Research and Writing on Music
Franz Boas made important contributions to a number
of diverse areas of ethnomusicological research, among
them recording and transcription; formal analysis (scales,
melody, and rhythm); song genres; song texts and the
relations of words and music; performance practice;
the social and cultural context of music; organology
(the study of musical instruments); areal relations and
history; and acculturation; in addition to his support
for the institutional structures of scholarship.
Perhaps his most important contributions to the
field of ethnomusicology were on the nature of tran-
scription in notation and sound recording (Ellingson
1992:118-25). Boas published over a hundred of his
own transcriptions (Fig. 32). At the beginning, he tran-
scribed the music by having the singer repeat the notes
until he had written it down in a Western notation
style. However, his work with Stumpf and the Bella
Coola had made him well aware of the limitations of
Western notation for tribal music. In one article, for
example, he adopted Stumpf s diacritic of a zero mark
placed above a note, to indicate that "the tone is sung
a little lower" (Boas 1888a:50; Ellingson 1992:120).
Boas was among the earliest ethnologists to make
mechanical sound recordings. The first American an-
thropologist to use Edison's wax cylinder phonograph
in the field was Jesse W. Fewkes, who recorded
Passamaquoddy Indian music in Maine in 1890.^ He
followed this test with recordings of the Zuni in 1890
and the Hopi in 1891. Funded by Boston philanthro-
pist Mary Hemenway, this collection was acquired by
1 06 PARTICIPANTS/ BOAS AND MUSIC
Harvard's Peabody Museum in 1894. During the Chi-
cago World's Fair in 1893, Boas worked with musi-
cologist John C. Fillmore to record KwakiutI songs on
1 1 6 wax cylinders. Also at the Chicago Fair, Benjamin
Ives Oilman recorded Javanese, Samoan, Turkish, as well
as KwakiutI music (again with Hemenway sponsorship;
this collection was also acquired by Harvard). The most
important institution for the recording of American In-
dian music during its first decade was the Smithsonian's
Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE). Alice C. Fletcher,
a Bureau research associate, had been studying Native
American music since the early 1 880s, and during the
1 890s she recorded the Omaha and many other Plains
groups. Other Bureau recordists were Washington Matt-
hews, among the Navajo, and James A. Mooney among
the Caddo, Comanche, Arapaho, Kiowa, and Paiute.
Though starting slightly laterthan the Smithsonian,
the American Museum of Natural History under Boas
was a leader, especially in quantity and regional range,
and it was the first American anthropology museum
to collect sound recordings. The history of early Ameri-
can Indian recording remains to be written, but it
appears that the American Museum was much more
systematic than the BAE in sponsoring recording.
Perhaps because of Boas' own interest in the subject,
the cylinders were carefully cataloged as soon as they
entered the museum. At the Smithsonian, on the other
hand, their creation and preservation were left to the
interest of individual researchers. Moreover, the Ameri-
can Museum's collection predated the largest Euro-
pean sound archive, the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv,
which began informally in 1 900 and officially in 1 905
(Reinhard 1971; Simon 2000, cf. Gillis 1984:324). In
addition to the 228 cylinders made by the Jesup Expe-
dition, other early American Museum recordings were
made among the Blackfoot and other Plains groups by
George Bird Grinnell in 1 897 and among the Tarahumara
and Huichol of northern Mexico by Carl Lumholtz the
following year. The American Museum collection, in
turn, became the model for others at the University of
California and Indiana University.^
Although we have no explicit statements from Boas
on the ethnographic utility of the phonograph, he must
have advocated it for his Jesup Expedition colleagues,
as several of the parties used the machine. The first
accessioned collection of phonograph recordings in
the American Museum is comprised of 1 39 cylinders
from the Koryak, Yukagir, Yakut (Sakha), Tungus (Even),
Chukchi, Eskimo (Siberian Yupik), and local Russians
made by Waldemar Jochelson and Waldemar Bogoras
in Siberia in 1 901 -2 (Freed, Freed, and Williamson 1 988:
1 01 ). In addition to Boas' forty-five Thompson Salish
cylinders of 1897, Livingston Farrand recorded thirty-
four cylinders among the Quinault and another ten of
the Quileute of Washington State in 1 898. On Sakhalin
Island in 1 898-9, Berthold Laufer recorded Gilyak (Nivkh)
and Tungus (Uilta) songs (Boas 1 903:97). ^ On the re-
lated Harrington Expedition in 1899, Roland Dixon re-
corded twenty-one cylinders among the Maidu of
northeastern California.''
This substantial recording activity is perhaps the
greatest ethnomusicological legacy of the Jesup
Expedition (Keeling 2001:285-90). The phonograph,
although a relatively recent ethnographic medium, was
just one part of a multi-media set of tools employed
by the Jesup Expedition. Like the extensive photogra-
phy, primarily of physical types, this activity resulted
in the production of a corpus of enduring objects
of otherwise ephemeral culture, which could remain
the basis for future scholarly research (Jacknis 1 984,
1 996). Years later, writing to museum founder George
Heye in 1 927, Boas explained, "I am trying to develop
gradually a collection of records of Indian speech and
song which, I believe, will be just as important as col-
lections of specimens of their handy craft which are
accumulating in museums" (Boas to Heye, 30 Novem-
ber 1927, APS-BP).
Although music was treated in several of the Jesup
Expedition publications, it held a relatively minor posi-
tion. Boas shared some insights into the Thompson
(NIaka'pamux) recording sessions in letters to his wife
and parents (Rohner 1 969:202-4), but his published
I. JACKNIS 1 07
remarks on music in theJNPE publications are quite
brief. He contributed a chapter on art to Teit's mono-
graph, The Thompson Indians (Je\t 1 900), including sev-
eral pages on types of songs and a description of
musical instruments (Boas 1900:383-85). Boas' report
on Bella Coola mythology included notations for four
songs, three with texts (Boas 1898:71, 82, 93, 94),
with other song texts and translations in passing. The
first volume of the Kwakiutl Texts contains a section
on "Songs" (Boas and Hunt 1905:475-91), with inter-
linear translations of 32 song texts, including texts for
20 Hamatsa songs and others, plus a description of a
winter ceremonial. One reason for this relatively mea-
ger output on Boas' part was his conception of his
research and publication as an entity. For example, the
winter ceremonial description was a more complete
version of his earlier account in a report that had been
published by the Smithsonian Institution (Boas 1 897a).
Generally, though, he did not repeat in hisJNPE publica-
tions the extensive information on music that was
contained in that monograph.
While neither Bogoras nor Jochelson supplied any
musicological analysis, theirJNPE monographs contain
good descriptions of music and musical instruments,
especially as part of shamanism (Keeling 2001). Both
include vivid anecdotes about Native reactions to their
recording (Bogoras 1 904-7:436; Jochelson 1 908:426-
7). Bogoras, for example, offered a very sophisticated
description of how the Chukchi shaman obscures the
source of the music by modifying the sound of his
voice with a drum, and another long account of his
use of the phonograph to explore the nature of "sepa-
rate voices" or ritual ventriloquism (Bogoras 1 904-
7:434, 436). The most extensive publication on music
to come out of the Jesup Expedition was John R.
Swanton's work. Swanton, a student of Boas then em-
ployed by the Smithsonian Bureau of American Ethnol-
ogy, collected among the Haida in 1900-1 for the
American Museum. His JNPE monograph contains a
general description of Haida songs and a brief sum-
mary of song types (Swanton 1905:212), which he
1 08
complemented in a longer study of texts and transla-
tions for 106 Haida songs collected on the expedition
(Swanton 1912). However, he noted only song texts
and enclosed a brief description; there were no tran-
scriptions or recordings (cf. Enrico and Stuart 1996).
While Farrand, Jochelson, Bogoras, and Laufer recorded
music, and Swanton obtained many song texts, only
Boas published transcriptions, as he seems to have
been the only musically literate person in the team.
Most anthropologists of the time worked with pro-
fessional musicologists to first transcribe and then ana-
lyze their recordings of Native music (Brady 1984:3).
Boas was virtually alone (along with Alice Fletcher) as
a fieldworker who was able to make recordings in the
natural context of musical performance, accompanied
with verbal records in the Native language, and then
musicologically analyze this material. His training al-
lowed him to investigate technical issues of scales,
melody, and rhythm. For example, he was perhaps the
first to note complex rhythmical structures in North-
west Coast songs (Ellingson 1 992:1 1 8; cf. Boas 1 888a:
51-2). More generally, he also contributed to the first
major debate in American ethnomusicology. John C.
Fillmore, the collaborator of both Boas and Alice
Fletcher, adhered to a widespread notion of the pe-
riod, that there was a universal harmonic sense, which
was realized only imperfectly by tribal music (Filmore
1 893, 1 895). Reviewing Fletcher's Study ofOmaha In-
dian Music (1893), Boas initially accepted Fillmore's
theory "that the underlying sense of harmony is the
same as ours" (Boas 1894b: 171). It is puzzling why
Boas supported this position, now regarded as false
and ethnocentric. Boas' later research showed how
each culture needed to be understood on its own
terms. Boas, like Fillmore, may have been influenced
by Hermann Helmholtz's theory of a natural musical
scale based on Western harmony (Myers 1 994:xx), or
he may have felt that it actually accorded a degree of
cultural respect to Native musical systems. We do know
that Boas' early work was marked by evolutionary
positions that he later rejected, and that his thought
PARTICIPANTS/ BOAS AND MUSIC
was always caught in intellectual oppositions (Stock-
ing 1974:1-20). In any event, towards the end of his
career, Boas did reject Fillmore's theory of latent har-
mony (Boas 1927:342).
Much of Boas' exploratory writing on Northwest
Coast music was an attempt to classify songs into
genres. In his early essay on KwakiutI songs, he noted
children's songs, love songs, prayers, and war songs
(Boas 1 896). His most definitive research on this topic,
left unpublished at his death, was his 1 930-1 field trip,
during which he was able to clarify the distinctions
between summer songs, winter songs, gambling songs,
love songs, mourning songs, and baby songs (Franz
Boas to George Herzog, 18 April 1933, APS-BP).
As a pioneer linguist. Boas naturally focused on the
setting and language of song texts. With most of his
musical transcriptions, he supplied the words in the
Native language and a translation. In his essay on Chi-
nook songs, he noted that "the Tsimshian sing many
Haida songs, although they do not understand the
meaning of the words" (Boas 1888b:224). From the
appended glossary of the Chinook words, he thought
it interesting "that not more than seventy-four words
occur in the collection of thirty-nine songs" (Boas 1 888b:
225). In several publications, most notably the KwakiutI
winter ceremonial study, he offered a semantic and
cultural explanation of the song texts, identif/ing, for
example, the various mythological characters to which
the songs refer.
Franz Boas is known forthe contextual ethnographic
approach he brought to the study of culture, advocat-
ing intensive fieldwork and Native texts over armchair
speculation. Naturally, he contributed to the study of
the social and performative context of music. For ex-
ample, he learned from his first KwakiutI field trip that:
The songs which are sung during these
dances are in part very old, but a consider-
able number are new, and native poets and
composers are continually adding to their
stock of songs. As chorus singing is prac-
tised [sic] at all festivals by these Indians,
and as the rhythms of the songs are very
complicated, a good deal of practice is
necessary before an artistic effect can be
reached. ... Every village has its singing-
master, who instructs young and old, and
holds regular rehearsals before each festival.
(Boas 1888a:51)
Again, his most elaborate study of this type was
his monograph on KwakiutI winter ceremonials, where
he specifically describes the seating of the musicians;
the roles and duties of the song leader (who acts as
composer and music director), his assistant, and the
chorus; and the handling of the instruments (Boas
1897a:432, 437); in addition to more general com-
ments on the masked dances to which the music is a
vital accompaniment.
Because of his role as artifact collector and mu-
seum curator, there was one otherwise minor field of
musicology to which Boas made an important contri-
bution—organology, or the study of musical instru-
ments. He himself collected a full range of Northwest
Coast rattles, whistles, and drums on his many field
trips (Cole 1 985; Jacknis 2002:23-6). During the Jesup
Expedition, however, he collected relatively little, shar-
ing the responsibility for the Bella Coola and KwakiutI
collections with George Hunt (Jacknis 1991b). An in-
sight into Boas' interest in musical instruments is evi-
dent in his instruction to the Jesup collectors. For ex-
ample, from John Swanton, collecting among the Haida,
he requested:
[R]attles also if fully explained. Please inquire
particularly in regard to the significance of
the raven rattle with hawk face on its lower
side and lying figure on its back. What is the
legend of the origin? How are they used and
how are they held in dances? What is the
difference between these rattles and the
round rattles, most of which represent birds
or heads? Are they used in different
ceremonials? What is the use of the rattle set
with puffin-beaks? What is the signficance of
the clapper, most of which represent the
killer-whale? Specimens of all of these, if fully
explained, are desirable. A series of whistels
[sic] with explanations would also be good
to have. Do you consider the flageolet as an
imitation of European patterns or as their
own invention? (Boas to John Swanton, 5
June, 1900, acc. 1901-31, AMNH)
I. JACKNIS I 09
Boas described these instruments principally in his
study of the KwakiutI winter ceremonial (Boas
1897a:431^, 437, 438^0, 445). In addressing the
iconography of Hamatsa rattles, for example, he noted
the skull motif as a reference to the man-eating theme
of the winter ceremonial and the former practice of
killing slaves (Boas 1 897a:439; cf. Fig. 33). Whistles, he
wrote, are considered the voices of spirits (Boas
1 897a:447). Perhaps because Northwest Coast instru-
ments are comparatively simple in form, it was these
sorts of contextual topics that Boas addressed, as
opposed to the more usual musicological concerns of
instrument form, construction, and tuning.
One area of research—a major Boasian orientation
that underlay the entire Jesup Expedition—was diffu-
sion and history. Boas, however, did little direct writ-
ing on this aspect of Native music. Perhaps he felt that
it was first necessary to compile an adequate sample
and description. This omission is particularly striking in
that such issues of areal relations were the ostensible
rationale for the expedition's work. In his summary es-
says, he did cite mythological and artifactual patterns,
but nothing from music, most likely because the musi-
cal collections were relatively small and because they
were not transcribed. Nevertheless, as he often did
with his many research topics. Boas suggested this
subject to his later students, George Herzog (1930)
and Helen H. Roberts (1936).
Franz Boas did, however, make an important con-
tribution to the study of more recent history. It is
commonly claimed that he was uninterested in stud-
ies of acculturation; but one of his most fascinating
musicological essays, "Chinook Songs" (Boas 1 888b),
was devoted to the music of the urban Indians of
Victoria, Vancouver, and New Westminster, B.C. Largely
migrant workers, they labored in the saw mills, canner-
ies, and hop fields. Boas published thirty-eight song
texts and translations, as well as two melodies in
musical transcription. The texts—composed in a com-
plex linguistic Creole that combined English, Chinook,
and other Native Northwest Coast languages—mostly
expressed feelings of loneliness and lost love. For in-
stance, "When the steamboat leaves/ Say good-bye,
Jimmy!/ Billy will feel very sad" (Boas 1 888b:224), with
the words "steamboat" and "good-bye, Jimmy" in En-
glish. In his analysis. Boas noted the contexts of perfor-
mance and transmission.
Throughout his mature career, Boas dedicated him-
self to creating the institutional structures of scholar-
ship; and ethnomusicology was no exception. Largely
as a result of the use of the phonograph, the 1890s
was the critical decade for the institutionalization of
the field (Lee 1 993:2 1 , cf. Densmore 1 927). Boas knew
and corresponded with the leading students of Ameri-
can Indian music, among them Alice C. Fletcher, James
A. Mooney, Washington Matthews, George Bird Grinnell,
John C. Fillmore, and Benjamin I. Gilman. In the Journal
of American Folk-Lore, he favorably reviewed Alice
Fletcher's pioneering A Study of Omaha Indian Music
(Boas 1 894b). In December 1 898, he invited Fletcher,
Matthews, and Carl Lumholtz to join him in demon-
strating some of their recordings of Indian songs at
the annual meeting of the American Folklore Society
(AFS) (e.g.. Boas to G. B. Grinnell, 23 December 1898,
AMNH-DA; cf. Newell 1899:53-4). This led to the for-
mation of an AFS committee on American folk music,
which Boas cHaired. As part of this effort. Boas came in
contact with leading musicians and composers of his
day. He asked his Columbia colleague Edward
MacDowell to serve on the committee. Although
MacDowell declined. Boas did use another local com-
poser, Frederick R. Burton, to transcribe some of the
recorded songs. These composers, along with Arthur
Farwell, Charles Wakefield Cadman, and R. Carlos Troyer,
were loosely referred to as "the American Indianists"
(Pisani 1 998). There is no record of Boas' personal opin-
ion on their creative work, but the Native music that
he and his colleagues were recording was a vital stimu-
lus to contemporary composers who were attempt-
ing to create a genuinely American music.
As a German immigrant, Boas naturally main-
tained scholarly ties with his homeland. He actively
1 1 PARTICIPANTS/ BOAS AND MUSIC
shared his research on Northwest Coast Indian music
with two of the founders of the so-called "Berlin school
of comparative musicology": Carl Stumpf and his stu-
dent Erich von Hornbostel (Christensen 1 991 ). Just as
Boas had sent his early Bella Coola transcriptions to
Stumpf, in 1905 he lent forty-three of the Thompson
cylinders to his old colleague, then at the University of
Berlin, evidently at his request (cf. Boas to Stumpf, 1 3
November 1 905, AMNH-DA). Von Hornbostel, with his
colleague Otto Abraham, used them as the basis for
an important early essay in ethnomusicology (Abraham
and von Hornbostel 1975 [1906]). Some of these cyl-
inders were reproduced by the Berlin Phonogramm-
Archiv and subsequently included in the Archives' Dem-
onstration Collection (Reinhard 1 971 ; Reinhard and List
1 963). First produced in the early 1 920s, copies of the
1 20-cylinder set were distributed to archives through-
out the world—"the first anthology of traditional
music ever issued" (Seeger and Spear 1 987:89). Boas
continued to teach and encourage growth in the field,
training scholars such as George Herzog (who had
previously studied under von Hornbostel) and Helen
H. Roberts. Through these German connections, Boas
infused the study of American Indian music with an
international perspective.
Boas' research on music had implications beyond
its own sphere of study. As music was the art to which
he was most personally attracted, it seems to have
become the model for his aesthetic theory, and helps
to explain the origins of his rather idiosyncratic theory
of primitive art (Boas 1927). Boas suggested that all
decorative patterns were derived from a craftsperson's
motor patterns Gacknis 1992:1 58). Using the word "vir-
tuoso"—a term common in musical criticism—Boas
claimed that designs, indeed all formal patterns, were
created out of the rhythmical actions necessary to pro-
duce the work. In support of this. Boas examined rhyth-
mic patterns in visual, verbal, and musical art forms.
Although his theory has it roots in German aesthetics,
it must have appealed to someone who was familiar
with the nature of artistic (i.e., musical) performance.
I. JACKNIS
As in all his work. Boas' research on music was
devoted to the critique of then-popular notions of
cultural evolution and to the promotion of cultural
equality. In his first essay on Native music, he argued
that "the mind of the native enjoys as well the beau-
ties of nature as we do; that he expresses his grief in
mournful songs, and appreciates humorous concep-
tions" (Boas 1887a:383). At the same time, however.
Boas' anthropology was committed to appreciating
cultures on their own terms. In his now-classic debate
with Smithsonian ethnologist Otis T. Mason over the
principles of museum classification, he prominently em-
ployed a musical example: "From a collection of string
instruments, flutes, or drums of 'savage' tribes and the
modern orchestra, we cannot derive any conclusion
but that similar means have been applied by all peoples
to make music. The character of their music, the only
object worth studying, which determines the form of
the instruments, cannot be understood from the single
instrument, but requires a complete collection of the
single tribe" (Boas 1 887b:62). Note his emphasis, that
the character of their music was the only object worth
studying. He elaborated this contextual approach in
the next response in the debate:
The rattle, for instance, is not merely the
outcome of the idea of making noise, and of
the technical methods applied to reach this
end: it is, besides this, the outcome of
religious conceptions, as any noise may be
applied to invoke or drive away spirits; or it
may be the outcome of the pleasure children
have in noise of any kind; and its form may
be characteristic of the art of the people.
Thus the same implement belongs to very
different departments of a psychological
museum. (Boas 1887b:65; see Fig. 33)
Nowhere could one find a better and more suc-
cinct example of Boas' approach to the study of cul-
ture. ' It was perhaps not an accident that Boas chose
to use musical examples to make a general cultural
critique. Such a perspective would come to influence
the study of Northwest Coast and other Native mu-
sics, as much as it affected anthropology in general.
For Franz Boas, music was not a limited or specialized
1 1 1
phenomenon, but actually lay at the core of human
culture and thus of anthropology.
Recording Thompson Indian Music, 1897
In June 1897, in Spences Bridge, B.C., Boas recorded
Thompson Indian music with the assistance of James
A. Teit (Rohner 1 969:202^; cf. Wickwire 1 988, 2001
,
this volume). Without doubt, these Thompson sessions
were the most important musicological contributions
of the entire Jesup Expedition project: first because
they involved Boas, the expedition leader; second,
because they were the most extensive musical research
(as opposed to sheer recording) of the six-year expedi-
tion fieldwork; third, because they were Boas' first
sound recording in the field; and finally because of their
subsequent analysis in a pioneering essay in ethnomu-
sicology (Abraham and von Hornbostel 1 975 [1 906]).
In this section we consider how sound recording, like
all ethnographic transcription, can be regarded as the
outcome of a social interaction resulting in cultural rep-
resentations. Like Native-made artifacts, these objects
must be understood within their generating context.
The visitingJNPE team—consisting of Boas, Farrand,
and Smith—spent about ten days in Spences Bridge
(Fig. 34), arriving on the evening ofJune 3, and leaving
the morning ofJune 1 4. In addition to sound recording,
the party took photographs, plaster casts, and mea-
surements of people, and gathered a small collection
of artifacts (see Thom 2001 :1 41-2; Wickwire, this vol-
ume). They began recording songs on June 6, docu-
menting ten songs in the first session, with another
thirty-five cylinders recorded over the next two days
(Wickwire 1 993:544). The sessions took place in Teit's
house; given the insensitivity of early phonographs,
the recording would have been improved by an in-
door setting.^ Earlier cylinder machines were rather large,
bulky, and heavy; but by the mid-1 890s several com-
panies had introduced home models that were much
smaller and lighter (Fig. 35). "About the size and weight
of a portable sewing machine today" (Brady 1 984:4),
such an apparatus could be packed on horseback, as
did Boas and the JNPE team. Although some were or
could be driven by an electric motor fitted with a bat-
tery, many of the home models were treadle or spring
driven and thus were perfect for field recording. And
like the modern tape recorder, the same machine could
be used for recording and play-back.
Like photography, sound recording is a focused
social interaction, minimally involving the ethnographer
and the Native performers. In this case, however, a
critical player wasJames Teit (1 854-1 922). Just as Boas
collaborated with George Hunt among the Bella Coola
and KwakiutI, here, too, he relied on a local field assis-
tant (see Wickwire, this volume). For the Jesup Expedi-
tion, Boas selected Teit to be the prime researcher for
the Plateau tribes of British Columbia. After participat-
ing in the 1897 recording session, he went on to do
important musicological research under the auspices
of the Anthropological Division of the Geological Sur-
vey of Canada. With a phonograph acquired in 1912,
Teit recorded 250 songs, now preserved in the Cana-
dian Museum of Civilization (Wickwire 1 988, 2001 :336).
Teit undoubtedly was responsible for selecting the
six singers to be recorded. In fact, several of them
were his relatives by marriage: Lucy Antko (his wife.
Fig. 36), Xwalinek (her sister), and Nsilkapeskit (her sister's
son; Wickwire 2001 :n. 7, 449). Just as Hunt tended to
go first to his relatives Oacknis 1 991 b:2 1 1 ), Teit must
have found it easier to involve people he knew well.
This rapport was critical, as Boas encountered some
initial resistance to his recording: "Some of the people
were bashful, especially the women, who did not want
to sing until all the men had left the house" (Rohner
1 969: 204). In fact, four of the six singers were female
(Wickwire 1993:544). As Wickwire points out, Teit's
ethnography was especially sensitive to women's is-
sues, probably because of his marriage to Antko.
Boas indicated that gender was an issue in the per-
formance, but the singers may have also been reluc-
tant to be recorded by a strange contraption. The pho-
nograph was relatively new for everybody, and espe-
cially so for Native people. The machines used during
1 1 2 PARTICIPANTS/ BOAS AND MUSIC
the Jesup Expedition were undoubtedly the first that
these people had ever experienced, which explained
the strong feelings of surprise frequently expressed (cf.
Brady 1999:1 10). Thompson people also had prob-
lems with being photographed (Hill-Tout 1978:64). "
But their initial shyness gave way to pleasure, aided
perhaps by the machine's reproductive abilities, as Boas
noted that "The singing was a great deal of fun for the
villagers" (Rohner 1 969:204).
This inter-social encounter produced objects that
transcribed or represented aspects of Native cultural
"reality" Oacknis 1 996). With his methodological sophis-
tication. Boas spent much of the 1 890s attempting to
ascertain the strengths and weakness of cylinder re-
cording as an ethnographic medium. On the one hand,
a cylinder recording was an indexical representation
of actual acoustical phenomena. Within its limitations,
it could more accurately record the sonic data apart
from the filter of an observer's abilities and knowledge.
And it was easier to capture a song by this means
than from the repeated singing necessary to produce
musical notation. Despite their obvious benefits. Boas
was acutely aware of the limitations of the cylinder
machines. Early phonographs could not accurately
record rhythm, faint notes, or the sounds of choral or
instrumental ensembles that were common on the
Northwest Coast. Even more critical, many musical per-
formances, among the Thompson as well as the
KwakiutI, lasted several hours, while wax cylinders
could record only for short periods (an average of three
minutes for a four-inch cylinder, and nine minutes for a
six-inch one).'-^ During his 1893 Chicago World's Fair
session. Boas overcame this limitation by recording a
single song across two cylinders; but in Spences Bridge,
motivated perhaps by a shortage of cylinders, he was
forced to use the machine more as a sampler. The
effect of such technological limits was to create the
song as a bounded musical object and unit of
ethnomusicological study (cf. Shelemay 1991:280).
With his interest in context. Boas clearly realized
that there was more to a song performance than the
physical sound. While recording the singing of the Th-
ompson, he noted the vivid acting and gestures that
accompanied the performance:
"The singers became ecstatic and acted out
all their old stories and ceremonies while
they sang. One of them sang a prayer. While
singing he danced and reached out to the
sun with both arms while looking upward.
Then he brought them down slowly, looking
to the ground. Before that he had crossed his
hands in front of his chest with the palms
outward, moving them to the left and to the
right as if he wanted to embrace the celestial
body" (Rohner 1969:203).
To his parents, he added,
"An old woman sang the song into the
phonograph which serves to 'cleanse'
women who had borne twins. She took
bundles of fir branches and hit her shoulders
and breast with them while she danced. The
song imitates the growl of the grizzly bear
because they believe that the children derive
from the grizzly bear" (Rohner 1 969:204).
Despite noting this detailed description. Boas did not
go on to complain about the phonograph's failure to
record such gestures, evidently resigning himself to its
limitations. On the other hand, perhaps his sensitivity
to such failure of transcription led him in 1930-1, at
the age of seventy-two, to use a movie camera to
document KwakiutI music and dance.
Returning to New York, Boas had these cylinders
cataloged, but he himself was never able to seriously
study them. In his musical research, as in all his work.
Boas generally devoted more effort to description than
analysis. By himself or with colleagues he managed to
transcribe most of his recordings, but his musical analy-
ses tended to be partial and expressed in short essays
and passages of monographs rather than in longer,
specialized works. Although not all his transcriptions
were published. Boas undoubtedly felt compelled to
publish as many as possible because they were the
principal form, at the time, of reproducing the music. In
these early years of sound recording, the available tech-
nology could produce multiple copies only with great
difficulty. When a system of mastering was developed
I. JACKNIS 1 1 3
a few years later, there was no commercial market for
these cylinders, and thus there was no incentive to
reproduce them in quantities. Boas did make copies of
his wax cylinders, but they were inevitably distorted
from the original, and there was a limit as to how many
copies could be made before the original signal was
obliterated. Thus transcription was as much a form of
reproduction (and presen>/ation) as it was analysis.
As in his linguistic and ethnographic research, Boas
was keenly interested in the methodological implica-
tions of these alternate forms of transcription. In one
of his earliest ethnological essays, "On Alternating
Sounds" (Boas 1 889b), he had called attention to the
role of observer bias in the transcription of exotic lan-
guages. In fact, it is hard to tell which was more funda-
mental for Boas—his approach to musical or linguistic
transcription. Moreover, his early training in psycho-
physics and acoustics, which he applied primarily to
linguistics (cf. IVIackert 1 994), also laid a foundation for
his musicological research. After using the phonograph
for the first time at the Chicago Fair, he made a careful
study of the usefulness of the machine. Working in
parallel. Boas transcribed melodies by ear, while Fillmore
made his transcriptions from the cylinder recordings.
Boas then subjected these to re-analysis during his next
field trip in the fall of 1894. His publication of the re-
sults (Boas 1 896, 1 897a) was the first comparative
investigation of the transcriptions of the same songs
by different transcribers. Although he complained to
his wife that Fillmore's music was "not very accurate"
(Rohner 1969:178-9), when he published them he
claimed that "on the whole" their respective "render-
ings of the music agree closely" (Boas 1 896: 1 ). In any
case, for Boas it was necessary to continually confirm
his ethnographic transcriptions, so that one could be
sure that they represented Native culture and not ob-
server bias.
Boas was not alone in preferring transcription to
the actual recording. According to Richard Keeling,
"Early collectors seem to have regarded the
machine more as a sampling device or as an
aid for producing written transcriptions than
as a means of recording actual performance
practice. While this approach to field record-
ing partially reflects theoretical presumptions
that seem archaic nowadays, the methodol-
ogy was due in great part to technological
limitations of the equipment itself (Keeling
1991:xiii, cf. Brady 1984:9).
Thus scholars such as Boas and Fillmore played their
cylinders over and over again to ensure the accuracy
of their transcriptions, in the process drastically de-
grading the surfaces of the grooves and their ability to
preserve the music.
Like Native artifacts, these cylinders were associ-
ated with documentation that reflected their creation.
Wickwire has noted the differences in Boas' and Teit's
field notes from this session.
"Boas made notes of only the cylinder
number, the tribal affiliation (Thompson
Indians'), the type of song ('Dancing song,
love song, religious song,' etc.), the place of
recording ('Spence's Bridge'), and the re-
corder ('F. Boas'). By way of contrast, Teit
made note of the Native names of the
singers ('Kaxpftsa', 'Antko', etc.), the Native
names of song-types ("s'tlae'eski"-dance
song, etc.), and incidental material such as
the flexibility of the words used in the songs"
(Wickwire 1988:189, cf. 2001).'^
She also notes that Teit's post-1 91 2 recordings were
much better documented, including the Native name
of the singer, a reference to photographs, how the
singer learned the song, a Native text and transla-
tion, and other information such as the age or im-
portance of the song or its ceremonial context. Any
analyis would depend on the kind and amount of
documentation that accompanied the recorded
music. Commenting on the nature of museum docu-
mentation, Tom McFeat observed that "object+ data
= specimen, where by 'data' one means notes, mea-
surements, drawings, charts, graphs, photographs,
and models" (McFeat 1967:93; italics original). The
object alone is not sufficient as a cultural represen-
tation. This equation is as true for sound recordings
as it is for photographs and artifacts. Unfortunately,
such minimal or partial documentation was common
1 1 4 PARTICIPANTS/ BOAS AND MUSIC
in many archives of early sound recordings (Seeger
and Spear 1987:1 1-2).
Boas drew upon this documentation for his brief
discussion of music in Teit's JNPE monograph (Teit
1 900).'" However, the principal analysis of these songs
was done by his German colleagues Abraham and von
Hornbostel (1 906). Although Boas would have preferred
to have the study published by the American Museum,
he felt it was acceptable for it to appear under other
auspices as long as proper credit were given (Boas to
Carl Stumpf, 13 November 1905, AMNH). The result-
ing essay was actually published in a Festschrift dedi-
cated to Boas. This article was one of the first sophis-
ticated analyses of the musical content of Native
American songs, based on recordings of actual perfor-
mances and the transcriptions of forty-three songs. The
essay is divided into two parts: "scales" and "rhythm,
tempo, structure, and performance practice." Although
Abraham and von Hornbostel analyzed notes and in-
tervals using Western musical terminology (e.g., thirds,
tonic, semi-tone), they observed, "But the fact that these
concepts, taken from our notions of harmony, cannot
be readily applied to Indian music is obvious from the
many cases in which the singing departs from pure
intonation of the consonant intervals" (1 975:303). They
had compared the relative tones to measurements of
absolute pitch, based on a standard tone. Offering a
statistical analysis of the intervals, they confronted
Fillmore's argument about "feeling of latent harmony,"
which Boas had supported. Instead, Abraham and
von Hornbostel concluded, tactfully perhaps, that
"this delicate psychological question is today not
yet ready for discussion" (1 975:306).
Turning to a rhythmic analysis, they admitted to
encountering "great difficulty in the rhythmic structure
and metrical arrangements of many of the melodies"
(Abraham and von Hornbostel 1 975:302). As Boas had
found earlier, they noted the complex rhythms and
irregular combinations of beats, and the varying rela-
tion of the drumming patterns to the singing (on the
thirty-five songs accompanied by percussion). Finally,
I. JACKNIS
they made a few, brief remarks about the quality of
the vocal production. Their only contextual comments
were that "most of the songs are dance or game songs;
others are designated as lyrical, religious, and 'medi-
cine' songs. But a specific musical characterization of
the types according to use could not be made"
(Abraham and von Hornbostel 1975:309).
Music and Culture/Description and Analy-
sis: The Legacy of the JNPE Recordings
Franz Boas never wrote the concluding volume of the
Jesup Expedition reports, summarizing its findings, and
it is now the common view that the Expedition's great-
est legacy was its numerous accumulated collections
(e.g., Krupnik and Vakhtin, this volume). The Thompson
Indian recordings were analyzed, although not by Boas
himself. That study, however, raises important ques-
tions about interpretative modes and disciplinary per-
spectives.
Citing their "lack of precise knowledge of the
culture," Abraham and von Hornbostel admitted that
they were necessarily "limited to strictly musical con-
siderations" (1975:301). The implication was that
Boas did not share with them any of the contextual
information that he and especially Teit had recorded.
As Wickwire observes: "Only Boas' information was
used in the analysis nor were any of the singers'
names mentioned. Only the English names of the
song-types were given" (Wickwire 1 988: 1 90). She
also cites errors the German researchers made be-
cause they were not aware of the cultural context.
On one song, what Teit called an exhaling sound,
indicating blessing or good will, they interpreted as
an inhaling sound denoting tension or excitement
(Wickwire 2001:444). We have the sound on the
cylinders but what does it mean and, more impor-
tantly, what does it represent?
Why did Boas not publish information on the cul-
tural context of Thompson songs, as he had for the
Kwakiutl?To some extent, these omissions stem from
the fact that Thompson ethnography was somewhat
1 1 5
marginal to Boas' own research and writing. Over the
course of decades, he managed to publish quite a bit
about KwakiutI music; but it took a while and single
essays were often limited. From a more fundamental
perspective, however, this objectivist perspective char-
acterized all of Boas' ethnography to some extent.
Like Abraham and von Hornbostel, Boas often treated
cultural elements as if they were discrete and isolable.
As I have suggested elsewhere (Jacknis 1996), while
Boas moved to a more contextual approach over time,
this shift was never complete. Moreover, specific de-
tails of his fieldwork were rarely noted in his ethnogra-
phy, just as he tended to describe cultures in collec-
tive rather than individual terms. In this analysis. Boas
and von Hornbostel may have been the more sophis-
ticated musicologists, but Teit had the best understand-
ing of the culture. His work, then, was edited largely
by Boas.
Perhaps even more important than making avail-
able documents of unique performances, recordings
also allowed comparison. Just as the invention of pho-
tography was necessary to the development of art
history, so did sound recording facilitate the cre-
ation of (ethno)musicology. A recording makes pos-
sible an analysis by scholars—such as Abraham and
von Hornbostel—who were not present at the original
performance. (Although this is the goal of transcrip-
tions, no system of musical notation can completely
capture all important aspects of a performance, a prob-
lem made all the more difficult when dealing with non-
Western—and frequently non-literate—cultures. More-
over, without recordings even transcriptions were
difficult to obtain). As Brady cautions, however, "with-
out personal knowledge of the cultural context in which
the recordings were made, many early armchair com-
parative musicologists reached conclusions and de-
veloped theories that were skeptically received even
by their contemporaries" (Brady 1 984:3). A full analysis
of the Thompson songs thus required both formal and
contextual information. The contrast between the
purely formal analysis of Abraham and Hornbostel
compared to the detailed cultural notes of Teit
presages a persisting tension in ethnomusicology.
As expressed in the 1960s and early 1970s, musi-
cologists such as Mantle Hood (1971) held that it
was necessary for scholars to be able to play and
technically analyze Native musics, while anthropolo-
gists such as Alan Merriam (1964) stressed the im-
portance of investigating their cultural context (cf.
NettI 1991:267).
One hundred years later, what are we to make of
these recordings and of Boas' ethnomusicological
research? Because of his personal interest in music,
and his dual background in science and the humani-
ties, Franz Boas realized the importance of recording
and of studying the music of Native peoples. For a
public museum, devoted to the display of artifacts, to
systematically collect sound recordings was an en-
lightened policy. Against some opposition on the part
of the museum's administration (jacknis 1 985:1 04-5),
Boas was able to argue that the expedition supported
by PresidentJesup needed to return home with as many
kinds of records as possible to document these "van-
ishing cultures." As one of the pioneers of ethnomusi-
cology, Boas encouraged several members of the ex-
pedition, who might not otherwise have investigated
this topic, to make valuable records and observations.
The sound archives that Boas initiated formed the ba-
sis for much of the major collections in this country.
Over time, these cylinder recordings, like the photo-
graphs and all the other collections of the Jesup Expe-
dition, have become historical sources in their own
right, as cultures—and especially practices of musical
performance—change. Contemporary scholars as well
as the descendants of their Native singers can go back
and appreciate these objects with keen appreciation.
And while we may not know as much as we would
like about these recordings, they remain, as Boas in-
tended (Stocking 1974:123): "the foundation of all
future researches."
1 1 6 PARTICIPANTS/ BOAS AND MUSIC
Acknowledgments
For research assistance and valuable discussion of these
issues, I am deeply grateful to Wendy C. Wickwire. As
the references make clear, I am particularly indebted
to her for information on the 1 897 Spences Bridge
recording session. Thanks also go to Thomas Ross Miller
and Richard Keeling for their help and information. I
would like to dedicate this essay to my late friend
Douglas Cole, who graciously shared his unpublished
research on Franz Boas.
Notes
1. For reasons of historical consistency, I
use the ethnic names that Boas employed in his
writing. The contemporary names for these
peoples are as follows: KwakiutI are the
Kwakwaka'wakw, Bella Coola are the Nuxalk,
Thompson are the NIaka'pamux, and Baffinland
Eskimo are the Inuit.
2. Thomas Edison patented his phonographic
recording machine in 1 877, but it did not become
commercially available until 1889 (Keeling
1991 :xii). For pre-1900 collections of American
Indian music, see Cillis 1 984; also Densmore 1 927;
Brady 1984; Seeger and Spear 1987; Lee 1993;
Myers 1994:xiii; and Keeling 2001.
3. In addition to the Smithsonian Bureau of
American Ethnology (3240 cylinders, ca. 1933),
other anthropology museums with music collec-
tions were the University of California Museum
(271 3), National Museum of Canada (1 530), Field
Museum (1500), and University of Pennsylvania
Museum. The American Museum of Natural His-
tory had about 2500 cylinders (Inman 1986:3).
Undoubtedly, the AMNH was a model for the sub-
stantial sound collections in California, directed
by Boas' student Alfred Kroeber, beginning in
1901 (Keeling 1991;Jacknis 2003). Indirectly, it
was also the basis for the large collection at the
Archives of Traditional Music at Indiana Univer-
sity. Much of the American Museum collection was
copied for Columbia University by another of Boas'
students, George Herzog, between 1936 and
1 948, and taken to Indiana in 1 948 when Herzog
was appointed to the faculty. In 1961 the AMNH
deposited its collection—including the recordings
from the Jesup Expedition—at the Archives of Tra-
ditional Music at Indiana University.
4. Extant documentation attributes the col-
lection to both Jochelson and Bogoras, but as we
know that the Bogorases made ninety-five pho-
nographic records, the Jochelsons probably made
the remaining forty-four. Furthermore, we know
that Jochelson worked with the Koryak, Tungus
[Even], Yukagir, and Yakut [Sakha], while Bogoras
spent time with the Chukchi and Siberian Eskimo
[Yupikj. According to the Indiana University sound
archives (Cillis 1984:345), the Siberian cylinder
collection comprises: Koryak (18), Yukagir (10),
Yakut (6); and Chukchi (28), Russians (45), Tungus
(5), Aivan [Yupik] Eskimo (8); for a total of 120
surviving cylinders. On a tribal basis, this would
give thirty-nine to Jochelson and eighty-one to
Bogoras, which should be roughly correct.
5. Although Berthold Laufer refers to sound
recording in his correspondence with Boas, these
cylinders have not been located (cf. Keeling
2001:280). The Archives of Traditional Music at
Indiana University does have his Chinese music
from the American Museum and his Indian and Ti-
betan collection from the Field Museum. As we
know that Laufer worked among the Tungus, those
cylinders listed under Bogoras and Jochelson's
name may be his, but Jochelson also worked with
the Yukagirized Tungus.
6. Again, the dating of the Maidu collection
is uncertain. The Archives of Traditional Music, In-
diana University, indicates a 1910 date for this
(Seeger and Spear 1987:40), which would be un-
likely from what we know of Dixon's Maidu field-
work; in one 1903 letter Dixon refers to recording
"last year" (Dixon to Boas, 26 March 1903, AMNH-
DA).
7. From a more technical perspective, such a
critique was directly addressed to the evolution-
ary displays in which all the musical instruments
of the world were grouped according to techni-
cal attributes (i.e., production of sound from vi-
brating strings, membranes, or columns of air in a
tube), popular in institutions such as Oxford's Pitt-
Rivers Museum and the Smithsonian. The Berlin
school of "comparative musicology" developed
Just such a universal system of classification for
musical instruments (Hornbostel and Sachs 1961
[1914]; cf. Kartomi 1990:167-74), one which has
I. JACKNIS 1 1 7
become the basis for most subsequent analysis.
Despite his ties to German scholarship, Boas seems
to have had little interest in such approaches. In-
stead, almost all of his musicological research and
writing came in the context of specific cultures
and regions.
8. Although Boas writes of going "down to
the village" to collect melodies (Rohner ) 969:202),
Teit's catalogue of the song sessions states that
the songs were "recorded on Phonograph by Dr.
Boas (at Teit's house), June 1 897" (Archives of Tra-
ditional Music, Indiana University, cf. Wickwire
2001 :432, 434, 437). Furthermore, Boas refers to
the singing occurring in "the house" (Rohner
1969:204).
9. After the stay in Spences Bridge, there is
no further mention of the phonograph. At the end
of July, however, Harlan Smith complained to a
clerk at the American Museum that the phono-
graph cylinders and photographic plates that the
museum had sent to Victoria in May were miss-
ing. Consequently, he had to "do without the pho-
nograph cylinders" (Smith to John Winser, 30July
1897, AMNH, cited in Mathe and Miller 2001:1 10).
After leaving Spences Bridge, Smith had gone
to Kamloops, which was Shuswap (Secwepemc)
territory, and Lytton, Thompson territory, where
he focused on archaeology and physical anthro-
pology (Thom 2001:142-3). Perhaps he was not
able to make projected recordings because of
these missing cylinders. Wickwire (personal com-
munication 1998) suggests that the Jesup team
left the machine with Teit, who continued to
record songs, or Farrand might have used it the
following year in Washington State. In any case, it
is clear that the American Museum had several
phonographs.
10. Several members of the Jesup Expedi-
tion noted the impression that sound recording
made among Native people. Both Jochelson
(among the Koryak) and Laufer (among the
Gilyak) reported similar Native beliefs that there
had to be a little man inside the machine with
an amazing ability to learn songs Qochelson
1908:426-7; Laufer to Boas, 4 March 1899, in
Boas 1903:97). Negative reactions to this mi-
metic ability were also expressed. Jochelson
wrote: "Older people [of Kamenskoye] stop the
younger ones from singing into the phonograph
saying [that] 'the old one' as they call the pho-
nograph will take their voices and they'll die"
(Jochelson to Boas, 3 December 1900, in Kendall,
Mathe, Miller 1 997:39). Because of such feelings,
performances were sometimes modified: "In Si-
beria, some shamans forbade the phonograph
recording of actual ceremonies, instead perform-
ing special demonstrations in front of the ma-
chine. Besides the possibility that the record-
ings might be used for evil purposes, they were
concerned that spirits would fly into the record-
ing horn and be trapped irretrievably inside the
phonograph box" (op. cit., pp. 36-7).
1 1 . Somewhat similar to the reactions to the
phonograph were Native responses to cameras,
which were much more familiar, especially on the
Northwest Coast (Blackman 1982; Rohner
1969:189; Kendall, Mathe, Miller 1997:33). Un-
like that tool, however, the recording could be
played back immediately for the subjects.
12. Probably because of their lack of sonic
sensitivity, Boas found cylinder machines to be of
little use for recording speech: "I have used the
phonograph quite a good deal for certain pur-
poses, and particularly for recording Indian mu-
sic. I find that it is absolutely without any value
for recording Indian languages" (Boas to D. P.
Penhallow, 10 February 1899, AMNH-DA)
1 3. The respective field notes are: Franz Boas,
1897, unpublished note, copy from Archives of
Traditional Music, Indiana University; James Teit,
1897, unpublished notes on songs, Salish Ethno-
graphic Notes, APS.
14. There are a few tantalizing clues that
Harlan Smith was to have analyzed the Thomp-
son music. Writing in Spences Bridge in 1 897, Boas
casually noted, "the other night when he [Smith]
took down the songs . . ." (Rohner 1969:205).
See note 9 on the possibility of Smith's use of the
phonograph. On one list of potential Jesup Expe-
dition publications. Smith was listed as the au-
thor of "Songs of the Thompson Indians" (cf. F. W.
Putnam to Boas, 12 August [?] 1903, AMNH-DA).
15. Of the texts for the Thompson River
songs. Boas wrote years later, "If I remember
correctly I sent the words to Hornbostel, but I
am not sure" (Boas to George Herzog, 18 April
1933, APS-BP).
1 1 8 PARTICIPANTS/ BOAS AND MUSIC
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1 22
^etjOnd ^OaS? Keassessmg the Contribution o(- "Inf
and "jxesearch /Assistant": James /\. T^ei't
ormant^
WENDY WICKWIRE
Few of the many early anthropologists who worked in
the Pacific Northwest were more productive thanJames
A. Teit (1 864-1 922). For the Plateau region, Teit gener-
ated a rich ethnographic record of over 2,000 pages
in forty-two published sources, and another 5,000
pages in thirty-four unpublished sources (Sprague
1991:103). He also collected artifacts, took photo-
graphs, made sketches, collected plant specimens,
and recorded songs on wax cylinders. Much of this
work was undertaken under the direction of Franz
Boas and thejesup North Pacific Expedition (JNPE),
an arrangement in which Teit is often seen as an
"assistant" and "informant to Boas."' Yet, given the pro-
digious, independent, and high quality of his output,
it is time to re-evaluate Teit as an anthropologist in
his own right.''
Teit's role in the JNPE was to document the inte-
rior regions of British Columbia and, in so doing, fill
a noticeable gap in the ethnographic record. Boas
devoted much of his own time and attention to the
central coastal region, partly because this is where
he had good contacts, and also because his few
ethnographic field trips inland had not gone well.
In fact, without Teit's assistance. Boas' JNPE output
would have been substantially smaller. When one
looks closely at Teit's on-the-ground work for the
JNPE, it could be argued that his contribution not
only stands on its own, but in many ways goes
beyond that of Boas.
A Timely Meeting in 1894
James Alexander Teit was the eldest of 12 children
born into a merchant family in the town of Lerwick in
the Shetland Islands (Fig. 37). In 1 884, two years after
finishing secondary school in Lerwick, Teit travelled to
Canada to Join his Uncle John Murray at Spences Bridge
on the Thompson River in south central British Colum-
bia (Fig. 38)^ Murray owned a popular trading outlet in
the village (Figs. 39, 40). As his uncle's employee, Teit
came into regular contact with the local NIaka'pamux
people who lived in the region (Fig. 41).'' He obviously
established immediate rapport with the latter, for within
three years, he had taken up residence with Susannah
Lucy Antko, a member of the Spences Bridge Band
(Fig. 42). When not working in the store, Teit under-
took whateverjobs were available, for example, ranch-
ing, fruit farming, hunting, and ferry work.^
Teit's life took an unusual turn in September 1 894
when he encountered Franz Boas who was in the re-
gion to complete work for his sixth and second-to-
last field season for the Committee of the British Asso-
ciation for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) for the
Study of Northwestern Tribes of Canada in British Co-
lumbia. En route by train from the Okanagan Valley to
the coast, Boas had decided to spend a night at
Spences Bridge. On hearing of a local man, a "Scots-
man" who was married to "an Indian woman [who
knew] ... a great deal about the Indians and was
especially kind," Boas immediately tracked him down
1 23
at his small ranch across the river from his hotel (F.
Boas to M. Boas, 21 September 1894, Rohner
1969:140). Seeing him so at ease with his wife and
her relatives and quite fluent in their language. Boas
employed him on the spot (Figs. 43, 44). As he ex-
plained it to his wife in a letter: "The young man is a
treasure [who] knows a great deal about Indian tribes.
I engaged him right away" (F. Boas to M. Boas, 21
September 1894, Rohner 1969:139). With Teit's as-
sistance. Boas instantly gained access to a cultural re-
gion that hitherto was not well represented on his eth-
nographic map.
A Link to the Interior
The demands of the BAAS survey on Boas were great.
Horatio Hale, an American philologist who had retired
to Ontario, was charged with directing Boas' fieldwork
in the Pacific Northwest. Hale's instructions to Boas
were to "give an ethnological description of the whole
region [of British Columbia], from north to south, with-
out omitting any stock" (Rohner 1 969:81 ). Hale, who
had worked in Oregon as a member of the Wilkes
Expedition of 1832-42, wanted a comprehensive
survey of everything, from languages and tribal divi-
sions to the physical characteristics of the peoples of
the various regions. Boas was often impatient with
his superior's demands, describing him as an "old man
[who] knows nothing about general ethnology" (Cole
1973:41).
Boas found ethnographic fieldwork in areas beyond
the coast a challenge. He had recorded the stories of a
small group of NIaka'pamux gathered at an Anglican
church at Lytton at the end of his second field season
in the Northwest Coast (his first for the BAAS) in July
1 888. But he was not satisfied with these due to the
heavy influence of Christian missionaries. After Lytton,
he headed east to Windemere, just west of the Rocky
Mountains where he encountered what he referred to
as his first "real Indians" on account of their "red skin,
eagle noses, the famous blanket, moccasins, rabbit [?]
apron, and deerskin jacket, with hair hanging loose or
braided, more than six feet long" (F. Boas to M. Boas,
1 8 July 1 888, Rohner 1 969: 1 02). Here too he expressed
disappointment. Although he collected a fair number
of stories and vocabularies there, he found it difficult
to find suitable "informants." He also found little com-
mon ground with his coastal work. As he explained to
his wife: "I am not so very much interested in these
tribes, because they have very little relation to all my
former work. . . . The language is very unfamiliar to me
and the interpreter does not understand well enough
to make it worthwhile to stay another week" (F. Boas
to M. Boas, 18 July 1888, Rohner 1969:102).
Boas tried again the following summer of 1 889 to
work with peoples of the interior, but this proved to
be even more disappointing than his earlier efforts. As
he noted in a letter to his wife, "The last two weeks
were not very fruitful. To my great distress a Lillooet
Indian who had promised me the evenings has gone
again and I had wanted to learn something about their
language" (F. Boas to M. Boas, 14 September 1889,
Rohner 1969:1 14). His lack of success with these for-
ays into the interior regions of the province may ac-
count for his decision to spend the entire 1890 and
1891 field seasons on the coast.
It was not until his sixth field trip in September
1 894, that Boas ventured again into the interior re-
gion. This time he decided to focus on the Okanagan
region, with stops also at Glacier, Enderby, Sicamous
and Kamloops. Again, his results were meager. "My
Okanagan trip was a great failure," he complained to
his wife in a letter dated September 16, 1894:
Friday I went with an Indian to Lake
Okanagan in pouring rain to measure Indians.
Unfortunately he took me to the chief first
instead of letting me go from house to
house. We had to parley a lot, and then the
chief told me to wait, that he was going to
talk it over in the evening. From the way he
acted I could tell that the good chief was
afraid and that I wouldn't get what I wanted.
When all the Indians had scattered in all
directions in the evening, I left, arriving in
Enderby very late and very angry. I was so cold
that I could not move my fingers. . . . Well, there
was nothing I could do about it. . . . Yesterday
1 24 PARTICIPANTS/ JAMES A. TEIT
I got five people in Enderby. I met a mission-
ary there who had come from the Lake. I
greeted him politely, he asked me what I
was doing, and I explained everything to him
as well as I could. He answered very politely
(he is French), 'That seems very foolish. What
do you want to do such nonsense for?' The
Indians ask his advice, which he freely gives.
And that is the reason for my lack of success
in Enderby. I will be glad when I am back on
the coast again! (F. Boas to M. Boas, 16
September 1894, Rohner 1969:136).
Not surprisingly, when Boas arrived at Spences Bridge
two days later, he was beginning to lose faith in his
abilities as a fieldworker. Teit's willingness to assist
him did much to lift his spirits. On the first day of their
meeting, Teit convinced his relatives and friends to
submit themselves to Boas' anthropometric measure-
ments; on the second day Teit saddled two horses
and took Boas to visit numerous aboriginal settlements
in the vicinity of Spences Bridge.
Immediately Boas' attitude to his fieldwork
changed. "The disagreeable feeling I had that I don't
get along with the Indians is slowly wearing off now,"
he wrote to his wife, "and I am hopeful that I will have
good results" (F. Boas to M. Boas, 21 September 1 894,
Rohner 1 969: 1 39). By the end of the visit, he noted, "I
am slowly getting into the mood of 'fieldwork' again"
(F. Boas to M. Boas, 23 September 1894, Rohner
1969:142).
Before departing for New York in December, Boas
made a return trip to Spences Bridge to continue his
work with Teit who had arranged a trip to a number of
outlying aboriginal communities: Lytton, Stain [Stein],
and North Bend. Boas was pleased, especially with his
success at measuring "one hundred and twenty-three
Indians" in just three days (F. Boas to M. Boas, 1 5
December 1894, Rohner 1969:195).
There were many rich ethnographic experiences
on this trip, such as one at Stain, at the confluence of
the Thompson and Eraser Rivers where a chief regaled
Boas and Teit with speeches in the company of nu-
merous onlookers (F. Boas to M. Boas, 1 5 December
1 894, Rohner 1 969: 1 96). Boas was particularly pleased
to find that Teit was already well along on an ethno-
graphic report on the NIaka'pamux that he had pro-
posed the previous September (F. Boas to M. Boas, 1 5
December 1894, Rohner 1969:196).
A Year of Continuous Work
During the first year of their collaboration, Teit proved
to be an ideal ethnographic assistant for Boas. He
worked diligently to answer the latter's queries about
the languages and traditions of the interior cultures. By
early spring 1895, he had completed a 216-page re-
port on the NIaka'pamux, noting that this did not in
any way exhaust his knowledge of the topic: "There is
no subject which [sic] I have taken up in the paper, but
what I could have treated more fully if I had wanted
to, especially as this [is] the case with beliefs and cus-
toms, many of which I have never made mention [of]
at all in the paper" (Teit to Boas, 22 February 1895,
AMNH-BTC).
One of Boas' early requests of Teit was to find out
what existed about the "Stuwixamux," an Athapaskan-
speaking group that was once resident in the Nicola
Valley. Teit tracked down three elderly men knowl-
edgeable about this little-known group and wrote an
account, which Boas included in his "Report of the
65th Meeting of the British Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science" (Boas 1 895). By the spring of
1895, Teit had also assembled a large collection of
"articles of ethnological value" (buckskin leggings, a
shirt, moccasins, beaver-teeth dice, gambling sticks, a
stone axe, a tent mat, two root-diggers, a fire drill, and
a stone hammer), which he mailed to Boas in New
York (Teit to Boas, 1 2 March 1 895, AMNH-BTC).
By August 1895, Teit felt sufficiently comfortable
with Boas to begin offering the latter critical feedback.
"I thank you very much for the copy [of the Sixth Re-
port on the Northwest Tribes of Canada] you sent,"
wrote Teit to Boas, "and have looked over it with much
pleasure and profit. You have made a few slight mis-
takes in your vocabulary of the Ntlakyapamux. I will
send you a list sometime of these when I have more
W. WICKWIRE 1 2 5
time and also the words and compound forms which
you seem to have been unable to obtain" (Teit to Boas,
1 2 August 1 895, AMNH-BTC). Teit also challenged Boas
on some of his conclusions regarding interior people:
I consider it very surprising that you should
find four, I might say five, such remarkably
different types of Indian [sic] in the rather
small area of BC. If you investigate the
Lillooet next summer you will I am sure find
that they are different from the
NLakyapamuxoe and the NkamtcinEmux
perhaps resembling the Harrison Lake type,
or perhaps somewhat different. You will also
find if you go into that field that the average
Carrier and average Chilcotin are not alike at
least in countenance or features and in
stature. The only mistakes which I notice in
looking over your sheets of measurements
are on sheet 10 (Teit to Boas, 22 October
1895, AMNH-BTC).
Teit's Role in the Jesup North Pacific
Expedition
In June 1 897, Boas returned to British Columbia to fin-
ish his work for the BAAS and to initiate the first phase
of his own field project funded by Morris K. Jesup, Presi-
dent of the Board of Trustees of the American Mu-
seum of Natural History. The goal of the Jesup North
Pacific Expedition was to conduct a systematic eth-
nological and archaeological investigation of the re-
lations among the indigenous peoples of the North
Pacific Rim—Northwestern America and Northeast-
ern Asia. Field parties would work in stages over a
five-year period on the American west coast, along
the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk, and in the northern
portion of the Bering Sea. Boas saw this project as
an opportunity to pursue a more historical approach.
In his words: "A detailed study of customs in their
relation to the total culture of the tribe practicing
them, in connection with an investigation of their
geographical distribution among neighboring tribes,
affords us almost always a means of determining
with considerable accuracy the historical causes that
led to the formation of the customs in question and
to the psychological processes that were at work
1 26
in their development" (Boas 1896, quoted in Cole
2001:32-3).
Boas sought out primary materials of all sorts, but
especially texts recorded in the Native languages
(retellings of myths, dreams, ideas, etc.), which he
considered to be the best source of accurate and
authentic ethnographic data (Berman 1996:220).
Since few First Nation peoples in the Pacific North-
west were fluent in English at this time, however, such
texts were difficult to elicit by non-linguists. Boas' fine
ear for languages enabled him to proceed quickly. But
he could not undertake the task of such large-scale
ethnographic and linguistic recording and mapping
alone. He therefore organized his Jesup Expedition
around teams of ethnographers. For its first field sea-
son in the Pacific Northwest, he appointed Harlan I.
Smith, assistant curator of the archaeology collections
at the American Museum of Natural History, to under-
take the archaeological component of the project. Boas
also brought along Livingston Farrand, a colleague in
psychology from Columbia University, to assist with
the general ethnographic field research. The only prob-
lem here was that neither Smith nor Farrand had had
any previous field experience in this region. In fact,
Farrand was a complete novice, having had no previ-
ous ethnographic field experience in Aboriginal North
America. He had joined this expedition at his own
expense, in order to gain some field experience under
Boas' tutelage.
To overcome the linguistic and cultural limitations
of his co-workers, Boas appointed Teit. The latter's
fluency in the NIaka'pamux language and two years of
field research under his close supervision qualified him
well to work on the JNPE project. As Boas explained in
his first Jesup Expedition report, Teit had begun his
Jesup research even before the arrival of the expedi-
tion team in British Columbia (Boas 1898a). Boas also
designated Spences Bridge to be the initial site for his
Jesup research in North America. He had outlined in
letters how he wanted Teit to prepare for his visit. Teit
had responded accordingly: "I have been preparing
PARTICIPANTS/ JAMES A. TEIT
the Indians here for your taking their pictures. If you
bring a camera I think you will have no trouble getting
a lot of both men and women" (Teit to Boas, 1 March
1897, AMNH-BTC). Teit also prepared his friends and
neighbors for the plaster casting process that Boas
planned to use to document human facial features. He
noted that without such preparation most would be
reluctant to participate (Thom 2001:141).
Boas' goal was to travel by way of the Cariboo
Wagon Road from Spences Bridge to Bella Coola. A
seasoned horse-packer, Teit planned this trip carefully,
even advising Boas that he and his colleagues would
need to bring little with them: "Regarding the camp-
ing outfit required," wrote Teit in April 1 897, "you will
not need to buy any of it. I will furnish it all. All you
have to bring will be your blankets and any other thing
you may wish in that line. Also anything you think best
as a protection against mosquitoes and flies which
are bad in some parts of the country through which
we will pass" (Jeit to Boas, 29 April 1 897, AMNH-BTC;
Fig. 45). Due to Teit's careful planning, the New York-
based research team was able to launch into its work
immediately on arriving at Spences Bridge. As Boas
noted after measuring and photographing people and
collecting ethnographic objects: "It was not much ef-
fort . . . Teit had prepared everything for us very well.
The Indians were ready for us promptly yesterday af-
ternoon, and we could not work quickly enough to
finish with all of them" (F. Boas to M. Boas, 5 June 1 897,
Rohner 1969:202).
The party of four worked incessantly on a variety
of projects, from plaster casting, photography and re-
cording songs: "We can be satisfied with the results of
our first two days here. If it only will continue this way!"
(F. Boas to M. Boas, 5 June 1897, Rohner 1969:202).
And it did continue. At the end of the third day. Boas
wrote to his wife:
We seem to be finished here with the
castings. I let Farrand and Smith make the
casts ready for shipping. This afternoon
Jimmy Teit and i went down to the village
and collected melodies. The phonograph
works very well, and we got ten good
songs.... I can really be satisfied with my first
few days here. We got eleven casts and
many photos, a few measurements and three
songs (Franz Boas, 5 June 1897, Rohner
1969:202).
Boas also noted that he had obtained explanations of
the various designs on woven baskets, jewelry, and
masks (F. Boas to M. Boas, 14 June 1897, Rohner
1969:205). In addition to helping Boas and Farrand,
Teit also made time to acquaint Smith with some of
the archaeological sites along the banks of the Th-
ompson River. Boas could not have wished for a more
productive beginning to his Jesup Expedition.
On June 14, Boas, Farrand, and Teit headed north
to the central interior, leaving Smith behind to con-
tinue his archaeological work at Spences Bridge,
Kamloops, and Lytton. Because Teit had organized ev-
erything, including four riding horses, five pack horses,
and three guides, who traveled behind on foot. Boas
and Farrand had little to do but to follow Teit. The
travel was slow, however, and Boas expressed frustra-
tion in his letters about the monotony of the trip. He
was particularly concerned about the time required to
pack and unpack the horses. He was also disappointed
to find most of the aboriginal villages along the way
to be completely deserted. He commented repeat-
edly that people had "scattered" in all directions. This
was late spring, a time when women traveled to their
favorite berry-picking and root-digging areas. Men may
have accompanied them to catch fresh fish or meat. "I
will be very glad when we finally reach the coast," he
wrote to his wife. "I am fed up with these trips into the
wilderness" (F. Boas to M. Boas, 6 July 1897, Rohner
1969:208). At Puntzi Lake, on the Chilcotin plateau,
the party dropped Farrand to undertake a month-long
field study of language and oral narrative traditions.
Meanwhile Boas continued with Teit onto Bella Coola
where he had arranged to work with George Hunt.
The son of an English Hudson's Bay Company employee
and a high-ranking Tlingit woman. Hunt had grown up
among, and married into, the Fort Rupert
W. WICKWIRE 1 27
Kwakwaka'wakw. Boas met him in 1886. Later he
comissioned him to mount an artifact exhibit and or-
ganize a performing group for the World's Columbian
Exposition in Chicago in 1893 (Cole 1985: 122-40;
Berman 1996).
After seven weeks of slow horse travel, Boas and
his party arrived at Bella Coola on 20 July 1897. Teit
and the guides remained there for three days before
beginning the return trip to Spences Bridge. They car-
ried with them the plaster casts and artifacts the group
had collected on the trip north. While Boas worked
with Hunt at Bella Coola and later at Rivers Inlet, and
with Charles Edenshaw at Port Essington, Teit contin-
ued the ethnographic work in the more southerly re-
gions that he had been doing prior to Boas' arrival:
collecting myths, working on the language, and revis-
ing his NIaka'pamux ethnographic report.
Boas returned to New York in late September 1 897
and wasted no time booking Teit for further ethno-
graphic fieldwork. With the Upper NIaka'pamux research
well underway. Boas was eager for Teit to begin docu-
menting adjacent groups—the Lower Thompson and
the Lillooet. Teit agreed to do this, reporting to Boas
by April 1898 that he had completed two weeks of
field research at Spuzzum, which included collecting
thirty-one myths and a range of artifacts: a stone pipe,
two stone hammers, and a copper spek (Teit to Boas,
6 April 1898, AMNH-BTC). By September 1898, Teit
had completed another two months of fieldwork
among the Lillooet (Teit to Boas, 28 August 1898,
AMNH-BTC). Although this was his first field research
beyond his home community, it went well: "I found
the Lillooets to be a very fine people—the most
tractable and kindest I was ever amongst. I had no
difficulty with them in any way. The Pemberton
people especially were very good" (Teit to Boas, 8
October 1898, AMNH-BTC). "My notes on customs
alone," he wrote to Boas, "fill 1 22 pages and I have
also gathered many stories." He brought home about
1 1 artifacts, the majority of which were baskets, and
a large collection of myths. After spending the fall writ-
ing up his Lower Thompson report (Teit to Boas, 1 1
November 1 898, AMNH, BTC), Teit returned to Lillooet
country again, reporting to Boas in July 1 899 that this
field research had also gone well (Teit to Boas, 1 2 July
1899, AMNH-BTC). In addition to seventeen artifacts,
including some very fine baskets, he had collected
more oral narratives, bringing his total number of Lillooet
stories to sixty (Teit to Boas, 19 July 1899, AMNH-
BTQ.
Early in the year 1 900, with The Thompson Indians 'm
press (Teit 1 900), Boas urged Teit to write up his Lillooet
field notes: "What are you doing with your Lillooet
material? Do you expect to find time soon to send me
your notes?" (Boas to Teit, 7 February 1 900, AMNH-
BTC). Teit replied a week later that he would send him
"some (perhaps all) this spring" (Teit to Boas, 1 6 Febru-
ary 1900, AMNH-BTC). Boas was now so delighted
with Teit that he proposed a five-year research plan:
I should like to suggest to you to commence
systematic work in this line by writing down
texts in the Indian language with interlinear
translation, and putting down at the same
time material for a dictionary. It is best to
select for the texts, on the one hand tradi-
tional material, such as myths, and on the
other hand material in the form of conversa-
tions or speeches, because the grammatical
forms that occur in the latter are, on the
whole quite different from those found in the
former. I hope you will be willing to under-
take this work, and I believe I shall be able to
set aside a certain amount of money to
compensate you for the time that you
devote to this matter. I think if you could
continue work of this kind for four or five
years, we shall be able to obtain a very full
dictionary and grammar of the Thompson
language (Boas to Teit, 27 January 1900,
AMNH-BTC).
In July 1900, Boas made his second and final field trip
to the Northwest Coast under the auspices of the Jesup
Expedition. As he had done in 1 897, Boas started out
at Spences Bridge where he spent a week working
with Teit prior to heading to Alert Bay to work with
William Brotchie, George Hunt, and others.
After Boas' departure, Teit undertook two months
of field research in August and September 1 900 among
1 28 PARTICIPANTS/ JAMES A. TEIT
the Shuswap and Chilcotin: "I have now interviewed
old men belonging to High Bar, Big Bar, Canoe Creek,
Dog Creek, and Alkali Lake," he wrote to Boas (Teit to
Boas, 20 September 1 900, AMNH-BTC). "I had one man
living with me for three weeks under wages, and
pumped him until he got tired." Teit was pleased with
his results: "I think I have obtained the great majority
or nearly all the stories remembered by the Fraser River
Shuswap" (Teit to Boas, 2 1 October 1 900, AMNH-BTC).
By November, he had crated and mailed to Boas some
seventy items gathered during this trip (Teit to Boas,
1 5 November 1900, AMNH-BTC). Meanwhile, he con-
tinued his work on his Lillooet report for theJNPE series
noting that, "I am writing the whole out in chapters in
the same way as you grouped my paper on the
Thompsons." He worked hard on this: "As I am writing
steady every night I expect to be able to send you the
whole paper before very long. As soon as I have fin-
ished it, I will commence to write out the Shuswap
myths" (Teit to Boas, 23 November 1 900, AMNH-BTC).
Teit hoped to get to the more westerly bands of the
Shuswap the following summer: "I think it will be a
wise thing if you can see your way clear to send me as
early as possible next summer to the Shuswaps of
Canim Lake, Upper North Thompson and Shuswap Lake.
. . . If this were done I would be able to write out a
paper on the whole Shuswap tribe in the same way as
the Lillooet and Thompsons have been dealt with" (Teit
to Boas, 23 November 1 900, AMNH-BTC). Finally, early
in the year ] 90 1 , Teit sent Boas the last chapters of his
Lillooet report (Teit to Boas, 26 February 1 90 1 , AMNH-
ETQ.
After a six month trip to the Shetlands in 1902,
Teit resumed his work for Boas: "I am going up Nicola
on the fourteenth to collect myths there," he wrote to
Boas in July 1 902, "and I expect it will take me until the
end of the month" (Teit to Boas, 1 2 July 1 902, AMNH-
BTC). Later, he noted that he would be willing to go to
the coast to work among the Lower Fraser people.
"Please give me full directions for the carrying out of
same" (Teit to Boas, 1 9 November 1 902, AMNH-BTC).
By mid-March 1903, Teit had completed this work.
Perhaps due to the success of the field research
undertaken by Teit and Hunt, Boas decided against a
field trip in 1 903. As he explained to Teit: "I am sorry
to say that I shall not be able to go out West this
summer. I have not had time so far to work out the
material that I collected three years ago, and so I think
it better to stay here and finish that work. I shall send
$400 for your Shuswap work within a few days. I am
looking forward to your next shipment" (Boas to Teit,
1 April 1903, AMNH-BTC). Just one month later. Boas
outlined to Teit a five-year research plan:
I wish you would take the time before you
start to think over the further development
of your work on the Shuswap, and also the
extension of your work on the Okanogon
[sic] and the Salish tribes of Washington. I
should like very much to be able to continue
your work in the whole region, which you
know so well, and to push it a little more
rapidly than we have been doing these last
few years. Could you not make some
estimate, say, for a period of about five
years, including in such an estimate the
expenses for fieldwork during such period
and a salary for yourself. I should like to see
included in this work also the recording of
texts in the Thompson language about
which we have so often spoken. My idea
would be that you should begin to write
these texts down, and that after you have
made a considerable collection, I should
come out, and that we should spend to-
gether some time with the Indians, getting
really thorough information on the grammar
of the language (Boas to Teit, 5 May 1903,
AMNH-BTC).
Teit responded that he needed financial compensa-
tion to do this: "I am quite willing to devote more of
my own time to it (the southern tribes), if you could
manage and afford to give me sufficient remuneration
so I could be able to give up some other lines of work
I at present partly depend on ' (Teit to Boas, 1 4 June
1 903, AMNH-BTC). Teit estimated that he would need
$850 to cover five years of research at eight months
per year.
By the end of the summer of 1903, Teit reported
to Boas that he had "visited all the Shuswaps and their
W. WICKWIRE 1 29
villages excepting the Spallumcheen and, of course,
the Kootenai band. I got some additional information
and cleared up some points, but on the whole I did
not add much to the information I obtained from the
Fraser River Shuswaps two or three years ago" (Teit to
Boas, 24 August 1903, AMNH-BTC).
With his Shuswap report well under way by the
following spring, Teit began to make plans for further
work among the Okanagan. "Personally I feel much
interested in the work," he wrote to Boas, "and will try
to take an elderly man with me from this region, who
is well acquainted with the Southern dialects, and in-
terested in old things" (Teit to Boas, 25 May 1904,
AMNH-BTC). "I think I will make a trip there this summer
leaving in about two weeks time, and making the
Okanagan River my objective point for this year. Go-
ing, I will pass through Similkameen where I will prob-
ably stay a short time, and returning I will visit Okanagan
Lake. I am not sure yet if I will cross the Boundary Line
with the pack train as there may be bother with the
customs" (Teit to Boas, 1 3 May 1 904, AMNH-BTC). By
the middle of August, he had completed six weeks of
work among the Okanagan (Teit to Boas, 12 August
1904, AMNH-BTC).
Meanwhile Boas, by 1904, had spent only five
months in the field during thejesup Expedition. His
productive ethnographic exchange by mail with both
Teit and Hunt, and his faith in both field researchers to
work largely on their own for months at a time had
eliminated the need for Boas to be on site. Smith and
Farrand were similarly dependent on their mail corre-
spondence with Teit to finalize their Jesup Expedition
reports (Teit to Smith, 4 December 1 899, AMNH-BTC).
Boas had not been pleased with his own fieldwork
during the first Jesup season in 1897, mainly due to
slow and awkward travel through the inland regions.
And Farrand's month at Puntzi Lake had resulted in
very sparse results. Meanwhile, Teit, who dealt with
slow and awkward travel on a daily basis, had gen-
erated a rich ethnographic database. He had also
become a sensitive and sophisticated fieldworker
who could negotiate easily between the world of
his interviewees and that of his distant employers.
For example, on the basis of unacceptable protocol,
he refused to comply with the AMNH's request for
signed receipts from aboriginal interviewees:
To them 'touching the pen' is a very serious
and solemn matter requiring much delibera-
tion, and explanation, as for instance when
they make an argument with the Govern-
ment, or with some big tyhee about some
important matter. It is also very unhandy for
example in open camps, in all kinds of
weather (raining or blowing) or perhaps
pested with mosquitoes, or blinded with
smoke, to get the Indian to mark a voucher
for some little specimen I have purchased
from him. Understanding the Indian mind
about the thing as I do, it seems to me in the
nature of a joke. I know it is business, but up
to date New York City methods do not
always work out in the wilds of B. C. Any
way it is no check on me, for it would be
easy for me to put crosses and Indian names
on any amount of them, and no one would
know whether they are genuine or not.
Signatures are different, but not one Indian in
200 can sign his name. Even amongst the
Whites it is not the style here (in small
matters) when say you get a meal (as I may
sometimes do when on a trip) to ask the
waitress to sign a voucher for it (Teit to Boas,
10 March 1904, AMNH-BTC).
Teit's Place in the Publication Record of
the Jesup North Pacific Expedition
Of the twenty-seven publications under the AMNH
Jesup North Pacific Expedition series, Teit authored four:
The Thompson Indians {] 900), The Lillooet{] 906), The
Shuswap {] 909), and Mythologyofthe Thompson Indians
(1 91 2). He was a major contributor to four others, act-
ing as a field assistant (identifying sites, collecting arti-
facts) and consultant to Harlan Smith for the latter's
Archaeology of Lytton (1 899) and Archaeology of the
Thompson River {] 900a); facilitating the photographic
work that formed the core of the Expedition's Ethno-
graphical Album ofthe North Pacific Coasts ofAmerica
and Asia (Boas 1 900); and providing the bulk of the
primary data featured in Livingston Farrand's Basketry
Designs ofthe Salish Indians {] 900). In comparison. Boas'
1 30 PARTICIPANTS/ JAMES A. TEIT
written contributions were substantially smaller, con-
sisting of five JNPE publications, of which three (Boas
and Hunt 1905, 1906; Boas 1909) drew heavily on
the research of George Hunt, and two (Boas 1 898b,
1 898c) drew on data provided by Charles Edenshaw,
a Haida artist at Port Essington, and an unidentified
storyteller at Bella Coola. Teit's monographs on the
Thompson, Lillooet, and Shuswap, were also the only
full ethnographic overviews ("basic ethnographies") of
the individual aboriginal groups completed for the
Northwest Coast segment of the JNPE and published
under the Expedition's series.
Conclusion
Thejesup North Pacific Expedition was one of the great
expeditions of American anthropology (Fitzhugh and
Crowell 1988:14). Historian Douglas Cole described it
as "the most cherished" of Boas' museum projects. It
was, he notes, "the showpiece of Boas' association
with the American Museum of Natural History" (Cole
2001:29). For Boas it was also important for estab-
lishing American anthropology as a field-based disci-
pline. It is ironic, therefore, that other than two short
field trips to the Northwest Coast in 1897 and 1900,
the JNPE marked the end of Boas' longterm fieldtrips.
After the JNPE, his fieldwork consisted of a small ar-
chaeological study in the American Southwest, fol-
lowed by two short trips to British Columbia in 1914
and 1 923 and a longer one in 1 930. In fact, the JNPE
helped establish Boas as a supervisor of distant teams
of resident fieldworkers. The key members of the Brit-
ish Columbia field team were Teit and Hunt, who sub-
mitted their results regularly to Boas by mail. Boas' de-
cision to move away from on-site field research may
be a consequence of the problems he encountered
during his 1897 field season, especially the inconve-
nience and expense of cumbersome travel through the
inland areas of British Columbia. Shortly after the JNPE,
he concluded that ethnography produced by observ-
ers who had command of the language and who were
friends with the Native peoples was of a higher quality
W. WICKWIRE
than that of the scholarly types "who had to work
through an interpreter" (jacknis 1 996:22 1 ).
Clearly Boas had Teit and Hunt in mind when he
made this statement, as by the end of the Jesup Expe-
dition, he had secured both as long-term, dedicated
assistants. In the case of Hunt and the ethnography of
the Coastal region, Boas could claim some credit as a
co-fieldworker. But Teit's case was different. Although
Boas had tried to do fieldwork in the Interior regions,
he never managed to accomplish anything close to
what he had accomplished on the Coast. Indeed, with-
out Teit, the JNPE ethnographic record for the interior
regions would have been weak. For this reason, Teit
deserves to be recognized today as more than a
"JNPE informant" or a "Boas' research assistant," but
rather as a full and productive JNPE team-member who
made a lasting contribution to the anthropology of
aboriginal North America.
Acknowledgements
First, I would like to thank Igor Krupnik and Laurel Kendall
for planning this special volume and working so dili-
gently with us to bring it to completion. I am espe-
cially grateful to Sigurd Teit, who supported my work
on his father with such enthusiasm and generosity over
the years. In particular, I would like to thank Sigurd for
donating the photographs of his father, James Teit, and
of the historical Spences Bridge community that ap-
pear in this essay. Special thanks to my workstudy
student assistant, Quinn Dupont for his work on the
photographs that appear in this essay. I also extend
my thanks to the British Columbia Provincial Archives
in Victoria, BC, the Kamloops Museum, Kamloops, BC,
and the American Museum of Natural History in New
York for allowing me to reproduce photographs from
their collections.
Notes
1 . Anthropologist Ronald Rohner's reference
to Teit as "one of Boas' principal informants"
(Rohner 1966:183) is typical.
1 3 1
2. Anthropologist Roderick Sprague has ar-
gued similarly that Teit's contribution to the study
of Plateau ethnology, folklore, linguistics, and
ethnographic analogy in archaeology has often
been "overlooked by researchers in that culture
area" (Sprague 1991:103).
3. James changed his surname from Tait to
Teit on arriving in Canada (Sigurd Teit, personal
communication).
4. Many names have been applied to the "In-
terior Salishan" peoples who occupy the south
central interior of British Columbia. In the early
published ethnographic record, they were called
the "Thompson," the "Okanagan," the "Shuswap,"
and the "Lillooet." In recent years, these anglicized
names have been replaced by the indigenous
names, spelled variously: "NIaka'pamux," "Sec-
wepemc," and "Sta'atl'imx." "Okanagan" has re-
mained the same. Throughout this paper the terms
are used interchangeably.
5. For fuller biographical details on Teit, see
Pat Lean and Sigurd Teit (1 995:3-60) and Wickwire
(1993, 1998, 2002). There is some difference of
opinion regarding Teit's early residency in British
Columbia. According to Peter Campbell (1 994:38),
Teit spent time from 1 887 until 1 892 in Nanaimo
working in the coal mines. Teit's son, Sigurd Teit,
however, reports that his father spent only two
weeks in the Nanaimo coal mines (Sigurd Teit,
personal communication 1989).
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W. WICKWIRE

rranz boas and an "anf.nisKed Jesup" on
in Island: ^hedciins^ (\Jew on ^erthoid [ aufer
and ^ronislaw f^ilsudski
KOICHI INOUE
Sakhalin Island, which was inhabited by three groups
of the North Pacific indigenous people—the Paleo-
Asiatic Nivkh (Cilyak), Tungusic Uilta (Orok), and the
Ainu—was included in the original fieldwork and op-
erational plan of theJesup North Pacific Expedition (JNPE)
at a very early stage (cf. Boas 1 905:92,99). However,
none of the Sakhalin Native nations were represented
in the subsequent JNPE publications, except for the
Nivkh featured in a special monograph contributed by
Lev (Leo) Shternberg. His monograph entitled "The
Social Organization of the Gilyak," however, was not
published with other volumes under the main JNPE
publication series nor in any related contemporary
proceedings. For several reasons, it remained in a manu-
script form for several decades, until its recent publica-
tion by the American Museum of Natural History in
1999 (Shternberg 1999; Grant 1999; Kan 2001).
The first section of this paper reviews and assesses
the "unfinished" fieldwork conducted on Sakhalin Is-
land within the framework ofJNPE in 1 898-9. The sec-
ond section deals with Franz Boas' presumed concerns
about the quality of the JNPE Sakhalin data and his
desire to expand the study of Sakhalin indigenous
people. The latter was clearly demonstrated through
Boas' post-JNPE relationship with two Sakhalin-focused
scholars: Leo (Lev) Shternberg and Bronislaw Pilsudski.
Laufer's JNPE Fieldwork on Sakhalin
Berthold Laufer ( 1 874-1 934), a German orientalist, was
appointed by Boas in 1 897 as the first participant in
the JNPE Siberian operations (Boas 1 903; Kendall 1 988;
see also Cole 2001:36-7; Vakhtin 2001:75-6). Hav-
ing just received his doctorate from the University of
Leipzig with a thesis on Tibetan texts, Laufer arrived in
Sakhalin via San Francisco, Vladivostok and Khabarovsk
on July 10, 1898. This started his field survey of the
Sakhalin Island and its Native people that lasted eight
months—until March 21,1 899.' During his eight-month
stay in Sakhalin, Laufer studied three local Native lan-
guages, the Nivkh, Tungusic [Orok?], and Ainu, and vis-
ited the northern, central, and southern sections of the
island (Freed et al. 1988a: 12-3; Kendall 1988:104).
From a preliminary published account of his field-
work (Laufer 1900a), it appears that Laufer began his
Sakhalin survey with visits to the Nivkh (Gilyak) villages
near the mouths of the Tym and Nabyl Rivers and along
the shore of the Sea of Okhotsk, in the present-day
Nogliki District (rayon). These were the residences of
the so-called "Tro-Gilyak" whose main villages were
Milk-vo, Nabyl-vo, Lun'-vo, Tyrmits, Nyi-vo, Chay-vo, and
Kaekr-vo (Laufer 1 900a:3 1 5). Laufer laconically writes:
"1 visited them [i.e., seven above mentioned villages
—
K.I.] in the summer of 1 898" (ibid).
It was probably on this first survey that Laufer also
paid a brief visit to "the village of Wal" (today's Val
K.I.) and its vicinity, in expanding his ethnographic ex-
ploration to the "Olcha" people. These were actually
not the Olcha/Ulchi (who reside on the Siberian main-
land, along the Amur River) but the Orok/Uilta, who
still comprise the core of the present-day residents of
1 3 5
the village of Val, about 50 km north of the eastern
Sakhalin district center, the town of Nogliki. Laufer
collected a number of valuable ethnographical speci-
mens (see his brief description of amulets in: Laufer
1 900a:326-7). He also observed a series of traditional
Orok funeral rites and ceremonies. In his brief published
account (Laufer 1 900a:327-9), he presented a fairly
short, though detailed information on certain Orok fu-
neral practices, such as placing coffins on trees or on
high wooden frames, and, in particular, about the fu-
neral of a drowned hunter. By September 1 898, Laufer
sent the following field report to Boas:
I have taken about [a] hundred
[anthropometrical] measurements and carried
on investigations on the physical types and
the culture of those tribes [i.e. the Nivkh and
Orok (Tungus)—K.I.], particularly regarding
their decorative art, of that I have obtained
interesting specimens together with good
explanations, daily life, fishing and hunting,
social organization, shamanism, medicine
and so on; as to their healing methods, I got
a very important collection of amulets. ..[for
protection] from diseases and representing
the figures of various animals [quoted from:
Kendall 1988:104].
Laufer also recorded songs and folktales on wax cylin-
ders by making use of the Edison phonograph. In March
1899, he even requested from Boas "a small instant
camera" with the aim to secure visual documentation
of what he observed in the field. In response, Boas
recommended that he hire a professional for field
photography. Laufer followed his recommendation
promptly.^
Judging from the aforementioned field reports, we
may assume that Laufer was, or at least tried to be,
faithful to the initial fieldwork instructions given to him
by Boas in 1 897, to write a "rounded" ethnography of
the Sakhalin Native people. Meanwhile, Laufer's spe-
cific and keen interest in the patterns of Native deco-
rative art was already clearly manifested in his reports.
In early September 1 898, Laufer fell seriously ill
with influenza and was obliged to attend to his
health fortwo-and-a-half months (Laufer 1 899b:733).3
This two-and-a-half month time roughly corresponds
to a period from September to mid-November, when,
upon recovery from the influenza (and also pneumonia
contracted among the Cilyak—see Freed et al.,
1 988a: 1 3), Laufer resumed his field survey. He stopped
first for five days at the village of Rykovskoye [now
called Kirovskoye] where he observed a Nivkh bear
festival, and then proceeded southward on horseback,
and reached the valley of the Poronay River (Laufer
1899b:733). Here he arrived at the southern portion
of the territory occupied by Uilta (Orok) people in
Sakhalin. Laufer summarized his trip as follows:
I visited the whole valley of the Poronai
[Poronay River] as far as the mouth of the
river on a reindeer sledge, and stayed for
some time in the large Tungus village Muiko,
where I had the great pleasure of obtaining
additional information in regard to the texts
which I had recorded during the preceding
summer. I have measured almost the whole
population of this area and collected statisti-
cal information. ... In December I reached
Tikhmenevsk [present-day city of
Poronaysk—K.I.], which is called Siska by the
natives. ... On the following day I started on an
excursion eastward, in which I was particularly
fortunate and successful. I obtained many
specimens and much information on the
Shamanistic rites and the ceremonials of the
natives (Laufer 1 899b:733).
With regard to Laufer's Orok survey, we should pay
special attention to the fact that he not only collected
museum specimens, but also recorded sound informa-
tion on wax cylinders and made ethnographic notes.
Laufer's Sakhalin wax cylinders and field notes deserve
serious investigation, if they can be found (see Keeling
2001:280). Since we have Pilsudski's contemporary
comparable ethnographic and phonographic materi-
als on the Orok (Pilsudski 1 985, 1 987, 1 989), it would
be desirable to make a comparative analysis between
the two sets of documentation.
Although Laufer wrote: "There are a great many
errors in Schrenck's descriptions of the tribes of Sag-
halin"^ (Laufer 1 899b:733), it was Laufer himself who
made an error when he said: "The Orok tribe, to which
1 36 PARTICIPANTS/ LAUFER AND PILSUDSKI
he [i.e., Schrenk—K.I.] refers, does not exist" [cf. Laufer
1 901 :36], since the "Tungus", the "Olcha", or the "Olcha
Tungus" in Laufer's denomination were nothing but the
Orok (Uilta) (cf. Demidova 1 978:1 1 9).
The area ofTaraika through which the Poronay River
flows was also inhabited by the so-called Taraika Ainu.
Laufer first met them on his visit to the villages ofTaran-
kotan and Taraika (present-day town of Ust'ye) located
across the river. He later visited the Orok villages of
"[U]nu, Muiko and Walit, having passed the famous lake
of Taraika"^ (Laufer 1899b:734).
On December 31 , Laufer returned to Siska and on
January 2, 1899, he
"[s]tarted by dog-sledge for Naiero [present-
day town of Gastello—K.I.], where I had the
best results in my work with the Ainu. Then I
visited all the settlements on the [east] coast
as far as Naibuchi, which is 260 versts from
Siska. This journey was exceedingly difficult,
and sometimes even dangerous" [ibid].
In fact, Laufer encountered numerous difficulties dur-
ing his fieldwork among the Ainu. First, a winter dog-
sled trip along the coast-line was physically very
trying, and Laufer experienced a near drowning in icy
water when his sledge broke through the thin ice (Laufer
1899b:734; Kendall 1988:104). Second, he suffered
from the lack of an operational language, since Rus-
sian was entirely unknown among the Ainu. Laufer was
forced to make full use of his knowledge of the Japa-
nese language, with which, however, the Sakhalin Ainu
were barely familiar at that time (Laufer 1 899b:732).
Third, and probably the most serious, gaps in commu-
nication and shortage of time (even though he spent
almost a month on that trip), resulted in Laufer's inabil-
ity to gain the confidence of the local Ainu. That was
obvious from his very poor data on physical anthro-
pology, since he did not succeed in obtaining any
anthropometrical measurements among the Ainu, ex-
cept for a single "man of imposing stature" in Korsakov.
Laufer attributed his failure to the extreme supersti-
tions of the Ainu (Laufer 1899b:733).
K. INOUE
Some comments to Laufer's trouble and methods
he used were noted in a letter to Leo (Lev) Shternberg
written in 1903 by Bronislaw Pilsudski:
Several days ago I heard that he [i.e., Laufer
—
K.I.] had taken measurements of eight Ainu
people in Korsakov and paid to each one by
ten bottles of spirits. I don't intend, of
course, to give either spirits or such amount
of money that may be equal to the [price of|
spirits, and the question is, whether I will be
able to obtain those [Ainu] who are willing
to be measured (Pilsudski 1996:212-3, Letter
no. 59).'
Laufer summarized his evaluation of the field survey on
the Ainu in the following manner:
I succeeded in obtaining a great deal of
ethnological material and information,
traditions, and a large amount of grammati-
cal and lexicographical material, although a
short time only was available for this pur-
pose. ... I am well satisfied with the results
of my ethnographical researches among these
people. I have obtained full explanations of
their decorative designs (Laufer 1 899b:733-4).
I am of the opinion that Laufer did not record Ainu
texts on wax cylinders. Despite the fact that he widely
informed others about his success in recording Cilyak
and Orok songs by the phonograph (Laufer 1 899a:36),
no other mention is found with regard to his Ainu re-
cordings. On the contrary, an additional message runs
as follows: "The only difficulty is that the instrument
cannot be used in the winter, owing to the effect of
severe cold" (Laufer 1 899b:732). As we know, his Ainu
survey was conducted exactly in the mid-winter,
through the month ofJanuary.
Toward the end of January, Laufer arrived on
horseback in Korsakov, the southernmost town of the
Sakhalin Island. Although he intended to return from
there northward along the west coast of the island,
this idea proved to be impossible, due to the lack of
any reliable means of communication in winter. Hence,
he was obliged to return following the same track he
used before, and proceeded "[a]s rapidly as possible
in order to reach Nikolaievsk'^ in time", i.e., by the end
1 37
of March. Thus in the morning of March 4, 1899, he
returned to the starting point of his Sakhalin journey
(Laufer 1 899b:734), most probably the town of Aleks-
androvsk, the Russian military post and sea-port situ-
ated on the Northwest coast of Sakhalin Island. Here,
he finished writing his field report cited above.
Was Laufer's Sakhalin expedition successful? As far
as his own accounts are concerned, it appears that
Laufer was fully confident that he had fulfilled the
whole task assigned to him by Boas, and that the
data he collected would enable him to write a
"rounded" ethnography of the Sakhalin people, i.e., the
Cilyak, the Orok, and the Ainu. In addition to those
field reports quoted above (Laufer 1899a, 1899b,
1 900a), Laufer published a few other pieces with some
data gathered during his Sakhalin trip. These include
his short monograph on the decorative art of the Amur
River people (Laufer 1 902); two short articles on rock-
paintings (Laufer 1 899c, 1 901 ); an article dealing with
the issue of the "Koropokguru" and "Tonchi" [prehis-
toric people on Sakhalin Island—K.I.] (Laufer 1 900b); a
single linguistic paper on Ainu numerals and phonol-
ogy (191 7a); and a fairly long paper on the origin of
reindeer breeding in Siberia, in which he covered the
Orok reindeer economy extensively (Laufer 1 91 7b).
Laufer's ethnography of the Nanay (Cold) people
of the Amur River was once announced on the list of
forthcoming JNPE publications as its Volume IV, Part II,
entitled The Cold (Boas 1 905:94). However, this mono-
graph was never published and, moreover, as Sergei
Kan recently pointed out, was "probably never writ-
ten" (Kan 2001 :232). Besides, the Nanay are not among
the Sakhalin indigenous people, as they reside along
the Amur River on the mainland.
Then, why did Laufer never publish his advertised
monograph on the Gold (Nanay) nor those on the Cilyak,
Orok, and Ainu? Since I was unable to look through the
voluminous personal correspondence between Laufer
and Boas at the American Philosophical Society in Phila-
delphia, I can only speculate in trying to find a reason-
able explanation. Even taking into account the various
other collections made by Laufer on his Sakhalin trip,
including the ethnographic specimens now at the
AMNH, the wax cylinders, his field notes, and manu-
scripts, it is beyond my present focus to evaluate
Laufer's legacy as a whole, that of a great scholar who
produced more than 200 scientific publications (Anony-
mous 1934:352-62; Hummel 1936:103-1 1). Laufer's
further career was different from his early fieldwork on
Sakhalin Island, as he "stood out primarily as an eth-
nologist, and perhaps his chief contribution was the
application of the principles of ethnology to historic
civilizations" (Kent 1934:349; Cale 1935:137). There-
fore I am eager to confine my role here simply to a
very general evaluation of what Laufer could (as well
as what he could not) achieve during his eight-month-
long Sakhalin fieldwork.
As to the former, Laufer's contribution regarding
his collection of ethnographic specimens has been al-
ready examined by several modern curators. Here one
may refer to Laurel Kendall's unpublished review of
Laufer's collection from the Amur River area (Kendall
1986), as well as to the most recent evaluation of
Laufer's ethnographic collections from the entire
Sakhalin-Amur River region (Roon 2000). As far as
Laufer's Ainu collection at the AMNH is concerned, it
was carefully examined recently by Prof. Y. Kotani from
Nagoya University and his team (Kotani et al. 1 993).
According to their report, 418 Ainu items are preserved
at the AMNH altogether, of which Laufer collected
thirty-eight items in 1898-1900. Although only nine
items are registered as obtained on the east coast of
Sakhalin, we may safely conclude that the whole set
of thirty-eight specimens was collected on Sakhalin,
including three pieces of nettle robe, six "moustache
lifters," and other utensils for everyday use (Kotani et
al. 1 993:1 1 8-20). This Ainu collection, though not nu-
merous, well represents the Sakhalin Ainu culture at
the turn of the twentieth century, at a time when the
Ainu barely retained many traditional forms of their
culture. In this sense, Laufer's collecting was a success-
ful enterprise, and we may well call him a successful
1 38 PARTICIPANTS/ LAUFER AND PILSUDSKI
field collector not only of Ainu, but probably also of
Orok and Nivkh (Cilyak) specimens. It would be desir-
able for the Orok and Nivkh items obtained by Laufer
to be also re-examined and re-assessed in the same
way.'°
With regard to what Laufer could not have achieved
during his Sakhalin journey, I cite another quote from
Pilsudski's letter to Shternberg written at Rykovskoye
on September 4, 1898:
Oh yes, I have forgotten about a main issue.
Young Doctor Laufer from Berlin, who is a
member of an American expedition, has
already been here. He heard of me still in
Vladivostok and wanted to drop in
Aleksandrovsk, but he didn't come. Then, I
left for Rykovskoye. Hence, it was just here
where we got acquainted with each other.
He called upon me with another German, i.e.,
an engineer. . . . Laufer has remained at
Natro. He has with him an interpreter, i.e., a
German deportee. Laufer himself does not
understand even a word in Russian, and it is
interesting to see what will come out. He is
going to stay the whole winter. Although I
did not say anything definite, I was and am
ready to give advice, but he showed very
little interest, and more often kept silent
during his visit. Despite my proposal that I
would answer him whatever he might be
eager to ask about, he appeared the second
time not at the appointed hour, and the
following day he departed. I do not know
what will occur further. I did not give him my
own notes, but I shall not refuse him in any
advice and guidance (Pilsudski 1996:161-2,
Letter no. 46).
Pilsudski's depiction of Laufer and his circumstances
on Sakhalin—however subjective and personal it might
be—is the sole source so far that may disclose Laufer's
real posture and behavior in the field. What was par-
ticularly disappointing to me was Laufer's invariable
reluctance to ask for Pilsudski's insight and advice,
notwithstanding the latter's repeated offers. No fur-
ther communication between the two ever took place
after the expedition. I deeply regret this situation, since
it was Laufer who could have benefited from Pilsudski's
consultation and help. Pilsudski was then the only per-
son on Sakhalin Island who was engaged in the study
of its Native people, the Nivkh, the Orok, and the Ainu.
Therefore, he was an invaluable resource and the only
available consultant at the very beginning of Laufer's
fieldwork. Besides, no language barrier existed between
the two, since Pilsudski was fully proficient in German.
With regard to Laufer's language competence,
Pilsudski referred that "Laufer himself does not under-
stand even a word in Russian." Although this was an
exaggeration (since Laufer had mastered Russian in his
student years), often a foreigner who is competent in
reading Russian, hardly understands the speech of
Russian village people, let alone the Russian speech of
indigenous people in Siberia. I encountered this exact
situation during my early fieldwork in Siberia. I wonder
if Laufer, when placed in a similar situation, might not
have become fully dependent upon his local interpreter,
"a German deportee." While Laufer used Russian as his
operational language in the Nivkh and Orok surveys,
he was unable to while among the Ainu, as mentioned
above. It was great loss that Laufer did not resort to
asking for Pilsudski's help, since the latter was by that
time already proficient in Sakhalin Ainu to a certain
extent.'^
It has to be taken into consideration that Laufer
was rushed into his Sakhalin fieldwork very shortly af-
ter his doctorate course in philology, presumably with
little if any training and preparation for field research
(Cole 2001:36). The Sakhalin Island trip for the JNPE
was his first experience conducting an ethnological
survey in this distant and inhospitable terrain, meaning
that he was obliged to educate himself in the field. In
addition, he spent two-and-a-half months of his Sakhalin
journey recuperating from infectious diseases he had
contracted there. Eventually, he finished an ethnologi-
cal survey of the Sakhalin Island Nivkh, Orok, and Ainu
within five-and-a-half months.
And yet, as seen from his field reports and early
publications, Laufer was confident that he had fulfilled
the whole task assigned to him by Boas and that Laufer
was well satisfied with the results, even from his less
successful Ainu survey. Are we then to call Laufer's
K. INOUE 1 39
Sakhalin expedition a "success"? I wish to refrain from
any final judgment for the time being, since many of
Laufer's Sakhalin materials are still missing and no full
account of his Sakhalin survey has been found. Some
of his manuscripts may still be discovered, as hap-
pened recently with Pilsudski's unpublished work and
other materials (Pilsudski 1996, 1998a, 1998b; Inoue,
1997b). But, it may also be possible that Laufer was
too proud and too rigorous of himself to produce a
substantial ethnographic monograph with a level of
preparation that he came to consider as insufficient.
Or else, he simply did not like the idea of writing the
"rounded" ethnography he was assigned to produce.
In the meantime, Pilsudski maintained a keen inter-
est in Laufer's achievements and continued to ask
Shternberg for information regarding Laufer's publica-
tions. The references are numerous during the follow-
ing years: "What has Laufer written on the Gilyak? Where
is it published?" (Pilsudski 1 996: 1 78, Letter no. 5 1 writ-
ten in 1 902); "Did Laufer publish anything? I should like
to have his works not only on the Gilyak but also the
Ainu as the result of his trip on Sakhalin" (ibid, p. 2 1 2,
Letter no. 59 written in 1 903); "Did Laufer write, didn't
he?" (ibid, p. 259, Letter no. 81 written in 1910). If Laufer
ever knew of Pilsudski's persistent interest in his
work, would that have helped to change his mind
and initiate some contact between the two scholars
ifnoX. during than c?/terLaufer'sJNPE Sakhalin-Amur sur-
vey of 1 898-9?
And lastly, I refer to a statement made by Boas in
1 902, two years after Laufer's return from hisJNPE field-
work, when his Siberian collections were already pro-
cessed at the AMNH and most of his Sakhalin contri-
butions were already published and/or written down.
In his summary paper on theJesup Expedition presented
at the International Congress of Americanists in New
York, Boas asserted that : "[A]t the present time we
are unable to state definitely what the relations of the
Gilyak and Ainu to the other isolated Siberian tribes'^
may have been. ... It remains for future researches to
show whether these tribes may definitely be classed
with the Northeast Siberian tribes" (Boas 1 905:99). This
may be a signal of Boas' growing dissatisfaction with
what Laufer achieved during his Sakhalin survey. I as-
sume that this might have prompted Boas to contact
Shternberg for additional data on the Nivkh (Gilyak)
and to try to enlist Pilsudski to conduct new Ainu studies
several years after the completion of the JNPE.
Pilsudski's "Second Expedition" to Sakhalin:
A Non-Journey?
"I hear from a friend of mine, Mr. L. Sternberg that you
are interested in Aino-folklore" (Inoue 1 999a: 1 1 5). This
was the opening sentence of Bronislaw Pilsudski's first
letter to Franz Boas, written on December 1 9, 1 907, in
Zakopane, a resort Polish town in western Galicia, then
under the Austrian rule. Thus started Pilsudski's rela-
tionship with Franz Boas through the introduction of
Leo (Lev) Shternberg.
Bronislaw Pilsudski (1 866-1 91 8), a Polish Siberian
anthropologist was born in the manor of Zulow (present-
day Zaiavas) in Wilna province (today's Lithuania), which
had been annexed to the Russian Empire.''' In 1887,
when he was 1 9 years old, Pilsudski, a freshman at St.
Petersburg University, was arrested on the charge that
he had been involved in an abortive conspiracy to
assassinate the Russian Czar, Alexander III. Pilsudski
was sentenced to penal servitude for 1 5 years and
exiled to the Sakhalin Island. He remained in the Rus-
sian Far East for 19 years (Fig. 46), first as a "state
criminal" in Sakhalin (1 887-97) and later as a "deported
peasant" (1 897-1 906). After the Russian-Japanese War
of 1 904-5, he managed to return—via Japan, the U.S.,
and Western Europe—to the Polish province of Galicia,
then under Austrian rule. He died in Paris on May 1 7,
1918. Pilsud ski's death, often referred to as a suicide,
occurred Just six months before the Polish statehood
was resurrected owing to the efforts of his younger
brother, the future Polish military dictator,Jozef Pilsudski
(1867-1935).
In 1 899, Pilsudski was able to leave Sakhalin Is-
land for Vladivostok, the main Russian port city on
1 40 PARTICIPANTS/ LAUFER AND PILSUDSKI
the mainland, where he found a job as a custodian at
the IVluseum of the Society for the Study of the Amur
Region. But, as early as 1901, he fell into depression
and apathy. His old friend, correspondent, and a
Sakhalin co-exile. Lev Shternberg tried to help him by
organizing new fieldwork for Pilsudski through the Im-
perial Academy of Sciences. "Knowing that the sole
medicine for him is the work, and understanding that
nobody can carry it out better than Pilsudski," Shtern-
berg organized a trip to Sakhalin for Pilsudski (Latyshev
1996:395). Thus, in July 1902, Pilsudski commenced
his new fieldwork among the Ainu on Sakhalin Island
where he had previously spent twelve years as a
political prisoner. This was Pilsudski's "first Sakhalin
expedition," which was extended for two more years
(1 904-5) at Pilsudski's own request in 1 903 under the
sponsorship of the newly founded Russian Committee
for the Study of Central and East Asia' MInoue 1985:8).
Pilsudski's fieldwork in Sakhalin (1 902-5) was high-
ly successful despite the interruption of the Russian-
Japanese War of 1 904-5. Shortly before the war broke
out, Pilsudski took part in an unsuccessful Russian ex-
pedition'^ (1903) to the Hokkaido Ainu, headed by a
Polish ethnographer and writer, WaclawSieroszewski'^
(Inoue 2003). Pilsudski collected valuable ethnographic
specimens, recorded folklore texts—especially on wax
cylinders'^—and took numerous photos of the Ainu,
Uilta (Orok), Nivkh (Gilyak), and Nanay (Gold) (Figs. 47-
49; see also Latyshev 1 998).
Six letters sent by Pilsudski to Boas between 1 907-
16 are preserved at the Franz Boas' Collection at the
Archives of the American Philosophical Society in Phila-
delphia (APS-BP), of which I reproduced the five then
available in an earlier Japanese publication (Inoue
1990:309-18). Upon re-reading Pilsudski's six letters
to Boas'^ at the APS as well as his numerous letters to
Shternberg (cf. Pilsudski 1 996), I have come to the con-
clusion that Boas had helped Pilsudski a great deal
between the years 1 908 and 1918. Boas answered all
Pilsudski's letters promptly'^°; he published Pilsudski's
article on the Ainu in the Journal ofAmerican Folk-lore
K. INOUE
(Pilsudski 1912a); and he most probably acted as a
go-between in the sale of Pilsudski's photos to various
American museums (Figs. 46-49)'^'. He also persisted
in encouraging Pilsudski to continue his scientific work.
However, Pilsudski's biggest morale boost came, I be-
lieve, when he was asked by Boas to go on a new
Sakhalin expedition in 1909. Although this trip never
materialized, the fact remained that Boas—one of the
leading anthropologists of the time—regarded Pilsudski
as a first-ranking expert on the Sakhalin Ainu.
Presumably, in the beginning of 1909, Pilsudski
wrote to Shternberg:
Several days ago, I received also a letter
from Boas, who wrote [to] me to send a
proposal to Chicago Museum, which might
probably dispatch me to collect ethno-
graphical specimens among the Ainu. Boas
considers that Sakhalin Ainu artifacts are
more preferable to the Hokkaido ones,
although the Hokkaido Ainu might be more
interesting for me. He thinks that the whole
expense may be 6000 dollars (Pilsudski
1996:240, Letter no. 68).
And later he informed Shternberg about his progress
in this task in another letter (stamped as March 8, 1 909),
saying: "I have sent my proposal to Chicago, asking
for 2000 dollars for my work and living during 9-1
months" (Pilsudski 1 996:243, Letter no. 71). In the next
letter to Shternberg (no. 72), however, Pilsudski reported
that "From Chicago I have received no answer, even
though I asked to let me know by telegram about the
decision, so as to prepare for my departure as early as
possible. Now I want to write again, asking for the
answer. I had better write to Boas himself (Pilsudski
1996:245; the date is missing). Presumably, Pilsudski
wrote a new letter to Chicago, and on May 1 0, 1 909,
he informed Boas that:
[I] have received the answer from Dr. Dorsey,
who writes me [that] Chicago Field Museum
wishes [to] send me to the Ainu and will take
steps to secure the sum of 6000.00$ and
request You to ascertain what I might
undertake to the Journey (APS-BP, no. 470;
Inoue 1999a:123).
1 4 1
On October 1 0, 1 909, Pilsudski wrote the first letter to
Shternberg from Paris:
Not the slightest answer from either Dorsey
or Boas. I asked Boas to give me instructions,
as to what I should pay attention to. I would
agree to go to Sakhalin, if he considered it
indispensable, even if I myself had planned a
trip to Northern Hokkaido. Boas wrote in
reply that he didn't write to me, since he had
heard nothing from Dorsey. Here [i.e., in
Paris—K.I.] Prof. Manuorte" told me that
Dorsey worked in a very large museum, and
that I should turn up the heat, but how and
in what way? I understand myself that this is
the only way-out for me. But, how to break
through? I wrote to Hawes'' who was
currently professor at Madison, but I have
received no reply. I want to ask Kennan
who once promised me help, if it was
necessary (Pilsudski 1996:248, Letter no. 75).
And, on November 7, 1 909, Pilsudski again wrote to
Shternberg from Paris:
I got a letter from Dr. Dorsey, who was
already in Europe and six weeks afterwards
was planning to come to me in Lwow. I
answered that I was at the moment in Paris
and preferred to see him here. And, in case he
could not come, I would try to appear wher-
ever he asks (Pilsudski 1 996:250, Letter no. 76).
Pilsudski's next letter to Shternberg (the date is
missing but the letter was most probably sent in
November 1 909) includes the following direct quota-
tion from Dorsey's letter, which runs:
I thank you for the references you gave me in
Cracow and will be glad to call upon your
friends. I shall probably not reach Calicia for
two or three months yet. I am sorry there has
been this delay in our getting together, but I
will warn you that you cannot in any sense
consider yourself as employed by the Field
Museum until I have taken the matter up
formally with my Director and secured his
permission, and before this can be brought
about, it is necessary that I should talk the
situation over with you. I say this, feeling lest
you might be disappointed (Pilsudski
1996:252, Letter no. 77).
Pilsudski's letter to Shternberg (no. 76) goes on:
I'm writing the same to Boas, who will be
surprised at the fact that Dorsey has not
seen me yet, since he promised Boas to do
so on leaving the US. I want to propose
Dorsey two plans: one is that I remain here
for a year in order to learn more English, to
work on what could be done by treating the
materials at hand, to look up more literature,
and to obtain practical training both in
photography and anthropometry. The other
plan is to start a field trip this winter, if he is
in a hurry and doesn't want to postpone it.
And anyway, if there were something for me
to receive in St. Petersburg, I should secure it
(Pilsudski 1996:250-1).
Meanwhile, commenting bitterly on Dorsey's letter,
Pilsudski writes to Shternberg:
Consequently, it delays, he writes to me
nothing of when we shall meet, obviously
three months later and not earlier, and he will
still return to America and have a talk with
the director, although in his first letter he said
that he was going to discuss with the
director. No doubt, there cannot be any trip
in 1910. There can be a better development,
too. But, I'm afraid that nothing will come of
it and it will be necessary for me to do
something, without any expectation
(Pilsudski 1 996:252, Letter no. 77).
It seems to me that Pilsudski never met with Dorsey,
since I have found no reference to this meeting in his
letters to either Shternberg or Boas. And, consequently,
his second Sakhalin expedition did not take place at
all—not only in 1910 but also later, as Pilsudski had
anticipated. The reason(s) and the cause(s) of why the
idea was eventually dropped remain unknown. My
guess is that too many personal motives were involved.
George Amos Dorsey (1868-1931), an American
anthropologist, held the position of curator in charge
of Anthropology at the Field Columbian Museum of
Natural History in Chicago from 1898 to 1915. He
took a three-year leave (1909-12) from his museum
work and traveled abroad as a foreign correspon-
dent for The Chicago 7r/i»iv/ie (Calhoun 1 991 :1 53-4).
Therefore, although he arrived in Europe in 1 909, he
was surely too busy to meet Pilsudski even in Paris. In
Europe, Dorsey was acting not as a Field Museum
curator but primarily as a journalist. Besides, I wonder
if the well-documented personal hostility between
1 42 PARTICIPANTS/ LAUFER AND PILSUDSKI
30/ KwakiutI Indians dancing at the Chicago Worlds Fair. Photographer, John H. Crabill, i 893 (AMNH 3372 1 7).
1 43
3 1/ Franz Boas, with George Hunt and his family, Fort Rupert, B.C. Photographer, Oregon C. Hastings,
November 1894 (APS neg. # 466)
1 44
THE KWAKIUTL INDIANS. 697
[To page 464.]
SONG OF HA'MSHAMTSES.
1. Hamasa'ya'lag-ila haisai ye hamamamai.
Trying to look for food all around yo hamamamai.
the world
2. Ba'bakuaya'lag-ila haisai ye hamamamai.
Looking for men all around tlie ye hamamamai.
world
3. Q'ula' mEiisayag-ila haisai ye hamamamai.
Life swallowing all around the ye hamamamai.
world
4. Xa'xauquaya'lag'ila haisai ye hamamamai.
Looking for beads all around the ye hamamamai.
world
TUNK, RECORDKD BY F. BOAS.
J. =72.
He ye ha ma ma ma ha ma ma mai ha -
Beating. J^l^lJ' IJ^*'/*'/!®**-
—•
—
1
—
1
r3 *
il^',
—
t -
-X
—t _ t _
ma - sa
ba - kua
ya -
ya •
g'i -
g'i -
A
la
la etc.
a a - hai sai
P—
^
h
—
y—
1—
•
1
_t
•
—
s>-^
1 ^ —)- 1+-
—
9i- ha ba ma - ma ma a mai
. .
.
=3(i fr-f-_
^ P=
1
1 1-
^'
_i5iJ=± 1=
-t 1 F
ha me mai ba ma - ma ma mai ha me ma he
ha - ma - ma mai ha ma a ma mai ha me mai ha
± m
ma a ha ma mai ha ma - ma - me ha - me.
32/ Musical notation by Franz Boas: Song ofHa'msliamtses. Reprinted from: Franz Boas, Tine Social Organization
and Secret Societies of the KwakiutI Indians, Report of the U.S. National Museum for 1 895. 1897, p. 697
1 45
33/ Hamatsa skull rattle (Kwakiutl). Collected by
George Hunt in Quatsino, B.C., 1 899. Photo by Lynton
Gardiner, (AMNH Cat. #16/6897, neg. 2A 19017)
34/ Pit house, Spences Bridge, B.C. Photographer, Harlan Smith, 1897 (AMNH 42776)
1 46
35/ Wax cylinder machine: Edison Standard Phonograph with horn, ca. 1 900. Photo by Carl Fleischhauer. Library of
Congress, American Folklife Center
1 47
36/ Lucy Antko, wife ofJames Teit, one of the six singers recorded by Franz Boas at Spences Bridge, B.C., 1897.
Photographer, Harlan Smith, i 897 (AMNH 22695)
1 48
37/ James Teit and two friends in Lerwick, Scot-
land, prior to his departure to Canada. Courtesy of
Sigurd Teit
38/James Teit's uncle John Murray in British Colum-
bia, circa 1 888. Courtesy of Sigurd Teit
1 49
39/Spences Bridge, / 887. Note John Murray's white cottage is visible on the
left. His store is the large building in the center of the photograph. Courtesy of
the Kamloops Archives (Kamloops, BC)
40/ Spences Bridge, circa
1890. This photo shows
Spences Bridge on both
sides of the Thompson
River. Courtesy of Sigurd
Teit
1 50
»4 1/Drying salmon on the beach on the north side ofthe Thompson River,just belowJohn Murray's store. Courtesy
ofSigurd Teit.
1 5 1

43/James Teit in his cabin at Tswall Creek. Courtesy ofSigurd Teit
] 53
44/James Teit and George Tomaxkain on the banks of the Thompson River, 1 890. Courtesy ofSigurd Teit
1 54
45/James A. Teit and Harlan I. Smith's pack train, Spences Bridge. Courtesy of the British Columbia Provincial
Archives, Vancouver.
1 55
46/ Bronislaw Pilsudski, three "Oltchi" (Ulchi) men, and a local settler. Studio photo. Original hand-written
caption by Pilsudski: "Oltchi (Mangun) from Amur River. Three standing men are Oltchi (the middle is son ofa
Chinese man and Oltchi woman), the sitting I am (the left) and a Jew (the right)." (SI-NAA 041 253.00)
1 56
47/ Sakhalin's Ainu
bear festival. Photogra-
pher, Bronislaw
Pilsudski. Original hand-
written caption by
Pilsudski: "Ainu of
Saghalien. The bear-
fest. The bear is
wounded." (STNAA
047396.00)
1 5 7
49/Sakhalin Ainu bear festival. Photographer, Bronislaw Pilsudski. Original caption by Pilsudski: "Ainu ofSaghalien.
The bear-feast. The feast about the killed bear. " (SI-NAA 047398.00)
1 58
Dorsey and Boas (cf. Freed et al. 1 988b:97-8) might
have contributed to the collapse of the planned new
Sakhalin affair.
In the meantime, Boas was eager to help Pilsudski
in the venues he controlled. In 1908, Boas tried to
publish Pilsudski's abundant Ainu folklore material in
the U.S." Boas advanced this possibility to an AMNH
patron, Arthur Curtis James, by asking him a direct
question: "Would you be sufficiently interested in this
matter to let me look over the material in detail and
give you a more definite report regarding the value
and the status of his manuscripts?" (Franz Boas to A. C.
James,June 6, 1 908, APS). Although this proposal failed,
it is evident that Boas was seriously interested in
Pilsudski's Ainu material and regarded it very highly. At
the end of his letter to A. C. James, Boas presented his
evaluation: "I am reasonably certain from what I know
about it that it is exceedingly unlikely that material of
this kind could ever be duplicated" (ibid.).^*'
In Lieu of a Conclusion
Notwithstanding his passion and endeavor. Boas could
not succeed in either obtaining the desired publica-
tions from Laufer's Sakhalin survey nor in incorporating
Shternberg's as well as Pilsudski's contributions into
the JNPE proceedings. Hence, the Jesup Expedition
program on Sakhalin Island remained "unfinished"
for several decades to come. Sakhalin Island, or more
properly the larger Sakhalin-Amur River area, was of
critical importance to Boas. This portion of the trans-
Pacific "Jesup region," from the Amur River in Northern
Asia to the Columbia River in North America presented
a unique cultural area, where the deeply rooted cul-
tural impact from, and connections with, the ancient
agricultural civilizations of China, Korea, and Japan met
with the hunter-gathering cultures of the North Pacific
indigenous people. This was why, in my view. Boas
tried very hard to organize a multidisciplinary study
of this area under the JNPE program. He asked Laufer
and Fowke, an archaeologist, to do the same Job that
he had assigned to Bogoras and Jochelson in more
northerly areas in Northeast Siberia as well as to
Smith, Swanton, and others (but first and foremost to
himself) on the Northwest Coast of North America.
However, neither Laufer nor Fowke were in any way
comparable to Bogoras, Jochelson, or to Boas himself,
as field researchers.
Due to repeated failures of Boas' several attempts
to document the culture, the Sakhalin-Amur area re-
mained one of the least studied sections under the
JNPE program and for years afterwards. The initial effort
was not completed until almost ninety years later. In
1 998, the Mouton de Cruyter Publishers started the
publication of The Collected Works ofBmnislaw Pilsudski
in seven volumes. The first two volumes are already
printed (Pilsudski 1998a, Pilsudski 1998b). The first
volume, entitled The Aborigines of Sakhalin, contains
twenty of Pilsudski's articles on the Ainu, Nivkh (Gilyak),
and Uilta (Orok), which had been published previously
in various languages (Russian, Polish, Japanese, etc.),
and have been translated into English by the volume's
editor. Prof. Alfred F. Majewicz from Poznan. The sec-
ond volume is a modern reprint of Pilsudski's only Ainu
monograph published in his lifetime (Pilsudski 191 2b),
with the addition of An Ainu English Index Dictionary to
B. Pilsudski's Materials, compiled by Alfred and Elzbieta
Majewicz (Pilsudski 1 998b). Subsequent volumes in-
clude Nivkh/Cilyak folklore texts, the Orok grammar
and dictionary, vocabularies of the Nanay and Olcha
languages, and other contributions by Pilsudski, which
were discovered recently as unpublished manuscripts.
These works were mainly the products of Pilsudski's
first Sakhalin expedition of 1 902-5.
As The Collected Works of Bronislaw Pilsudski will
be finally available to scholars eighty years after the
death of their author, it is safe to say that Pilsudski was
one of the critical figures in the ethnography of the
Sakhalin-Amur region. He was a contemporary of the
Jesup Expedition efforts and was in contact with some
of its key participants, like Boas, Laufer, and Shternberg.
Therefore, we have but to regret that Pilsudski's
expertise was never used by Laufer during his field
K. INOUE
work on Sakhalin. Nor was Franz Boas fortunate in the
following years in strengthening his cooperation with
Pilsudski—either through American publication of his
folklore materials in 1 907-8 (Inoue 1 999a: 1 1 5-20) or
in arranging Pilsudski's "second Sakhalin expedition"
of 1909-10 that never materialized.
Acknowledgements
This paper is a substantially revised version of the origi-
nal presentation delivered at the Franz Boas' Cente-
nary Conference in New York (November 1 3-1 7, 1 997;
Inoue 1999b). In the present paper, the original sec-
tions that dealt with the relationship between Shtern-
berg and Pilsudski are omitted, and a new section
focused on Berthold Laufer's work on Sakhalin Island
was added, thanks to the suggestion of Igor Krupnik.
My thanks are due, first of all, to Igor Krupnik, for his
persistent encouragement and support; to Prof. Jiro
Ikegami, Hokkaido University; and to my colleagues at
the Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, for
their valuable comments to the earlier draft of this text.
I am also grateful to Paula Fleming from the National
Anthropological Archives (NAA), Smithsonian Institu-
tion and to the NAA staff for assistance and permis-
sion to use four of Pilsudski's original Sakhalin photo-
graphs as illustrations to this paper.
Notes
1 . This is confirmed by one of Laufer's earli-
est reports published in Globus, which says that
"[D]r. Laufer left New York in May 1 898 and trav-
eled to Sakhalin Island via Japan and Vladivostok
where he lived among the various local races from
Summer 1898 until March of 1899." (Laufer
1899a:36).
2. See one of the studio portraits of the Amur
River people that Laufer ordered to be taken
(Fitzhugh and Crowell 1988:25).
3. The place where Laufer fell ill was most
probably the village of A/£?rro (Pilsudski 1996:161).
4. Without doubt, this was not a Tungus (i.e.,
Evenk) but the Uilta (Orok) village, since Muiko was
known as an Orok summer campsite on the Poronay
River (Oral communication by Prof. Jiro Ikegami).
5. The book referred to here is by Leopold
von Schrenck (1 881-95).
6. Lake Nevskoye on present-day maps.
7. A contemporary Russian name is Ust'-
Dolinki.
8. All quotations from Pilsudski's letters that
have been published in Russian (see Pilsudski
1996) were translated into English by myself.
9. The town of Nikolayevsk-na-Amure, the
main Russian administrative center located on the
continent, is at the mouth of the Amur River, across
the Mamiya/Tatar Strait from the Sakhalin Island.
1 0. This task was recently fulfilled by Tatyana
P. Roon from the Sakhalin Regional Museum (Roon
2000). For over nine months, between December
1998 and September 1999, she conducted an
extensive survey of the Amur and Sakhalin ethno-
graphic collections preserved at the various Ameri-
can museums.
11. Friedrich Kleie, an oil prospector. Cf.
Pilsudski 1996:309, Note 99.
12. A testimony thereto was given by John
Batchelor who met Pilsudski in Hokkaido in 1 903.
Batchelor writes: "I met this gentleman [i.e.,
Pilsudski— K.I.] in Sapporo several years ago and
the only language we could properly converse in
was Ainu! He in Saghalien Ainu and I in Yezo."
(Batchelor 1938:3).
1 3. Evidently, the Chukchi, Koryak, Even, and
the Yukagir, surveyed by otherJNPE Siberian teams.
14. Main biographical sources on Bronislaw
Pilsudski in English are: Inoue 1 985; Sawada 1 985;
Kowalski 1995; Majewicz 1998.
1 5. The Chairman of the Committee was Prof.
Vasily V. Radloff, then Director of the Russian Im-
perial Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography
(Kunstkamera). Shternberg was appointed as the
Committee's executive secretary. Concerning the
Committee, see Inoue 1999b:146.
16. The expedition was organized by the
Russian Imperial Geographical Society and the
Russian Academy of Sciences. Being invited as
the only Ainu expert in Russia, Pilsudski joined
the team directly from Sakhalin. It was on this
occasion that he met John Batchelor in Sapporo
(see above note 1 1 and also Inoue 2003)
17. Waclaw Sieroszewski (1858-1945), a
Polish revolutionary exile to Siberia, was an au-
thor of the basic ethnography on the Sakha
1 60 PARTICIPANTS/ LAUFER AND PILSUDSKI
(Yakut) people (Seroshevskii 1896). From his trip
to Hokkaido, he published two small pieces of
travelogue entitled '"Wsrod kosmatych ludzi"
(Among the Hairy People) in 1926 and "Volcano
Bay" {]903). Both were included in Sieroszewski's
Collected Works, vol. 1 8 (1 961 ).
1 8. It appears that Pilsudski followed Laufer's
example of making use of the Edison phonograph
in recording Native language and folklore. In 1 981
,
some eighty years afterwards, more than eighty
original phonographic cylinders on which Pilsudski
had recorded Ainu folklore texts and which were
preserved at A. Mickiewicz University in Poznan,
Poland, gave birth to the so-called ICRAP (the In-
ternational Committee for the Restoration and As-
sessment of Bronislaw Pilsudski's Work). ICRAP has
been engaging in editing and publishing The Col-
lected Works ofB. Pilsudski, in seven volumes, under
the editorship of Prof. Alfred F. Majewicz of A.
Mickiewicz University in Poznan.
19. They are registered as "Franz Boas Pa-
pers, nos. 1 1 69; 41 4; 470; 607; 472" (APS-BP), and
a letter without any catalog number (Inoue 1 999a).
20. Unfortunately Boas' letters to Pilsudski are
not preserved at the APS, except for one carbon
copy (APS-BP, no. 524a), which is reproduced in:
Inoue 1 999a:l 30-1 . Nevertheless, there are signs
of Boas' answers, as indicated by handwritten
messages found on a letter sheet: "F.B./ Ordered
July 7, 1914" and "Answered July 7th" (APS-BP, no.
472; Inoue, 1 999a: 1 27-8).
21. APS-BP, no. 607; Inoue 1999a:125.
22. Latyshev's reading for this name notwith-
standing, it was in fact French physical anthro-
pologist Louis Pierre Manouvrier (1 850-1 927), that
Pilsudski had referred to here. For this clarifica-
tion, I want to thank Aleksandr M. Reshetov of
the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography
(MAE) in St. Petersburg, who has kindly confirmed
its Cyrillic spelling as "Manuvriye," looking up the
original hand-written letter.
23. Charles H. Hawes, a British traveler, who
published a book on the Russian Far East entitled
In the Uttermost East ( 1 903).
24. George Kennan, an American journalist,
who published several books, including an excel-
lent essay, Siberia and the Exile System (1 891 ).
25. On Dec.l 9, 1 907, in his first letterto Boas,
Pilsudski made a proposal to deliver a complete
set of Ainu folklore texts (240 tales andl20
riddles) to be published in America, if he were
guaranteed a monthly income of $120 for eight
months (APS-BP, no.l 169; Inoue, 1999a:1 17).
26. Pilsudski's Ainu folklore material was par-
tially published by Boas in a short article (Pilsudski
1912a). Most probably, however, Boas meant
here the whole material that Pilsudski had offered
to Boas for publication (cf. note 25). It was printed
in Poland as a more extended collection (Pilsudski
1 91 2b). That was Pilsudski's only monograph pub-
lished during his lifetime.
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K. INOUE
J
Louis ^hotndge and Indigenous 1 iingit
thnOgrapht): Ti^en and Now
NORA MARKS DAUENHAUER
AND RICHARD DAUENHAUER
One of the lasting features of Franz Boas' work during
and after the years of the Jesup Expedition was his
collaboration with indigenous writers and intellectuals
such as George Hunt for KwakiutI, Henry Tate for
Tsimshian, and Louis Shotridge for Tlingit. As far as we
can tell, these relationships were productive and mu-
tually beneficial, and resulted in scholarship of endur-
ing quality and value. Details of how Boas' working
relationships actually shaped the texts are only more
recently attracting critical attention (Rohner 1 969;
Hymes 1 985; Maud 1 993, n.d.)- In Tlingit, for example,
Boas, working with Louis Shotridge, a Tlingit Indian
from Klukwan, was able to document Tlingit phonol-
ogy accurately for the first time (Boas 1 91 7). This analysis
has been confirmed by subsequent generations of lin-
guists. For his part, Shotridge attended Boas' lectures
at Columbia University, and he benefited greatly from
Boas' training in phonetics and current anthropologi-
cal theory and methods. Shotridge became the first
Tlingit, and possibly the first Northwest Coast Native,
with professional training in linguistics and anthropol-
ogy. He led expeditions to the Northwest Coast, and
between 1913 and 1 929 he published several articles
in the UniversityofPennsylvania MuseumJournal, one of
which is the subject of this chapter.
Louis Shotridge and the Jesup Expedition
Connection
Although not a part or project of the Jesup Expedition
per se, Shotridge's work belongs to the spirit of the
Jesup Expedition era and is intimately linked to one
of its major figures, Franz Boas. The beginning of
their collaboration falls within the wider timeframe
of the period, and, along with the work of John
Swanton, it forms one of the cornerstones of Tlingit
research and publication. His work with Boas seems
to have been a pivotal event in shaping Shotridge's
career. This chapter covers the biographical and his-
torical background of the relationship and examines
the mutual influence of Boas and Shotridge on each
other's work. Focus is on the scholarly publications
of language and folklore by Louis Shotridge, espe-
cially his 1920 article, "Ghost of Courageous Ad-
venturer," and his role in the 1917 grammar of Tlingit
by Boas.
The chapter examines and evaluates Louis Shotridge
as a Tlingit intellectual in the western, academic sense
of the term; as the first indigenous transcriber and trans-
lator of Tlingit oral literature; and as a stylist in English.
He deliberately used archaic English and "poetic dic-
tion" in an attempt to retain the integrity of the original
Tlingit style. The result is a highly crafted translation,
but one that is awkward by modern standards and
difficult for or even unintelligible in places to the aver-
age contemporary reader. Parallels between the stilted
English and everyday Tlingit become clear when the
English is back-translated into Tlingit (a work in progress
by Nora Marks Dauenhauer, not included here). The
heart of the paper is Nora Marks Dauenhauer's new
English editing of Shotridge's 1920 translation.
1 65
Biographical Background and Early Career
of Louis Shotridge
Louis Shotridge was born in 1 882 in the Chilkat village
of Klukwan, in southeast Alaska. He died in Sitka in
1937. He was the son and grandson of prestigious
Tlingit leaders. His paternal grandfather, L Shaaduxisht
(ca. 1819-1889) from whose Tlingit name the angli-
cized form "Shotridge" derives, was a leader of the
Kaagwaantaan (Eagle moiety) Finned House (Keet
Cooshi Hit), an off-shoot of the Kaagwaantaan Killer
Whale House, and was one of the leaders of the 1852
Tlingit raid on the Hudson Bay trading post at Ft. Selkirk
at the confluence of the Pelly and Yukon Rivers. His
father was George Shotridge (1852-1917), whose
Tlingit name was Yeilgooxu, and who was leader of
the prestigious and famous Whale House (Yaay Hit) of
the (Raven moiety) Caanaxteidi. George was a friend
of Lt. George Emmons, the famous ethnographer and
collector among the Tlingit (see Kan, this volume), and
both Louis' father and grandfather are well documented
in historical writings and photographs. Shotridge's
mother was Kudeit.saakw of the Finned House Kaag-
waantaan. Thus Louis belonged to the same house
group as his paternal grandfather.
Louis Shotridge was no stranger to the English-
speaking world. His family had a long history of inter-
action with Euro-Americans, and he was educated in
the Presbyterian mission school. Louis' marriage to his
first wife Florence was arranged by their families at
birth, but their relationship blossomed at mission school.
She was Susie F. Scundoo (c. 1 882-1 91 7), of the Moun-
tain House Lukaax.adi, whose Tlingit name was Kaat><;
waantsex. Photographs show her to be a stunning
beauty, and by all accounts she was a talented and
charming woman. They were married on December
25, 1902, in Klukwan.
in 1905, Florence Shotridge was invited to dem-
onstrate Chilkat weaving at the Portland International
Exposition, and Louis accompanied her. There he met
and impressed Dr. George Gordon of the University of
Pennsylvania Museum, who a decade later hired Louis
as an agent and to document the museum's North-
west Coast collection.
Milburn (1997) traces and examines a number of
phenomena that converged in the lives of Louis and
Florence Shotridge. The rise of tourism and the "curio"
trade paralleled the start of museum collecting. At some
point, Louis decided to become involved in the curio
and collecting trade. He was no stranger to this activ-
ity, the Chilkat area being influenced by earlier mu-
seum collectors, such as the Krause brothers, Emmons,
and various Presbyterian missionaries. The latter en-
couraged Native carving as crafts to generate rev-
enue, while Sheldon Jackson was collecting traditional
artifacts for his museum in Sitka (the future Sheldon
Jackson Museum). Milburn observes that Shotridge's
pursuit of an entrepreneurial career through his interac-
tion with American society was consistent with the
activities of his father and grandfather, and she sug-
gests that this may be seen as an attempt to maintain
his prestige within a rapidly changing Tlingit society
(1 997:1 03). Despite the high level of schooling in South-
east Alaska, only a small percentage of Natives suc-
ceeded in breaking into Euro-American professions. The
"civilizing" rhetoric of Protestant missionaries was aimed
at creating an indigenous laboring class. Perhaps Louis
and Florence saw the curio market as a stepping-stone
to become involved in professional, intellectual work.
The years from 1 907 to 1 91 1 were highly produc-
tive for the young couple. They hired tutors to teach
them English and music. Florence was an accomplished
pianist, and Louis is remembered for his outstanding
baritone voice. They performed duets and toured with
an Indian Grand Opera Company. From the time when
Florence was first asked to demonstrate Chilkat weav-
ing through their years of participation in Indian fairs
and the Opera, the Shotridges functioned as what
Milburn calls "cultural" entrepreneurs, re-inventing their
"authentic" and "exotic" selves as the circumstances
dictated (Milburn 1997:1 1 7). It is difficult to evaluate
this phase of their careers, which seems embarrassing
and stereotyped today. To some extent, Louis and
1 66 PARTICIPANTS/ LOUIS SHOTRIDGE
Florence may have "bought into" this style of pre-
sentation as the prevailing model, but even if they
found it offensive and demeaning, living up to the
popular stereotype may have been the only vehicle
available to them at the time. As his later career
demonstrates, Louis Shotridge constantly fought
against the trivialization of Indian culture by the
white establishment.
In 1910, Louis was offered a temporary position at
the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia.
He was essentially a "show and tell," dressing in Plains
Indian style to meet public expectation. Florence was
the "Indian Princess." George Emmons urged the mu-
seum officials to hire Shotridge full time. Edward Sapir
also wanted to hire him for the Canadian National
Museum in Ottawa, but Louis decided to stay in
Philadelphia. In 1 9 1 2 he was admitted to the Wharton
School of Finance and Economics, where he stud-
ied for two years. Through talent, ambition, and hard
work, the Shotridges had achieved the educational
and social refinements that were necessary to par-
ticipate in the middle-class worlds of academe, mu-
seum patronage, and business administration
(Milburn 1997:122). In 1913, Florence authored an
article for the University of Pennsylvania Museum
Journal (Shotridge 191 3).
George Cordon, Franz Boas, and Shotridge'
s
Flourishing Career
In the meantime, George Gordon had been busily de-
veloping an Anthropology Department at the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania Museum (UPM). In the winter of
1914, he set up a meeting at Columbia University be-
tween Louis Shotridge and Franz Boas. For two months
the two men worked together every morning record-
ing Tlingit songs and phonetics. Some of the excite-
ment of their working out the phonetics of Tlingit is
recorded in Shotridge's letters of November 4 and 1 7,
1914, to Gordon (Milburn 1997:123-4,143). This re-
search resulted in the publication of the first reliable
Tlingit grammar (Boas 1917). While in New York,
Shotridge also attended Boas' General Anthropology
classes at Columbia University and participated in
weekly anthropological discussions with a group of
peers. Although he did not receive a formal degree,
Shotridge was the first academically trained Native
American ethnographer from the Northwest Coast. This
achievement earned him the authority to work unsu-
pervised within the Euro-American art/culture system.
In 1915, Gordon offered Shotridge full-time employ-
ment as Assistant Curator in the UPM North American
Section. He worked for the museum for the next sev-
enteen years, the first Native American from the North-
west Coast to be employed full-time within a museum
context (Milburn 1997:124).
Growing interest in collecting texts in the indig-
enous languages positioned Native ethnographers such
as Hunt and Shotridge in the forefront of scientific eth-
nography. Milburn's fascinating study of the evolution
of anthropological thought during this period is be-
yond our scope here, and we only note the develop-
ing conflict between two personal and professional
influences on Shotridge's life: the clash between Boas
(and other "scientific professionals") and George T.
Emmons, the amateur entrepreneurial pragmatist.
Shotridge had great potential as a cultural insider with
outside professional training. However, his circum-
stances were very complex, and ultimately he contin-
ued to be tokenized and stereotyped by the estab-
lishment. But still, Shotridge managed to use the sys-
tem and to exploit it to his own professional agenda,
which, as Milburn demonstrates, was congruent with
the widely accepted progressive Tlingit societal goals
of the era.
In 191 5, Shotridge led the Wanamaker Expedition
(1914-8) to Alaska (named after its sponsor, John
Wanamaker, department store magnate and member
of the UPM's Board of Managers; Milburn 1986:64-5),
the first anthropological expedition led by an Alaska
Native. Much has been written about Shotridge as a
collector, and most of that has been rather negative
(cf. Mason 1960; Carpenter 1975; Cole 1985; Price
N. M. DAURENHAUER AND R. DAUENHAUER 1 67
1 998). Milburn reviews and refutes this anti-Shotridge
line of argument (Milburn 1997), and we agree with
her. Shotridge's detractors have grossly oversimplified;
much of their evidence is hearsay and is not borne out
in reality. The situation in southeast Alaska was com-
plex and times were changing rapidly. Shotridge had
two major agendas: to show the greatness of Tlingit
culture through the clan art; and to find an institutional
sanctuary for Native art objects that were then being
seen as obsolete, negative, or contested in a Tlingit
society that was advocating assimilation to western
norms, patrilineal inheritance, and Christianity. In par-
ticular, his collecting goals were then fully compatible
with the "progressive" (modernist) cultural agenda of
the Alaska Native Brotherhood, founded in 1912, of
which Shotridge was elected Grand President in 1 930.
It seems unlikely that Shotridge would have been
elected to the office of Grand President if his personal
life and professional philosophy were not in keeping
with the mainstream or majority of the membership.
Thus, in his collecting practices, Shotridge sub-
scribed to a "salvage paradigm." Rather than being in
conflict, the acquisition goals of the University Museum
and the Tlingit assimilationists' goals of removing tra-
ditional art objects from the community were comple-
mentary with each other and with Shotridge's personal
and professional goals. Milburn sees this as a synthesis
of Native Tlingit and institutional Euro-American atti-
tudes and desires (1997:268). Shotridge worked to
preserve what he considered to be the strengths of
his heritage without compromising Native American
ability to achieve civil equality. In this regard Shotridge
exemplified the Native American struggle of the early
1 900s for recognition within the dominant society and
he was personally impacted by the ambivalent, often
contradictory worlds within which he operated. He
evidently achieved support from the Alaska Native
Brotherhood (ANB) membership because he wanted
to preserve and display objects as texts on the history
of Tlingit society and as monuments to Tlingit great-
ness (Milburn 1986:203-4).
Personal tragedy entered Shotridge's life in 1917.
His wife Florence had tuberculosis; her health deterio-
rated and she died on June 12, 1917. One wonders
what her achievements would have been had she lived
another twenty years or more, and shared the decades
during which Louis' research and writing came to frui-
tion. Louis remarried in 1919, and returned to Philadel-
phia. His employment with the museum was secure;
Gordon, the Anthropology Department's head, encour-
aged and promoted Shotridge as a professional eth-
nographer, and the next ten years were highly produc-
tive. During these years, Shotridge continued to build
and document the collection, and he published eight
articles in the University Museum Journal, one of which
is the subject of this chapter (Shotridge 1 920). Of his
assigned activities, Shotridge did not care for writing,
but preferred fieldwork and collecting.
It was Shotridge's grand strategy to collect those
objects of clan art that best represent Tlingit societal
history and show Tlingit social structure in a micro-
cosm. His agenda was to show the greatness of Tlingit
art and culture, but to do it in a clan-specific way. His
attention to clan identity is reflected in his collecting
and in his publications such as "Ghost of Courageous
Adventurer" (Shotridge 1 920) As noted previously,
these items were becoming increasingly controversial
in the Tlingit community because of the conversion to
Protestant Christianity (which was much more intru-
sive on Tlingit lifestyle than Russian Orthodoxy, and
which also had the full backing of the American secu-
lar authorities) and because of increasing conflict be-
tween Native matrilineal and Euro-American patrilineal
systems of inheritance. Although recognition of clan
ownership was "notarized" through the traditional pro-
tocol of reciprocity at potlatches, Shotridge felt that
this was only temporary, because people forget,
and times change. In contrast, a museum would pro-
vide a permanent record of glory. This would be an
honorable alternative.
Shotridge also sensed a growing shift away from
the clan system and toward the community as the
1 68 PARTICIPANTS/ LOUIS SHOTRIDGE
unit of identity and political action. He saw future po-
litical and social strength coming from a collective ap-
proach. In retrospect, we can see even more clearly
that Shotridge perceived correctly that clan-centered
identity and political power were already on the wane
and were being replaced by western forms and con-
cepts. The ANB and other Pan-Indian movements were
(and are) community-based rather than clan-based. The
pattern becomes increasingly evident in the subsequent
history of the ANB and later Native organizations, such
as Tlingit and Haida Central Council, and Alaska Fed-
eration of Natives, culminating in the Alaska Native
Claims Settlement Act of 1971 and the creation of
regional, for-profit corporations; the latter (in 1 92 1 ) had
no precedent or parallel in traditional Tlingit social struc-
ture. Shotridge saw this coming, and made a special
effort to collect and document Tlingit cultural achieve-
ment on a clan-by-clan basis, from a Tlingit point of
view, in contrast to the more generic and western-
based approaches of others.
Museum management, however, was then char-
acterized by a conflict of priority between catering to
public display and public expectation, and pursuing
the advancement of science. Shotridge collected what
the Tlingit considered significant, sometimes disagree-
ing with museum management on this. As noted pre-
viously, Shotridge wanted to represent the historical
greatness of the Tlingit clans. In doing so, his work
goes far beyond formal classificatory analysis or col-
lection of texts. Shotridge goes into the social and
historical context of the art objects. He treated myth
and legend as events that situated the various Tlingit
clans in time and place, within history and geography.
For Shotridge, the agents by which groups were dis-
tinguished and by which social structure was defined
were visually articulated in crest objects. We will re-
turn to this shortly.
The End of Louis Shotridge's Career
By the end of the 1 920s, Shotridge's career at the UPM
was winding down. George Cordon died in January
1 928, and in August, Louis' second wife, Elizabeth, died
of tuberculosis. With the stock market crash of 1929
and the Great Depression, funding became a prob-
lem, and new management had interests in areas other
than Native America. In 1932, after twenty years of
service, Shotridge was dropped from the UPM staff.
Sometime between 1 93 1 and 1 932, Shotridge mar-
ried for the third time. His last years were financially
troubled, and in 1 935 he was hired as a stream guard
to police fishing. In July 1 937 he apparently fell from a
roof He was discovered and taken to the hospital in
Sitka, where he died ten days later, on August 6, 1 937.
He was survived by his third wife and four children.
Milburn emphasizes that the factual record sharply con-
tradicts the sensationalized accounts of Shotridge's
death published in the 1960s and 1970s (Milburn
1997:321; Cole 1985:266). These stories also circu-
late in oral tradition. We, too, have heard the oral ac-
counts cited by Cole (1985:266) but have preferred
not to discuss them. As much as they may be fascinat-
ing folklore, they may not be accurate.
Shotridge's Concern with Context
Shotridge's insistence on the social and historical con-
text of art objects raises an interesting and important
theoretical debate. This is covered fully by Milburn
(1 997: chapter 7, esp. 271 ff) but it is also necessary to
touch on it briefly here. Major experts in Tlingit eth-
nography of Shotridge's time, such as Emmons, John
Swanton, and Boas differed in their approaches to ob-
jects and their meanings. Emmons was probably clos-
est to Shotridge in his interest in obtaining detailed
Native interpretations of objects. Swanton explicitly
discounted the association of myth, oral history, and
the imagery found on crest objects (Swanton
1 908:395), and Boas advocated a formalist approach,
arguing that designs could be interpreted outside the
social context of clan and personal history (see espe-
cially Boas 1907:386-7, which is contained within
Emmons 1907 and discussed by Milburn 1997:272-
3; see alsojonaitis 1995:306-35). Milburn concluded
N. M. DAURENHAUER AND R. DAUENHAUER 1 69
that "The tightly knit Tlingit relationship between so-
cial structure, personal and clan histories, myths, and
objects was obscured when Boas opted to rely exclu-
sively on a formal, decontextualized analysis of design
systems" (1997:273). Quoting Marjorie Halpin (1994:
1 3), Milburn continues, "By separating art from its sto-
ries. Boas and his followers separated art from the com-
munity context which gave it meaning and life, and,
finally, obscured the vital connection between art and
the land which, whether intentional or not, was part of
the colonial enterprise of separating Natives from their
lands" (1 997:2 74). For anthropological museums it was
essential to recontextualize ownership of Native Ameri-
can objects within a Western patrimony because there
was no value in an exchange that continued to per-
petuate concepts of Native ownership and the his-
toric associations they represented. In this regard,
Shotridge's emphasis on the particulars of collective
ownership was at odds with the anthropological con-
figuration of objects within a Western system of ac-
quisition and display (Milburn 1 997:274-5).
Milburn describes how Shotridge's emphasis on the
accurate representation of Tlingit society and history
became even more of a focus after Gordon's death.
Shotridge then had sole discretionary responsibility for
composing and framing the collection. In the final years
of Shotridge's employment, his work was essentially
neglected by the UPM officials, enabling him to base
his purchasing decisions almost exclusively on his own
agenda rather than on more generalized visual or inter-
pretative considerations. In the final analysis, his com-
bined oral history and photographic record places ob-
jects in the Shotridge collection at UPM among the
best documented of Northwest Coast objects in any
non-Native institution (Milburn 1997:271-2, 275).
The Knife and the Story as Text and Context
In 1920, Shotridge published "Ghost of Courageous
Adventurer" in the University Museum Journal {Shot-
ridge 1 920). This article provides an excellent example
of Shotridge's philosophy as described previously. It
documents the history and social context of a single
artifact in the collection—one that, in fact, might easily
be overlooked by the casual museum visitor. The Tlingit
knife named "Ghost of Courageous Adventurer" (Fig.
50) was acquired by Louis Shotridge in Sitka in 1918
and was soon mentioned as being on display (Shot-
ridge 1920:11). In his article, Shotridge shows how
stories illuminate the complex relations between ob-
jects, oral history, and social structure. It is a powerful
story and an excellent example of Shotridge's concern
with keeping objects in their cultural contexts of clan
ownership and history—his emphasis on clan owner-
ship and historical presentation, in contrast to timeless
and decontextualized, generic display (Fig. 51). As
Milburn explains, "Shotridge's histories were intimately
related to particular crest objects and the clans that
owned them. Because of their detailed oral histories
the objects constituted a metonym for the existing
fabric of Tlingit society" (Milburn 1997:345). This will
become evident in his story and its frame.
In his opening paragraph, Shotridge explained that
his purpose was to illustrate how a selected object of
Tlingit visual art represented its mythic prototypes, how
"prototypes of animals of land, air, and water, and the
denizens ofthe unseen world are represented". In what
was to be recognized as the hallmark of Shotridge's
style, he described in detail the object and how he
acquired it:
To illustrate these arts, I have chosen, for this
article, a war knife. This specimen, although
not among the most conspicuous of the
many important objects exhibited in the
Northwest Coast Hall of the University
Museum, has its own story and has in fact a
special importance. The knife itself, its name,
the material in which it is wrought and
everything connected with it have many
sentimental associations for the Tlingit.
The blade and guard are made of iron and
the pommel of ivory. The grip has an iron
core covered with mesh made from the hair
of the wild goat. Both the iron and the ivory
are said to be the same pieces mentioned in
the legend given in the following pages. The
ivory pommel is carved like a human skull
1 70 PARTICIPANTS/ LOUIS SHOTRIDGE
which represents a ghost, the cavities being
inlaid with blue iridescent abalone shell that
glows with soft hues. The blade is well
hardened metal with sharp edges on both
sides, wrought out in one piece with one end
reduced like a stem or tang which is driven
into the ivory pommel. A separate piece of
the iron is shaped to fit the handle end to
form a guard. The length of the weapon,
from tip to the top of the handle, is fifteen
and one-half inches.
I obtained this old knife from the last of
Thunderbird House group of the Shungukeidi
50/ The "Chost of a Courageous Adventurer" knife,
with sheath, both ofwhich are associated with the story.
UPM Coll #NA 8488 (knife 38.6cm long)
clan of Chilkat. It was the only object which
carried with it to the present day a record of
the important part which the clan took in
establishing a trade connection between the
northern Tlingit and the alien tribes of the
Interior. It was the last link with the past and
therefore the last thing with which the clan
was willing to part (Shotridge 1920:1 1-12).
The knife alludes to or recalls an expedition by the
Chilkat Tlingit from Klukwan over what is now known
as the St. Elias Range to the Copper River. The trek
was led by a man of the Shangukeidi clan named
N. M. DAURENHAUER AND R. DAUENHAUER
Gaayshaayi, who is called in the story by the English
translation of his name. Eagle Head. Shotridge explains:
There is no accurate geographical informa-
tion to be offered to indicate the exact
location of the regions referred to in the
account of the journey, and we can only
guess at localities by computing the time it
took to walk from the starting point. The
legend shows that after crossing the desert
of ice, the party went along the Pacific coast
all the way to what is now known as Copper
River. This journey on foot, which is said to
51/ Yendaayank', the last direct descendant of Tlingit
chiefEagle Head, who headed the party described in the
story, as photographed in Sitka, / 908.
have taken all of the favorable season,
proved a difficult one. Even at the present
time with maps and modern equipment, one
is often puzzled as to a safe course over the
deserts of ice along the way.
When the explorers returned to Klukwan, the
old Native town on the Chilkat River where I
was born, only very few of the men survived to
receive the honors of discovery and the
prospect of acquiring riches. Some lost their
lives while crossing the ice and others died of
starvation. The survivors on their return told
their story and made known the inhabited
1 7 1
regions of the west coast. They also brought
back iron and ivory, articles previously unknown
to the Tlingit people (Shotridge 1920:12-4).
The aspect of Shotridge's work that we focus on in
this chapter is his English version of the history that the
knife recalls. The pattern of the text and context of the
story is typical in Tlingit folklife and oral tradition. An
important narrative genre consists of accounts of how
clans acquired the right to claim and use certain areas,
objects, or crest designs, called in Tlingit at.dow, liter-
ally meaning "an owned or purchased object." As in
the case of the knife, the purchase was through the
lives of clan ancestors, whose experience gives subse-
quent generations the right to claim and use the crest
or object. As Shotridge articulates in an editorial com-
ment in the story, "Only through sacrifice does man
acquire something of value. It was at the cost of brave
lives that we now have in our hands those objects
that constitute our pride." For more on this, see Nora
Dauenhauer (1986, 1995) and Dauenhauer and
Dauenhauer (1987, 1990, 1994).
The Style of the Story
Shotridge's style in the story itself is quite different
from his style in the introduction cited above. The big-
gest problem the modern reader immediately faces in
the story is Shotridge's use of archaic English. This was
a deliberate choice. He explains: "In rewriting the ac-
count of the journey I have preserved the original form
as far as translation from Tlingit to English permits. The
language in which these legends are told is what might
be called poetic in form and often archaic. It is a form
of diction that will sometimes yield in translation to
obsolete forms of English" (Shotridge 1 920: 1 4).
This raises a point of translation theory on which
we disagree with Shotridge. Is it correct to use deliber-
ately archaic and obsolete forms in translation if the
style of the original is not really archaic or obsolete?
Shotridge chose archaic English in an attempt to con-
vey a sense of the Tlingit. He also used unnatural En-
glish word order to convey a sense of Tlingit syntax.
On one hand, he brilliantly succeeds. Upon reading his
text, Nora Marks Dauenhauer's first reaction was, "I
could hear the Tlingit on the back side of what he was
saying." In fact, this gave her the idea of back-translat-
ing the English into Tlingit, a work currently in progress
but far from completion. She found this relatively easy
to do, because the Tlingit grammar was so transpar-
ent in Shotridge's English text. We are not suggesting
that there was ever a written Tlingit "Ur-text" from which
Shotridge translated. Although Shotridge was a good
speller of Tlingit and there are many examples of his
linguistic transcriptions of names and terms extant, it
is unlikely that he ever transcribed or wrote a version
of the story down in Tlingit. It would be an archivist's
delight if there were. But there is no extant text of the
story in Tlingit written by Shotridge, and we have no
reason to assume that he ever did write it out in Tlingit.
His written version composed in English is based on
Tlingit oral accounts. He probably called to mind oral
traditions that he had heard in Tlingit, and translated
them into written English.
Shotridge undeniably succeeded in conveying a
sense of Tlingit in his English. The down side of this
success is that his translation is difficult and even unin-
telligible to the average reader of English. It uses the
full set of archaic English locationals and directionals:
here there where
hither thither whither
hence thence whence
These are not obsolete in Tlingit, and in fact match
quite well. Most educated readers would be able to
follow these. But some vocabulary sends even edu-
cated readers, unless they are educated in Middle En-
glish, to the dictionary, like:
whilom = formerly
I trow = I think
Shotridge's impression and description of Tlingit
as "poetic in form and often archaic" is true only rela-
tive to his English translation. The style of Tlingit narra-
tives such as this tends to be formal and conservative
in Tlingit, but not alien or archaic. Unlike Tlingit oratory
1 72 PARTICIPANTS/ LOUIS SHOTRIDGE
with its rich metaphor and simile that people consider
bewildering and often call "old time Tlingit," the prose
narrative of crest stories is relatively straightforward.
Therefore, one could argue that the level of style called
for in English should be also formal and conservative,
but not archaic or confusing. This is the balance we
have tried to strike in the revised translation: it is in-
tended to be formal, but natural (see below). Thus, we
debated many of Shotridge's vocabulary choices. For
Shotridge's "comrades," the word "buddies" was too
conversational. Likewise, the leader's taunt to his de-
spondent trekkers, "Did you come here for pleasure?"
sounds a bit stiff, but "Did you come here for a good
time?" is too colloquial.
While the planned obsolescence of Shotridge's
translation succeeds in conveying a sense of Tlingit
structure, it creates unnecessary barriers for all readers,
even the most educated, and therefore it fails to com-
municate the power of the story as fully as it might.
His effort to preserve the letter of the original fails to
preserve the spirit; it does not convey the emotional
power and function of the original because it fails to
communicate even literally to the modern reader.
Our Editorial Procedures
The balance of this paper is our edited version of the
Shotridge's English composition. Here are some of the
general procedures we have followed in the revision:
1 . We have kept the gems of "poetic diction"
wherever they are "poetic" but not obscure. For
example "foliage moon." We like this so much
that we have added a few of our own, such as
the buds "puckering," which conveys the theme
of the Tlingit verb.
2. Most of Shotridge's parenthetical notes are
incorporated into the main text, especially where
they explain the "poetic diction"; for example
"the month of May" in the opening line. Some of
his comments are relegated to notes, and we
have added some notes of our own.
3. All archaic English nouns, directionals, and
locationals are replaced with modern English.
Thus "girdle" becomes "belt," and all the hithers,
thithers, and whences are dropped. The "drift log
with spurs of queer genus," which borders on
bombast, becomes "a drift log with an unusual
kind of spur." It sounds more pedestrian, but
clear.
4. Where the word order is unnatural or unclear,
it is changed. "To follow that river big" becomes
"to follow that big river."
5. Anything that creates linguistic confusion is
edited and in extreme cases paraphrased.
6. Generally translators do not translate personal
names such as Eagle Head, but Shotridge did,
and we have left them as is. Shotridge also plays
with ethnonyms: Tlingit, meaning "human," and
Cunanaa, meaning Athapaskan but literally
"other," or "alien," which now conveys all kinds of
sci-fi associations. Technically, "alien" as an
English word comes from the Latin for "other."
Here is an example of a passage we edited: "Care-
fully that man looked and felt, then to the camp and
to comrades he told. Right away with him they went
thither." This becomes: "Carefully the man looked at it
and felt it. Then he returned to camp to tell the rest of
them. Right away they went back there with him."
This review of examples illustrates Eugene Nida's
idea of levels of "transfer" (Nida 1 964: 1 84-92). He iden-
tifies literal transfer, minimal transfer, and literary trans-
fer. "Literal transfer" is word-for-word, whereas "mini-
mal transfer" is whatever is necessary to make accept-
able sense in the target language: for example, adding
"a" or "the" in English when translating from languages
that have no articles, such as Russian or Tlingit. In Nida's
context, it seems that Shotridge confused the literal
and minimal transfers. His style is optional and oper-
ates at the level of literary transfer; his grammar is not
optional and exemplifies the minimal transfer.
We should note that the division of the narrative
into sub-sections with titles is not in the Shotridge
original, but is a preferred publishing convention
today, and one that we hope will be of help to
readers in following the story and possibly tracing
its route.
N. M. DAURENHAUER AND R. DAUENHAUER 1 73
"Ghost of Courageous Adventurer,"
[Translated from Tlingit oral tradition by Louis Shotridge
(1 920), edited by Nora Marks Dauenhauer (1 997)]
Opening Frame
It was May, the foliage moon, the month when buds
are puckering on trees, when the Shangukeidi laid their
packs in canoes and poled away to lands unknown.
They weren't many. Maybe they numbered twenty men.
Among them was Eagle Head. They steered their ca-
noes toward TIeheeni, a branch of the Chilkat River. A
traveler never took this stream too far inland because
a glacier grew there, shutting off their passage.
From Sea Level to Timberline
The canoes of cottonwood moved on and on. Now
they pole and now they tow. Through ice water wade
the bare feet of those brave men of long ago. The
common cold was unknown in those days. Where did
the man of today come from to be so soft? Regard-
less of all protection he catches cold.
One camp ahead they reached Trout Creek, across
from where the town of Porcupine now is. Here the
canoes were beached, turned upside down, and
wrapped with underbrush. "Maybe we'll be lucky
and make our return through here." Though the trail
of the sun was still long, they didn't go any farther
that day, for as always on such a journey, little things
must be fitted together, retying packs so they lay bet-
ter on backs. Staffs, too, were always made to fit the
hands. Thus, they always made camp there at the ca-
noe landing.
As the sky turned gray at dawn, faces passed
through loops of pack straps. Those packs of food
were heavy. Trout Creek Mountain was steep. The jour-
ney moved in that direction, without eating breakfast,
because the tongue was still coated. How different is
the man of today. Eat first and work next. But with the
man of long ago it was work first, and with sunrise
comes time for breakfast. Food eaten before the tongue
is cleared, they say, was unwholesome to the stom-
ach. It was when the sun was sliding down that the
journey climbed to the timberline. Their guess was right.
The next trees were far away from here, so the journey
made camp.
Chilkat Summit; O'Connorand Tatshenshini Rivers
Then from that place, while it was still dark, they
mounted the journey again. When the sunbeams low-
ered their feet to the base of the mountain, the expe-
dition had reached the summit. They made a fire for
their lunch stop. When they had finished eating, the
group continued, following the short cut called De-
spondent Man's Trail, that ran from the prairie to Chilkat
Pass. The expedition moved on and on. At times the
new trail was good, and sometimes bad. In hollows
the old snow was melting slowly and retarded their
travel without snowshoes.
After two camps in that direction, no more trees
were seen, only a low growth of willows here and
there. From the summit of Chilkat Pass there is a stretch
of rolling land of about forty miles, a divide between
the timber line of the Tlingit forest and the interior.
Maybe six camps from home, the group came to a
big river. Now people call it Alsek (Tatshenshini). ' From
there they moved downriver along the shore. Two
camps in that direction, they thought they might be
too far down. From piles of driftwood they dragged
logs and right away they lashed together a raft. This is
how they gained the far side of the river. From there
the group went westward.
Following the Ice Field to Yakutat
One camp from the river, the group came to the face
of a glacier. Looking north and south, they couldn't
see the end. Their guess was right: that growth of ice
was wide. Where should the journey go? To the ocean,
one would think. It was from there that a traveler had
formerly come. The expedition had wandered onto
the route that strangers had taken home.^ The group
stopped to camp at the timber line of the glacier. That
evening the men agreed on a certain course.
1 74 PARTICIPANTS/ LOUIS SHOTRIDGE
When the Big Dipper [Yaxte; Great Bear] was turn-
ing over to daybreak, they were already walking on
the glacier. In the cool of dawn, it was firm underfoot.
But as the sun rose higher, the firm surface began to
melt, and fear crept in. But ready was the rope of the
man of long ago. It was strong, made from the hind
quarter of mountain goat. It was tied to the leader's
waist and stretched through the hands of all the men.
Far ahead of them, side by side, stood two moun-
tains, (Seattle and Ruhamah). In between them looked
good. They kept their faces moving that direction. Eagle
Head was in the lead. It was slow going, they say,
because of many crevices. Even though the mountains
looked quite near, when night fell they still were far
ahead. At night, it was like a tanned skin underfoot,
with less precaution needed for each step. Twilight lay
over the icefield and it was clear to the men where the
danger lay. No one had making camp to rest in mind,
and the line moved on throughout the night.
Those travelers of long ago stood in the haze of
dawn. They looked up to the face of the mountain on
the north side, and then up to the face of the mountain
on the south. It was Chaan Yuka, Midway of the Ice
Field called Chaan. From that time on this name, given
by those men of long ago, was fixed in our language.
No one knows what language the name is borrowed
from. [Probably the Athabaskan name had been ap-
plied to these mountains in more ancient time, and the
name made more widely recognized only since the
Tlingit discovery—NMD].
On went the journey till the mountains with the
night were left behind.^ The sun was falling into its
slide when the sound of a great drum reached the
men's ears. The wind was down, and through the still
air louder and louder came that thunder-like drumming
as they traveled on. It was the ocean, the great salt
water, beating its arms against the shore in waves.
When they recognized the sound, relief swept through
their heart and limbs, and their pace increased. The sun
had taken its last steep slide when the group came to
camp among the first timber. There was no courage
N. M, DAURENHAUER AND R. DAUENHAUER
left in anyone to go farther; sleep had overpowered
courage.
How much sleep had they taken when each man
squatted into his pack straps and rushed off to follow
the first to leave camp? Maybe joy was what they felt.
What did each expect from where the sound was reach-
ing their ears? It's always this way: a little change in a
hard experience brings a feeling like berries to the
mouth—for a while it's good, but soon the taste melts
away. The sun was half way along its trail when the
group came to a lake. Where is this? They thought it
was a lake, but it was really Yakutat Bay. Until the tide
went out, they had no idea they had come to the
shore of the ocean. The sun had sunk behind a moun-
tain when the group arrived at the lip of the waves.
Against the shoreline, up and down, the great salt water
moved its arms. But there was no sign of human habi-
tation. Where were those feelings of joy now? Like
spruce pitch from a tree, slowly, they melted away.
Malaspina Glacier
After this, their feet, just like their feelings, became heavy,
too. They camped one night. With pointed words, they
disagreed. What kind of a man was strong willed
enough to continue? So one speech went against an-
other. It is said that Eagle Head, that real man, while
humming a little tune to himself, pushed and drew an
awl through his moccasin patch. They say that Eagle
Head's little humming was an omen of the anger in his
heart. Speaking slowly, he said, "You sound to me like
homesick children. Did you come here for fun? Turn in
your tracks now if you choose, before it gets any harder.
As for me, my feeling is not to turn my face homeward
empty handed." It was then the men realized their
shame and how they were discouraged and disheart-
ened. Once more courage pierced their weak hearts.
But in camp on the edge of another glacier (probably
the Malaspina Glacier) this talk continued. There are
few men with courage enough to blame them. Maybe
they too, even these courageous few, would have
weakened had they stood there face to face with this
1 75
glacier with its end unknown.'' Toward dawn the ex-
pedition moved along on the glacier. They say this
was even more dangerous, since the crevices were
many and bigger. On and on slowly, the expedition
moved. Had two young men taken more care, no grief
would have come to the travelers. Maybe their minds
wandered away from thoughts of caution. From this,
the first two deaths occurred among them. They
fell into ice crevices. This is the way it always is: a
man may take much care, but his time to die ig-
nores that care.
Who was to blame for these lost lives? No one
dared to say the way he felt about what happened.
They feared the words of Eagle Head. The travelers sat
in meditation. Maybe some minds vacillated and de-
cided now one way and then the other, but no one
there was strong enough to turn back. While the trav-
elers sat with troubled hearts. Eagle Head snatched his
pack strap and said, "Let's keep going. Is it something
new to you that a man should die?" With this remark
he started to walk. One by one the men slowly moved
after the leader. There was trouble underfoot, but in
spite of everything, the heart of Eagle Head never
yielded. How strong the heart of that man must have
been. Maybe it was like European steel from people
beyond the horizon; it never bent. It took them two
days and one night to reach the other side of the gla-
cier. From there, once again the expedition moved
along the wave-lip shoreline.
Following the Shoreline; the Discovery of Iron
After making camp, one of the men was walking along
the shore. Unless there was something that needed to
be done, the traveler of long ago never kept still or sat
around in camp. What was he looking for? It was to
drive away the tiredness that created such a habit. He
was walking not too far from camp. There, across his
path, lay a drift log with an unusual kind of spur. The
man had never seen such spurs. From his belt, that
man of long ago drew out his adze. What could be
harder than this green stone? ^ Therefore, little did that
man of long ago take care. He struck the unusual
growth with all his strength. "Dummm" the sound came
out. What was it that had such a sound, and what did
it mean? The edge of that hard, green-stone adze
had broken off, with only a bright spot where it had
slipped on the spur. "My adze—so much depended
on you," he said in amazement. For a moment, trouble
pierced his mind, but the thought of the unusual log
was stronger.
Maybe then came to mind for the man of long ago
that something lay at hand superior to his green-stone.
For some moments the man contemplated the un-
usual log. Then he rolled it over. More of the spurs
were sticking out. Carefully the man looked at it and
felt it. Then he returned to camp to tell the rest of
them. Right away they went back there with him. They
carried the log to camp. First they pounded on it with
rocks. No, these unusual spurs only bent. "What will fire
do to it?" They laid the unusual log on the fire, and on
it lay all eyes. Behold! Before their eyes the log burned,
but what they thought were spurs only turned like
red-hot coals. Thus, through a drift log, iron was car-
ried to the hands of the Tlingit.
To the Copper River
In late summer, when the Coho salmon were swim-
ming, one by one, in streams to shore, the expedi-
tion reached the bank of a large river. Maybe it's
the one now called the Copper. Here their minds
vacillated, deciding now to cross the river and con-
tinue on along the ocean shore, and now to follow
the river upstream. Camping at the same place one
night after another. Eagle Head slept through all
those days. Never were his feelings heard from his
lips. Maybe now his strong heart and courage were
bending a little. No one can say what luck will favor
any man's effort.
They don't say how many days it was that they'd
been camping in this one place when smoke was
sighted toward away upriver. "Aliens. Gunanaa," some-
one said.*^ They wanted to make certain, but no one
1 76 PARTICIPANTS/ LOUIS SHOTRIDCE
said anything. Whoever happened to be near his
pack squatted to put it on, and with one accord they
made a run toward the smoke. The smoke appeared
close, but in spite of their haste, night fell before they
reached it. But it was not too dark, and they could see
the way ahead clearly. Where did the depression go?
Excitement overwhelmed it, and onward rushed the
hurried feet.
Up the Copper River: Encountering the Athapasi<ans
The travelers came out from behind a point, and
right before their eyes lay many fires. It looked like a
long row of houses, maybe a sizeable town. Maybe
they never scented all that smoke because the
breeze was blowing away from them. The travelers
were still some distance away when the dogs be-
gan to bark at them. On the opposite side of the
stream from the town, the travelers quietly halted.
From out of the village came forth a voice. Maybe it
meant, "Who are you?" No one was there to tell them
what the strange language had said. "We are hu-
man—^Tlingit—and we seek your presence." Likewise,
they failed to understand the person from another place.
While they hesitated to wade across, the fires were all
extinguished. Alien people, always, like wild animals,
are shy. Above the swishing sound of the running stream
they could hear talking at night. Infants in cradles were
crying. There was nothing else the travelers could do
but to wait for daylight. The people they had searched
out were afraid of them.
Gradually night faded away, and dawn opened on
a large camp with a long row of brush houses. Pres-
ently, one by one, smoke rose from within each dwell-
ing. It was Eagle Head who came out to the stream
edge. He gestured to the people across, and one by
one those new people assembled. In front of them
stood their headman, who likewise talked by gestures
to the travelers. He only exchanged a few words, and
when he was finished, they talked among each other.
They all seemed happy. Then the travelers were sum-
moned to come over.
Trading with theAthapasl<ans
The Tlingit waded across and walked among the alien
tribe. To this day we still walk toward a place in the
same manner. The travelers were surrounded in the
open, and strange eyes were on them. Maybe they
were curious to those eyes. From among the crowd,
their leader emerged. Likewise Eagle Head stepped
forward to meet him, and face-to-face stood the Tlingit
and the man of the alien tribe. Gesturing, they acknowl-
edged each other. Presently, from his pouch, the Tlingit
brought out his daadzi for him to see (a fire-making
apparatus of flint and pyrites - NMD). With it was some
tinder of shredded cedar root. Before the eyes of the
alien people a fire began to blaze from a spark. For a
moment there was silence, and then confusion of
voices. The alien people were amazed. After demon-
strating his daadzi, Eagle Head placed it in its pouch
and then offered it to the alien man. "I brought this for
you, my friend." With these words he placed the fire-
making set in the hands of the alien man. Those inland
people used a wooden drill to make fire. In return, the
leader lifted his quiver of arrows from his shoulder, and
with his bow gave it to Eagle Head. This is how the
greetings of the Tlingit and the alien were expressed
with gifts.
No longer was there a feeling of suspicion. Before
feasting there, those alien people lined up to dance for
the travelers, according to their custom. They greet
friendship with dance. Do they put on special make-
up for dance, as we do? Not at all. Those nomads
—
whoever happens to be near, some maybe with packs
of infants—move, just as they are, into dancing the
moment a song is started. Happy are they, these in-
land people. Though all the dangers of man were
known to them, life among them was peaceful. Why
do the Tlingit not learn this good life? How bad it must
have been on our ancestor for his offspring only to be
the antagonist to another man. Maybe we were both-
ered first, and then we struck back hard at the other
man.'
N, M. DAURENHAUER AND R. DAUENHAUER 1 77
It is not told how long they camped with the alien
people. All through their stay, of course, they went on
exchanging things. Everything the travelers had went
as gifts in return for the many things the alien people
gave them. It was at that time that walrus tusk ivory
was given to the Tlingit, which, up to that time, like
the iron, was unknown to them.
The people the travelers met in that camp pointed
to still other people, (probably Eskimo - NMD) living
further to the west, and told them that this was the
meeting and trading point.* Maybe it was at that time
the Tlingit came to know of copper, but we don't
know. It was from that region, in later years, that we
acquired copper.
Returning to Klukwan
It was autumn, when the cottonwood trees had turned
yellow, when a warning cry of the return approach of
the Chaan Yuka travelers was heard in Klukwan. Their
canoes drifted in front of the town. When the canoes
came ashore there, only a very few of those men
came home. The missing had fallen along the way.
To some person a son, to another a husband, or per-
haps a father, too, was missing. That was a moment
of sorrow. From the different parts of the village, only
cries of grief were heard.
In his canoe stood Eagle Head. Never before in his
manhood did his voice tremble. Maybe sorrow entered
his strong heart from above, when he called out those
names, one by one, of the brave men who fell along
the way. From the beginning it was this way. Only
through sacrifice does man acquire something of value.
It was at the cost of brave lives that we now have in
our hands those objects that constitute our pride.
Forging of the Dagger from tine Iron; Ceremonial
Debut ofthe Dagger; Oratory; Naming and Pass-
ing ofthe Dagger
It is not known how long after that they had this
piece of iron. Until Kaa.ushti, a war leader of the Kaag-
waantaan rose in his maternal uncle's stead, it was
1 78
never brought into view. During his possession it was
first formed like a war knife. When first completed, it
was not as you see it now. Only after we came to
have grindstones was its rough surface made smooth.
The ivory head, however, was never changed. It's just
the way it was first made.
It was during a Kaagwaantaan encounter with
T'ikanaa, a Tlingit division occupying the southwest
coast of Prince of Wales Island, that the knife was fin-
ished The man of long ago always did a thing like this
at the right time. Thus it was in wartime this knife was
awarded. One day a messenger went from house to
house, announcing "Kaa.ushti is calling all his clansmen
to the Finned House."
When all were seated in his clan house, that great
warrior stood before the people. "You men of Nees.adi,
Shangukeidi, and Kaagwaantaan, I desire your support.
Without you, what can I accomplish? At this moment I
call on you to confirm the desires of those men in
whose place I stand before you. From the moment it
was told to me, not once did the deed performed in
confirmation of the noblest claim by those men who
gave their lives in the Chaan Yuka journey ever leave
my mind. My heart feels good that it has fallen to me
to bring out the object of concern on the minds of
those men whom I have succeeded." When their minds
were set at ease. Eagle Head stood up and spoke,
"Only our ghosts have returned to you, you children of
Shangukeidi." From that time on, people never forgot
his remark.
At the end of his speech, that great warrior drew
forth from its sheath this knife, called "Denizen of Un-
seen World. "'° It was Kaa.ushti who pronounced the
name. With outstretched hand he lifted it and called
him, saying, "Eagle Head, take it. In your hands shall
rest the memories of those brave men." Eagle Head
came forward from the group. He was all bent over,
his eyesight, too, was very short; old age had over-
come him. "Kaagwaantaan! I can only offer acceptance
in this old age. Only in my dream will it be my post. If
only this moment had come while I was young! I take
PARTICIPANTS/ LOUIS SHOTRIDCE
this knife only to pass it through these old hands, I
think, to hands of greater power." In this way the knife
passed to the Shangukeidi.
Thus it was the remark made by the courageous
adventurer that inspired the artist who made an image
of the name" as the pommel of the war knife, and as
nearly as the Tlingit idea can be interpreted in English,
the name of the knife is The Ghost of Courageous Ad-
venturer.
Conclusion
We hope that this newly edited translation is faithful to
Shotridge's intention to show the greatness of Tlingit,
and will in fact help convey it by removing his mean-
ingful work of almost 80 years ago from relative ob-
scurity and placing it in the linguistic mainstream for a
new generation of readers.
The example of his style shows us how language
changes. The example of his life's work shows us how
attitudes can change as well. Milburn summarizes, "To
Shotridge and others of his era, preservation and rep-
resentation were key factors in seeking institutional
sanctuary for objects, while today, control over repre-
sentation and possession are the issues that dominate
Native American peoples' concerns. ...What emerges
from this discussion is a realization of the historically
contingent and politically charged nature of posses-
sion and interpretation and its long and complex his-
tory among the Northwest Coast peoples" (Milburn
1997:347).
We are all part of that history, and as we judge
those who have gone before us, so will we be judged
by those who will come after us. We are dealing with
the same issues as Louis Shotridge, but almost a cen-
tury later. His concern was recording the greatness of
the Tlingit clans through their visual art documented in
the fullest context possible. Our concerns are more for
recording the Tlingit language and the classics of Tlingit
oral literature composed and published orally in that
literature. It is perhaps indicative that we focus on
Shotridge's writing here, as an example of his success.
We believe that Milburn is correct in her conclusion
that Northwest Coast art has always been
contextualized politically, and that the context changes
from generation to generation. Back in Shotridge's time
("Then"), it was politically correct to assimilate to West-
ern culture, and to remove traditional art from the com-
munity. Now it is seemingly "politically correct" to de-
mand that art back, with the demands often couched
in confrontational terms. Then, the Tlingit language was
not in danger; now it is, with fewer than 600 speakers
remaining today, most of whom are above the age of
fifty, it is similarly politically correct these days to de-
mand "the language" back, as if it were an object kept
in a vault or in a display case, rather than a living pro-
cess and relationship. Languages are not like objects
of art, and the dynamics of loss and restoration are far
more complex.
We would like to conclude with two quotations
from the letters of Louis Shotridge, in some small way
to link our work in general and this paper in particular
to his legacy. In 1 923, Shotridge wrote, "It is now clear
that unless someone goes to work to record these
old things as evidence, the noble idea of our forefa-
thers shall be entirely lost" (Louis Shotridge to George
Gordon, January 27, 1 923; Milburn 1 997:345). We sub-
scribe to this, even today, and especially today. In this
spirit, we also edit Shotridge's composition of 1 920,
which has now joined its place among the "old things."
In 1 932, in his farewell words to the University of Penn-
sylvania Museum, Shotridge wrote, "I hope that in the
future the old Tlingit objects will always have a fair
chance in representing their former masters" (Louis
Shotridge to Horace Jayne, January 18, 1932; Milburn
1 997:346). We hope that our small editorial effort will
help to keep this fair chance going.
Acknowledgments
We express our debt to Maureen Milburn, who has
been researching and writing about Louis Shotridge
for over 1 5 years (Milburn 1 986, 1 994, 1 997). We have
relied heavily on her unpublished Ph.D. dissertation
N. M. DAURENHAUER AND R. DAUENHAUER 1 79
(Milburn 1997) for historical and archival information
on Shotridge. This is the most definitive study on this
issue, and it is indispensable for anyone interested in
Shotridge's life and work. We also thank Judith Berman
for her comments and support, and the staff of the
University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia for
their assistance in securing illustrations.
Notes
1. What some older travel accounts call the
Alsek River is now called the Tatshenshini River.
Sometime since the turn of the twentieth century,
the major river names used in the early travel ac-
counts have all "rotated" one position counter-clock-
wise to the northwest on modern maps. The name
"Alsek" no longer refers to the Tatshenshini, but now
refers to both to the Upper Alsek River, which re-
quires a helicopter portage to navigate, and to the
Lower Alsek River which flows into the Pacific at
Dry Bay. The Shotridge reference to Alsek is now
called the Tatshenshini, which flows into the Alsek
and continues to the coast as the Lower Alsek River.
What was formerly called the Tatshenshini is now
called the Blanchard River, and is a tributary of the
Tatshenshini River joining it shortly above the usual
put-in spot for rafters at Dalton Post, Shawshe in
Southern Tutchone. One possible route for the jour-
ney Shotridge is describing was for the group to
follow the drainage of what is now called the
O'Connor River and to cross the Tatshen-shini River
below the confluence. On the famous Kohklux map
drawn in 1852 (Davidson 1901:76; de Laguna
1972:88; Kohklux 1995:15) there is a dotted line
labeled "reported trail" connecting the headwaters
of the Tklaheenae (TIeheeni) River and "Sticks Vil-
lage," an Athapaskan village on the east bank of
the All-Segh (Alsek = Tatshenshini) River, north of
the confluence of the O'Connor River. The travelers
head down river on foot. There are several points in
this section of the river where they could have
crossed to the west bank and to the ice fields. They
probably went westward on the ice from this sec-
tion of the river and not after the confluence with
the Alsek, which would be more than a two-day
hike. The trekkers presumably crossed the Alsek
River over an ice bridge. Glaciers and ice fields
covered rivers in places, and there are songs and
1 80
stories in Tlingit oral tradition about people coming
down rivers under the ice. Alternatively, their route
could have been over what is the Novatak glacier
on modern maps, below the confluence of the Alsek
and Tatshenshini Rivers. This is now the inland side
of the Alaskan Glacier Bay National Park, and a re-
gion of dramatic ice movement. All of these gla-
ciers are part of the same larger ice field, and how-
ever the hikers ascended, they eventually used Mt.
Ruhamah as a bearing. This mountain is also on the
Kohklux map and modern maps. It is near Russell
Fjord, an area of spectacular glacial advance in re-
cent years.
2. Other travel. Shotridge noted: "It is evident
it was this bit of vague information, which occa-
sionally, had been heard in Chilkat as passed on
from no known authority, that convinced these men
to be all the more determined in their purpose to
penetrate into the unknown country" (Shotridge
1 920:1 7). By the time of Russian contact in the late
1 700s, there was established travel between Chilkat
and Yakutat. Traveling in 1 788, Izmailov and
Bocharov noted that they met people in Yakutat
who were from Chilkat (Shelikov 1 981 :94); but it is
unclear if they traveled between Chilkat and Yakutat
by land or sea. River travel between Dalton Post
and Dry Bay was well established (de Laguna
1972:85-90). The present story treats the legend-
ary time of first exploration of the route, but sug-
gests that even these early travelers suspected they
were not the first to use the route.
3. Light. It is now approaching midsummer,
and the trekkers are facing the land of the midnight
sun; the sun is gradually moving to the north, where
the sky will appear red all night, and night is literally
in the south, behind them.
4. Malaspina Glacier, of today's map. The origi-
nal is ambiguous here: literally "at this moment." We
take the reference as not to the men at this mo-
ment in the story, but to Shotridge's audience of
readers in the present time frame. Possibly he meant
both. Who among us is to say that he or she wouldn't
weaken at the thought of continuing when faced
with the awesome sight of the Malaspina Glacier.
This glacier is larger than the entire state of Rhode
Island. There are historical accounts from the Rus-
sian period by an officer named Tarkhanov who
accompanied the Yakutat Tlingit over that glacier
to the Copper River.
PARTICIPANTS/ LOUIS SHOTRIDGE
5. Green Stone (probably jade). The pre-con-
tact adze or axe was made of stone. According
to Tlingit traditional accounts (including this story)
the first metal was found in driftwood from Euro-
pean ships. After contact, steel axes replaced
stone, and the technology of Northwest coast
wood carving was revolutionized. The Tlingit ob-
tained native copper from the interior, notably
from the Copper River, and indigenous techniques
evolved for working it.
6. Athapaskan Indians. The Tlingit term is
Cunanaa, meaning "alien" or "other tribe." The origi-
nal is: "Cunanah" [alien tribe] man said. In the next
paragraph, the original is: "Tlingit [human] we are,
it is thy presence we seek." As with many other
ethnonyms around the world, the Tlingit word for
themselves is Lingi't, meaning "human."
7. "Happy Athapaskans". Shotridge seems to
be indulging in some romantic stereotyping here
about the idyllic life of primitive people in con-
trast to the warlike tendencies of the sophisti-
cated people of the coast.
8. The reference here is most probably to
the Chugach or Pacific Eskimo, also called Alutiiq
or Sugpiaq. This passage is ambiguous and we
are guessing and paraphrasing that the aliens are
not telling the Tlingit of yet another separate place
where they can meet and trade with the Eskimo,
but rather that this is the same trading spot where
the Tlingit found the Athapaskan. Shotridge's
original is, "The people found in that camp
pointed to still other people [probably Eskimo]
living farther on [westward], and meeting point
it was where they were found" (Shotridge
1920:25—brackets are Shotridge's). The "aliens"
were probably either Eyak or Ahtna. Presumably,
this is their trading spot. The reference to brush
houses indicates a temporary camp rather than
a permanent village.
9. Precise clan identification of the T'ikanaa
is unclear. The term is unique here, and means
"the tribe on the outer or seaward side of the
island," from t'ika (outer, seaward) and naa (tribe).
The Nees.adi, Shangukeidf, and Kaagwaantaan
are clans of the Eagle moiety. The host,
Kaa.ushti, makes a speech alluding to the de-
parted leaders of his clan. At the end of the
passage. Eagle Head responds and addresses
"Children of Shangukeidf." This term is normally
used when a person of one moiety is addressing
people of the opposite moiety whose fathers are
of the speaker's clan. Thus, this phrase makes
sense only if members of the Raven moiety were
present as witnesses to the passing of the knife
by Kaa.ushti of the Kaagwaantaan to the Shangu-
keidf. The Finned House is also the house group
of Louis Shotridge, so listeners and readers know
that his clan and house passed the dagger on to
the Shangukeidf. It is important to note here that
the story does not end with adventure and the
return of the explorers, but with the creation, his-
tory, and social contextualization of the art ob-
ject that alludes to that adventure. This part of
the narrative structure is very important in Tlingit
oral tradition and to Shotridge's efforts at con-
textualization.
10. "The Denizen of Unseen World" is pre-
sumably a spirit or a ghost, an inhabitant of the
spirit world. We have not heard the orginial name
of the dagger in Tlingit, but Shotridge calls it "Deni-
zen of Unseen World" or "as near as Tlingit idea
can be interpreted in English, the "Ghost of Cou-
rageous Adventurer" (Shotridge 1920:21) Pass-
ing the knife to Eagle Head, a participant of the
original journey, also identifies it with him and
his spirit.
1 1 . We added the word "image" to
Shotridge's translation—cf. his original text, "art-
ist who fashioned the name of the war knife on
the Pommel" (Shotridge 1920:26). We take this
not as written inscription, but use of the artistic
image and design of the death's head—the spirit
or ghost. The story illustrates how an art object
becomes at.oow, an object purchased with the
lives of ancestors, in this case the courageous ad-
venturers who died on the expedition. The ob-
ject is made, brought out ceremonially, and passed
on to new stewards. Along with the memories
and spirits of the original men who lost their lives
and all the previous stewards of the object, Eagle
Head, who survived the journey but who will die
and join the spirit world, becomes included among
those whose spirits are remembered by the ob-
ject, and who are typically recalled in ceremonial
oratory, for examples of such traditional orato-
ries connecting and contextualizing individuals
and the art objects (see Dauenhauer and Dauenhauer
1990:229-323).
N. M. DAURENHAUER AND R. DAUENHAUER
References
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1907 Notes on the Blanket Designs, to Emmons
1907:351-400. Reprinted in: Jonaitis 1995:188-
247.
1917 Grammatical Notes on the Language of the Tlingit
Indians. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Mu-
seum.
Carpenter, Edmund
1975 Collecting Northwest Coast Art. In Ameri-
can Indian Art of the Northwest Coast: A Dialog
on Craftmanship and Aesthetics. Bill Holm and Bill
Reid, eds. Pp. 9-27. Seattle: University of Wash-
ington Press.
Cole, Douglas
1985 Captured Heritage: the Scramble for
Northwest Coast Artifacts. Seattle: University of
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Dauenhauer, Nora Marks
1986 Context and Display in Northwest Coast
Art. Voices of First America: Text and Contest
in the New World. Special Issue of New Scholar
10:419-32.
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the John H. Hauberg Collection. Abbott, Brown,
Price, and Thurman, eds. Seattle: Seattle Art
Museum.
Dauenhauer, Nora Marks, and Richard
Dauenhauer
1 987 Haa Shukd, our Ancestors: Tlingit oral Narra-
tives. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
1 990 Haa Tuwundagu Yis, for Healing our Spirit:
Tlingit Oratory. Seattle: University of Washington
Press.
1 994 Haa Kusteeyf, Our Culture: Tlingit Life Stories.
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Davidson, George
1901 Explanation of an Indian Map of the Rivers,
Lakes, Trails and Mountains from the Chilkaht to the
Yukon drawn by the Chilkaht Chief, Kohklux, in 1 869.
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De Laguna, Frederica
1 972 Under Mount Saint Elias. The History and Cul-
ture of the Yakutat Tlingit. Smithsonian Contributions
to Anthropology, vol. 7, pts.1-3. Washington, DC:
Smithsonian Institution Press.
Emmons, George T.
1 907 The Chilkat Blanket. Memoirs of the Ameri-
can Museum of Natural History, vol. 3, pt. 4, pp.
329-350.
Halpin, Marjorle Myers
1 994 A Critique of the Boasian Paradigm for North-
west Coast Art. Culture XIV (1 ):5-l 6.
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1 985 Language, Memory, and Selective Performance:
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1995 A Wealth ofThought. Franz Boas on Native Ameri-
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Mclntyre.
Kohklux Map
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cal and Museums Association.
Mason, J. Alden
1 960 Louis Shotridge. Expedition 2:1 0-1 6.
Maud, Ralph
1 993 The Porcupine Hunter and other Stories. The
Original Tsimshian Texts ofHenry Tate. Vancouver:
Talonbooks.
n.d. "The War ofthe Ghosts:" Two Tellings by Charles
Cultee to Franz Boas, 1891 and 1894. Manuscript
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1 986 Louis Shotridge and the Objects of Everlast-
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Kristin Barsness, eds. Pp. 54-90. Philadelphia: Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania Press.
1994 Weaving the 'Tina' Blanket: the Journey of
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and Richard Dauenhauer. Pp. 549-64. Seattle:
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in this paper is Draft 4, February 1 6, 1 997.
Nida, Eugene A.
1 964 Toward a Science of Translating. Leiden: E. J.
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1 989 Primitive Art in Civilized Places. Chicago: The
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1 969 The Ethnography of Franz Boas. Letters and
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1 82 PARTICIPANTS/ LOUIS SHOTRIDGE
Shotridge, Florence
191 3 The Life of a Chilkat Indian Girl. The Museum
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1 920 Ghost of Courageous Adventurer. The Museum
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N. M. DAURENHAUER AND R. DAUENHAUER

^iiinguai/'£)icuiturai Interpreters and
Informants of the Jesup Expedition ra
SERGEI KAN
Much of the writing on the Jesup North Pacific Expedi-
tion ONPE) (e.g., Freed et. al. 1 988, 1 997;Jonaitis 1 988;
Krupnikand Fitzhugh 2001) as well as a number of the
essays in this volume which celebrates the expedition's
centennial, inevitably focus on its organizers and spon-
sors and, especially, on its field ethnographers. After
all, they are the ones who collected the data sought
by Boas and whose names appear in the JNPE publica-
tions. Our research on the lives and scholarly contribu-
tions of these ethnographers is obviously made easier
by the availability of substantial biographical materi-
als, published and archival (see Al'kor 1935; Codere
1959; Cole 1999; Rohner 1969; Kan 1992, 2000,
2001a; Krupnik 1996; Shavrov 1935; Stocking 1974,
1996; Vakhtin 2001; Vdovin 1991; Wickwire 1993).
However, as the present paper as well as several
other essays in this volume demonstrate, we could
achieve a much better understanding of the
expedition's contribution to circumpolar ethnology by
paying serious attention to these ethnographers' local
informants, interpreters, research assistants, and col-
laborators (see chapters by Dauenhauer and Dauen-
hauer, and by Wickwire, this volume).
At the turn of the twentieth century, when the JNPE
volumes were being put together, most anthropolo-
gists did not bother to include much information on
their local interpreters and Native as well as non-Na-
tive consultants, considering it to be irrelevant to schol-
arship. In the context of the JNPE, the only exceptions
to this rule were, of course, James Teit (see Wickwire,
this volume) and Boas' long-term collaborator and col-
league, the great Kwakwaka'wakw ethnographer,
George Hunt (Cannizzo 1983; Jacknis 1991; Berman
1996, 2001; Webster this volume), whose name ap-
pears next to Boas' as the co-author of the KwakiutI
Texts (Boas and Hunt 1905, 1906). While Hunt's role
as theJNPE's key Native participant is unique, a num-
ber of other Native American and "mixed-blood" (Cre-
ole, Metis) interpreters, amateur ethnographers, and in-
formants played a major role in collecting and making
sense of this and related expeditions' voluminous data
(see Wickwire 1 993; cf. Milburn 1 986; Dauenhauer and
Dauenhauer 1 994, this volume).'
In recent decades many practicing cultural anthro-
pologists as well as historians of anthropology have
become interested in the interaction and the relation-
ship between the ethnographer and his or her infor-
mant as the context within which "ethnographic data"
is not only collected but, to some extent, constructed
(see Buckley 1 989; Kan 200 1 b). A number of scholars
have been referring to this interaction as a "dialogue"
(Dwyer 1977; Tedlock 1979). As Clifford and Marcus
(1986:15) have pointed out, "In this view, 'culture' is
always relational, an inscription of communicative pro-
cesses that exist, historically, tefween subjects in rela-
tions of power."
Like many other ethnographers of theirtime,JNPE
expedition fieldworkers, with the exception of Bogoras
among the Chukchi (Bogoras 1904-9); Jochelson
among the Sakha (Yakut) (but not among the Koryak,
1 85
cf. Jochelson 1 908, 1 926); Hunt (Boas and Hunt 1 905,
1 906) and Teit (1 900), were not fluent in the local Na-
tive languages. Therefore, they had to rely on bilingual
interpreters and informants who could speak at least
some English or Russian.-^ Such interpreters or cultural
brokers, as Karttunen (1994:xi) has suggested, "func-
tioned as conduits through which information flowed
between worlds in collision, translating more than just
words and bringing comprehensibility to otherwise
meaningless static".
I believe that by examining the biographies and
the ethnic/cultural background of these local partici-
pants in JNPE we would not only gain a much deeper
and more nuanced understanding of the nature and
the quality of the ethnography bequeathed to us by
Boas and his colleagues but would also assign these
unnamed (or barely mentioned) men and women to
their proper place in the JNPE's annals.^
Jesup Expedition Ethnographers
Even a cursory examination of the ethnographic mono-
graphs included in the JNPE series reveals how uneven
theirquality really was. Some, like Bogoras' TheChukchee
(1 904-9) or Teit's The Thompson Indians (1 900), were
true classics of early twentieth century ethnology, cov-
ering many of the major aspects of Native material,
social, and spiritual culture. Other, such as Farrand's
collection of Chilcotin myths (Farrand 1 900) or Laufer's
brief ethnography of the Amur River people (Laufer
1 900), were rather disappointing.
The reasons for this disparity are quite obvious. On
the one hand, we are dealing with very experienced
field workers, like Waldemar Bogoras, a Russian eth-
nographer who, prior to JNPE, had spent years living
among the Chukchi and spoke their language (Kan
1 992; Krupnik 1 996), orJames Teit, a British expatriate
who had settled among the Thompson Indians (Nlaka'-
pamux), married a Native woman and became fluent
in NIaka'pamux (Wickwire 1 993, this volume). Both of
these men had already conducted some ethnographic
research before they joined Boas' team.
On the other hand, there were some JNPE team
members who were like Livingston Farrand. He was
not an anthropologist by training, had ever conducted
any fieldwork, nor had even visited American Indians
prior to his trip to the Northwest Coast in 1897. To
make matters worse, he seemed to have trouble es-
tablishing good rapport with the "Indians." Here, for
example, is what he said about his research among
the Chilcotin: "The conditions were not particularly fa-
vorable for the work, for the Indians were by no means
cordial at the outset, and good interpreters were not
to be found. That great resource of ethnological work
in the Northwest, the Chinook jargon, was also not
available in this tribe" (1 900:3-4)." Farrand did not fare
much better among the Quinault whom he visited dur-
ing the summer, when most people had already left
for their salmon fishing camps. In addition, many of
those remaining behind had converted to Shakerism a
few years prior to his visit and considered the old reli-
gious traditions to be evil and not worth discussing.
Luckily, Farrand located an elderly man who had re-
fused to become a Shaker and was willing to talk
about the old culture. This man. Bob Pope, who was
dying of TB, became Farrand's main informant (Farrand
and Kahnweiler 1 902:79; Jonatis 1988:191).
I would argue that if we could obtain biographical
information on this Quinault man, on Teit's Shuswap
informant Sixwilexken, orSwanton's Haida informants
and interpreters, such as Henry Edenshaw (Blackman
1 982), Mary Ridley, Walter McGregor and "Abraham,"^
the ethnographic texts produced by these JNPE par-
ticipants might tell us a lot more than they currently
do.*' Similarly our understanding and appreciation of
Bogoras' ethnography of the Chukchi and Jochelson's
monograph on the Koryak—JNPE's classic publica-
tions—could be enhanced if researchers ever manage
to figure out who their local informants and inter-
preters were.'
To illustrate this argument 1 devote the rest of
this paper to the discussion of a relatively short but
rich account of certain key aspects of the nineteenth
1 86 PARTICIPANTS/ BILINGUAL INFORMANTS
century Tlingit culture given in the 1 880s to George
T. Emmons, the great "amateur" ethnographer of the
Tlingit, by his bilingual RussianATIingit informant, Ivan
Zhukov.
George T. Emmons, Sergei I. Kostromitinov,
and Ivan Zhukov
Although George T. Emmons (1 852-1 945), one of the
characters in my story, was not a participant in the
JNPE, his outstanding and voluminous ethnography of
the Tlingit, both published and unpublished (see de
Laguna 1991; Emmons 1991)** clearly complemented
the new information being collected by Boas and his
associates. In fact, because of Boas' familiarity with
Emmons' research in southeastern Alaska, this region
was not the focus of the expedition's activities (Boas
1903:77). This would also explain why Swanton's
monumental ethnography of the Haida (Swanton 1 905)
did appear as part of the JNPE publication series
while his two important works on the Tlingit did not
(Swanton 1908, 1909).
Like Bogoras and Teit, Emmons spent years inter-
acting with the Native people, learning their language
and studying their ways. Having come to southeast-
ern Alaska in the early 1 880s to serve on a Navy ship
that policed the area, he eventually became the major
authority on Tlingit culture and the main collector of
Tlingit artifacts (de Laguna 1991; Low 1991). He de-
veloped good rapport with a number of Tlingit fami-
lies, including that of Shaaduxicht (ca. 1819-89), the
head of the Finned House of the Kaagwaantaan clan
and a powerful Chilkat leader; he was also the mater-
nal grandfather of Louis Shotridge (Dauenhauer and
Dauenhauer 1 994:549-5 1 , this volume). The latter may
have been the one to adopt the Navy officer into his
lineage and clan. As Emmons himself put it, "I have
visited all of their villages. ... I have made a study of
their history and I have lived with them on the most
intimate terms, until they have given me one of the
their family names and look upon me as one of them-
selves" (de Laguna 1 991 :xvii).''
Emmons' most important work on the Tlingit, a
monograph entitled The Tlingit Indians, which he began
working on in the late 1880s, was never completed
and languished in the AMNH archives until it was fi-
nally published in 1991, after having been painstak-
ingly edited by Frederica de Laguna.'" While putting
together this manuscript, Emmons not only relied on
his own observations and interviews but used a unique
ethnographic account, entitled A Glance at the First
Customs of the Tlingit or Kolosh as the Russians Found
Them at Sitka.^ ' According to Emmons' notes, this text
was written in Tlingit by "Shukoff," a half Russian and
half Tlingit, and given to a Russian interpreter who trans-
lated it into English in 1 887 or 1 888.'^
The English version of the sketch is about twenty
typewritten pages long and contains a variety of
interesting data, from myths of the Raven cycle to
descriptions of memorial ceremonies (potlatches) and
shamanism. By the time this text was written and
translated only two other detailed ethnographies
of the Tlingit had appeared in print. The first one was
Ivan Veniamlnov's pioneering account, based on his
sojourn as a Russian Orthodox missionary in Sitka in
the late 1830s and published in Russia in 1840
(Veniaminov 1984). The second was Aurel Krause's
monograph based on his trip to southeastern Alaska
in 1 881-2 and published in Germany in 1 885 (Krause
1 956). The latter account relied heavily on the former,
particularly when it came to mythology and spiritual
culture. Compared to those two works, A Glance at
the First Customs of the Tlingit was less detailed and
was not written as a scholarly work, but as a rendition
of an oral presentation. However, it did contain some
unique pieces of information that were more likely to
have come from a speaker of Tlingit and a partial in-
sider, like "Shukoff," than from outsiders, like Veniaminov
and Krause.
in order to better evaluate this text, we must es-
tablish the identity of "Shukoff' and that of his transla-
tor. The former task is fairly easy, since Emmons tells
us that the man was educated by the Russian Church
S. KAN 1 87
in Sitka and in the early 1 880s was employed by the
U.S. Naval Commander and later by the civil authorities
as a native policeman in Sitka. He died in the mid-
1880s at the age of sixty.
The only individual who fit this profile was Ivan
Zhukov, who was born in about 1825 at a Russian-
American Company (RAC) post on the Nushagak River
to a Tlingit mother and a Russian father, a Baranov-era
pmmyshlennik ico\on\a\ hunter and trader).'^ As a young
man in 1 841 , Zhukov served as an apprentice (iunga)
on the Company ships. He later studied at the Novo-
Arkhangelsk (Sitka) seminary to become a priest for
the Tlingit but was expelled for some "disgusting
deed." However, due to a significant increase in the
number of Tlingit converts in Sitka, the Church de-
cided to appoint him as its interpreter in 1844. A
letter to the local RAC office by the local Orthodox
priest, Fr. Misail, in which this reassignment of a
young Tlingit Creole''' was requested, stated that
Zhukov could also work as a teacher, instructing
Tlingit children in the Russian language and teach-
ing the Tlingit language to the non-Tlingit seminar-
ians. The Company agreed to honor the Consistory's
request, bringing Zhukov back to Novo-Arkhangelsk
and appointing him the official tolmach (interpreter)
of the Alaska Consistory, with a salary of fifteen
rubles a month, plus five rubles a month for teach-
ing the "Kolosh" (Tlingit) language.
Zhukov must have been a gifted interpreter and
teacher: in 1 845 Bishop Innokentii (Ivan Veniaminov)
instructed the Consistory to award him 85 rubles
for his diligent two years of service as a church in-
terpreter, and especially for his work on translating
the Gospel into Tlingit. In 1849-50 he received a
large monetary award for translating several new
chapters of the New Testament as well as other
religious texts into his mother's native tongue. How-
ever, a letter from a member of the Consistory to
the RAC Governor, Michail Teben'kov, dated August
1 850, pointed out that, while Zhukov had been an
excellent interpreter and did not drink.
His behavior in other respects has become
so unclean in the last few years, that only a
dire need forced us [the Consistory] to
continue employing him. However, lately,
despite all of our measures aimed at making
him improve his conduct, it has become even
worse, thus damaging the cause of Christian-
izing the Kolosh. Consequently he must be
removed from the Church's service . . . and
sent away from Novo-Arkhangelsk to some
other Company post; in the meantime, he
should at least be sent away from the town,
so that he would no longer be in contact
with the Kolosh.
One wonders whether Zhukov had been involved
in some sexual misconduct (as he seems to have been
in the post- 1867 era) or whether he was obtaining
illicit benefits from his special position as a powerful
intermediary between the Church and the local Tlingit
community with which he was still connected through
his maternal kin. In any event, he appeared to have
been a real survivor. While transferred to Kodiak by
Teben'kov in 1 850, he must have been needed by the
Novo-Arkhangelsk parish and was brought back there
by Voevodskii, since he continued to work for the
Consistory until 1 852-3 when he was finally fired from
his job at the Seminary and as the Church's main inter-
preter, having been given his final monetary reward for
good work.
In the mid-1 860s, Zhukov reappeared in the church
records as the RAC interpreter assigned to the Novo-
Arkhangelsk port, whom the current missionaries re-
lied on for information about the Tlingit population of
Sitka and whom they wished to rehire as a church
interpreter. In 1 866, having been frustrated by his own
lack of command of the Tlingit language and having
examined Tlingit translations available in Novo-
Arkhangelsk and found them inadequate, Fr. Nikolai
Kovrigin, assigned to serve as a missionary to the
"Kolosh," decided to ask Zhukov if he had done more
and better translations and to give him Tlingit lessons
(ARCA, D 316). Zhukov replied that he had no addi-
tional translations in his possession and that he would
not mind teaching Kovrigin some Tlingit for a nominal
fee. When the priest asked him to take part in his visits
1 88 PARTICIPANTS/ BILINGUAL INFORMANTS
to Tlingit homes, the interpreter replied that he was
too busy working in the port but, if offered a salary, he
would be willing to help the priest not only to speak
to the Natives but to work on translating Orthodox
prayers.'^ Despite Zhukov's bad reputation among the
local clergy, Kovrigin, desperate to have a Tlingit-speak-
ing assistant, hired him to help compile a census of
Sitka's Native population. Before leaving Novo-
Arkhangelsk, Fr. Nikolai recommended that the Church
hired a full time Tlingit interpreter, "even a man like
Zhukov." However, because of Zhukov's dubious repu-
tation, the local bishop vigorously objected to this
proposal.
We know almost nothing about Zhukov's mother
and her family, except that she must have been a high-
ranking woman, since missionary records mention her
sister being married to one of the Sitka lineage heads
(ARCA, D 316). Zhukov must have learned to speak
fluent Tlingit from his mother and other Tlingit relatives
and it is very likely that he maintained close ties with
them, listening to their stories and taking part in their
ceremonies or at least observing them, since he seemed
to know a great deal about them (see below). After
all, their houses were just outside the walls of Novo-
Arkhangelsk where he lived during the 1840s to
the 1 860s. At the same time, the tone of his ethno-
graphic sketch suggests that he identified more with
the Russians.'^
When Alaska was sold by Russia to the United
States in 1 867, Zhukov, like many other Creoles, did
not take advantage of an opportunity to return to his
father's country. But neither did he try to obtain Ameri-
can citizenship.''' However, like other "Russians" who
remained in Sitka after its purchase by the U.S., he must
have had a difficult time trying to make ends meet,
since his name appeared on an 1 874 list of 1 23 local
Russian and Creole inhabitants requesting financial as-
sistance from the Russian government to cover the
cost of moving to Russia."^ This request was not
granted and Zhukov continued to reside in Sitka. Al-
though, like most other local Russians and Creoles, he
remained listed in the parish records, he must not have
been devout, since the record-keepers referred to him
as a "doubtful" (somnitel'nyi) Christian (ARCA, D 405; D
414).
A real survivor, Ivan Zhukov continuedto use his
linguistic skills as well as his ability to act as an inter-
mediary between his mother's people and the new-
comers. Thus we know that the local American offi-
cials relied on him to spy on the restless members of
the Kiks.adi clan during the so-called 1 879 "Tlingit un-
rest" (ARCA, D 434; The Alaskan 2/6/1886, p. 3; Kan
1 999: 1 98-20 1 , n.d.). Soon thereafter, as I have already
mentioned, he was hired by the U.S. Naval commander,
in charge of maintaining law and order in Alaska, to
serve as an interpreter and an Indian policeman.
Zhukov served in that capacity until his death (caused
by syphilis and a wound which led to gangrene) on
February 2, 1886.^«
Before discussing Zhukov's ethnography, a word
must be said about his sketch's translator, referred to
by Emmons only as "George." I believe that he was
none other than Sitka's most prominent Russian resi-
dent, Sergei lonavich Kostromitinov, known to the
Americans as George Kostrometinoff. A son of a RAG
employee and a Creole (Russian-Aleut) woman, he was
born in Sitka in 1854 and educated at the local Rus-
sian colonial and later American schools.'^' Having
grown up in Sitka, Kostromitinov must have had plenty
of opportunities to interact with the local Tlingit. It
was also rumored that he had a Tlingit mistress (Stepan
Ushin's Diary, ARCA D 434)." From these contacts, he
must have learned to speak fluent Tlingit. Using that
knowledge as well as his fluency in Russian and En-
glish," Kostromitinov served for twenty years as an
official interpreter for court and civil officials in Sitka
and traveled throughout the region in that capacity.'^''
As a Deputy U.S. Marshal, he frequently took Native
and non-Native prisoners south to Seattle and Port-
land. A respectable and fairly well-to-do Sitka citizen,
he belonged to the town's upper crust and was the
darling of the Russian clergy and American officials
S. KAN 1 89
alike, who called upon him for
information on Sitka's pre- 1 867
history and Tlingit culture. Sergei
lonavich often wrote articles on
these subjects for the Sitka
newspaper and was among the
founders of the Alaska Society
of Natural History and Ethnology
established in Sitka in 1887. In
1893 he was appointed Lieu-
tenant Colonel of the organized
militia of the District of Alaska
and he continued to be referred
to as the "colonel" for the rest
of his life. A staunch Russian
patriot, he also served as the
warden (starosta) of Sitka's St.
Michael's Russian Orthodox ca-
thedral from 1 886 until the early
1910s, when he decided to
become an Orthodox priest.
Ordained in 1912, he became
one of the Sitka parish's most
popular pastors, well liked by its
Creole and Tlingit parishioners
alike. For his work for the Or-
thodox Church, Kostromitinov
received two awards from the
Russian government: a St. Daniel's cross in 1900 (Fig.
52) and a silver goblet in 1 906 (Ziorov 1 893, passim;
The Alaskan 1 /5/1 901
,
p.2; 1 2/29/1 906, p.2; Russian
Orthodox American Messenger 1912, vol. 1 6:305-7).
When "Fr. Sergei" died in 191 5, the Church honored
him by burying his body underneath the cathedral floor.
Thus, like Zhukov, Kostromitinov was a bicultural and
multilingual cultural broker who found a new niche for
himself on the new post- 1 867 Alaska frontier.
While it is impossible to establish how much of
Kostromitinov's own knowledge of Tlingit culture is
reflected in his translation of Zhukov's ethnographic
sketch, I suspect that he did modify the text; in fact,
52/Sergei lonavich Kostromitinov, ca. 1 90 1 in Sitka. Photographer, Elbridge W.
Merrill. Alaska State Library, Vinokouroff Collection, PCA 243-1 -27.
there is a parenthetical note by Emmons which says
that "George" had added some information on a "would-
be shaman."
Zhukov's Ethnography
Zhukov's ethnographic sketch is an interesting docu-
ment. While its author was a semi-educated amateur,
he was trying to offer Emmons a description of "tradi-
tional" Tlingit culture of an earlier era while offering
occasional comments on the changes that had taken
place in it during his lifetime." Thus his brief and rather
naively worded ethnography has a temporal dimen-
sion, something lacking in the accounts of indigenous
1 90 PARTICIPANTS/ BILINGUAL INFORMANTS
cultures produced by Boas himself and most of Boasian
ethnographers of the JNPE era. For example, Swanton
(1 908)—whose early works are archetypically Boasian
—
portrayed the Tlingit culture as a timeless entity. To a
lesser extent, so did Emmons (1 991) in his monumen-
tal work, even though the latter does contain a signifi-
cant number of references to important historical events
involving the Tlingit.
In contrast to Swanton, Zhukov sprinkled his text
with such statements as, "I am writing about ances-
tors of present race. The present race are far from their
ancestors, although they are trying to follow in steps
of ancestors but not with same force" (p. 2). His rich
account of the killing of slaves at a ritual for dedicat-
ing a new lineage-owned house (pp. 4-8) ends with
the following comment, "Now [they] tear blankets [and?
or?] cotton instead of killing slaves" (p. 8).
Zhukov's biculturalism can be felt in the two voices
with which he speaks about his mother's people. On
the one hand, one can hear some nostalgia, or at least
regret, in a passage which tells us that the ancestors
of the present-day Tlingit were healthier and physi-
cally stronger, since they did not drink. On the other
hand, as a son of a Russian father who identified him-
self with the Russians and who spent his entire life
working for them and later for the Americans, he gave
his Tlingit contemporaries credit for being "very indus-
trious" and earning money by fishing, hunting, cutting
wood, etc. (ibid).
At the same time, some of Zhukov's observations
are written in a non-judgmental, neutral tone, more
typical for ethnographers than missionaries or govern-
ment officials. For example, immediately after describ-
ing traditional magical practices and formulae, he states
that the modern-day Natives' use Christian prayer as a
way of bringing luck in hunting as well as gambling,
something of which neither Russian nor American clergy
would approve (p. 4).
On the whole, Zhukov's account offers a lot more
information on Tlingit religion and mythology (much of
which he describes in a section entitled "Superstitions
of [the] Tlingit," thus switching from his more neutral
"ethnographic" voice to that of an outsider and long-
time interpreter for the Orthodox Church) than on so-
cial organization or material culture. This might be a
reflection of his experience as a missionary interpreter
who had to translate theological concepts from one
language into another. Not surprisingly, Veniaminov's
ethnography has the same quality (Kan 1990, 1999).
Of course, some of the things Zhukov says about Tlingit
mythology (especially the episodes of the Raven myth
cycle), religious beliefs, and ritual practices can also be
found in Veniaminov's and Krause's works as well as in
the subsequent ethnographies by Kamenskii (1905/
1 985), Swanton (1 908, 1 909) and Emmons (1 991 ).
Zhukov's account, nevertheless, is valuable in some
of its minor but unique ethnographic details" as well
as in its use of direct quotations from ceremonial
speeches and magical formulae. Zhukov's ethnographic
sketch is also sprinkled with Tlingit terms, some of
which would be familiar to most modern-day speak-
ers of this language as well as to specialists in Tlingit
linguistics and ethnology, while others appear to be
archaic and would require careful scholarly examina-
tion (something I am not ready to do at this point).
Thus in his description of the magical observances in-
volved in halibut fishing, Zhukov quotes an actual ut-
terance made by the fisherman addressing the fish,
"Look out, you will tear your mouth [if you struggle].
Your bones were in the fire long ago!" (pp. 3-4). The
last sentence meant that this particular halibut was
a reincarnation of its ancestor whose bones had
been burned in a ritually correct manner (cf. Emmons
1991:145).
Another example of the richness of Zhukov's ac-
count is his description of a special ritual involved in
the potlatch host's greeting of his out-of-town guests,
which took place just before they landed in front of
his village. According to the Creole ethnographer,
having been asked by the host where they had come
from, the guests (standing in their canoes) replied,
"We came here by the road ... of the sun." Since
S. KAN
the sun-wise direction was a ritually positive one, tliis
reply meant that, as Zhukov himself explained, "they
came with good faith; they came to have a joyous
time" (p. 7). Prior to the guests' landing, the chief host
ordered some slaves to be sacrificed, so as "to kill the
trail" about to be followed by the guests from the
beach to his house (ibid). Although Zhukov does not
explain the meaning of this expression, I have ar-
gued that this is another illustration of the central
notion of the entire cycle of Tlingit memorial feasts,
i.e., that the guests, who were members of the moiety
opposite to that of the hosts, served as the link
between the latter and their departed matrilineal
kin (see Kan 1989).^8
My final example is from Zhukov's description of a
smoking feast, which was a major component of a
series of rituals following a high-ranking aristocrat's
death. According to Zhukov, at the conclusion of smok-
ing and an exchange of speeches between the hosts
and the guests, the chief host addressed the spirit of
his deceased predecessor, in whose honor the cer-
emony was being given, with the following words,
"Stand on one side and let your fathers go by." As the
author himself explains in parenthesis, this meant that
the spirit of the deceased was present in the house
until his body was cremated (p. 1 7). While other eth-
nographers mentioned the existence of such a belief
among the Tlingit, Zhukov offers us an actual ritual
utterance confirming it.
Conclusion
Compared to Emmons' monumental ethnography of
the Tlingit, Zhukov's sketch is not long at all. Nonethe-
less, a careful review of the former demonstrates that
Emmons did learn a lot from this Sitka Creole and in-
corporated bits and pieces from Zhukov's account into
his own text. Hence, A Glance at the First Customs of
the Tlingit or Kolosh as the Russians Found Them at Sitka
not only adds some rather significant details to our
knowledge of the nineteenth century Tlingit culture
1 92
(presented from the point of view of a partial insider
fluent in the local Native language) but helps us better
understand the material presented in Emmons' own
oeuvre. How much more this classic work could have
told us about the Tlingit people of the pre-JNPE era if
we had similar information on Emmons' other Native
sources of data and the specific circumstances of his
fieldwork.'^''
This brief review of Zhukov's ethnography and its
relationship to that of Emmons, Swanton, Veniaminov,
and other fieldworkers who recorded information on
Tlingit culture is an attempt to suggest ways in which
we could try to transform the old monographs of the
JNPE-era from monolithic and monological texts to more
polyphonic or dialogical ones. The same can be said
about several other papers appearing in this volume.
In its own unique way, each of them demonstrates
how much work still remains to be done on theJNPE
legacy, despite a century that separates us from it
and the frustrating silence of many of its profes-
sional ethnographers about their bilingual/bicultural
interpreters, informants, research assistants, and
collaborators.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all of the organizers of the Jesup
Expedition Centenary Conference, and especially Lau-
rel Kendall and Igor Krupnik, for inviting me to present
a paper at this important scholarly gathering and then
to transform it into the present piece. Krupnik's sug-
gestions and comments on the essay's first draft were
very helpful in my work on its final version. Over the
years, my understanding of George Emmons' contribu-
tion to Tlingit ethnography has benefited greatly from
conversations and correspondence with Frederica de
Laguna as well as Richard and Nora Dauenhauer. As
always, a special "thank you" (gunalcheesh) goes to my
Tlingit friends, adopted relatives, and teachers who
shared with me some valuable inside information on
both Emmons and Kostromitinov.
PARTICIPANTS/ BILINGUAL INFORMANTS
Notes
1 . Cf. Anderson and Halpin's discussion (2000)
of the recently published field notes of William
Bynon, a talented ethnographer of mixed
Tsimshian-Welsh descent.
2. This was true of Boas himself whose com-
mand of Kwakwaka'wakw was limited and who
relied heavily on English as well as the Chinook
jargon in his research on the Northwest Coast and
the adjacent areas (Berman 1996; Rohner 1969).
3. Thusjudith Berman's (1 996, 2001 ) rethink-
ing of George Hunt's role in Boas' Kwakwaka'wakw
research, including her detailed linguistic analysis
of the Boast/Hunt texts, has given us a very dif-
ferent understanding of their nature and quality.
4. I suspect that the reason for the Chilcotin
unfriendliness towards the visiting anthropologist
was the mistreatment they had suffered from gold
rush packers and prospectors in the 1 860s, which
eventually precipitated a violent confrontation,
mislabeled in the annals of British Columbia his-
tory as the "Chilcotin War" (Lane 1 98 1 :4 1 1 ).
5. More information is currently available on
some of Swanton's Tlingit informants and inter-
preters during his later fieldwork of 1 904. Thus,
his principal Wrangell informant, Katishan, was a
well-known local leader, prominent in his clan (the
Kaasxagweidi) and the Presbyterian Church (see
Swanton 1909:1; Young 1927). Don Cameron,
his main Sitka interpreter and a source of some of
the ethnographic data, was also an active mem-
ber of the Presbyterian Church. Since some of his
descendants still live in Sitka, his biography could
be reconstructed (Kan 1979-97). At the same
time, we know nothing about Dekinaak'w, "an old
man of the Box House," the source of many of the
texts recorded by Swanton in Sitka in English and
Tlingit (ibid.).
6. For an interesting and thoughtful discus-
sion of Native American ethnographers and an-
thropologists' informants outside the JNPE context
see, for example, several essays in Casagrande
(1960), Liberty (1978), and especially the more
recent and more theoretically-sophisticated works
by Buckley (1989) and Brown (1989).
7. Like Bogoras, Jochelson did mention some
of his Native assistants in the introduction to his
works. Thus we know that his two main Yukagir
interpreters and informants were Aleksei Dolga-
nov and Ivan Spiridonov, while a Russianized
Koryak, Nikolai Vilkhin ("the only tolerably good
interpreter in the Cishiga district") assisted him in
recording and translating Koryak myths (jochelson
1908:1 5).
8 Emmons' most important publications on
Tlingit culture include a monograph on basketry
(1 903), the Chilkat blanket (1 907), and the Whale
House of the Chilkat (1916). The only other Na-
tive American culture that he studied was that of
the Athapaskan-speaking Tahltan of the British Co-
lumbia interior (1 911).
9. Clear evidence of Emmons' being ac-
cepted by the Tlingit is the fact that he was in-
vited to various feasts and potlatches (e.g.,
Emmons 1991:391). In addition several of my
Tlingit consultants and friends told me that for
years Emmons was involved in an intimate rela-
tionship with a Tlingit woman (Kan 1 979-1 997).
10. A related manuscript by Emmons, en-
titled History of Tlingit Tribes and Clans, still remains
unpublished, although material from it has been
incorporated by de Laguna into Emmons' (1991)
monograph and used by Hope (2000) in his on-
going research on traditional Tlingit tribes, clans,
and clan houses.
1 1 . This document has been deposited in the
Anthropology Archive of the American Museum
of Natural History (AMNH-DA), together with
Emmons' The Tlingit Indians.
12. While the title page of this sketch lists
1882 as the date of its translation into English, a
parenthetical remark within the text itself indicates
that in 1 887 the interpreter himself added some
information to Shukoff s (Zhukov's) account of sha-
manism. Hence I cannot agree with de Laguna's
(1 991 :xi) dating of this translation as 1 884.
13. Biographical information on Zhukov
could be found in the Alaska Russian Church Ar-
chives (ARCA, D 347; D 434). Some of the mate-
rial presented in this paper appeared in my earlier
monograph on the history of Russian Orthodox
Christianity among the Tlingit (Kan 1999:131-
3,167-8).
14. "Creole" was a standard term used by
the Russian-American Company to refer to the
offspring of a mixed Russian-Native Alaskan
union.
S. KAN
1 5. From Zhukov's other comments, it ap-
pears that he was trying to get a higher price for
his services, portraying the study of Tlingit lan-
guage as a very difficult task.
1 6. Thus Zhukov never referred to the Tlingit
as "my people," calling them "the natives" instead.
1 7. Church records dating back to the early
1 870s list him as a "Creole" rather than an "Ameri-
can citizen," a category which included the more
respectable segment of the local "Russian" com-
munity whose members did not or claimed not to
have any Native Alaskan blood.
18. Fr. Nikolai Mitropol'skii's file (ARCA, B
20).
1 9. Thus, in 1 880 Zhukov traveled on board
of the U.S.S. Jamestown to various coastal villages
in order to interpret for the Navy officers in their
deliberations with the Tlingit (Stepan Ushin's Di-
ary, ARCA, D 434).
20. Zhukov's Tlingit fellow-policemen car-
ried his coffin to the cemetery and were followed
by uniformed sailors and soldiers. As his body
was lowered into the ground, guns were fired
(Stepan Ushin's Diary, ARCA D 434).
21. For biographical data on Sergei I.
Kostrornitinov, see ARCA (B 14), Kostrometinoff
(1 876-1 908), Pierce (1 990:262-3), and Kan (1 999,
passim).
22. According to Tlingit sources (Kan 1979-
97), a number of his descendants still reside in
several Tlingit communities.
23. Kostromitinov might have also had the
command of Aleut.
24. The Russian Church also took advantage
of Kostromitinov's knowledge of Tlingit, assign-
ing him the task of translating Veniaminov's fa-
mous sermon. Guide to the Heavenly Kingdom, into
that language. The translation was published in
Sitka in 1 901
.
25. It is actually not entirely clear whether
Zhukov wrote his sketch specifically for Emmons.
26. Zhukov's sketch begins with am inter-
esting page-long description of the physical char-
acteristics and bodily adornment of the "old-time"
Tlingit men and women (Pp. 1-2).
27. Thus, for example, his description of the
practices involved in the preservation and ceremo-
nial use of enemies' scalps (2) is more detailed
than Emmons' (1 991 :335).
28. Cf. an expression "killing the money," used
to refer to the potlatch hosts' distribution of
money among the guests (Kan 1979-97).
29. To Emmons' credit, he did occasionally
mention the name of a Tlingit person who had
given him a particular piece of information; he also
often indicated whether he had personally at-
tended a native ceremony he was describing (see
Emmons 1 99 1 ).
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PEOPLE, ANIMALS, AND LAND: AJESUP THEME REVISITED

1"he Jesup Expedition and the jViodemization
of f\jort!i pacific f\jaturai ["jistory
ROBERT S. HOFFMANN
At the turn of the last century, the Jesup North Pacific
Expedition of the American IVIuseum of Natural History
(1 897-1 902) established a new paradigm for the "field
sciences"—those scientific endeavors that explore the
natural world and the role of humans and their cultures
within that world. Disciplines such as geology, geog-
raphy, botany, zoology, and anthropology were at that
time, and to a significant extent remain, based prima-
rily on data collected directly from the natural world
("the field"), through observation, measurement, and
collection of specimens. While in the Western scientific
tradition such fieldwork had been carried on for at
least four centuries, it was given strong impetus by
the worldwide growth of European colonial empires in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which allowed
Western scientists freer access to the more remote
and less studied parts of the globe. This access was
primarily used to accumulate specimens in the narrow
field of the individual scientist's area of interest (for
example, mammals), which were placed in museums
in Western, or in some cases, colonial capitals.
The significant difference in the Jesup North Pacific
Expedition and the later (1916-1930) Asiatic expedi-
tion of the American Museum of Natural History lay in
deliberate combining of scientists from different disci-
plines into a single field team ("the method of corre-
lated work"; see Andrews 1932). Similarly, the Jesup
Expedition Centennial—with its arrays of papers, sym-
posia, and historiographic research—brought to-
gether anthropologists, linguists, geneticists, and
evolutionary and environmental biologists (note the
changing disciplinary nomenclature) to examine
changes that have occurred in our knowledge and
understanding of both human cultures and biotas of
the North Pacific, including Beringia.
The Jesup Expedition as a "Natural History"
Venture
This "correlated work", which made the Jesup Ex-
pedition such a breakthrough, is effective only if the
several specialists staffing a complex expedition are
willing to spend at least some of their time working
outside of their own specialties. That this was true of
the JNPE pattern of fieldwork can be seen by the re-
sults of its mammal collecting (Allen 1 903). Altogether,
about 500 specimens of twenty-nine species were
obtained from seven different localities throughout
eastern Siberia. These were, from south to north;
(1) Vladivostok (43°09' N, 1 3r53' E);
(2) "lower Amoor" (Amur River, near Nikolaevsk-
na-Amure, at 5 3" 10' N, 140°44' E);
(3) "Gichiga, on the west coast of the Sea of
Okhotsk" (the town of Cizhiga, actually, at the
extreme northeast corner of that sea, at the head
of Shelikov Gulf and mouth of the Cizhiga River,
62°00' N, 160 34' E);
(4) "Marcova, on the middle Anadyr River, 600
miles north of Cichiga" (the town of Markovo,
actually, about 330 miles northeast of Cizhiga);
20 1
(5) "near the mouth of the Anadyr River" (near or
at the site of the present-day city of Anadyr,
64°50' N, 1 76W E);
6) "Indian Point, on the extreme northeastern
coast of Siberia" (Cape Chaplin, actually, the
southeastern tip of the Chukchi Peninsula, at
6474' N, 172°10' E); and
(7) "Verkhne Kolimsk, on the middle Kolyma
River" (the town of Verkhne-Kolymsk on the
upper Kolyma River, at 65 38', N 1 50 40' E).
Most specimens were, to be sure, collected and pre-
pared by Norman Buxton, thejesup Expedition's des-
ignated zoologist (Figs. 54-56); but a significant num-
ber were captured by several of the expedition's an-
thropologists—Bogoras, Jochelson, and Laufer (Allen
1903:101-2).
The collection, now at the American Museum, in-
cludes what were then considered to be twelve new
species, two of them named by their describer, J. A.
Allen, in honor of Norman Buxton. In addition, Buxton
obtained 800 birds representing 1 25 species, published
subsequently by Allen (1 905), including a new species
of lark, Alauda buxtoni; he was also commissioned to
collect other vertebrates.
Norman Ceer Buxton (1 872-??), the only trained
biologist on the JNPE staff, remains a shadowy figure
in the expedition. His only written material appears to
be section of J. A. Allen's report titled "Itinerary and
General Description of the Country" (Buxton 1 903; see
also Figs. 57-61). He was from Johnstown, Ohio, and
had served earlier as a collector for Edward Avery
Mcllhenny's expedition to Point Barrow, Alaska, for the
Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences in 1897-8
(Allen 1 903; Stone W. 1 900).' The only other source of
information about that expedition may be found in a
popular article written by Mcllhenny (1 904). Although
it does not mention Buxton, it gives some hint of what
he experienced in Alaska on that trip.
None of the new species from Siberia named by
Allen has retained its identity up to the present, all
now being considered synonyms of earlier names. This
202
was due to the way in which post-Jesup systematists
altered their views of evolution and speciation in the
ensuing century, discussion of which makes up the
remainder of this essay.
Franz Boas, the lead scientist for thejesup Expedi-
tion, was a pivotal figure in this changing course of
Western science. Formally educated in mathematics
and physics as well as geography, Boas was fasci-
nated by what he saw as a fundamental dichotomy
between "physics" and "cosmography." Today we use
different words—inductive science versus deductive,
observational or field sciences (see above) that can be
grouped under the rubric of natural history (Boas 1 887).
It was his lifelong goal to produce a synthesis of these
two modes of science, which probably led him to staff
the Jesup Expedition with a variety of specialists.
The "natural history" aspect of the Jesup Expedi-
tion was thus quite broad. However, in contrast to the
anthropological team whose fieldwork was undertaken
by seasoned ethnographers (like Bogoras, Jochelson,
and Boas himself) or professionally trained young gradu-
ates (like Laufer), the fieldwork of the biology team
was undertaken by hired collectors, such as Buxton in
Siberia, and A.J. Stone for the collecting in Alaska and
northwestern Canada supported by the American Mu-
seum at about the same time. Whereas the anthro-
pologists published their own scientific reports, the
natural history reports of theJNPE were written by other
people, such as J. A. Allen, Curator of Birds and Mam-
mals at the American Museum, who was no longer
physically capable of field work under the strenuous
conditions encountered in Siberia or Alaska (Allen 1 903,
1 905). It was, however, common in the natural history
tradition for museum curators to remain with their col-
lections, while they employed collectors to obtain the
material necessary for their research. Perhaps the best
known such team was the British Museum's Oldfield
Thomas and his collectors, among them Malcolm
Anderson and Douglas Carruthers.
Andrew J. Stone was from Missoula, Montana, but
no more is known of him than is of Buxton. He was
PEOPLE, ANIMALS, AND LAND/ NATURAL HISTORY
engaged by Allen to collect in Alaska, Yukon, and North-
west Territories from 1 896 to 1 903, funded mainly by
J. M. Constable, Trustee and First Vice President of the
American Museum. Logically, this might have been
considered the New World portion of the Jesup
Expedition, since the area surveyed was the counter-
part of northeastern Siberia east of the Bering Strait.
However, it was not so designated, nor was it called
the "Constable Expedition" after its funder, but was
named after the hired collector. Stone published only
one paper from his trip (Stone 1 900), covering his itin-
erary and geographical notes, observations of the larger
mammals, and a few comments on Native inhabitants
for 1 896-8 —the same type of material that Buxton
wrote for Allen— while the scientific results were pub-
lished by Allen in a series of twelve papers between
1897 and 1905. Why Allen (and Boas) should have
downplayed the museum's fieldwork in eastern Beringia,
while publicizing it on the other side of the Bering Strait,
is unclear. It may be related to the fact that the U. S.
National Museum in Washington already had a
headstart in this area through the activities of W. H.
Dall, R. Kennicott, E. W. Nelson, W. H. Osgood, E. A.
Preble, and others.
Collections and the Changing View of the
Species
At the close of the nineteenth century, the term "bio-
logical diversity" had not been coined, and ecology
was in its infancy. Species of organisms, and for that
matter, human populations ("races"), were defined ty-
pologically, on the basis of their morphology, and while
Darwinian evolution was generally accepted by the
scientific community, an understanding of the basis
—
the genetics of individuals and populations—was just
developing. It is interesting to compare the number of
species recognized by systematists of the Jesup Expe-
dition era with those later in the century. I will restrict
myself to Beringian mammals, since that is my spe-
cialty, but similar trends are evident in most other
groups, and in the wider North Pacific region.
Table 2/ Total Number ofRecognized Land Mammal Species
in Behngia at the End ofthe Nineteenth Century
West Beringia only Holarctic East Beringia only
(Northeast Siberia) (Alaska and Yukon)
1 shrews 1 shrews
2 lagomorphs 3 lagomorphs
1 marmot 1 marmot
1 ground 4 ground
squirrel squirrels
1 red-backed 1 red- 3 red-backed
vole backed vole voles
3 lemmings 4 lemmings
4 gray voles 1 2 gray voles
1 4 carnivores 2
carnivores
24 carnivores
5 ungulates 4 ungulates
subtotal: 41 3 65
TOTAL 44 68
Around 1 900, a total of 1 09 species of terrestrial
mammals had been named as inhabiting Beringia, forty-
four in eastern Siberia, and sixty-eight in the Alaskan-
Yukon region (Table 2). But of these, only three were
considered Holarctic species; that is, found both in
Eurasia and North America. These were the northern
redbacked vole, Evotomys(=Clethrionomys) rutilus, arctic
fox, \/ulpes{=Alopex) lagopus, and polar bear Thalarctos
(=Ursus) maritimus. A fourth species, musk-ox Ovibos
moschatus, had a historically Holarctic distribution, but
was extinct in both western and eastern Beringia at
that time; subsequently it was successfully reestab-
lished on both sides of the Bering Strait. That more
than 1 00 species of mammals were to be found in the
northern North Pacific at the time of the Jesup Expedi-
tion suggests a degree of species richness that we
now believe was almost a two-fold overestimate. How-
ever, the application of systematics and taxonomy in
the study of biodiversity does not always lead to ex-
aggeration of species richness. I will illustrate its ups
and downs in the twentieth century by focusing on a
few major groups of Beringian mammals with which I
am most familiar.
In 1900, there were thought to be ten species of
red-toothed shrews (genus Sorex) in east Beringia,
and nine in west, none shared, for a total of nineteen
species. Of the ground squirrels and marmots, there
R. S. HOFFMANN 203
were two in west Beringia and five in east Beringia,
again, none shared. Of the gray voles (genus Mi-
crotus), there were four in the west and twelve in
the east, none of which were Holarctic (Table 3).
A pattern of more described species in east
Beringia (Alaska-Yukon) is evident, both in total mam-
mals, and in the selected groups, caused for the
most part by the tendency of North American mam-
malogists to "over-split" taxonomic units. In its ex-
treme form, this was exemplified by the taxonomy
of the North American brown bears, or grizzlies,
published by Merriam (1918) in which he recog-
nized seventy-six species of bears, allocated
among fifteen groups, in North America alone. This
for a species now regarded as a single entity, with
fewer than ten subspecies at most.
Genetics and the Biological Species
Concept
Table 3/ Numbers ofShrews, Marmots, Ground Squirrels, arid
Cray Voles Recognized in Beringia, End ofNineteenth Century
West Beringia only
Shrews (Sorex)
Sorex macropygmaeus
araneus
ultimus
sibiriensis
sanguinidens
tomensis
vir
gracillimus
tscherskii
subtotal: 9
Holarctic East Beringia only
Sorex personatus
pribilofensis
arcticus
tundrensis
richardsoni
sphagnicola
glacialis
hoyi
hydrodromus
palustris
10
Marmots (Marmota) and Ground Squirrels (Spermophilus)
Arctomys kamtschatica
Citellus undulatus
subtotal: 2
Cray Voles (Microtus)
Arvicola slowzovii
buturlini
tshuktshorum
Aschizomys lemminus
Shortly thereafter, a reaction against such taxon
splitting began to set in, culminating in the work
ofjulian Huxley (1 940, 1 942) and Ernst Mayr(l 942)
of the American Museum and supported by the
work of the expatriate Russian geneticist and natural
historian, T. Dobzhansky of Columbia University
(1941). They introduced the important new ideas of
"polytypic species" and the "biological species con-
cept." Mayr (1 942:1 46) commented that "new investi-
gation . . . show[s] that many of the previously recog-
nized species are nothing but subspecies of widespread
polytypic species. The acceptance of the modern bio-
logical concept . .
. resulted in an extraordinary simpli-
fication of the system."
The shift from a monotypic, typological species
concept to a polytypic, biological one was important,
but the emergence of statistical applications and nu-
merical systematics also contributed to "simplification,"
(i.e., the "lumping" of two or more taxa previously
considered distinct species into a single, presumably
polytypic one. This paradigmatic shift also had an im-
pact on anthropologist's views of what constituted
subtotal:
TOTAL:
4
13
Arctomys pruinosus
Spermophilus empetra
beringianus
osgoqdi
barrowensis
5
Microtus miurus
abbreviatus
operarius
unalascensis
macfarlani
sitkensis
kodiacensis
innuitus
drummondii
xanthognathus
pennsylvanicus
12
27
human species and subspecies ("races"), particularly
by emphasizing the importance of gene flow between
populations. The shift resulted in an apparent decline
in mammal species richness in Beringia; in the 1950s
and early 1 960s, the number in west Beringia was thirty-
two, and in east Beringia, also thirty-two, equal on both
sides of the Bering Strait. But of these, twenty-five had
Holarctic distributions, so the total number of species
recognized fell to thirty-nine (Table 4), slightly more
than a third of the number recognized in 1 900. Of the
nineteen species of Sorex that had been named by
the early 1 900s (see Table 3), only six were recog-
nized at mid-century, two of which were Holarctic.
One marmot (instead of two) was recognized, but it
was Holarctic, as was a single Holarctic ground squir-
rel. Five species of gray voles, instead of sixteen,
were recognized, three of which were Holarctic (Table
5).
204 PEOPLE, ANIMALS, AND LAND/ NATURAL HISTORY
Cladistics and the Evolutionary Spe-
cies Concept
The next, and current, phase of systematic analy-
sis began in the mid-1 960s with the widespread
adoption of the concepts and principles of cla-
distic analysis of systematic relationships, or phy-
logenetic systematics, which have, in this period,
produced a revolution in evolutionary studies, in-
cluding the evolutionary species concept. The con-
cept was pioneered by G. G. Simpson, who held
joint tenure at both the American Museum and Co-
lumbia University. It is a "lineage" or "clade" concept
of the species, "a single lineage of ancestor-descen-
dant populations which maintains its identity from
other such lineages, and which has its own evolution-
ary tendencies and historical fate" (modified from
Simpson 1961; quoted in Wiley 1981:25).
Additionally, development of several new tech-
niques—comparative studies ofchromosomes, protein
electrophoresis, and multivariate statistics—were fol-
lowed by DNA studies (restriction site analysis, base
pair sequencing, etc.) and sophisticated modeling of
phylogenetic topology and significance testing. The
combination of new data generated by different
techniques, and their analysis through the principles
of phylogenetic systematics, has resulted in an increase
once more in the number of species recognized, as
those previously thought to be polytypic species have
been shown to consist of two or more distinct spe-
cies. Species richness in Beringia now stands at forty
species in west (Siberia), and forty-two in east Beringia
(Alaska and Yukon), of which eighteen are Holarctic in
distribution, for a total of sixty-four species in Beringia
as a whole (Table 6), more than one and one-half times
the number admitted during the period of indiscriminant
lumping under the polytypic species rubric.
The Future:
Gene Sequencing and Phyiogeography
The new techniques mentioned above have led to more
robust hypotheses of phylogenetic relationships based
Table 4/ Total Number ofRecognized Land Mammal Species in Beringia,
Mid-twentieth Century
West Beringia only
(Northeast Siberia)
Holarctic East Beringia only
(Alaska and Yukon)
3 shrews 2 shrews 1 shrew
1 lagomorph 1 lagomorph
,
2 lagomorphs
1 marmot
1 ground squirrel
1 red-backed vole 1 red-backed vole
1 lemming 2 lemmings 1 lemming
1 gray vole 3 gray vole 1 gray vole
1 carnivores 2 carnivores
4 ungulates
Subtotal: 7 25 7
Total: 32 32
on cladistic analysis of larger and more diverse sets of
characters. Examples of such hypotheses can be illus-
trated by the shrews, marmotines, and voles I have
been emphasizing. George (1988) based her analysis
on electrophoretic data from twenty-six species of
the genus Sorex, including ten from the North Pacific
region. She found that they clustered into three major
clades; a primitive North American one; then a Eurasian
group that included, in addition, two North American
species (S. arcticus, S. tundrensis); and, finally, a larger
group of North American Sorex belonging to the
subgenus Otisorex. Only one small clade, consisting
of S. araneus (Eurasia), S. arcticus (North American),
and S. rw/i(;/rens/5 (Beringian) displayed an Holarctic
distribution. Recently, Dokuchaev (1997) described a
new allospecies, Sorex yukonensis, which with S.
m;>7uf/ss/ww5 forms an Holarctic superspecies.
With respect to the ground squirrels and marmots
(tribe Marmotini), ongoing work in molecular phylog-
eny of the Spermophilini by an international research
group- clearly demonstrates several novel points:
(1) ground squirrels are paraphyletic, with at least
five distinct clades (Harrison et al., n.d.);
(2) marmots, instead of being ancestral to ground
squirrels, fall within the ground squirrel clades;
(3) both ground squirrels and marmots have
distinct North American and Eurasian species
groups, with only one species, the arctic ground
squirrel, having an Holarctic distribution. These
R. S. HOFFMANN 205
preliminary conclusions
are based on complete
sequencing of the
mitochondrial cyto-
chrome b gene, and
sampling of all species
level taxa in the two
groups, a total of sixty-
three, plus five outgroup
taxa (Harrison et al., n.d.).
Table 5/ Number ofShrews, Marmot'mes, and Cray Voles Recognized in Beringia,
Mid-twentieth Century
West Beringia only Holarctic East Beringia only
Sorex minutus Sorex caecutiens Sorex vagrans
hawker! araneus
Marmota marmota
Spermophilus undulatus
Eothenomys lemminus Microtus agrestis Microtus xanthognathus
gregalis
economus
Total: 3 7 2
Cray voles of the genus
Microtus (sensu lato) are widely agreed to be among
the most difficult mammals systematically. A new hy-
pothesis based on fairly complete chromosomal stud-
ies at the species level, less complete electrophore-
sis, and DNA comparisons of a few species, have
been synthesized into a new taxonomic scheme
with relevance for the North Pacific and Beringia. What
was previously regarded as a single genus, Microtus, a
very large and heterogeneous taxon, has now been
subdivided into twenty genera or subgenera, of which
several have Holarctic distributions (Zagorodnyuk
1 990; Musser and Carleton 1 992). In this scheme, there
are four major clades of gray voles, one restricted to
the Palearctic, two to the Nearctic, and one in the Hol-
arctic, which contains Beringian species and species
groups. This pattern is similar to what we have already
seen in the Beringian shrews and marmotines, and sug-
gests the possibility of chronological and evolutionary
concordance across the Bering land bridge in the Pleis-
tocene.
The groups I have focused on are small to medium-
size mammals, and the general patterns I have described
tend to hold for these size classes. However, Beringian
ungulates and carnivores are mostly large to very
large in size, and a greater proportion of them show
Holarctic distributions. Note, however, that the small-
est carnivores—the ermine and weasel—are also Hol-
arctic. This correlation of distributional pattern with
body size and ecological niche probably results from
the fact that such mammals have larger home ranges
and greater dispersal ability compared to small mam-
mals, and are thus more likely to have established
amphiberingian ranges at sometime during the Pleis-
tocene (Hoffmann 1 984).
The most recent trend is what has been termed
"phylogeography" (Avise 1 998), the "historical aspects
of the contemporary spatial distributions of gene lin-
eages." Most phylogeographic studies have been
based on sequence data from maternally inherited mi-
tochondrial genes, but other gene markers are rapidly
being developed. At a recent international mammal
congress held in Spain in July 1 998, over forty papers
employing the phylogeographic approach were given
(Reig 1 998), a considerable number of them being de-
voted to mammals of the Beringian region, both large
and small. Thus, this newest application will lead to
explicit hypotheses of animal migrations, and has been
applied to human migrations across Beringia as well
(Schurr and Wallace, this volume).
And the Sea Between
Beringian marine mammals, all large to very large,
require comment at this point. Thirty-one species
currently occur in the cold-temperate to arctic waters
of the North Pacific and Arctic Oceans, linked by the
Bering Sea. Of these, one is the coastal sea otter (Enhydris
lutris); seven are coastal to pelagic seals and sea lions
(including northern fur seal); and twenty-three are
whales, including eight baleen and fifteen toothed
whales. In sharp contrast to the nomenclatural insta-
bility described above for Beringian terrestrial mam-
mals, the marine mammal species limits and recog-
206 PEOPLE, ANIMALS, AND LAND/ NATURAL HISTORY
Table 6/ Total Number ofRecognized Land Mammal Species in Behngia,
End ofTwentieth Century
West Beringia only Holarctic East Beringia only
9 shrews 2 shrews 6 shrews
1 lagomorph 1 lagomorph 2 lagomorphs
1 marmot 1 ground squirrel 2 marmots
1 red-backed vole 1 red-backed vole
4 lemmings 1 lemming 5 lemmings
3 gray voles 1 gray vole 4 gray voles
2 carnivores 8 carnivores 4 carnivores
1 ungulate 3 ungulates 1 ungulate
subtotal: 22 18 24
Total: 40 42
nized names have changed very little in the past cen-
tury. Only one new species of whale has been described
from this region in the last 100 years; Mesoplodon
carlhubbsi'm 1 963, from the southern edge of the area
in question. Similarly, only one additional seal, Phoca
largha, was recognized in 1977 as a distinct species,
having formerly been considered a subspecies of the
common harbor seal, Phoca vitullina.
All ofthese marine mammals have Holarctic ranges,
not surprising given the virtually continuous coastal
and pelagic habitats spanning the rim of the North
Pacific. Only one now extinct Beringian species was
not known to be Holarctic—the Steller seacow,
Hydrodamalis gigas—whose only known range encom-
passed the Commander Islands off the eastern coast
of the Kamchatka Peninsula. Discovered in 1741 and
exterminated in 1 768, it was strictly coastal in habitat.
Its closest living relative is the dugong of the Indian
and Western Pacific Oceans, but more closely related
fossil forms are known from the North Pacific. The ex-
tinction of this unique species through indiscriminant
harvest for meat by hunters was a severe loss to the
biological diversity of the Beringian region, since it rep-
resented the end of a specialized, highly adapted lin-
eage.
Conserving North Pacific Biological Diversity
Other Beringian species nearly suffered the same fate.
Sea otter populations shrank back from the southern
ends of their large original range, and no longer occur
in northern Japan, southern California, and
northern Mexico. Elsewhere, the popu-
lation was severely reduced and frag-
mented, surviving only in small areas of
central California, the outer Aleutian Islands,
and the Kurile Islands. Under protection,
the species has now recovered some of
its range, with help from reintroduction,
and is now fairly regular in Kamchatka, the
Commander Islands, central and southern
Alaska, and parts of British Columbia.
Many of the baleen whales suffered a similar fate,
and their numbers are still depressed, especially the
Eurasian population of gray whale, and all populations
of blue, right, and bowhead whales. There has also
been a recent serious decline in the Steller sea lion
population of unknown origin; it is speculated that
heavy fishing pressure in the North Pacific and Bering
Sea may be at least part of the cause, by reducing the
sea lion's food base.
Terrestrial mammals have fared better. Populations
of many of the large mammals have been reduced,
and local extinctions are widespread, but overall,
species populations are not endangered. Small and
medium-size mammals are still widespread and often
common, but no accurate assessments of population
status exist for most places.
Due to some degree of protection (hunting regula-
tions, preserves, captive breeding, reintroductions, etc.),
the status of some species has improved. In addition
to the sea otter, the musk-ox has benefited from
protection and reintroduction, and is now reestablished
both in Alaska and eastern Siberia. The sable, seriously
over-harvested in the past, has also increased in both
numbers and distribution.
In most, if not all, cases, reduction of biodiversity in
Beringia and the North Pacific, both historically and
up to the present, has been caused by direct human
exploitation. The future challenge is not only to gain
sufficient knowledge of these ecosystems so that
human use of biotic resources can be placed on a
R. S. HOFFMANN 207
sustainable basis; but also, it is to conserve enough of
the natural world to ensure that these ecosystems,
both terrestrial and marine, will remain viable. Four
major formations encompass terrestrial ecosystems
of the lands bordered by the North Pacific between
about 35° and 75° North latitude. These are arctic
and mountain tundra, taiga (boreal forest), and mixed
coniferous/broad-leafed forest, with patches of steppe
inland along the southern margins.
The most threatened of these formations is the
mixed forest. In the United States and Canada, this
formation, sometimes called a "temperate rainforest,"
is the focus of an ongoing controversy over what
level of logging is sustainable in these forests, and
what proportion of the old-growth "ancient forests"
should be protected. On the Eurasian side, a parallel
controversy focuses on the mixed forest of the Rus-
sian Far East, particularly in the drainages of the Amur
and Ussuri River basins, which also includes a signifi-
cant part of northeastern China (former Manchuria),
and the appended Korean Peninsula. Another country
in this region is Japan, in particular, its two northern
islands, Hokkaido and Honshu. Along the southern
margins of the region, on both sides of the Pacific,
much of this unique forest is already cut over. How-
ever, the opportunity to manage the mixed forests of
Alaska, western Canada, and the Russian Far East still
exists, and with it the opportunity to preserve their
rich biodiversity, with many unique species. A small
sampling includes Siberian tiger, Amur leopard. Lake
Evoron vole, three or four species of tree voles, moun-
tain beaver, shrew-moles, Chinese soft-shelled turtle,
giant salamander, Steller's sea eagle, and northern
spotted owl.
With a few conspicuous exceptions, these species
have little or no commercial value. On the other hand,
trees, when reduced to logs, have an immediate com-
mercial value to the people who cut them down, even
though the forest ecosystem from which the trees
came had an even greater global economic value in
terms of photosynthesis (carbon dioxide absorption from,
oxygen release to, the atmosphere), watershed protec-
tion (runoff, erosion control), soil building, and other
ecosystem services.
Past history demonstrates that when individuals or
corporations have the opportunity for short-term profit
by exploiting natural resources (be they sea otters or
redwoods), they will usually act to do so. This is espe-
cially true if the exploiter does not reside in the eco-
system or community that is exploited.
The two keys to sustained utilization of natural
resources from ecosystems are: (1) sufficient knowl-
edge of composition and function of the ecosystem
to make informed decisions concerning exploitation;
and (2) policies controlling exploitation determined by
people residing within the ecosystem, who have a
vital stake in prudent policy-making (of course, good
policy is only as good as its implementation and
enforcement). Here is a vital problem, the solution
to which both natural historians and anthropolo-
gists could contribute more effectively if they
worked together rather than separately. It is time
to revive "the method of correlated work" to con-
duct research on a wide variety of topics by inter-
national teams of scientists in the spirit of the Boasian
synthesis.
That the broad view of field research espoused by
Boas remains alive is seen in the scope of "planetary
biology", a newly coined name for the combined disci-
plines of biology (both molecular and whole organism)
with palaeontology and geology. One can only won-
der what those industrious but almost unknown field
collectors, Buxton and Stone, would make of that.
Notes
1 . We are grateful to Mr. Donald Cunningham
for the information on Buxton's year of birth as
well as his first and second name.
2. N. N. Vorontsov, E. A. Lyapunova, Institute
of Developmental Biology, Moscow; R.C. Harrison,
P. W. Sherman, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York,
E. Yensen, Albertson College, Idaho and R. S.
Hoffmann, Smithsonian Institution.
208 PEOPLE, ANIMALS, AND LAND/ NATURAL HISTORY
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R. S, HOFFMANN 209

*y!ie Languages of the fNjorth pacific j^im,
1 55^7" ' 997 > snd the Jesup xpedition
MICHAEL E. KRAUSS
Throughout most of our historical perspective the con-
nection between the "Old World" and the new has been
the Atlantic European expansion westward since 1 492.
This movement has by now almost completely oblit-
erated the aboriginal connection, culminating in the
control of the North Pacific area by distant Moscow
and Washington, and a Cold War which utterly sealed
off that connection for the lifetime of most of us now
living. This period also minimized contact between
scientists on both sides, and greatly intensified the pro-
cesses that have been destroying what remains of the
indigenous cultures and languages along that entire
North Pacific arc.
The understanding of the relationship between
the two hemispheres and its history that the Jesup
Expedition promised only reached its beginning stages.
Except for the Russian Ryabushinski Expedition of
1 909-1 1 across the Aleutian-Kamchatkan arc, the JNPE
remained unique; and all further work was severely lim-
ited by the political situation of 1917-90. After this
tragic lapse, the scientific and social issues surround-
ing the Jesup Expedition remain, and even have devel-
oped new importance, including the question of sur-
vival of these cultures and languages and their role in
the society of the future.
This paper lists the eighty languages of the North
Pacific rim; describes the texture of that diversity;
summarizes their status from robust viability to ex-
tinction during the century 1 897-1 997; the causes of
that situation, including American and Russian politics.
often in contrast; the role of Jesup Expedition field-
workers in documenting the diversity; and the issues
of the social responsibility of the scientist. It also deals
with the critically endangered state of most of these
languages today (with twenty already extinct, and all
the rest, except for around three to five, with speakers
of the older generation only), as part of the global
crisis of impending mass language extinction.
Definitions: Jesup Area Languages
I shall here first present my definition of the Jesup
Expedition area for language purposes, as a frame-
work for a quick survey and statistical overview of the
indigenous languages in the North Pacific arc, and of
their viability status then and now. For these purposes,
I shall consider the languages along the coast, on salt
water, from the Columbia River on the American side
to the Ussuri River on the Asian—Astoria to
Vladivostok—and secondarily also the first tier inland
(up to about 500 kilometers).'
As we well know, counting languages as opposed
to dialects is often arbitrary and artificial, but in terms
of the mutual intelligibility criterion and according to
the best current statements,^ from the Columbia to
the Ussuri in 1 897 there was up to eighty different
Native languages spoken, or, at least still remembered,
on the coast and first tier inland.
I shall not detail the considerations defining the
languages listed here, but only shall note that my defi-
nition of languages is somewhat finer, especially on
2 1 1
the Asian side, than that established in the Russian
literature.^ For example, Ainu is (or was) two languages
(Kurile including Hokkaido, and Sakhalin); Nivkh is two;
Yukagir is (or was) perhaps four; Asiatic Eskimo is (was)
three; Kerek-Koryak-Alyutor is three; Itelmen is (was)
three; and Arman Tungusic is counted separately. On
the other hand, I have been perhaps overgenerous in
retaining the established (Russian) count for Primorski
Tungusic languages, with Negidal, Ulch and Oroch
treated as separate from Evenk and Nanay (following
Doerferl 978), though Kill is not counted here because
it is further inland than Nanay. By some counts, then,
the Asian languages could be a lot fewer; but I am
making a special effort to differentiate evenhandedly
for both sides—a difficult task, where I hope I am not
overcompensating for under-differentiation on the Rus-
sian side.
Diversity
Though the arc as defined is almost symmetrical
(actually, Vladivostok is about 300 kilometers further
south than Astoria) and the Asian side, at least grossly
viewed, (including Kamchatka and Sakhalin) appears
to have much more coastline than the American, there
are significantly more languages and greater diversity
on the American side than on the Asian. Fifty-three of
the eighty area languages are American, and only
twenty-seven are Asian (Tables 7 and 8), even with the
fineness or generosity just allowed for the Asian. (Over-
lap is eliminated by calling St. Lawrence Island part of
Asia, and by including the Aleut of the Commander
Islands with American Aleut, and Big Diomede Inupiaq
with Little Diomede.) The diversity is, at most, only
slightly greater on the American side, however, in terms
of different genetic language families represented—
a
much deeper measure of diversity: eight families on
the American side (Chinookan, Salishan, Chemakuan,
Wakashan, Tsimshianic, Haida, Athabaskan-Eyak-
Tlingit, and Eskimo-Aleut), and six on the Asian (Es-
kimo-Aleut—due to the presence of three Siberian Yupik
Inguages—also Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Yukagiric,
Tungusic, Nivkh and Ainu). That could, in fact, be made
seven and seven, since it is arguable that Kamchatkan
and Chukotkan are genetically different,'' and that
Tsimshianic is genetically related to Chinookan.^ I think
also that in a global perspective, the density of diver-
sity here is below average for pre-agrarian parts of the
world in terms of area, but not per capita, and the
diversity is greater on both sides in the more southerly
latitudes.
The diversity is greater along the coast than on the
first inland tier: of the eighty total, fifty-eight are coastal,
and only twenty-two are first tier inland. Most diverse
is the American coast, with thirty-six, followed by the
Asian coast, with twenty-two; then the American in-
land with seventeen; and last the Asian inland, with
only five (and that by counting Yukagiric in 1 897 as
four languages).
Viability Status 1897
We now come to the issue of viability status and fate of
these North Pacific languages. By viability I mean, most
essentially, that the language is being transmitted by
the traditional natural method of speaking it to the chil-
dren as their first language.*^ Sheer numbers is a major
factor in language power and language survival; but the
language of 1 00 people, including all the children, will
probably remain alive longer than the language of
1 00,000, including no children.
In ] 897, most of the eighty North Pacific languages
were still viable, learned as a first language by all or
most children. (This we can judge from the subsequent
and current situation, by projecting backwards; the
accounts of the time seldom make mention of vi-
abilty.) On the Asian side the main exceptions were
South ltelmen^ already very nearly extinct, replaced
by Russian; also probably Omok and Chuvan Yukagiric,
if not already extinct,** replaced by Russian or Chukchi;
and on the American side, two widely separate
Athabaskan languages mainly by near extinction of
the group, Tsetsaut^ and Kwalhioqua,'° and probably
also Chemakum." These six languages must all have
2 1 2 PEOPLE, ANIMALS, AND LAND/ LANGUAGES
been extinct by about 1 935.
Of the remaining seventy-four, about eight more
were by then reduced to such small numbers, and/or
were being learned by so few or no children, that they
would have been rather moribund in 1 897: Kurile Ainu
confined on Shikotan Island and languishing;'^ Arman
Tungusic on Siberian mainland;'^ probably alsoPentlatch,
Nooksack and Twana Salishan; and Lower and Cath-
lamet Chinook in North America.''' All of these became
extinct during the last half of the last century. North-
east Kamchadal probably belongs in this category, but
reports are contradictory, and it could conceivably be-
long in the next category.'^
By 1897, at least eleven more languages were
entering a precarious state: Kerek"' in dwindling
numbers; Sirenikski Eskimo' ''assimilating to Chaplinski;
TagishAthabaskan'** assimilating to Inland Tlingit; Eyak'^
first assimilating to Tlingit and by 1 897 overwhelmed
by American canneries; and Southern Tsimshian assimi-
lating to Coast Tsimshian. With the death of Valentina
Wye, the last speaker, in February 1997, Sirenikski
Eskimo was the sixteenth of the eighty to become
extinct, now leaving sixty-four languages still with us;
Eyak and Tagish each have one remaining speaker,
while Kerek and Southern Tsimshian^" reportedly each
have two. The last children taught Ainu on Sakhalin
were born about 1 905 (those on Hokkaido not much
later); Sakhalin Ainu is now extinct (Hokkaido very nearly
so). Furthermore in Washington state Lower and Upper
Chehalis, Cowlitz, Quinault, and Quileute were not much
longer to be learned by any children, and all have from
two to five speakers at present.
In 1 897, the other fifty-five may still have appeared
fairly robust, with all or most of the children being raised
speaking them. Here, however, we come to a sharp
contrast in conditions on the American side as op-
posed to the Russian.^'
Indigenous Language Policyand Results, 1 997
On the American side (Table 7), heavy Euro-American
settlement and development was already advanced.
especially in Washington State and British Columbia,
and generally more advanced than the Russian on the
Asian side. However, the federal Indian language
policy for the school system, a rigid policy already
well established along the entire American coast in
both the United States and Canada, still had more im-
pact on the viability of the languages themselves. The
policy called for strict speaking of English only; chil-
dren were punished for speaking a Native language.
Though there was still missionary support for using
Native languages (by Russian Orthodox, Moravian, An-
glican-Episcopal, Roman Catholic Oblates and Jesuits),
including in written form and printed books, the pro-
language mission policy was rapidly losing out to
the mainstream Protestant-led federal policy." The rigid
English-only policy was powerfully reinforced, inciden-
tally, by the assimilationism so urgently needed to deal
with vast hordes of "barely white" immigrants who
now poured in not from Northern or Western Europe,
but from Southern and Eastern Europe.
In contrast, Russian demographic pressure was
minimal on the Asian side, and hardly increasing. It was
so far behind the American that Chukotka, for example,
was more American than Russian;" the schools were
generally far fewer if present at all, and were not moti-
vated by any deliberate policy to eliminate indigenous
languages. Ironically, even the influence of the Russian
Orthodox Church was far stronger in Alaska than in
Russia. Orthodox support for Alaskan languages, even
printing materials in four of them and nothing in the
Asian languages, provided some significant opposi-
tion to the American policy,^'' while on the Asian
side there was no policy to oppose. Such was the
contrasting context on the two sides for the Jesup
Expedition era. We shall return to this after a brief
account of development since then.
The American anti-Native language policy reigned
supreme for about sixty years, from 1 9 1 to 1 970,
until generally there were no more Native-speaking
schoolchildren to punish. By 1 970, along the Pacific
coast from California to the Aleutians the only elemen-
M. E. KRAUSS 2 1 3
tary schools where young children could speak any of
these languages were at Atka (Aleut) and English Bay
(Chugach Alutiiq). Further North, the youngest Native
speakers on the American side are for the central part
of Central Yup'ik, seventeen of sixty-seven villages, and
St. Lawrence Island Yupik, in two villages. Liberalization
of the policy began only in the 1 970s, too late to help in
most cases in the United States or Canada."
On the Russian side, the Revolutionary regime took
over the Russian Far East in the 1 920s and established
schools for indigenous communities, reaching most by
the 1 930s, with a policy that was basically favorable
for indigenous languages, for populist-idealistic or cyni-
cal reasons, or perhaps both. Languages were more or
less officially recognized and defined, with literary stan-
dards for some, often disregarding divergent dialect
or even language-level differences, for practical rea-
sons (e.g., Sakhalin Nivkh, Naukan Yupik). Several lan-
guages, or at least parts thereof, were relatively well
served in the printing of school literature from the 1 930s
through the 1 950s; such as Siberian Yupik Eskimo (with
over 100 titles for 1,200 total population, best per
capita, but in Chaplinski Yupik only), or Chukchi (460
titles for 12,000 people), Nanay (217 titles, 10,000
people), Evenk (25,000 people, 400 titles, probably
one dialect only). Even (12,000, 190 titles), Koryak
(7, 1 00, 117 titles, Chavchuven dialect only). However,
far less well served were Nivkh (4,000 people, 20 titles,
Amur dialect only?)." (West) Itelmen (1 ,200 people) got
only the bare beginnings (1 932 primerand arithmetic),
and for 300 Commander Island Aleut a primer and
dictionary were drafted but not published (in Bering
Atkan language). Several other recognized languages
still spoken by schoolchildren at the time, but with
populations under 1 ,000, got no books: Yukagir, Ulch,
Oroch, Negidal, and Orok. Also, the degree to which
the books were properly distributed or really used is
inconsistent and questionable. In any case, the policy
and practice were favorable enough that the Soviet-
side languages remained quite generally viable
through the period 1 930-60,^^ the same period when
2 1 4
American parents, now bilingual in English, switched
to speaking English with their children, as instructed.
The Soviet literatures in indigenous languages first
adapted the Latin alphabet of International Commu-
nism, but were Cyrillicized already in 1 937. World War
II, the Great Patriotic War, increased Russian activity
and development in the Far East, along with Russian
nationalism. Finally, and most devastatingly, in about
1 957 came ukrupnenie {WWage consolidation") with the
destruction of the many smaller villages, and above all
intematy{hoard'mg schools) in the consolidated villages,
severely restricting children's contact with their par-
ents and following a de facto policy of Russification,^^
in some cases even making a point of burning the
native-language books. ^° The result of this abrupt and
disastrous change in the 1960s and 1970s, ironically
at the same time that American policy began to liber-
alize, is that now only Chukchi may have a significant
proportion of children speakers in some less settled
groups. Evenk probably also has some young speak-
ers in the Amur-Chita region; Koryak and Even perhaps
also in some pockets; Nanay perhaps a few children
somewhere. But for all other Russian-side languages
the youngest speakers are now in their thirties or older.''
There are ironic contrasts in the timing; replace-
ment by English occurred mostly 1930-1960 while
the Russian policy was liberal, then the replacement
by Russian occurred while American policy liberalized.
The result is that of the fifty-five languages that
might have appeared robust in 1 897 (thirty-six on the
American side, nineteen on the Russian), only two may
still be viable or partly so on the American side (Central
Alaskan Yup'ik and St. Lawrence Island Siberian Yupik;
Table 7), only three or four on the Russian have any
children speakers (Chukchi, Evenk, Koryak, perhaps also
Even), and the status of even these most-favored lan-
guages is extremely endangered (Table 8). The less
endangered Native languages of the North are all quite
distant from the «Jesup arc»: almost all Greenlandic
and East Canadian Inuit; Tundra Nenets, Northern and
Eastern Khanty in Russia; Northern Saami in Scandinavia;
PEOPLE, ANIMALS, AND LAND/ LANGUAGES
and Dogrib or South Slavey in Canada. These are not
to be compared with Sakha (Yakut), which has three
or four times as many speakers as all other Northern
languages combined, placing it in an entirely different
class of languages in this respect.^^
Social Responsibility of the Scientist, and
the Global Language Extinction Issue
What did Boas, Jochelson, Bogoras, and their collegues
think, if anything, about the future of these languages
in 1897? First though, I take 1897 and the Jesup
Expedition merely as symbolic of the larger effort and
careers of these men, in the field from the 1 880s to
the 1920s, right while the fate of the American Native
languages (but not yet that of the Russian) was being
sealed, or prepared. The extent or intensity of their
linguistic fieldwork hardly even peaked during theJesup
Expedition time; they may have done more before and/
or after it than on it. Second, I need to emphasize that
they did not document all of the eighty languages
during their longer career period, and far fewer still
during JNPE surveys, which skipped Alaska altogether,
a huge "keystone" of the North Pacific arc. In fact,
coverage was much spottier on the American side,
where two-thirds of the languages are located.
How much solid survey-like knowledge the JNPE
team members had of what languages and dialects
were in the area in 1897 or 1902 is quite unclear.
Whether they were or were not interested in a regional
overview, such an overview was in any case rather
impossible with the transportation facilities of the time
(some of their travel was quite heroic, to achieve what
they did under those circumstances), with limited re-
sources, and with Boas' strict rule over the plans. As
for last-minute salvage of dying languages for linguis-
tic science, in the interest of comparative linguistics or
philology, only Boas appears to have given much pri-
ority to that, and during theJNPE even Boas disregarded
that priority, as his interest clearly centered on docu-
menting indigenous life in its oldest "purest" form, while
languages were still alive and fully functioning.
Finally, insofar as the JNPE funding was through a
museum, with a natural priority on collecting material
objects, it is indeed remarkable that so much language
work got done, thanks to the interest, linguistic skill,
and hard work of these men.
I now come to the question of the social responsi-
bility of the scientist, as a humanist and human being,
then and now. Taking only the central examples I know
of best—Boas, Jochelson, and Bogoras— I am struck,
even shocked, that as revolutionaries, discoverers
of cultural relativism, they wrote so little in theirJNPE
contributions to protest or even express regret
about the then very active colonial suppression of
the languages and cultures. They hardly said and
did anything to oppose the decline of the languages
and cultures they were documenting. Perhaps it was
"scientific detachment" above all, or assumption that
the disappearance of those languages and cultures
was inevitable, or that there was nothing they them-
selves could do about it anyway, especially as tran-
sient outsiders and foreigners. Or perhaps it was some
combination of the above. I have myself noted little
or no trace of regret: Bogoras did not have much
exposure to American suppression, butjochelson cer-
tainly did, in the Aleutians 1 909-1 0, but there is not a
word about it even in his correspondence. Boas, like-
wise, left no written word that I have seen—except
perhaps to his wife about the banning of the KwakiutI
potlatch, or late in life a general thought about culture
loss—about language suppression or loss. Jochelson
had converted fully, from revolutionary to scientist, never
to return. His old friend Bogoras, on the other hand,
was ever the revolutionary and activist, and, instead
of fleeing Russia after the October Revolution of 1 9 1 7,
he became, among other things, founding director of
the Leningrad Institute for the development of North-
ern minority languages in education (Institut Narodov
Severa).
On the American side, one thing that Boas and his
colleagues could realistically have done was to have
helped resident pro-language missionaries to develop
M. E. KRAUSS 2 1 5
Table 7/ North American Languages Current Status, Sequenced from the Columbia River toward the Bering Strait
Coastal
Languages
Fam. Status Speakers Total
Pop.
Lower e 1930
Chinook
Lower S >d <5 200
Chehalis
Quinault S >d <6 1 ,500
Lushootseed S <d 60 2,000
Twana S e 1 980 350
Clallam s d <20 3,000?
Quileute Chm >d 3 784
Chemakum Chm e>1928
Makah W c 50? 1 ,000
Nitinaht w >c 20 500?
Nootka w c 500? 5,000?
Northern s <d <30 3,000
Straits
Nooksack s e 1 958 350
Halkomelem s <d/>c ? 50? 7,000
Squamish s d <20 2,300
Pentlatch s e 1 940 55
Sechelt s >c 40 700
Comox s <c 300 1 ,000
Bella Coola s >c 50 700
KwakiutI w c 400? 4,000?
Heiltsuk- w c 300 1 ,500
Oowekyala
Haisia w c 1 00 1 ,000
Southern >d 2
Tsimshian
Coast b-d 500 4,500
Tsimshian
Nass-Gitksan b-d 1 ,000 5,500
Tsimshian
Tsetsuat AET e 1 934 1
Southern D 10 500
Haida
Northern <d 40 1 ,700
Haida
Tlingit AET c-d 575 1 1,000
Eyak AET >d 1
Alutiiq EA b-c 400 3,000
Tanaina AET b-d 75 900
Central EA a-c 10,000 21 ,000
Alaskan Yup'ik
Aleut EA b-d 300 2,200
Inupiaq EA c 500 3,200'
2 1 6
Inland
Languages
Fam ^ La L U J Tnral
Pop.
Kwalhioqua AET e>1923
Cathlamet e 1930
Chinook
Cowlitz S >d 2 200
Upper S >d 2 200
Chehalis
Columbian S C 75 500
Thompson S c <500 3,000
Lillooet S c 300 2,800
Chilcotin AET >b 1,000 2,000
Carrier AET a-c 2,400 5,000
Babine AET B? 200-300? 2,000?
Sekani AET C 100 500
Tahltan AET >c 40 1,200
Tagish >d 1
Southern AET c 200 1,400
Tutchone
Ahtna AET c 80 500
Upper AET >b 40 160
Kuskokwim
Koyukon AET c 300 2,300
PEOPLE, ANIMALS, AND LAND/ LANGUAGES
Table 8/Northeastern Asian Languages Current Status, Sequenced from the Bering Strait toward the Ussuri River
Coastal
Languages
Fam. Status Speakers Total
Pop.
Naukan Yupik EA c 60 400
Central Siberian EA a-c 1,300 2,300
Yupik
Sirenik Yupik EA e 1997
Chukchi ChK a-b 10,000 1 5,000
Kerek ChK >d 2 400
Koryak ChK a-c 2,500 7,000
Alyutor ChK c 200 2,000
Even T a-c <7,500 17,000
Arman Tungus T e 1960
—
Northeast ChK e? 1950 0'
—
Itelmen
South Itelmen ChK e 1910
—
West Itelmen ChK e 1986 70 1,500
Amur Nivkh c-d 100 2,000
Sakhalin Nivkh c 300 2,700
Negidal T c <100 500
Ulch T c <500 3,200
Oroch T c 100 900
Orok T c 35 300
Udegey T c-d 100 1,600'
Kurile Ainu e 1960
Hokkaido- e 1986 3^
Sakhalin Ainu
Inland Fam. Status Speakers Total
Languages Pop.
Chuvan Yukagir e<1900 "1,300'
Omok Yukagir e<1900
Tundra Yukagir c-d 50 600
Kolyma Yukagir d 20 300
Evenk T a-c 9,000 30,000
Nanay T c <2,000- <2,000-
12,000' 12,000'
Abbreviations used in Tables 7 and 8:
Status :
a allgenerations including children
b parentalgeneration and up
c grandparental generation and up
d small number ofvery old speakers
e extinct, with approximate date ofextinction
< in a situation approaching a particular status
> beyond the situation described for a particular
status
X-Y Communities within the language area range in
status from one status to another.
Footnotes for Tables 7 and 8:
' Seward Peninsula only; Northern Alaska, Canada and Greenland not counted
^ Russia only, China and Mongolia not counted
^ Russia only, China not counted
" Sakhalin only, Hokkaido not counted
Language families :
AET Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit
EA Eskimo-Aleut
ChK Chukotka-Kamchatkan
Chm Chemakuan
S Salishan
T Tungusic
W Wakashan
M. E. KRAUSS 21 7
better orthographies. But Boas evidently had little
use for missionaries of any kind, and they consequently
for him—a lost opportunity.
As for a conclusion, I can only offer my personal
view, which has motivated my whole career. It would
be a tragedy if these Native minority languages
disappear, not just for linguistics, or ethnohistory, or
for science, or for human rights, or for these peoples
themselves; but their loss would be a tragedy, I claim,
for humanity at large. We have come to understand
biologically that our physical survival depends utterly
on a certain condition of the biosphere, the ecosys-
tem biodiversity, that we need desperately to learn to
preserve and not to destroy. I believe it is the same
with human cultural, linguistic, and intellectual diver-
sity. Diversity itself also constitutes a system of its
own, which I call our "logosphere," the web of intellec-
tual life that is our very humanity. We obviously have
the power now to destroy that too, and are do-
ing so at an explosive rate, globally." We must learn
to control the growth of English-, Spanish-, Chinese-,
Russian-, even Yakut-speaking culture, and see it as a
supplement, a merely practical enrichment to the
minority indigenous ones. We must prevent this un-
necessary destruction of all other languages in the path
of that development, or we destroy the complex and
beautifully diverse system upon which our survival as
human beings depends. That is my claim.
Therefore, for us here now, it is our job to docu-
ment and preserve, but also to protest where still nec-
essary, to intervene, and to help support efforts to
maintain or revitalize this heritage, and to make the
work ofJesup Expedition researchers on North Pacific
languages a lasting contribution to that.
Notes
1. Compare the maps in Jesup 1897; Boas
1 903, with Krauss 1 988 (reprinted, with some cor-
rections in Chaussonnet 1995:109, 1996:108).
Coastal is defined as having territory on salt water,
or so by default (no other indigenous group inter-
vening, e.g., Udegey).
2. See especially Goddard 1 996 for the North-
west Coast to Alaska, and Krauss 1 997 for Alaska
and the Asian side; also Krasnaia kniga iazykov
narodov Rossii 1 994.
3. See Krauss 1997; Vakhtin 1992:1 3; Al'kor
1 932 (especially pp. 48-5 1 , 54 ff., 84-7, 1 02-3);
Curvich 1985:184; Vdovin 1959:288-91;
Mladopis'mennye iazyki narodov SSSR 1959:12;
Isaev 1977:246-53.
4. See Volodin 1976:17-9, 1997:12-14.
5. See Tarpent 1 996.
6. I have been estimating the number of
speakers of Alaskan since 1961 and, later, Sibe-
rian languages; results were published first in Krauss
1973a, 1973b, but only for Alaska (and border
languages, including USSR Eskimo and Aleut), like-
wise Krauss 1 974, 1 982 (map); the whole arc map
and table see Krauss 1988 (also Chaussonnet
1995, 1996) and especially Krauss 1997.
7. Patkanov (1912 ill: 915, 920) shows that
according to the 1897 census, one man in the
village of Apacha spoke Kamchadal, which, if he
was not displaced, would have been Southern
Kamchadal. Jochelson in 1910 (191 1 :1 39) reports
of Southern Kamchadal that "the last old woman
still remembering that dialect, died shortly before
[my] arrival" (no location given). Obviously there
was no careful investigation, but it does seem
probable that speakers of Southern Kamchadal
surviving in 1897-1910 were few and scattered.
See below for the status of Northeastern Kamchadal,
which may well have been quite different.
8. G.N. Kurilov, personal conversation 1997;
see also Jochelson 1934:150 for Chuvan and
Jochelson 1926:57 for Omok.
9. See Boas and Goddard 1924:1; Krauss
1 973a:91 6-7. The last speaker, Jane Dangeli, died
in approximately 1934.
10. See Krauss 1973a:917-8, 1990:531-2.
One speaker, Tonamal (Melissa or Blizzy Moxlah
or Moxley), was still alive in 1923.
11. See Boas 1892:37, who reported three
speakers in 1890, one of whom, his informant
Louise Webster, was still alive in 1 928 (Elmendorf
1990:440).
12. Torii 1919:3-5, 15-9; Bergman 1 933:
211-7; Murasaki 1 963. Murasaki in 1 962 checked
on seven possible speakers, most of whom prob-
ably knew nothing of Kurile Ainu, but general
2 1 8 PEOPLE, ANIMALS, AND LAND/ LANGUAGES
extreme stigma, shame, and reluctance added to
the uncertainty.
13. Doerfer 1978:55; Novikova 1960:20,
1968:107, and Sunik 1959:338-9; also Juha
Janhunen personal communication 1993.
14. Thompson and Kinkade 1990:37, 41,
also Kinkade p.c. ca. 1995. The last speaker,
Charles Cultee, died in the 1930s.
15. Patkanov (1912 111:914, 920) shows that
according to the 1897 census, 207 of 696
Kamchadals in twelve villages in the Kamchatka
River drainage still spoke (Northeastern) Kam-
chadal. More precisely, in seven of those twelve
villages no Kamchadals spoke Kamchadal, in two
more 5% and 6%, while in the rest, most or all (76%,
84%, 1 00%) did, in no clear geographical pattern.
The Jesup Expedition did not visit the area. More-
over, since Kamchadal was surely low-prestige,
and a choice between Kamchadal and Russian
was forced in the 1 897 census, it is probable that
the actual 1897 figure was well above 207. It
seems that no one really investigated, and I con-
sider it conceivable that someone might still re-
member Northeastern Kamchadal even today.
16. See Leont'iev 1983:12-9; Kibrik
(1 991 :263) names three speakers, two at Meyny-
pil'gyn, for 1 989.
17. See Menovshchikov 1964:7-10, and es-
pecially Krupnik 1991, which carefully describes
the whole decline and extinction process, far bet-
ter than I have seen for any other language in the
area, or perhaps in the world.
18. Krauss, 1997: 9. Angela Sidney died in
the 1990s, leaving only Lucy Wren (John Ritter,
personal communication).
19. Krauss 1997:11-12; Krauss 1982:11-8;
de Laguna, 1990:195-196. The one remaining
speaker, Marie Smith Jones, 80, was still alive in
1 998.
20. Marie-Lucie Tarpent 1997. Southern
Tsimshian is probably the last "language" in the
Jesup area to be "discovered" by John Dunn around
1975; see Dunn 1979:62-3.
21. For the Russian side in 1897, see espe-
cially Patkanov 1 91 2, a remarkable and important
source.
22. See, for example, Krauss 1980:18-24,
94-6; also Alton 1998, a dissertation that exten-
sively documents U. S. Federal and Alaska Native
language policy and its effects, for Alaska; and
Levine and Cooper 1976 for British Columbia, an
important source.
23. See, for example Hunt 1975; Krauss
1994:366; Vdovin 1965:258-62.
24. See, for example Krauss 1980:15-7,
1 990:206-1 1 , for Alaska; and Vdovin 1 965:258-
62 for failure of missions to the Chukchi.
25. Krauss 1980:21-4, 95-7; 1997:5-19, 23-
34; Thompson and Kinkade 1990.
26. Vakhtin 1992:13-4; Al'kor 1932, espe-
cially pp. 48-9, 56-7, 102-3.
27. These counts were done in large part by
myself, in 1 990, with kind permission from Galina
Sergeevna Mishchenko to enter the stacks at the
Leningrad Public Library annex at Kupchino for eth-
nic literatures, an official depository for all such
publications, where I simply counted the items
for each language present.
28. See e.g., Savoskul 1978, especially pp.
145-8; Avrorin 1970; Chichio 1985:80.
29. Vakhtin 1992:17-23; Krauss 1980:47-9.
30. G. A. Menovshchikov, L. Aynana, and oth-
ers, personal communications 1985, 1990; see
also Chichio 1990: 55.
31. Krauss ] 997:] 3-9, 27-34; Krasnaia kniga
iazykov narodov Rossii 1994:69, 32, 70, 37, and
especially personal communications of Toshiro
Tsumagari, Viktor Atknin 1994.
32. For circumpolar overview and viability
status of all Northern languages, see Krauss 1997.
33. I have written a number of articles about
the impending global collapse of linguistic diver-
sity, e.g., Krauss 1 992, 1 996.
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M. E. KRAUSS 22 1

54/WaldemarJochelson, Norman Buxton, and Waldemar Bogoras in San Francisco before their departure
for Siberia, spring 1 900. Studio photo (AMNI-i 38343)
223
55/Norman C. Buxton in Cizhiga, Siberia, flanked by the local Russian officer and his secretary, Spring 1 90
1
(AMNH 22089)
224
57/ Shestakova, a Koryak winter settlement at Penzhina Bay, Siberia, winter 190i. Norman Buxton,
photographer (AMNH 22065)
225
58/Native dog-teams in Markovo, Anadyr River valley, winter 1901. Norman Buxton,
photographer (AMNH 22053)
59/ The town of Markovo, Anadyr River valley, winter 1901. Norman Buxton, photographer (AMNH
22051)
226
60/ Mr. Nikolai Sokolniliov, commanding officer of the Anadyr District, with Native
children. Markovo, winter 1901. Norman Buxton, photographer(AMNH 22054)
6 1/Dried salmon on the sled, used for both human and dog food. Markovo, winter 1901.
Norman Buxton, photographer (AMNH 22065; AMNH 22055)
227
62/A group of Yakut (Sakha) children, 1902. Photographer, WaldemarJochelson (AMNH 1 1015)
228
229
64/ltelmen poet Anatoly Levkovsky, with his wife Tatiana and son Nikolai. Photographer, Nelson Hancock
230
65/Respected Itelmeti elderand educator, Tatiana Petrovna Lukashkina was born
in the village ofSopochnoe. She remembered fondly growing up there under the
tutelageofher blind grandmother, Maria Vasil'evna Pavlutskaia. Photographer,
Nelson Hancock
66/ The village ofKovran in 1 994 from across the Kovran River. Photographer, IngridSummers
67/Store closed, Verkhne Khairiuzovo, February, 1994. This became an increasingly frequent occurrence. It was some-
times rumored that the store was closed during usual opening hours because ofthe drunkenness ofthe storekeeper. But
it also began to be closed simply because there was nothing to sell. This store owned by the Fishing Cooperative went
entirely out ofbusiness. Photographer, David Koester
mmm
232
68/The remains ofthe Kovran clubhouse (dom kul'turyj. Photographer, David Koester
69/ The village of Verkhne Khairiuzovo, summer of 1 992. Photographer, David Koester
233
234
7 1/ltelmen elders Anastasia (Nadia) Phtchina, Aleksandm Krasnoiarova and Polina Popova from Kovran, at an Itelmen
gathering in / 995. Photographer, Nelson Hancock
235
236
73/ The village ofKirganik, on the Kamchatka River in
central Kamchatka, is another site that indigenous
peoples are re-inhabiting. Closed in the 1 960s, Kirganik
is now a summer home to a small number of indig-
enous Kamchadals, such as Aleksandr Tolman, shown
here in the summer of200 1 . As the regional economy
continues to worsen, some people are choosing to move
permanently to Kirganik, as it provides better access
to fish andgame. Photographer, Nelson Hancock
74/ Afanasii Reshetnikov,
another ofKirganik's elderly
resettlers, in front of his
house. 1 997. Photographer,
Nelson Hancock
237
75/Family ofthe Chiefofthe Tundra Yukagirband, winter 1902. Photographer, WaldemarJochelson (AMNH / 754).
Cjcnctlc prehi'stom of Paieoasi'atic-speakin
ropulat,on. of Northeastern S^bena and
their j^eiationships to f\jative /Xmericans
THEODORE G. SCHURR
AND DOUGLAS C. WALLACE
Franz Boas initiated the first systematic exploration of
the population relationships across Bering Strait with
the launch of thejesup North Pacific Expeditions (JNPE)
of 1 897-1 902. Assuming that the ancestral home of
the American Indians was Asia, Boas was eager to
establish the links between aboriginal groups residing
in Siberia and the New World, and to elucidate the
processes by which these relationships developed. To
this end, the JNPE collected an enormous amount of
cultural and linguistic data from populations inhabit-
ing the northern regions of both sides of the North
Pacific, including folk tales, grammars, songs, artifacts,
masks, boats, dwellings, and clothing (Crowell 1988;
Fitzhugh 1 988; Curvich 1 988; Krupnik 1 988; Rousselot
et al. 1988). The similarities in folklore, shamanistic
practices, cultural traditions, types of dwellings, deco-
rative motifs, and languages across Bering Strait con-
vinced Boas (1 903, 1 905), Bogoras (1 902), and Jochel-
son (1908, 1926) that northeastern Siberians were
much closer to American Indians than to other Asian/
Siberian peoples.
Furthermore, Boas believed that the physical
differences between populations would reveal their
relationships in the present, which, in turn, would
refiect their origins and relationships in the past (Boas
1912, 1928). To test these ideas. Boas and his col-
leagues took measurements of body and facial fea-
tures of thousands of individuals from dozens of
ethnic populations within a 10-year span (Boas 1905;
Jantz et al. 1 992; Ousley and Jantz 2001 ). From these
data, they concluded that populations of the North
Pacific constituted a single racial type which originated
from a common cultural and linguistic tradition that
was formerly more widespread than at present, en-
compassing Northeast Asia, Alaska, and the Northwest
Coast of North America (Boas 1905, 1912, 1928;
Jochelson 1926). However, the exact links between
Siberian and Northwest Coast populations and the
Eskimo were less clear, with the Aleut falling some-
where in the middle of the two geographic extremes.
Based on these findings. Boas proposed that an-
cient Asians initially migrated across a land bridge to
America, and were subsequently cut off for a long
period of time by glaciers, thereby allowing the differ-
entiation of the distinctive and heterogeneous Ameri-
can physical types. Later, when the glaciers retreated,
the land bridge was opened up again and Americans
flowed back into Asia until they met "Mongoloid " popu-
lations migrating from the south and west, a concept
which became known as the "Americanoid" theory
(Bogoras 1 902; Jochelson 1908; Boas 1912, 1928). In
this model, the back migration of American cultures
from east to west across the North Pacific produced
the Chukchi, Koryak, Kamchadal, Yukagir and Nivkh
(Gilyak) (Boas 1905). The peoples on either side of
the North Pacific were then separated at Bering Strait
by the intrusion of the Eskimo, a people who were
culturally and morphologically distinct and purport-
edly originated in Central Canada (Boas 1 905, 1912),
with further diffusion between northern populations
being prevented by this "Eskimo wedge" (Collins 1 937;
Dumond, this volume).
239
Table 9/ Siberian PopulationsAnalyzed for Genetic Variation
Population N n Field Collection Site(s) Collection
Date(s)
Sample
Collection
Ref
Siberian Yupik 79 79 Anadyr, Providenya, & 1994-5 Sukernik 1
Sireniki; Chukchi Autonomous
District, Magadan Region
Siberian Yupik >102 70 New Chaplino, Uelen, & 1979-82 Sukernik et al. 2, 3
Sireniki; Chukchi Autonomous
District, Magadan Region
Coast Chukchi 66 66 Anadyr, Providenya, & 1994-5 Sukernik 1
Sireniki; Chukchi Autonomous
District, Magadan Region
Reindeer 515 70 Rytkuchi & Amguyema; 1977-9 Sukernik et al. 3, 4
Chukchi Chukchi Autonomous District,
Magadan Region; Middle
Pakhachi & Achayvayam;
Koryak Autonomous District,
Kamchatka Region
Koryak 104 104 Tymlat, Ossora, & Karaga; 1993 Schurr and 5
Koryak Autonomous District, Sukernik
Kamchatka Region
Koryak 51 51 Voyampolka & Kovran; Koryak 1996 Schurr, 5
Autonomous District, Sukernik &
Kamchatka Region Starikovskaya,
Itel'men 47 47 Voyampolka & Kovran; Koryak 1996 Schurr, 5
Autonomous District, Sukernik &
Kamchatka Region Starikovskaya,
Nivkh 57 57 Nekrasovka & Rybnovsk; 1991 Sukernik and 3
Sakhalin Region Starikovskaya
Udegey 45 45 Gvaysugi; Primor'ye Region 1992 Sukernik and 3
Starikovskaya
Uichi/Nanay 87 87 Old and New Bulava; 1997 Sukernik and 6
Khabarovsk Region Starikovskaya
Negidal 14 14 Old Bulava, Vladimirovka; 1996 Sukernik and 6
Khabarovsk Region Starikovskaya
Yukagir 68 27 Andryushkino & Nelemnoye; 1986-7 Sukernik et al. 3
Yakut-Sakha Republic
Even 375 43 Sebyan-Kujhal & Beryozovka; 1990 Sukernik et al. 3. 7
Yakut-Sakha Republic
Nganasan 700 49 Novaya, Ust-Avam, & 1974-5, Sukernik et al. 3. 8. 9
Volochanka; Taymyr 1984
Autonomous District,
Krasnoyarsk Region
Evenk 250 51 Suringa & Polygus; Evenk 1991-2 Sukernik et al. 3
Autonomous District,
Krasnoyarsk Region
Northern Altai 30 28 Suronash, Tuloi, & Artybash; 1 994 Sukernik and 1
Gorno-Altai Republic Starikovskaya
Ket 23 23 Sulamai; Evenk Autonomous 1992 Sukernik et al. 10
District, Krasnoyarsk Region
Selkup 50 - 20 Farkovo; Krasnoyarsk Oblast 1990 Sukernik et al. 3,11
TOTALS 2,663 931
Note; 'N' = original number ofsamples taken during the initial period offield research, and 'n'- number ofsamples
analyzed for mtDNA variation. The 'Field Collection Site(s)' are indicated by village then administrative district and
region. 'Ref = References: I = Starikovskaya et al. (1 998); 2 = Sukernik and Osipova 0982); 3 « Sukernik et al.
(1981); 4 = Torroni et al. (1993b): 5 = Schurr et al. (1999); 6 = Schurr et al. (2000); 7 - Posukh et al. (1990); 8 -
Karaphet et al. (1 981); 9 = Osipova and Sukernik (1 983); 1 = Sukernik et al. (1 996); 1 1 - Sukernik et al. (1992).
240 PEOPLES, ANIMALS, AND LAND/ GENETICS
Although not confirmed through systematic sta-
tistical analyses until recently, these preliminary find-
ings of the JNPE posed a series of hypotheses about
Siberian and Native American origins and affinities that
have formed the basis of subsequent studies of popu-
lation relationships in this region. What all of these
later analyses have attempted to explicate are the num-
ber of migrations or population expansions which en-
tered the New World and gave rise to Paleoindians;
the timing of these migrations, i.e., how early the Ameri-
cas were colonized; and from where in Asia or Siberia
the progenitors of these aboriginal peoples originated.
In what follows, we describe how the modern mo-
lecular genetic data obtained from aboriginal popula-
tions of Siberia, in particular, those from Chukotka and
Kamchatka, may be used to test the hypotheses about
the origins and diversity of eastern Siberians and their
evolutionary relationships with Native Americans that
were raised in the JNPE investigations (Figs. 62, 63).
Although there is a burgeoning literature on Y-chromo-
some variation in indigenous Siberians and Native
Americans, we focus here on mitochondrial DMA
(mtDNA) diversity in these populations.
The body of data brought to bear on these ques-
tions derives from a large number of anthropological
genetic studies conducted among various aboriginal
Siberian populations by Dr. Rem I. Sukernik, his col-
leagues at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics,
Novosibirsk, and his collaborators, over the past twenty
years, including us from Emory University (Table 9). All
of the recent molecular data that are the focus of this
paper were obtained from these samples in the labo-
ratory of Dr. Douglas C. Wallace, Center for Molecular
Medicine, Emory University. These samples represent
over a dozen different ethnic groups that occupy a
wide geographic expanse of northern Asia, with a strong
eastern Siberian emphasis. As such, this data set per-
mits the direct comparison of molecular genetic infor-
mation with the craniometric and anthropometric data
that were collected from many of these same popula-
tions by members of the JNPE.
Table 1 0/ Haplogroups in Native Siberian and EastAsian
Populations
ndpiuyruupb roiy ii lUi pi 1 r\cbiriLiion ^iicb
AA CCD n
DD L.*jii-iKNA ' iniergenic y-Dp
eiciion, + 1 DD I / c
V-
nu
F -1 2406h/-l 2406o (-9052n/
-9053f), -i-16517e
C -h4830n/-(-4831f, +1 0394c,
+ 10397a, -h16517e
H -7025a
Y +7933j, -8391e, -t-10394c,
-^16517e
Z -I-10394C, +10397a, -i-l 1074c,
-H1651 7e
Note.' The polymorphic restriction sites are numberedfrom
the first nucleotide ofthe recognition sequence according
to the published sequence (Anderson et al. 1981). The
restriaion enzymes used in the analysis are designated by
the following single-letter code: a, Alul; c, Ddel; e, Haelll; f
Hhal; g, Hinfl; h, Hpa/; j, Mbol; n, Haell; o, Hindi. Sites
separated by a diagonal line indicate either simultaneous
site gains or site losses for two different enzymes, or a
site gain for one enzyme and a site loss for another be-
cause ofa single common nucleotide substitution.
Mitochondrial DNA Variation in
Paleoasiatic-speaking Populations
Among Paleoasiatic-speaking populations, six distinct
haplogroups have been identified' . These include three
of the five haplogroups observed in Native Americans
(A, C, and D), and three additional mtDNA lineages (C,
Y, and Z) which are present in Asian populations (Table
10)^. Each of these haplogroups is defined by both
restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs) and
control region (CR) sequence polymorphisms (Table 1 1 ),
with several different CR sublineages usually present
within each haplogroup. The haplogroups and their
constituent haplotypes, as well as their associated
CR sublineages, have specific distributions in Native
Siberian and Native American populations that sug-
gest genetic relationships between them.
Chukotkan Populations
The majority of Chukchi and Siberian Yupik (Eskimo)
haplotypes belong to haplogroups A and D (Tables
T. C. SCHURR AND D. C. WALLACE 24 1
Table 1 // CR Sequence Sublimeages in Siberian and Na-
tive American Populations
Haplo-
group
CR Sub-
lineage
Polymorphic Nucleotides
1611 IT, 16192T, 16223T, 16290T,
16319A, 16362C
161 1 IT, 1 6223T, 16265G, 16290T,
16319A, 16362C
16223T, 16290T, 16319A, 16362C
1611 IT, 16223T, 16290T, 16319A,
16362C
16223T, 16298C, 16327T, 16519C
16124C, 16223T, 16298C, 16327T,
16519C
16093C, 16189C, 16223C, 16261T,
16288C, 16298C, 16519C
16223T, 16298C, 16325C, 16327T,
16519C
16223T, 16362C
16093C, 16173T, 16223T, 16319A,
16362C
16129A, 16223T, 16271T, 16362C
16223T, 16325C, 16362C
16017C, 16093C, 16129A, 16223T,
16519C
16126C, 16189C, 16231C, 16266T,
16519C
16129A, 16185T, 16223T, 16224C,
16260T, 16298C, 16519C
Note ; The polymorphic nucleotides are reported as nucle-
otide changes relative to the published reference sequence
(Anderson etal. 1981).
I
IV
I
II
IV
I
II
III
iV
I
I
12, 1 3). In both Chukotkan populations, the frequen-
cies of haplogroup A haplotypes are found to be
consistent with those observed in the Yupik people
from St. Lawrence Island and southern Alaska, and
are similar to the frequency of this mtDNA lineage in
Na-Dene Indians (Haida, Dogrib) and Amerindians
from the Northwest Coast of North America (Bella Coola,
Nuu-Chah-Nulth). Conversely, the Aleut differ from the
Siberian Yupik and Alaskan Alutiiq and Yup'ik in ex-
hibiting haplogroup D mtDNAs at the highest frequency
(Merriwether et al. 1 995; Rubicz et al. 2001 , in press;
Derbeneva et al. 2002). In addition, the Chukchi have
haplogroup C, G and Y mtDNAs (Derenko et al. 1 997,
1998; Starikovskaya et al. 1998; Schurr et al. 2001),
which are also present in the Koryak and Itelmen. Based
on what is known of Eskimo family histories, the
low frequency of haplogroup C mtDNAs in Siberian
Yupik could have been obtained through gene flow
from the Chukchi. However, haplogroup C mtDNAs
are also observed in Alaskan Eskimo populations
(Merriwether et al. 1 995), making it possible that these
haplotypes were part of the genetic stock of ances-
tral Eskimo, albeit present in low frequencies.
Kamchatkan Populations
Haplogroup A, C, and D encompass around forty-two
percent of Koryak mtDNAs but only twenty percent
of Itelmen mtDNAs, with the remainder belonging to
haplogroups C, Y, and Z (Derenko et al. 1997; 1998;
Schurr et al. 1999) aabie 12). Although the Koryak
and Itelmen are more genetically similar to each other
than to any other Siberian population, and share found-
ing haplotypes from haplogroups C, C, Y, and Z, they
also exhibit statistically significant differences in
haplogroup frequencies and haplotype distribution, im-
plying some degree of genetic differentiation between
them (Schurr et al. 1 999). The CR sequence data also
reveal recent gene flow between the two Paleoasiatic-
speaking populations (Schurr et al. 1 999), confirming
previous observations of population contact between
them (Antropova 1 964a, 1 964b; Krasheninnikov 1 972;
Arutiunov 1 988a; Krushanov 1 993). These results sup-
port linguistic and culture evidence which indicates
that Itelmen and Koryak populations arose from tem-
porally distinct expansions into the Kamchatka Penin-
sula (Vasil'evskii 1971 ; Arutiunov 1 988a; Arutiunov and
Sergeev 1 990; Dikov 1 990).
In contrast, the Reindeer and Coastal Chukchi
gropus show much higher frequencies of haplogroup
A, C, and D mtDNAs (Table 1 3; Torroni et al. 1 993b;
Starikovskaya et al. 1 998; Schurr 1 998). Based on
these data, the three studied Chukchi populations re-
semble each other more than any of them do to the
Koryak or Itelmen. Furthermore, the intermediate fre-
quencies of haplogroup A, C, and D mtDNAs in the
Reindeer Chukchi groups relative to the Koryak and
the Coastal Chukchi is consistent with the known his-
torical expansion of Reindeer Chukchi south across
the Koryak Mountain Range, during which local Koryak
tribes were at least partially absorbed (Bogoras 1 904;
242 PEOPLES, ANIMALS, AND LAND/ GENETICS
Jochelson 1908), as well as docu-
mented gene flow between the Coast
Chukchi and Siberian Yupik (Sukernik
and Osipova 1 982).
Mitochondrial DNA Variation
in Eastern Siberian Popula-
tions
Among other Native Siberian groups,
mtDNAs belonging to haplogroup C
are found primarily in eastern popula-
tions, specifically the Even, Yukagir, and
Nganasan (Table 1 3). These results,
along with the higher frequencies of
haplogroup C mtDNAs in the Chukchi,
Koryak, and Itelmen, imply a consid-
erable degree of genetic contact be-
tween eastern Siberian and
Paleoasiatic-speaking groups from
Kamchatka and Chukotka. This interpretation is sup-
ported by ethnographic evidence of contact, trade,
and conflict among eastern Siberian populations
Cochelson 1 908, Antropova 1 964a; Krushanov 1 993).
By contrast, haplogroup Y mtDNAs are absent in most
eastern Siberian populations, but occurred at a high
frequency in the Nivkh and were present at polymor-
phic frequencies in the Udegey, Nanay, Ulchi, Negidal,
Korean, Ainu, and Japanese fTorroni et al. 1 993b; Horai
et al. 1 996; Schurr et al. 1 999, 2000).
The remaining "Other" mtDNAs in the Chukchi and
eastern Siberian groups probably belong to haplogroup
Z, with the highest frequency of these mtDNAs occur-
ring in the Even and the Chukchi of the Pakhachi River
group. This interpretation is supported by CR sequence
data from another Even population (Derenko et al.
1 997, 1 998). Because these mtDNAs are also present
at low frequencies in the Nganasan and Yukagir, they
could have originated in Tungusic-speaking popula-
tions and then spread to other ethnic groups through
contact in the past several millennia. If correct, this
interpretation would be supported by ethnographic
Table 1 2/ Haplogroup Frequencies in Eastern Pacific Rim Populations
POPULATION n A B C D C Other Ref
Frequency (%)
Paleoasiatic:
Chukchi 66 68.2 — 10.6 12.1 .9.1 — 1
Eskimo-Aleut:
Siberian Yupik 79 77.2 — 2.5 20.3 — — 1
Savoonga Yupik 49 93.9 — — 2.0 — 4.1 2
Gambell Yupik 50 58.0 — 14.0 26.0 — 2.0 2
Old Harbor Alutiiq 1 1 5 61.7 3.5 — 34.8 — — 2
Ouzinkie Alutiiq 41 73.2 — 4.9 14.6 — 7.3 2
Pribilof Is. Aleut 72 25.0 — 1.4 66.7 — 6.9 2
Na-Dene:
Dogrib 1 54 90.9 2.0 — — 7.1 2
Haida 38 92.1 7.9 — — 3
ndiud o cC. J 96.0 4.U 4
Amerindians:
Bella Coola 32 78.1 6.3 9.4 6.3 3
Bella Coola 25 60.0 8.0 8.0 20.0 4.0 4
Nuu-chah-nulth 63 44.4 3.2 19.0 22.2 1 1.1 5
Nuu-chah-nulth 15 40.0 6.7 13.3 26.7 13.3 4
Note.- 'Ref = References: / = Staril<ovsl<aya et al. ( 1 998); 2 = Merriwether
et al. (1995); 3 = Ward et al. (1993); 4 = Torroni et al. (1 993a); 5 = Ward et
al. (1991). Other = Other haplotypes, i.e., those which do not belong to the
haplogroups identified in the table but may have different lineal affiliations
evidence indicating considerable assimilation of Yukagir
populations by the Even (Arutiunov 1 988c), and cul-
tural and genetic contacts between Even and Koryak
along the northern Sea of Okhotsk coast, due to the
expansion of the Even into that region during the sev-
enteenth and eighteenth centuries Cochelson 1908;
Antropova 1964a; Arutiunov 1988c).
In this regard, we now know that haplogroup Z
occurs in populations spanning the entire breadth of
northern Eurasia. It is observed as far west as the Saami
of Finland (Sajantila et al., 1 995), also occurs among
the Udmurt, Tatar, Bashkir, and Mari of the Volga-Uralic
region (Meinila et al., 2001; Bermisheva et al., 2002),
and in seen in a number of eastern Siberian popula-
tions (Table 1 3). Based on its distribution, haplogroup
Z could possibly have accompanied the expansion of
Neolithic herding cultures throughout Eurasia.
Another trend seen in these data is that central
Siberian populations exhibit genetic profiles that are
quite different from those of eastern Siberian groups.
Although haplogroup A-D mtDNAs are present at vary-
ing frequencies in the Mansi, Ket, Selkup, and Northern
T. C, SCHURR AND D. C. WALLACE 243
Table 1 3/ Haplogroup Distribution in West Pacific Rim and Siberian Populations
Population n B D H J M 0th Ref
Coastal
Chukchi
Reindeer
Chukchi
Amguema
Chukchi
Pakhachi
Chukchi
Koryak*
Reindeer
Koryak
Maritime
Koryak
Itelmen
Nivkh
Udegey
Nanay
Ulchi
Negidal
Even
Yukagir
Nganasan
Evenk
Tofalar
Tuvan
Buryat
Northern
Altai
Ket
Selkup
Korean
Taiwanese
Han
66
70
24
46
1 55
89
54
47
57
45
14
37
13
43
27
49
51
27
43
24
28
23
20
13
20
68.2
28.6
37.5
23.9
5.2
5.6
5.6
6.4
2.0
3.9
4.3
Haplogroup Frequencies {%)
7.7 7.7
10.6 12.1 —
21.4 12.6 —
14.9
17.8
7.4 59.3
17.4
9.1
7.0 - — 1.4 25.7
16.7 8.3 _ 16.7 2
10.9 10.9 2.2 30.4 2
1.3 41.3 _ _ 9.7 _ 5.8 _ 3
1.1 _ 43.8 _ _ 7.9 10.1 3
1.9 37.0 14.8 3
68.1 4.3 6.4 3
28.1 5.3 64.9 1 .8 2
8.9 73.3 2
42.9 7.1 14.3 21 .4
10.8 10.8 37.8 1 3.5
23.1 1 5.4 7.7 1 5.4 7.7
7.0 2.3 32.6 2,
3
33.3 3.7 3.7 2,
3
36.7 4.1 2.0 2.0 12.2 2.0 2,
3
9.8 2.0 2
11.1 22.2
23.3 2.3 2.3 1 1.6 2.4
9.1 4.2 25.0 2.3 2.3
14.3 3.6 10.7 7.1 21.4 3.
5
34.8 4.3 17.4 60.9 3,
5
30.0 35.0 2.
3
23.1 1 5.4 23.1 7.7 15.4 6
5.0 10.0 45.0 6
Note.- n = sample size, and 0th = 'Other' haplotypes, i.e., those which do not belong to the haplogroups identified in the
table but may have different lineal affiliations. The asterisk C') indicates that 12 individuals were not certain of their
ethnicity in terms ofMaritime versus Reindeer Koryak, but included in the totals for all Koryaks. 'Ref= 'Reference': I
= Starikovskaya et al. (1998); 2 = Torroni et al. (1993b); 3 = Schurr (1998); 4 = Schurr et al. (1999); 4 = Sukernik et
al. (1996); 5 = Ballinger et al. (1992).
Altayan, the majority of their haplotypes belong to
other mtDNA lineages (Torroni et al. 1 993b; Sukernik
et al. 1 996; Derbeneva et al. 2002a; Schurr et al. 2003).
These populations also largely lack mtDNAs belong-
ing to haplogroups G, Y, and Z (Torroni et al. 1993b;
Sukernik et al. 1 996; Derbeneva et al. 2002a; Schurr et
al. 2003). In fact, based on their RFLP composition,
most of these haplotypes appear not to be of East
Asian origin (Table 1 3). Instead, all of the central Sibe-
rian populations exhibit mtDNAs from West Eurasian
haplogroups H and U (Schurr 1 998; Derbeneva et al.
2002a; Schurr et al. 2003), with the remaining haplo-
types belonging to other West Eurasian haplo-groups.
These results clearly indicate that western/central
Siberian populations are distinctive from eastern
Siberian populations, and appear to have mtDNAs of
244 PEOPLES, ANIMALS, AND LAND/ GENETICS
Hapio- Geographic
group Region
B
C
D
C
Y
Z
Siberia
America
America
Siberia
America
Siberia
America
Siberia
Siberia
Siberia
botli ancient Eurasian and
Asian origin as part of their
overall genetic composition.
When these differences in
haplogroup composition
among Native Siberian popu-
lations were statistically ana-
lyzed, several distinct popula-
tion groupings reflecting the
regional differences amongst
them were observed (Fig. 76).
These included branches lead-
ing to Chukotkan groups, Kam-
chatkan groups, Uralic-
Tungusic groups, and central
Siberian groups. The closeness of the Yukagir to
Tungusic-speaking groups probably reflected the re-
cent assimilation of the former populations by the
Even (Arutiunov 1988c), with the Nganasan showing
intermediate position between the Uralic-Tungusic and
central Siberian clusters due to having haplotypes in
common with each set of populations. Interestingly,
the Nivkh were positioned away from the rest of the
eastern Siberians, and clustered with the Koreans, who
also had haplogroup D, C, and Y haplotypes (Ballinger
et al. 1992; Horai et al. 1996). Similarly, the Udegey
were something of an outlier relative to other Siberian
populations, and clustered with the Taiwanese Han,
who also had significant frequencies of "other" mtDNAs
with similar mutational characteristics as those present
in the Udegey, although not belonging to the same
exact haplogroups, since most of those present in the
Udegey belong to haplogroup M (Torroni et al. 1 993b).
Genetic Discontinuity of Paleoasiatic-speakers
and Native Americans
Given the overall pattern of genetic divergence in Si-
beria, it was not surprising that a comparison of the
haplotypic diversity of Paleoasiatic-speaking and Na-
tive American groups revealed a striking discontinuity
between these populations.
Table 1 4/ Sequence Divergence ofSiberian and Native American Haplogroups
n N Sequence Divergence
Divergence {%) Time (YBP)
10 119 0.0280 12,714 - 9,645
46 189 0.0789 35,550 - 26,969
30 99 0.0391 1 5,205 - 1 1,534
14 123 0.0433 19,686 -14,934
31 72 0.1223 54,009 - 40,972
13 47 0.1115 50,664 - 38,434
16 62 0.0565 25,682 -19,483
1 1 106 0.0239 10,855 - 8,234
7 58 0.0138 6,864 - 5,207
4 12 0.0209 9,495 - 7,203
Note.' n = number of haplotypes, and N = number of individual mtDNAs, for each
haplogroup. The sequence divergence estimates were weighted by the number ofindi-
viduals within each haplogroup. Divergence times were calculated by multiplying the
haplogroup sequence divergences by the mtDNA evolutionary rate of2.2-2.9% per
MYR (Torroni et al. 1 994a).
Haplogroup Distribution
Although having a number of haplogroup A, C, and D
haplotypes, the Chukchi, Koryak, and Itelmen, as well
as the Siberian Yupik, are not closely genetically re-
lated to Native American populations. In fact, they
actually share only the founding haplotypes from
haplogroups A and C with Amerindian groups, and,
based on CR sequence data, these do not appear to
be identical to comparable mtDNAs from Native Ameri-
can populations. Otherwise, Paleoasiatic-speaking and
North Pacific Rim groups exhibit a number of popula-
tion- or region-specific haplotypes in each of these
haplogroups, which apparently arose in their ancestral
populations independent of those occurring in Paleo-
indian groups (Ward et al. 1991, 1993; Torroni et al.
1 992, 1 993b; Shields et al. 1 993; Starikovskaya et al.
1998; Schurr et al. 1999). Therefore, the majority of
these mtDNAs cannot be the same as the founding
haplotype in New World populations, and instead, must
have arisen after the colonization of the New World.
This degree of genetic differentiation of Siberian
and Native American populations provides evidence
for at least two major expansions of ancient Beringian
populations into northern North America before and
after the last major period of glaciation, the timing of
which are mirrored by the different divergence values
T. C. SCHURR AND D. C. WALLACE 245
for haplogroup A in Siberia and the Americas (Table
1 4). The estimated sequence divergence for this haplo-
group in Siberia is 0.028 percent, a value considerably
less than that for the Americas, 0.079 percent. These
values give correspondingly different divergence times
for Siberia (1 3,000-1 0,000 years before present (YBP))
and the Americas (36,000-27,000 YBP). This apparent
discrepancy is largely attributable to almost exclusively
Chukotkan haplotypes being present in the haplogroup
A estimate for Native Siberians. In fact, the three esti-
mates of the genetic divergence of haplogroup A in
Siberian and Native American populations, one for
Chukotkan groups (0.029 percent; 1 2,727-9,655 YBP),
Na-Dene Indians (0.021 percent; 9,545-7,241 YBP), and
Amerindians (0.079percent; 35,909-27,241 YBP) (Tor-
roni et al. 1 992; Starikovskaya et al. 1 998; Schurr et al.
1 999), show very clearly the extent of diversity which
has developed between them, not just within the haplo-
group itself. Thus, while these divergence estimates
do not give exact times for the ages of specific ethnic
groups, they provide a temporal framework in which
to view the emergence of the ancestral populations
for the three major Native American linguistic divisions.
In addition, haplogroup B mtDNAs are absent in
the Koryak and Itelmen, as well as in the Chukchi and
Siberian Yupik (Torroni et al. 1 993b; Starikovskaya et
al. 1 998; Schurr et al. 1 999). In fact, haplogroup B is
absent in almost all eastern Siberian populations (Shields
et al. 1992; Petrishchev et al. 1993; Torroni et al.
1993b), excepting those inhabiting the southern
margin of Siberia adjacent to Mongolia and northern
China, where low frequencies of deletion haplotypes
appear (Petrishchev et al. 1993; Kolman et al. 1996;
Sukernik et al. 1 996). Conversely, this mtDNA lineage
is present in almost all Amerindian populations at low
to moderate frequencies (Schurr et al. 1990; Ward et
al. 1991, 1993; Torroni et al. 1992, 1993a, 1994a;
Merriwetheretal. 1995; Lorenz and Smith 1994). These
results suggest that haplogroup B was never part of
the ancestral gene pool for Paleoasiatic-speaking popu-
lations, and that these groups played no role in the
dispersal of this mtDNA lineage into the New World.
Furthermore, the virtual absence of haplogroup B
mtDNAs in modern Eskimo, Aleut, and northern Na-
Dene Indian populations (Table 11), which represent
more recent expansions into North America, implies
that haplogroup B mtDNAs were not present in the
Beringian region after 1 0,000 YBP, when these popula-
tions were likely founded.
Regarding the other mtDNA lineages present in
northeastern Siberians, haplogroup C, Y, and Z mtDNAs
have not been observed in either ancient or modern
Native American groups (Schurr et al. 1 990; Torroni et
al. 1 992, 1 993a, 1 994a, b; Stone and Stoneking 1 998;
Lorenz and Smith 1 996, 1 997). Therefore, populations
bearing these haplotypes must have spread in north-
east Asia after the initial populating of the New World.
Consistent with this hypothesis, the divergence times
of haplogroups G, Y, and Z are shallower than those of
haplogroups A-D in Siberia and the Americas (Table
1 3). Of these Siberian mtDNA lineages, haplogroup G
is the oldest and most diverse, a result paralleled by its
broader distribution within Asia itself (Horai et al. 1 996;
Ballinger et al. 1 992; Torroni et al. 1 993b; Schurr 1 998;
Starikovskaya et al. 1998; Schurr et al. 1999, 2001;
Bermisheva et al. 2001 ; Derbeneva et al. 2002a).
CR Sublineage Distribution
The distribution of CR sublineages in Siberian and
Native Americans further highlights the genetic discon-
tinuities between these populations. To begin with,
the primary sublineages within haplogroups A, C, and
D present in northeastern Siberians differ from those in
Native Americans (Table 1 5). In general, Paleoasiatic-
speakers and North Pacific Rim populations share more
of these sublineages than either did with eastern Sibe-
rian or Native American populations. Within haplogroup
A, almost every CR sequence from these populations
has the 161 1 IT mutation that delineates "American"
from "Asian" haplotypes from this mtDNA lineage. Since
the founding CR sequence for this haplogroup is the
only mtDNA shared between the Chukchi, Siberian
246 PEOPLES, ANIMALS, AND LAND/ GENETICS
Table 1 5/ Distribution ofhaplogroup A, C and D Sublimages in Sibe-
rian and Native American Populations
Haplo- CR Sequence Eastern raieo- N. Pacific Rim Amerindians
group Sublineage Siberians Asiatics Populations
A 1 VA X
II X
III
111
VA YA
l\ /
IV A; YA
r
1 X
II X
111 X
IV X
D 1 X
II X X
111 X
IV X
Note; 'Eastern Siberians' include Nivkh, Udegey, and Evenk; Paleoasiatics'
include Itelmen, Koryak, and Chukchi; 'North Pacific Rim Populations' include
Siberian andAlaskan Yupik, Alaskan Inuit, and Na-Dene Indians; and 'Amerindians'
include NWCoast and all otherAmerindian populations
Yupik, Alaskan Alutiiq and Yup'ik, Na-Dene Indians, and
Amerindians (Ward et al. 1991, 1993; Shields et al.
1 993; Starikovskaya et al. 1 998), it clearly demarcates
the occurrence of the 161 1 1T mutation in haplogroup
A mtDNAs, hence, the initial population expansion which
brought them to the New World.
Several other polymorphic nucleotides identify/ spe-
cific sublineages of haplogroup A. The 16192T muta-
tion distinguishes a set of mtDNAs that are found only
in the Koryak, Chukchi, Siberian Yupik, Alaskan Alutiiq
and Yup'ik, Aleut, and Na-Dene Indians (Table 1 4), and,
hence, delineates a "North Pacific Rim" branch of this
haplogroup. These sublineage I mtDNAs comprise sixty
percent of the Chukchi and Siberian Yupik mtDNAs
(Starikovskaya et al. 1998), as well as the majority of
CR sequences in Alaskan Athapaskans, Alaskan Alutiiq
and Yup'ik (Shields et al. 1 993) and Aleut (Rubicz et al.
2001 , In Press). Such a distribution implies that these
haplogroup A mtDNAs evolved in isolation from simi-
lar haplotypes in the Na-Dene Indians and Amerindians
living in the NW Coast, and that they are part of the
common genetic stock that gave rise to the Chukchi,
Eskimo-Aleut, and Alaskan Athapaskans.
Within sublineage I, a Na-Dene-specific sub-branch
is also present. This sub-branch is characterized by
the np 16233Cand np 16331Ctran-
sitions, the latter also causing the
Rsal np 16329 site loss which has
been observ/ed in Na-Dene-specific
RFLP haplotypes (Torroni et al. 1 992,
1993a). Haplotypes with this mu-
tation occur in the Dogrib and Tlingit
of Canada, and are also present in
the Navajo and Apache of the United
States Southwest (Torroni et al.
1992, 1993), populations that de-
scended from Northern Atha-
paskans (Haskell 1987). Based on
these data, it appears that this sub-
branch of sublineage I arose early in
the differentiation of Athapaskan
populations prior to their dispersal into Alaska and
North America, and was spread to neighboring
Amerindian populations through gene flow.
In addition, all of the CR lineages having the
16265C transition form a distinct cluster that contain
exclusively Eskimoan sequences (Table 14). In fact,
every Eskimo population analyzed for CR sequence
variation exhibits mtDNAs from sublineage II (Shields
et al. 1993; Starikovskaya et al. 1998; Saillard et al.
2000). As a consequence, these mtDNAs appear to
have arisen in ancestral Eskimoan populations, and
spread to various circum-arctic regions during the ex-
pansion of the ancestors of today's Yupik and Inuit
people during the last several thousand years. In con-
trast, the third sublineage (III) lacks the 161 1 IT
mutation altogether. These CR sequences appear
largely in East Asian and eastern Siberian populations.
Because they lack the 1 61 1 IT mutation, sublineage 111
mtDNAs likely represent the ancestral state for this
mtDNA lineage (Table 1 1). Among Paleoasiatic-speak-
ers, the Koryak and Itelmen have haplogroup A CR
sequences from sublineages I and III, whereas the
Chukchi and Siberian Yupik lack them altogether.
Recent studies of Aleut populations also indicate
that they have unique haplogroup A sequences (Rubicz
T. C. SCHURR AND D. C. WALLACE 247
Amguyema Chukchi
Coast Chukchi
Siberian Eskimo
L Pakhachi Chukchi
Udegey
Taiwanese Han
Nivkh
Korean
N. Altaian
Ket
'Sel'kup
Nganasan
Yukagir
Evenk
Even
Maritime Koryak
Reindeer Koryak
Itel'men
76/Neighbor-Joining Tree for Aboriginal Siberian and East Asian Populations
The genetic distances used to generate this tree were estimated from RFLP
haplotype data (modified after Schurr et al. 1 999, Fig. 5).
et al. 2001 , In Press). The majority of these sequences
derive from sublineage I, with two distinct subsets also
having the 16212A—C (16212C) and 16234C—
T
(1 6234T) transitions, both of which appear to be Aleut-
specific. However, none of the Aleut sequences have
the Eskimo-specific 16265C transition (Shields et al.
1993; Starikovskaya et al. 1998; Saillard et al. 2000),
or the Athapaskan-specific 16331G transition (Shields
et al. 1 993; Torroni et al. 1 993a).
mtDNAs belonging to a fourth sublineage (IV) of
haplogroup A occur exclusively in Native American
populations (Table 1 5). Within this sublineage, the
16129A mutation defines a largely North Amerindian
cluster of haplogroup A mtDNAs which is comprised
of Haida, Nuu-Chah-Nulth, and Bella
Coola CR sequences, and, within this
cluster, a subgroup consisting of only
Nuu-Chah-Nulth mtDNAs is seen
(Shields et al 1993; Starikovskaya et
al. 1998). Another cluster defined
by the 16355T transition contained
only Haida and Bella Coola mtDNAs
(Ward et al. 1991, 1993;
Starikovskaya et al. 1998). The
uniqueness of these Haida
haplogroup A CR sequences, and
the lack of mtDNAs having the Na-
Dene-specific 16331G transition,
explains in large part the genetic
differences previously observed
between the Haida and other Na-
Dene Indian populations (Torroni et
al. 1992, 1 993b; Shields etal. 1993).
Overall, these population-specific CR
sublineages may reflect the isola-
tion and re-emergence of remnant
populations occupying biogeo-
graphic refugia in Beringiaand south-
ern Alaska, which existed until the
end of the last glacial maximum
(Rogers et al. 1991). Moreover,
these findings imply that Amerindian populations
have become genetically differentiated from groups
residing in Arctic and Subarctic regions, and that con-
siderable gene flow has taken place among NW Coast
populations.
Similar trends were observed for the CR sequences
of haplogroups C and D. Two sublineages in haplogroup
C bear a close resemblance to haplogroup C mtDNAs
present in Native American populations (sublineage
IV) by having the 1 6223T-1 6298C-1 6327T sequence
motif characteristic of this mtDNA lineage (Tables
11, 15). Sub-lineage I occurs predominantly in East
Asian and eastern Siberian populations, whereas the
other (II), having the additional 16124Cand 16318T
248 PEOPLES, ANIMALS, AND LAND/ GENETICS
mutations, occurs only in Paleoasiatic groups (II).
Amerindian sub-lineage IV differs from these Siberian
sublineages by the presence of the 16325C mutation.
The only populations found to have similar mtDNAs
are Mongolians and Amur River populations (Kolman
et al. 1996; Schurr et al. 2001), suggesting these re-
gions as possible source areas for ancestral Native
Americans. By contrast, the third Siberian sublineage
(III) has a quite different sequence motif than the oth-
ers, and appears only in Paleoasiatic groups, possibly
reflecting its origins amongst them.
Likewise, haplogroup D has several sublineages
within it (Table 14). The first (I) occurs at very low
frequencies among Paleoasiatic-speaking groups and
Siberian Yupik, and represented the only
haplogroup D mtDNA in the Koryak (SIB40;
Starikovskaya et al. 1 998). The second
sublineage (II) occurs exclusively among
Chukotkan populations, as no similar types
are seen among Native American groups
with high frequencies of haplogroup D (Ward
et al. 1 991 , 1 993; Shields et al. 1 993). The
remaining mtDNAs from East Asian and
eastern Siberian populations formed a
sublineage (III) that had a sequence motif
most similar to haplogroup D haplotypes
in Native American populations (sub-lineage
IV), indicating that sublineage III probably
represents the ancestral state for this
mtDNA lineage in Asia and the Americas.
Amerindian sublineage IV mtDNAs were
distinguished from similar Asian haplo-
types by the 16325C mutation. Interest-
ingly, the only Asian populations that were
found to possess haplogroup D mtDNAs
with the 1 632 5C mutation are Japanese and
Koreans (Horai et al. 1 996) and Amur River
groups (Schurr et al. 2001 ). These findings
suggest that East Asia could be a possible
source area for these haplotypes in New
World populations.
Aleut populations also have unique haplogroup D
sequences (Rubicz et al. 2001 , In Press; Derbeneva et
al. 2002b). These sequences have the 16129A and
1 6271 C transitions defining the D2 subtype described
by Forster et al. (1996), which is defined by the
16223T-16271C-16362C motif. The D2 subtype has
previously been detected in the Chukchi and Siberian
Eskimo (Starikovskaya et al. 1 998), as well as a single
Alaskan Athapaskan Indian (Shields et al. 1 993), but is
absent from Greenland Eskimos and Kamchatkan popu-
lations (Saillard et al. 2000, Schurr et al. 1999). This
pattern suggests that D2 haplotypes arose in ances-
tral Aleut and were disseminated to surrounding groups
through gene flow.
Koryaks
Itel'men
Ainu
Japanese
Koreans
Siberians
Yakima
Nuu-Chah-Nulth
Bella Coola
Haida
Eskimos
Chukchi
///Neighbor-joining tree for aboriginal Siberian, East Asian, and
Amerindian populations. The genetic distances used to generate this
tree were estimated from CR sequence data (Schurr et al. 1 999, Fig. 8).
T. C. SCHURR AND D. C. WALLACE 249
The phylogenetic analysis of CR sequence variation
in eastern Siberian, East Asian, and Native American
populations revealed sets of relationships which were
consistent with this assessment (Fig. 77). First, there
was an obvious split between the Paleoasiatic-speaking
groups from Chukotka and Kamchatka. The Koryak
and Itelmen showed much closer genetic ties to the Ainu
and East Asian populations, whereas the Chukchi were
much closer to the Siberian Yupik, Haida, and North-
west Coast Amerindian populations. In addition, the
contemporary Korean and Japanese populations
showed close genetic affinities, and the Ainu had ge-
netic similarities to both groups, as seen in Horai et al.
(1996). The latter association was probably attrib-
utable to recent admixture between the Ainu and Japa-
nese, rather than these groups having an ancient shared
ancestry.
Certain affinities among Native American popula-
tions were also evident in this analysis. All Northwest
Coast Amerindian populations clustered together, and
the Bella Coola and the Haida showed a particularly
close relationship. This close relationship seemed to
imply that the Haida were an Amerindian population
that was linguistically influenced by Na-Dene Indians,
rather than being a Na-Dene Indian group that was ge-
netically influenced by Amerindians. However, further
comparisons of genetic diversity in the Haida, Alaskan
Athapaskans, and Northwest Coast Amerindian groups
will be necessary to confirm this hypothesis.
Furthermore, eastern Siberians and the Yakima of
Washington state show some degree of similarity to
each other. This similarity largely results from the fact
that eastern Siberians contained a number of different
haplotypes from haplogroups A, C, and D, and these
had CR sequences that were more similar to those in
Amerindian populations than those in Chukotkan and
Kamchatkan populations. As a result, eastern Siberi-
ans and Amerindian populations were positioned fairly
close to each other (Fig. 77). In other words, popula-
tions located some distance away from the North Pa-
cific Rim on either side of Bering Strait tended to have
more similar CR sequences than those occupying the
former Beringian region. However, it should be noted
that all of the Siberian haplotypes differed from com-
parable Native American haplotypes at the RFLP level.
Hence, both eastern Siberians and Amerindians appear
to have arisen from common ancestral populations,
rather than from those that expanded in this region
more recently, such as Paleoasiatic groups, Eskimo-
Aleut, and Na-Dene Indians. Concomitantly, those
populations whose ancestors last occupied the former
Beringian region have become genetically differenti-
ated from Siberian and Amerindian groups, and now
resemble each other more closely than to their puta-
tive sister groups in northern Asia and the New World.
When additional CR sequences from other Native
Siberian populations are used to assess the genetic
affinities of these populations, some of these same
patterns are observed (Fig. 78). Paleoasiatic popula-
tions are split into Chukotkan and Kamchatkan groups,
while the Reindeer Koryak show similarities to the Even,
who probably influenced them culturally and geneti-
cally. The Koryak and Itelmen also show similarities to
Amur River groups, who have significant frequencies
of haplogroup G and Y mtDNAs, and this may reflect
the common origins of these populations. While form-
ing a distinct branch separate from the easternmost
populations, the Tofalar, Evenk, Buryat and Tuvan clus-
tered together within a larger grouping that included
all eastern Siberian peoples. By contrast, the Yakut,
Northern Altayan, Ket, and Selkup clustered at some
distance from eastern Siberian populations, most likely
because of the sizeable portion of Western Eurasian
haplotypes in their mtDNA gene pool (Table 10).
Comparison of Genetic and Anthropomet-
ric Data for North Pacific Rim Populations
The results of these studies allowed a direct compari-
son of the patterns of biological variation among North
Pacific Rim populations based on mtDNA, nuclear DNA,
anthropometric, and craniometric data. The first no-
table difference between these sets of analyses was
250 PEOPLES, ANIMALS, AND LAND/ GENETICS
the relationship between the Koryak and
Itelmen. Based on mtDNA data, these two
populations show close genetic affinities
(Schurr et al. 1 999), while the principal
components (PC) analysis ofJNPE anthro-
pometric data shows the Kamchadal
(Itelmen) to be distantly related to other
eastern Siberian groups, including the
Koryak (Comuzzie et al. 1 995). In all like-
lihood, this discrepancy reflects the sig-
nificant level of admixture between
Itelmen and Russians since the turn of the
eighteenth century (Antropova 1964b;
Murashko 1 994), and mostly that medi-
ated through non-Native male gene flow,
since the mtDNA data clearly show the
Itelmen to have only aboriginal genotypes
amongst them.
There were also shifting patterns of
association amongst the Paleoasiatic-
speaking populations of Chukotka and
Kamchatka. Aside from the Koryak-ltelmen
closeness, the mtDNA data show the
Koryak to have some affinities with Chuk-
chi populations, but stronger links with
populations from the Lower Amur River/
Sea of Okhotsk region farther south (Nivkh,
Udegey, Nanay, Ulchi, Negidal, Ainu). The
PC analysis of JNPE anthropometric data also reveal
affinities between the Koryak and the Even and Yukagir
(Comuzzie et al. 1 995; Ousley 1 995), associations that
are reflected in the genetic distance estimates based
on mtDNA haplogroup and frequencies and CR se-
quence variation in Siberian groups (Figs. 76 and 78).
Third, the relationship of the Nivkh to other eastern
Siberian and circumpolar Arctic populations differs
depending on the type of analysis being conducted.
mtDNA studies indicate that the Nivkh are an outlier
relative to most eastern Siberian groups, but do have
links to both Lower Amur River, Sea of Okhotsk, and
Kamchatkan populations. By contrast, the PC analysis
Yakuts
Sel'kups
Kets
Northern Altaians
— Udegeys
Negldals
Nivkhs
Ulchi
Nanai
Itei'men
Koryaks
Reindeer Koryaks
Evens
Tofalars
SEskimos
Chukchi
Venisey Evenks
Buryats
Tuvans
78/ Neighbor-Joining tree for Native Siberian and East Asian Populations.
The genetic distances used to generate this tree were based on CR sequence
data from these populations (Shields et al. 1 993; Derenko et al. 1 997,
1 998; Starikov-skaya et al. 1 998; Schurr et al. 1 999, 2000,200 1 , 2003)
ofJNPE anthropometric data position the Nivkh close
to both the Chukchi and Aleut (Comuzzie et al. 1 995),
or to the Alaskan Athapaskans (Ousley 1995). Al-
though having a high frequency of haplogroup D, none
of these Nivkh haplotypes are closely related to those
appearing in Paleoasiatic-speaking populations. These
differences may, thus, reflect the convergence of physi-
cal features in the Nivkh and other North Pacific popu-
lations, rather than being the consequence of substan-
tial contact and gene flow amongst them.
Fourth, the clustering of Eskimo populations varies
according to the type of data being used in the analy-
sis. One PC analysis ofJNPE anthropometric data (Ousley
T. C. SCHURR AND D. C. WALLACE
1995) suggested a link between the Labrador,
MacKenzie Delta, and Siberian Yupik, and affinities
between the other Alaskan Yup'ik with Aleut and
Amerindians, whereas another showed the Siberian
Yupik to be intermediate between the Koryak and
Chukchi (Comuzzie et al. 1 995). Nuclear genetic data
reveal a different pattern, with most Eskimo popula-
tions clustering together, and the Aleut diverging
from Eskimo groups (Harper 1980; Crawford et al.
1981). The mtDNA data also highlight the genetic
similarity among Eskimo populations, both Siberian and
Alaskan, and the relative closeness of Eskimo groups
and Alaskan Athapaskans, as well as the strong ties
between Siberian Yupik and Chukchi (Starikovskaya et
al. 1998). These differences imply that regional inter-
actions with eastern Siberian, Aleut, or Athapaskan
populations may have influenced the distribution of
physical features in Eskimo groups.
Fifth, the Aleut also show varying degrees of simi-
larity to North Pacific Rim populations, depending on
the type of data being analyzed. Based on limited
mtDNA data for this population, the Aleut appear to
be part of the genetic stock which emerged after the
initial peopling of the New World, although exhibiting
haplogroup A and D frequencies which distinguished
them from other Eskimoan populations. On the other
hand, PC analysis ofJNPE anthropometric data has iden-
tified affinities between the Aleut and Alaskan Yup'ik
(Ousley 1 995), or between them and Athapaskans and
Northwest Coast Amerindians (Comuzzie et al. 1 995).
Therefore, the Aleut appear to have biological charac-
teristics that are intermediate between those of a num-
ber of populations from the North Pacific Rim, perhaps
as a consequence of their geographic isolation and
later contact with various ethnic groups.
Finally, unlike the Aleut, the Haida show rather
consistent patterns of similarity to North Pacific Rim
populations, irrespective of the type of data being
analyzed. The mtDNA data reveal the Haida to have
affinities with both Athapaskan and NW Coast Amer-
indian populations, although tending to be closer to
the latter groups. The same pattern is observed in the
PC analysis ofJNPE anthropometric data (Ousley 1 995)
and previous nuclear genetic data (Field et al. 1 988), as
well as linguistic evidence for this group (Krauss 1 988).
Thus, to a degree not seen for other Arctic populations,
all biological anthropological data for the Haida are gen-
erally concordant in revealing mixed Athapaskan-
Amerindian genetic and cultural influences on the for-
mation of this tribal group, as well as certain unique
features that may have arisen as a consequence of its
geographic isolation.
Overall, these analyses confirm that single locus
genetic systems such as the mtDNA are informative
for delineating the origins and affinities of human popu-
lations, in this case, Paleoasiatic-speaking and other
eastern Siberian groups. In addition, they have shown
that certain populations cluster together on the basis
of shared maternally-inherited genetic lineages and their
constituent haplotypes, probably due to their com-
mon origins and subsequent regional differentiation.
These studies have further demonstrated how the
genetic substructure within these groups can be
used to piece together the population history of north-
east Siberia and northern North America. However,
the uncertain relationships among some North Pacific
Rim populations revealed by the comparison of mtDNA
data with those from anthropometric, craniometric,
and nuclear genetic studies indicate that data from bi-
parentally inherited genetic systems, as well as the
uniparentally inherited Y-chromosome, are needed to
more fully characterize the process of population
differentiation in these regions, and hence, test previ-
ous hypothesizes about the genetic prehistory of ab-
original Siberian groups.
Revisiting JNPE Conclusions About North-
eastern Siberian Origins
Based on these molecular data, it is possible to make
a number of conclusions about the associations be-
tween eastern Siberian and Native American popula-
tions, and to determine how well these findings relate
2 52 PEOPLES, ANIMALS, AND LAND/ GENETICS
to the models proposed by Boas and his colleagues at
the turn of the century. First, from a genetic standpoint,
Paleoasiatic-speakers do not appear to be closely re-
lated to Native American populations. Although having
haplogroups A, C, and D in common, Paleoasiatic-speak-
ing and Amerindian populations share few, if any,
haplotypes from these mtDNA lineages. Such differ-
ences probably reflect the fact that the former popula-
tions expanded into northeastern Siberia following the
last glacial maximum, whereas ancestral Amerindians
had entered the New World well before this time. Thus,
from a molecular perspective, Paleoasiatic-speakers
cannot be considered "Americanoids."
Second, the genetic data reveal a dichotomy be-
tween Paleoasiatic-speakers from Chukotka and those
from Kamchatka. Based on mtDNA data, the Chukchi
and Siberian Yupik have strong genetic ties with popu-
lations located across the Bering Strait from them, such
as Alaskan Eskimo and Na-Dene Indians, as well as
affinities with some northern Amerindian groups. By
contrast, the Koryak and Itelmen have stronger ge-
netic connections with ethnic groups originating in the
Lower Amur River/Sea of Okhotsk region, such as the
Nivkh, Udegey, Nanay, Ulchi, Negidal, and Ainu. These
associations suggest that Kamchatkan and Lower Amur
River populations emerged from a common gene pool
some 5000-8000 years ago, or perhaps that the
emerging northern Okhotsk cultures that gave rise to
the Koryak and Itelmen subsequently influenced those
evolving from southern Okhotsk cultures.
Along the same lines, the molecular data do not
reveal the presence of an "Eskimo wedge" among north-
eastern Siberians and Native American groups (see also
Dumond, this volume). In general, Eskimo groups have
mtDNA haplotypes that are similar to those appearing
in Na-Dene Indians and Chukchi, and hence, appear to
have emerged from the last inhabitants of ancient
Beringia before the flooding of the land bridge. The
mtDNA data may also suggest that Eskimo popula-
tions evolved in the Bering Sea region, perhaps in
southwest Alaska, rather than north-central Canada,
as suggested by the "Eskimo wedge" model. On the
other hand, the Chukchi, Eskimo, Aleut, and Na-Dene
Indians all tend to be genetically distinctive from each
other, implying some degree of geographic isolation
amongst them since the occupation of their respec-
tive homelands.
Fourth, the molecular data show both the ge-
netic distinctiveness of Tungusic-speaking groups,
and their genetic influence on the Yukagir, Chukchi,
and Koryak. These findings are consistent with both
ethnographic evidence from northeastern Siberian
groups, and the analyses of the anthropometric data
collected in this region during the JNPE. In addition,
central Siberian groups, such as the Northern Altayan,
Selkup, and Ket, are not closely linked to eastern Sibe-
rian populations, and instead show a distinct genetic
profile that includes both West Eurasian and East Asian
genotypes. These regional differences support previ-
ous assertions by Boas and members of the JNPE that
northeastern Siberian populations had origins and
affinities distinct from those groups located in the
interior of northern Asia, such as the Mongolian, Buryat,
Tungusic-speakers, and Yakut (Sakha), the later two
sets of populations having entered this region in rela-
tively recent prehistory.
Finally, the mtDNA data have provided a number of
insights into the process of the peopling of the World.
To begin with, they suggest a pre-glacial maximum
date (> 18,000 cal BP) for the emergence and expan-
sion of ancestral Paleoindians into the New World (Table
1 3), as also proposed by Boas (1 905). They also sug-
gest the occurrence of multiple population movements
across the Bering Strait during this early period of settle-
ment (between 35,000-15,000 cal BP), possibly using
both interior and coastal routes (Torroni et al. 1993a,
b; Starikovskaya et al. 1 998; Schurr et al. 1 999; Schurr
and Wallace 1 999). Furthermore, as noted above, these
data are generally consistent with the glacial barrier
model of Rogers et al. (1 99 1 ). According to this model,
once ancestral Amerindian populations began settling
in the New World, glacial coalescence cut them off
T. C. SCHURR AND D. C. WALLACE 253
from related groups living farther north on the Beringian
land mass. The resulting ice barriers in Beringia and
North American isolated in glacial refugia the popula-
tions that would eventually develop into the Eskimo-
Aleut, Na-Dene Indians, and Amerindian populations.
Similar refugia were created within eastern Siberia, with
the concomitant population isolation leading to the lin-
guistic and biological differentiation of the ancestral
groups that gave rise to Chukotko-Kamchatkan-,
Yukagir-, Altaic-, and Uralic-speaking, populations. On
a larger scale, these glacial refugia may also have per-
mitted the divergence of "caucasoid" and "mongol-
oid" populations, thereby influencing the pattern of
genetic variation throughout all of Eurasia.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Drs. Rem I. Sukernik and Elena B.
Starikovskaya for their participation in a larger study
of Siberian and Native American origins, from which
this paper is contributed. Thanks also to Lorri Griffin
and the Clinical Research Center of the Emory Univer-
sity School of Medicine for their assistance in the pro-
cessing of blood samples, and Drs. Andy Kogelnik and
Sandro Bonatto for their assistance with the statistical
analysis of the mtDNA data. Many thanks are also due
to the hospital staff and doctors in the villages of
Ossora, Karaga, Tymlat, Voyampolka, and Kovran in
Kamchatka, Russia for their assistance with this project;
the Koryak and Itelmen people from these villages for
their participation in this research and hospitality dur-
ing our fieldwork in Kamchatka in 1 993 and 1 996; Dr.
Vladimir V. Slavinskiy of the Providenya hospital for his
generous help and assistance with sample collection
in the Chukchi Autonomous Area; and the Chukchi and
Siberian Yupik people for their participation in this re-
search during fieldwork in Chukotka in 1 994. This re-
search was supported by the International Science
Foundation, the J. Worley Brown Fellowship Fund, the
Leakey Foundation, the National Institutes of Health,
the National Science Foundation, the Russian Fund for
Basic Research, Sigma Xi, and The Wenner-Gren Foun-
dation for Anthropological Research.
Notes
1 . A "haplotype" is an individual mtDNA de-
fined by a specific set of polymorphisms, whereas
a "haplotype group," or "haplogroup" is a set of
related haplotypes that share the same set of iden-
tifying mutations. The term "mtDNA lineage" is
used interchangeably with "haplogroup" in the
text, since both denote the same genealogical
associations among mtDNAs.
2. For a description of the methods used to
characterize mtDNA variation in Siberian and Na-
tive American populations, please refer to the
publications cited in the text and tables.
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258 PEOPLES, ANIMALS, AND LAND/ GENETICS
*]"!ie post-Jesup (3,enturt) of f^esearch o
the preKistory of fNjortheast Liberia
n
SERGEI ARUTIUNOV
The contributions of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition
(1897-1902) marl<ed a giant leap in the accumulation
of knowledge about the cultures and peoples of
Northeast Siberia. To the Russian participants of the
Expedition, their JNPE fieldwork and subsequent pub-
lication efforts were formative experiences. It also
helped transform them into professional anthropolo-
gists and key figures in the emerging field of the Russian
Siberian/North Pacific/Circumpolar research. It was thus
not surprising that some twenty years later, the former
JNPE members, particularly Waldemar Bogoras (Vladimir
Bogoraz) and Lev Shternberg, became key players in
the development of northern anthropological research
in the former Soviet Union in the 1 920s and in the early
1930s. Many other Russian Siberian anthropologists
who did not participate directly in theJNPE efforts were,
nevertheless, well informed about this venture and its
scientific results, and were deeply influenced by them
(see Krupnik 1998).
The impact of the ideas generated by Franz Boas,
the intellectual and organizational leader of the Jesup
Expedition, on this early development of Soviet/
Russian Siberian anthropology was decisive. The sub-
sequent Stalinist purges and the obnoxious ideologi-
cal control by the Communist Party over all kinds of
humanitarian studies in the former Soviet Union stalled
and obscured this impact over almost fifty years.
However, the attempts to discredit this influence
as a manifestation of "bourgeois" ideas were reflected
in propaganda statements only. The core of Siberian
anthropological research during the entire Soviet era
remained primarily evolutionist in spirit and generally
Boasian in its focus and content. In was not until re-
cently that popular though superficial post-modernist
approaches were established among a portion of
Russian anthropologists during the most-recent post-
Soviet years.
Three Generations of Researchers
There were several successive cohorts, or generations,
of Russian (Soviet) scholars who were active in the
study of Northeast Asia and the Russian Far East [the
Pacific Coast of Russia—ed.] following Bogoras,
Shternberg, and Jochelson. The first cohort consisted
of people born in the early 1 900s, like Maxim G. Levin,
Georgii F. Debetz, Nikolai N. Cheboksarov, abd Alexei
P. Okladnikov. The second cohort consisted primarily
of the students of this first generation, including Valerii
P. Alekseev, Dorian A. Sergeev, Rudolf F. Its, Nikolai N.
Dikov, Yurii P. Mochanov, Anatolii P. Derev-ianko, and
many others, myself included. Our cohort became ac-
tive in Russian Siberian/Far East research in the early to
mid- 1 950s. In the 1 970s, the third cohort entered the
scholarly forum, and its members are currently most
active in Russian Siberian research in anthropology and
prehistory.
These three cohorts, or generations, are distinct
groups of people. They can be singled out not only in
the studies of Northeast Asia, and not only in the his-
tory of Russian anthropology, in general, but perhaps
in the overall history of Soviet (as well as post-Soviet)
science. Many people, who were born between 1910
and 1 926 and who were still young in the 1 940s, were
decimated during World War II. The birth rates at the
peak of the Stalinist terror and in the subsequent war
years (i.e., between 1937 and 1945) were relatively
low compared to both the preceding and the follow-
ing decades. Therefore, the first generation consisted
mostly of people born between 1900 and 1913; the
second generation—of those born between 1925 and
1937; and the third generation—of those born in the
late 1940s and during the 1950s, that is, well after
World War II. Perhaps, we can now identify the fourth
cohort that consists of scholars born during the 1 960s
and 1 970s. As a very promising current trend, a grow-
ing number of young anthropologists have been trained
from among representatives of Native Siberian people,
including a fairly high percentage of women. In abso-
lute numbers they are still few, but the total number of
Native people across Eastern Siberia and the Russian
Far East does not exceed 50,000 [excluding the Sakha/
Yakut people—ed.].
In general, there was a high degree of continuity
between these distinctive generations of scholars
in Siberian anthropology. The general framework of
scholarly approach, laid down by Boas, is highly vis-
ible in publications of the keyJNPE participants, such
as Waldemar Bogoras, Waldemar Jochelson, and Lev
Shternberg, although the latter was not a direct JNPE
team member. It is still articulated in the subsequent
contributions by Levin, Debetz, Cheboksarov, and
others who either attended classes of some of the
"seniors" of the "Jesup Generation" [mostly courses
taught by Bogoras in Leningrad in the 1920s—ed.]
or at least were influenced by their writings. Apart
from the influence of Franz Boas in the field of cul-
tural anthropology, important intellectual beacons
for all the Russian students in Siberian anthropol-
ogy had been A. Hrdliaeka in the field of physical
anthropology and V. Cordon Childe in the area of
archaeology.
All the 'senior' scholars have greatly influenced the
next generation of Russian Siberian anthropologists.
The impact was spread not only via theoretical ap-
proach, which can be generally characterized as
broadly evolutionist rather than strictly Marxist, but
also by sharing the experience and practices of field-
work conducted between the late 1920s and the
1 950s in various areas of Siberia. Among other schol-
ars of the same "post-Bogoras" generation, who were
not directly affiliated with the tradition transmitted by
Bogoras and Shternberg, was Boris O. Dolgikh. Dolgikh
was even more deeply immersed in long-term field
studies in Siberia and thus, in a certain sense, he
continued the pattern of fieldwork once determined
by the participants of the Jesup Expedition. Dolgikh's
field experience and methods greatly influenced the
endeavors of his disciples of the following (World
War II) generation, such as Vladimir I. Vasil'iev, Yurii B.
Simchenko, Vladilen A. Tugolukov, and others.
The Joint efforts of three post-Jesup generations of
Russian Siberian scholars have elevated the status of
our knowledge about physical and cultural anthropol-
ogy as well as the prehistory of Northern Eurasia to a
qualitatively new and higher level compared to that of
the turn of the twentieth century. The general back-
ground of this knowledge made it possible also to
advance new scenarios of events that have happened
across Siberia and the Northeastern tip of Asia adja-
cent to North America in the course of the last three or
four millennia. These events resulted in the formation
of the current ethnic and cultural mosaics of the area,
mainly of the Chukotka and Kamchatka Peninsulas, and
the Kolyma River Basin in the interior portion of the
present-day Magadan Province (oblast). The academic
efforts and their results over some seventy years after
the publication of the main JNPE Siberian volumes
were quite impressive. Nevertheless, many questions
260 PEOPLE, ANIMALS, AND LAND/ PREHISTORY
still remain unresolved and many more new issues
have arisen in the course of research and studies
that could not be proposed in the time of the Jesup
Expedition a century ago.
Basic Milestones in Research in the Siberian
Northeast
One of the basic questions in cultural (pre)history of
Northeast Asia is the transition from a mainland (inte-
rior) adaptation to a maritime one, that is, when and
how the shift occurred in Arctic subsistence from hunt-
ing of inland big-game mammals to the pursuit of the
pinnipeds and the cetaceans on and off shore. So far
we can trace only the more or less late stages of mari-
time adaptation, which undoubtedly had to be pre-
ceded by a long initial evolution.
On the Russian side, archaeological studies across
the northeast section of Siberia (adjacent to Alaska
and the Bering Strait) began in 1945 by Sergei I.
Rudenko. History repeats itself. At the turn of the cen-
tury, in the time of the Jesup Expedition, the basic an-
thropological research in Siberia was conducted by
many progressive-minded social activists (often, dedi-
cated revolutionaries), who were exiled to this remote
area by the repressive Czarist government. In the So-
viet time, a still more oppressive Stalinist regime once
again exiled hundreds and thousands of liberal-minded
intellectuals and scholars to Siberia. Sergei Rudenko
was one of those exiles. Among the hardships of exile,
he found enough energy to prepare for and to design
a trip around the shores of the Chukchi Peninsula, which
he would realize when released from his exile. In 1 945,
Rudenko finally was able to undertake a long and not
too safe journey, largely in wooden and skin-boats,
with Native crews around the coasts of the Chukchi
Peninsula. All the difficulties notwithstanding, he man-
aged to conduct a broad archaeological reconnais-
sance survey and also to undertake critical excava-
tions at some sites. The results of his excavations
were published in his well-known Russian mono-
graph and were later translated into English by the
Arctic Institute of North America (Rudenko 1947,
1961).
In the mid- 1 950s, Maxim G. Levin, Dorian A. Sergeev,
and Nikolai N. Dikov began organizing numerous Rus-
sian expeditions to this area. They contributed a large
amount of archaeological and paleoanthropological
(osteological) materials that were derived from ancient
populations of the Bering Strait area and the adjacent
regions along the shores of the Chukchi Peninsula. This
work is now continued by the members of the next
cohort of scholars, such as Mikhail M. Bronstein, Kirill A.
Dneporvskii, and others.' These materials can be
matched by the data gathered by American and West-
ern European archaeologists in Alaska and Northern
Canada, and viewed against a broader background of
recently accumulated knowledge on the origins and
distribution patterns of prehistoric human populations
in the Northern part of Asia. They have enabled us to
formulate some tentative new hypotheses about the
formation of ancient Eskimo culture(s) in the Bering Strait
area and about its impact on populations of the adja-
cent territories (cf. summaries in Fitzhugh and Crowell
1 988; Leskov and Muller-Beck 1 993).
The Most Important Archaeological Sites
and Cultures of Northeast Asia
A good compendium of prehistoric sites and cultures
of Northeast Siberia (Northeast Asia) was produced in
two volumes by Nikolai Dikov and published more
than twenty years ago (Dikov 1 977, 1 979). One should
also consult the monograph of Ruslan Vasilievskii
(1973), and those of Yurii Mochanov (1977) and
Svetlana Fedoseeva (1980) for the adjacent inland re-
gions, basically in Yakutia (Sakha Republic). As the ba-
sic ancient cultures and their most representative sites
across the northeast (Pacific) section of Siberia are con-
cerned, the complex of sites excavated by Nikolai Dikov
at the Ushki Lake on Kamchatka Peninsula should be
ranked among the most important discoveries. Nu-
merous cultural layers at the Ushki sites are safely
separated by stripes of volcanic ashes. This provides
S. A. ARUTIUNOV 26 1
reliable absolute and relative dates for a series of Up-
per Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures, which tentatively
can be compared to, and connected with, some an-
cestors of Amerindian, Eskaleut, and modern Paleo-
asiatic populations of this part of Northern Asia and
the adjacent regions in North America.
The discovery by Nikolai Dikov of the Chortov Ovrag
(Devil's Gorge) site on Wrangel Island in the Chukchi
Sea is evidence of an early maritime adaptation in the
northernmost regions of Siberia at the beginning of
the 2nd Millennium BC. The excavations at the Chortov
Ovrag site produced a rough but efficient harpoon head
for hunting marine mammals. Sites of the Ust-Belsk
culture in the interior of the Chukchi Peninsula show
definite connections to the ancient residents of the
Lena River Basin. The Ust-Belsk sites also indicate an
early penetration of bronze tools into the Siberian
Arctic, which were incorporated into the more or less
unchanged pedestrian hunting economy typical of
the preceding cultural stages.
Numerous ancient archaeological sites have been
discovered along the Russian (Siberian) side of the Bering
Strait and in adjacent coastal areas. Of those the most
critical are the Uelen and Ekven cemeteries, excavated
by the Russian teams of Maxim C. Levin, Dorian A.
Sergeev, Sergei A. Arutiunov, and recently by an inter-
national group led by Mikhail Bronstein and Kirill
Dneprovskii. These two ancient Eskimo sites provide
infinitely rich material on the evolution of the Okvik,
Old Bering Sea, Punuk, Birnirk, and Thule variations of
the ancient Neo-Eskimo culture (see Arutjunov and Bron-
shtein 1 993; Bronshtein 1 993; Dumond and Bland 2002).
Non-Archaeological Evidence and Consider-
ations
According to the hypothesis of Christy Turner (1 985,
1 988), which was based on dental features of the
American aboriginal populations, there have been
three major waves of migrations from Asia to (North)
America. One migration took place probably not later
than 13,000 BP and is responsible for the ancestry
of the majority of the American Indian populations
(Amerinds), with the exception of the members of the
Na-Dene linguistic family (and some related groups).
The second wave represented the ancestors of Na-
Dene and can be tentatively dated to around 9000
or 8000 BP. The third wave gave birth to the Eskimo-
Aleut (Eskaleut) populations; it may be dated approxi-
mately by 4000 or even 6000 BP.
From the most general viewpoint, the linguistic
composition of the huge Eurasian continent, with the
exception of its southeastern portion of mainly south-
ern China and Indochina, can be reduced to only two
major linguistic (super-)phyla. This classification is based
upon the most radical current perspectives and con-
cepts in historical comparative linguistics that are ad-
vocated by such modern linguists as H. Fleming, Aron
Dolgopolskii, and Sergei Starostin. Those theories liter-
ally "lump" several major language families into groups
or phyla, in this case—even in super-phyla. One ofthese
phyla is known as 'Nostratic' (as named by Illich-Svitych
1971), and the other as 'Sino-Dagestanic' (named by
Starostin 1989). The latter includes North-Caucasian
languages; Burushaski language of the Hindukush Moun-
tains, Sino-Tibetan; Yenisseic (Ket); and possibly Na-
Dene language families (the position of the Basque
language remains unclear). The former includes all other
languages of Northern, Central, and Western Eurasia;
its Eastern "sub-phylum" consists of the Dravidic and
Uralo-Altaic. There is some evidence in favor of a hy-
pothesis that all of the so-called Paleo-Asiatic languages
of Siberia and the North Pacific, including the Yukagir,
the Nivkh, Chukchi-Koryak, Itelmen, and also Eskaleut,
and the Ainu, can be placed in a remote connection
with this "Eastern sub-phylum" (Fleming 1 987).
To date, the first Amerinds, who supposedly crossed
more than 1 3,000 years ago from Asia to America by
the Bering Land Bridge, could not be traced with any
certainty in any archaeological sites in Siberia. Some of
the analogies that are often proposed—for example,
by Russian archaeologist Yurii Mochanov (1969) and
others—between American and Siberian Paleolithic
262 PEOPLE, ANIMALS, AND LAND/ PREHISTORY
i
industries can seem spectacular. But the actual gap in
most cases is too big, both in time and space. iVlost
probably the archaeological traces of the early migrants
from Siberia may now all be buried deep under the
waters of the Bering Sea. Therefore, although there can
be no doubt that the ancestors of the Amerinds once
lived in Asia, so far attempts to find material indica-
tions of their Asiatic habitat and connections have been
futile.
After the first wave of Amerind ancestors' migrated
to North America, the Bering Land Bridge had given its
place to the Bering Sea. It can be assumed that the
kinsmen of the Amerinds (if any), who might have re-
mained in Asia, have been assimilated by another wave
of migrants. The newcomers were probably from the
stock of the Sino-Caucasian speakers. In eastern and
northeastern sections of Asia these were the ances-
tors of the present Sino-Tibetan, Yenisseic (Ket), and
Na-Dene linguistic families, and, possibly, also bearers
of some intermediate linking languages, which are now
completely extinct.
Amerind ancestors were in all probability strongly
oriented towards large inland game hunting, since
nothing seems to indicate that there was any trend
towards a maritime adaptation among them. On the
other hand, the second migration wave, that is, the
ancestors of the Na-Dene people, could not use the
land bridge and they had to cross the Bering Strait in
some type of sea-going vessels. Therefore, these
people had to be maritime adapted, to some extent.
Most of their present westernmost descendants like
the Eyak, Haida, and the Tlingit are among the most
specialized maritime-adapted populations in North
America. The Ket people in Siberia, the only remaining
present-day group of the Yenisseic speakers, also
are predominantly fishing-oriented, although they live
thousands of miles away in the inland boreal forest
zone of Central Siberia.
It can be assumed that fishing specialization has
deep roots in the Final Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic
cultures of Northern and Eastern Siberia. Hence, the
present-day fishing Siberian populations belonging to
the Nostratic phylum, such as the Khanty of the Ob
River Basin or the Nivkh of the Lower Amur River and
Sakhalin Island, might have acquired some initial fish-
ing skills from the preceding Sino-Caucasians—the
Yenisseic and Proto-Na-Dene (and other related extinct
groups) "substratum"—ancient inhabitants of the
Beringian zone. Nikolai Dikov argued more than thirty
years ago (Dikov 1 967) that there were obvious cul-
tural parallels between Paleolithic cultures of Kamchatka
(as illustrated by the Ushki sites) and some prehistoric
cultures of North America. The latter include Palisades,
British Mountain, and Anangula. In Dikov's opinion,
beyond the obvious parallels in stone tools, the shell
beads, red ocher used in burial rituals, and other cul-
tural traits are strong indicators of close cultural simi-
larities between the two prehistoric stocks.
If these analogies are correct, then we can assume
that the early sites in Kamchatka (dated from some-
where about 13,000 BP to approximately 10,000 BP
or later) preceded or could well be correlated with the
alleged dates of the Na-Dene migration to North
America. Therefore, not only the linguistic affiliation
of the Ushki site inhabitants can be quite possibly
Na-Dene linked; the creators of the earliest known
maritime cultures in Alaska and the Aleutians, includ-
ing the Anangula site, are believed to have been early
Na-Dene speakers as well, rather than the Eskaleut, as
is often claimed.
The migration of the Na-Dene speakers across the
Bering Strait could have been at least partially caused
by the growing pressure of the later Nostratic migrants
to Siberia. We can logically suppose that this pressure
must have been particularly strong between 7000 and
6000 BC, or between 9000 and 8000 BP. This is the
time of the earliest agricultural sites in the Northwest-
ern portion of the Indostan sub-continent, which mark
the hypothetical Nostratic (Dravidian) intrusion into the
continental (northern) portion of South Asia. The move-
ment of the early agriculturalists might have been par-
alleled by a similar intrusion of other Eastern Nostratic
S. A. ARUTIUNOV 263
(Old Uralic) populations from farther north into the
central section of Northern Eurasia. The latter were
not agriculturalists but could still have been tech-
nologically well-advanced. A simultaneous start of
these two population shifts can be corroborated by
an alleged greater proximity between proto-Dravidic
and proto-Uralic languages, than with any other
Nostratic proto-languages (Illich-Svitych 1971).
The subsequent millennia, that is 7000 to 4000 BP
(5000-2000 BC) in Northern Eurasia, was the era of the
"Neolithic evolution" and of the formation of the many
local Neolithic cultures in Siberia. These were created
by the distinct though distantly related ethnic groups
of Nostratic origins, such as the Yukagir, the proto-
Tungus, and the ancestors of the Northeastern
Paleoasiatic populations (such as Chukchi-Koryak-
Itelmen, Nivkh, etc.). They were gradually assimilating,
replacing, and/or ousting out of Asia, across the Bering
Strait, the remains of the preceding Sino-Caucasian
(Yenisseic, Proto-Na-Dene) stock.
This earlier Sino-Caucasian substratum, while being
assimilated, might have been a significant factor in eth-
nic and linguistic diversification of the incoming
Nostratic migrants. Even more important must have
been their racial (i.e., physical anthropological) impact.
Many physical traits of these new populations, includ-
ing typically Mongoloid features, began to prevail due
to earlier processes of climatic biological adaptation.
Let us now consider the question of the position
of the Eskaleut ethno-linguistic group in this complex
formation of the modern native populations of North-
east Siberia. The exact data that can help answer this
question are rather scarce, and any speculations on
this subject can only be tentative and hypothetical.
Still, an attempt at a broad integrating hypothesis can
be made, according to the data of physical anthropol-
ogy (cf. Alexeev 1 993). On the one hand, the Eskimo
as well as the Aleut and the Chukchi demonstrate defi-
nite features of the Arctic local race. This reflects their
millennia-long adaptation to the extreme climatic con-
ditions of the Arctic. On the other hand, their relatively
dark pigmentation suggests that they belong to the
Pacific branch of the Mongoloid race and that initially
they were formed in more southern latitudes than their
current habitat. While Asiatic Eskimo display certain
evidences of recent admixture of Central Siberian popu-
lations, the Aleut show some "Europeoid" (Caucasoid)
deviations from the basic Mongoloid type which can-
not be reduced to the late European (mostly Russian)
admixture only.
There are also important archaic ethnographic
parallels between ancient Eskimo and Nivkh (Cilyak)
cultures (Arutiunov et al. 1972) as well as between
the Nivkh and the Aleut. There is also some evidence
of an early and even historical Eskaleut habitation in
Kamchatka (cf. Vdovin 1972). Finally, Nikolai Dikov,
who insisted upon some obvious Amerind parallels in
one of the Ushki sites in Kamchatka, argued that
there were definite Eskaleut (Eskimo) parallels at an-
other, later Ushki site.
The Cultural Peak of the North Pacific Mari-
time Adaptation in Siberia
The cultures that can be considered the highest
achievements of the Arctic maritime adaptation in
Northeast Siberia were the classic forms of the Old
Bering Sea and Punuk cultures of the Bering Strait area.
Surprisingly, their basic cultural features first appeared
in sites of almost three millennia ago in a practically
ready-made form. From its known beginnings, these
cultures demonstrate an astonishingly high number of
features which are almost identical to the modern stage
of cultural development identified by the ethnographic
data. The features that differentiate the modern cul-
ture from the culture of nearly three millennia ago are
rather less important and minor. Probably, nowhere in
the world can we observe such a high degree of cul-
tural continuity, with so little change in the course of
millennia.
This may signif/ that the sea animal hunting adap-
tation of the Bering Strait Eskimo people has reached
the maximum level of its possible development in a
264 PEOPLE, ANIMALS, AND LAND/ PREHISTORY
pre-industrial context. We may speculate that this highly
sophisticated culture was not imported to the Bering
Strait area from some other territories in a ready-made
form. Rather, it was assembled and developed to
Its utmost perfection here from a number of mutually
adjusted cultural "details." Many ofthose "details" might
have been introduced from some other areas in which
they had originally developed.
We may hypothetically single out two main direc-
tions of such cultural diffusions. One venue of critical
cultural influence came from the shores of the Arctic
Ocean, from the mouths of the great Siberian rivers.
The other input came most probably from the south,
from the Sea of Okhotsk shores, mainly from the areas
to the north of the Amur River. Here it received some
important influences from the more southerly regions.
The first stream clearly can be traced via ancient tradi-
tions of Eskimo decorative ornamentation. It introduced
the exquisite technique of engraved straight and punc-
tuated lines, points and circles that are visible already
in the bone industry of the Burulgino site of the para-
Ymyyakhtakh cultural affiliation in the present-day
Yakutia (Sakha Republic). The second stream, probably
having its origins somewhere near the Sea of Japan,
brought with it the rich curvilinear designs, t'ao-t'ieh-
like images, and fantastic faces. The harpoon technol-
ogy was most probably developed independently in
both of these two cultural traditions. It reached its high
level of perfection in the Bering Strait area.
The late Old Bering Sea and the subsequent Punuk
cultural traditions seem to have been the peak of
artistic, social, and food-obtaining efficiency of the
maritime-adapted cultures at the Bering Strait "Cross-
roads." It was probably the Little Ice Age of AD 1 500-
1 700 that brought about a relative deterioration of
the environmental abundance. Consequently, the rela-
tive artistic, social, and cultural impoverishment of the
coastal population occurred. This same environmental
trend, however, triggered the rise of a Native reindeer-
breeding economy in the interior regions of Siberia
(Krupnik 1 993). Thus, around AD 1 500-1 700, a critical
and partly regressive transition took place, with a
significant portion of the formerly sedentary coastal
population moving inland and becoming nomadic. Its
results are well observed in the historically documented
diversity of Native cultures and economies in North-
east Siberia (cf. Krupnik 1 988).
Conclusion
The current destiny and the future of the sea-mammal
hunting culture of Northeast Asia are currently even
less clear than its remote past. The Native maritime
hunting economy in Siberia has been able somehow
to endure, although in a very deformed and distorted
condition, under the artificial paternalism of the Soviet
system. Now, under the stress of transition to a mar-
ket economy, the prospects for its continuity are very
dim. On the other hand, the beauty and sophistication
of technical and artistic achievements of the ancient
Eskimo and their Siberian neighbors may become and,
in fact, is currently emerging as a new source of inspi-
ration, pride, and cultural reassertion of identity for their
modern descendants
Acknowledgements
The author expresses his gratitude to the Kennan Insti-
tute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington, DC,
which partly sponsored his work on this paper.
Notes
1. See the most recent summary of the current
Russian archaeological research on the Chukchi
Peninsula and in the adjacent areas of the North
Pacific in several papers published in Dumond and
Bland 2002
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S. A. ARUTIUNOV 267

Life in Lost SjsWa^CS: Mome, Land, Memort) and tli<
Senses of Loss in fost-Jesup Ivamciiatka
DAVID KOESTER
This paper is about social absence, that is, about the
absence of irreducibly social aspects of experience. It
is about the contemporary significance of closed and
dying Native villages in Kamchatka, in the Russian Far
East. To suggest a metaphor for my strategy here, one
might think of the following analysis as an inquiry into
what would happen to the fabric of social life if some
force were to snip threads throughout the weave, leav-
ing behind a set of connections that seem random
without their previous supports. This is not to ask
what would happen if certain roles were not filled
or specific reciprocal obligations were not met; such
occurs regularly when individuals in a community
leave or die. Rather, it is about what happens when,
for example, the possibilities for maintaining obli-
gations, fulfilling plans and expectations have dis-
appeared, when a rupture has occurred in the con-
tinuing process of re-establishing familial ties through
the daily experience of places where memories are
generated or when the skills and understandings
one has learned no longer contribute to one's rela-
tionships in one's community.
In examining social relations and loss, I will not
present a culturological vision of society in which all
components of the socio-cultural system fit together
in a functioning whole, only to point out the subse-
quent gaps. My aim is, rather, to examine the nature
and formation of durable interconnections in social life.
My argument is that specific features of the social
understanding of loss help to make sense of the rela-
tive success and failure at current efforts in cultural
revitalization among the Native peoples in Siberia
whose ancestors were surveyed by the teams of the
Jesup Expedition one hundred years ago.
The phenomena of social absence that I will de-
scribe are familiar to anthropologists. An historical
example, well known in the North Pacific, is the ban-
ning of the potlatch on the Canadian Northwest Coast,
against which Franz Boas and others protested vigor-
ously (Stocking 1974:307; Boas 1 974[1 899]: 1 06;
Cole and Chaikin 1990:130-1). Boas had argued
that the potlatch was part of the Indian economic
system, a public paying of debts that was at the
same time an investment in one's future. It obli-
gated recipients to repay at a later time and thereby
encouraged the giver to give freely so as to have
more to receive:
The sudden abolition of this system. . .
destroys therefore all the accumulated
capital of the Indians. It undoes the carefully
planned life-work of the present generation,
exposes them to need in their old age, and
leaves the orphans unprovided for (Boas
1974[1899]:106).
Boas' argument implied that even with perfor-
mances banned, the social effectiveness, the obliga-
tions still existed as long as people remembered them
and remembered the status that went along with giv-
ing and receiving. He remarked, in his polemic to pro-
tect the tradition, that we should not be surprised that
abolition was resisted by what he called "the best
269
class" of Indians, "only the lazy should support it, be-
cause it relieves them of the duty of paying their debts"
(Boas 1974[1899]:106). Political goals aside, Boas's
point was that the silencing of the practice opened a
gap in the set of relations by which people interacted
and lived.
The rapid decline of indigenous populations and
the curtailing of traditionally held practices by ex-
ternal cultural and economic influences and govern-
mental authorities led anthropologists to undertake
major salvage operations. The Jesup Expedition, with
its variety of salvage activities, became a founding
and exemplary model. The aims of salvage ethnol-
ogy and linguistics in the U.S. were to establish an
account of how Native American cultures varied
geographically and to inscribe in a durable repre-
sentative form as much as possible of languages,
customs, practices and general information concern-
ing the lives the various peoples led and the stories
they would tell before those ways of life and sto-
ries passed away. This recording was done, as Ber-
nard Cohn has pointed out, by stripping away the
obvious signs of White influence and focusing on
features that seemed peculiarly Native (Cohn 1 968).
The task was to record as much as possible, before
the last generation that could tell of the prior way of
life disappeared.
Today's cultural revival movements across the
North Pacific, with their attention on preserving lan-
guage and tradition, sometimes resemble salvage
anthropology. For the most part, however, they are
much more attuned to specific sentiments of loss
and contemporary needs of economic development
(e.g., Abryutina 1996; Stroganova 1997; Fondahl
1998: 89-131).' I focus here not on the practical
issues of cultural restoration or the salvaging act of
preserving in writing and other media that which
was passed down through emulation, imitation and
teaching. Instead, I examine the meaning of the loss
of that which was taken away or displaced by gov-
ernment policy.
To explain what it means to lose one's village, I
present here descriptions of three senses of the idea
of life in a "lost village." These descriptions are based
on published texts, songs, poetry and narratives I
recorded during fieldwork in indigenous communities
in Kamchatka during the early-mid 1 990s. The first sense
is a past-oriented sentiment toward life in the villages
lost when resettlement was forced by Soviet economic
policies of the 1950s and 1960s.^ These closed vil-
lages still today constitute "original homelands," places
of personal and familial identification. Many people,
including young people, say that they are descendant
from Utkholok or descendant from Sopochnoe, villages
that no longer exist. These settlements were "closed"
(that is, abandoned under government pressure)
some thirty or even fifty years ago. The youngest
who claim to be descendant from them may never
even have seen them. An important second sense
of loss is that people now feel that, because of the
post-Soviet rupture in communication, funding, and
delivery of social services they are living in villages
that are "lost" to the outside world. They recognize
that the governmental responsibility that once sup-
ported rural Soviet village life has disintegrated and
feel that no one cares about their plight. Contem-
porary life for them now is life in a "lost village." And
finally, a third sense of life in lost villages is the at-
tempt of various groups of people to live in villages
once closed, to actually establish, or reestablish, life
in these lost villages.^
Village Ties Expressed in Poetry
In a general discussion of the experience of place
Keith Basso has written that, "Relationships to places
may. . . find expression through the agencies of myth,
prayer, music, dance, art, architecture, and in many com-
munities, recurrent forms of religious and political ritual"
(Basso 1 996:57). The various ways for place to be ex-
perienced and articulated includes the meaning of
village life as it is and has been expressed in poetry,
both written and in song. The four poems examined
2 70 PEOPLE, ANIMALS, AND LAND/ LOST VILLAGES
here issue from differing points of view. All of indig-
enous Kamchatkan origin, two of the authors still live
in the villages of which they write and the other two
live in Kamchatka's capital city, Petropavlovsk. For one
of them her natal village no longer exists.
The first example is a song by a young Itelmen
composerAnatoly Levkovsky(Levkovskii), born in 1 962
(Fig. 64). It was his first song and he composed it
while he was in Moscow, missing his home village of
Kovran on the western shore of Kamchatka.'' It is en-
titled simply, "My Village" and the melody is simple
and straightforward as are the ideas. In the following
translation I have cut out repetitions, in part melodi-
cally motivated, that emphasize that he loves and will
never leave his village.
My little village is set out by the sea.
My beloved native home.
I'll never leave it behind,
it's dear to me.
Our people are unpretentious,
I'll never leave it behind,
indeed they are talented craftspeople
My family lives here and my many relatives.
We all love you village.
There is no limit to our love.^
(Levkovsky 1997)
For Levkovsky, his family, his relatives, his people
share the affection they feel toward the village and
that shared affection is his affection. He loves Kovran
as his home, as the place of his people. His apprecia-
tion for the village also derives from the practical way
in which people make their lives there.^
Levkovsky is director of cultural activities for the
village of Kovran and he still lives there, in the place of
his birth.
Tatiana Evstropovna Cutorova, a published author
—renowned for her singing voice—was also born in
Kovran. She now lives with her children and grand-
children in the city of Petropavlovsk. In 1994, at a
gathering of Itelmens and Kamchadals' in the hot
spring area of Upper Paratunka, she sang a song
in Itelmen that she had composed specially for
the occasion. Addressed to her sister, her song
was a doleful lament, performed in the style of
the Itelmen traditional khodila^ and composed
about the village and the relatives whom she
misses. It echoes the same theme of love for the
village associated with its inhabitants.
Swans took flight at dawn
Their cries resounded
as if they were weeping
At once my heart yearned
they're flying past Kovran
My village, my Kovran
I cannot forget
As if some evil demon is holding me
I cannot break loose
The geese are going to fly over Kovran
They will circle over my village
I send warm greetings
I miss my fellow Kovraners
Cod give me wings
I will fly to my village
My soul will be calmed among my kin
I'll walk throughout the village
(Recorded by the author, 3 July
1994, in Itelmen)''
Tatiana Evstropovna herself explained in Russian
the meaning of the poem to me from which the
translation here. With the village of her birth still in
existence her song evokes ties to the village through
kin and through the experience of its topography.
In the images of circling over and walking through-
out the village (particularly in contrast to being held,
unable to break loose) her feeling of loss and of
attachment to the place is expressed as memory
and desire. The poem sets in opposition the far away
D. KOESTER
distance to the village, marked by flight and the
grounded contact of walking through the village.
These two songs about ties to Kovran through its
landscape and people can be contrasted with a po-
etic cycle of verses about the town of Milkovo, the
hometown of Kamchadal poet, Nina Berezhkova-
Porotova. Milkovo, in central Kamchatka, is much
larger than Kovran and its present-day population is
predominantly of Russian origin. Many of its indigenous
Kamchadals have been active in local cultural revital-
ization and have established a Kamchadal Club. Less
tied to people-in-the-place, the opening lines and much
of the remaining ten verses of Berezhkova-Porotova's
poem extoll natural beauty, the permanent features of
the landscape, dramatic changes of season and the
familiar, relatively unchanging characteristics of plant
and animal life. Rather than writing of people in the
environment, she humanizes the landscape:
Milkovo in a valley cradle
Was hidden under a down-coat of snow
The mountains put on a snowy malakhai
[hood in Itelmen]
they hid a grey tress in ravines
(Berezhkova-Porotova 1993:1 1-2)
As in the two songs above, Berezhkova-Porotova's
sentiments toward the place are linked to an elder
relative. The title verse, "I've been panged by Milkovo
since childhood" reflects on the tale of the author's
grandmother, who sought to defend the village church
when Soviet officials came to take away its bell. Other
verses recall childhood, and give vignettes of tradi-
tional life, sprinkled with Itelmen words (Berezhkova-
Porotova 1993:7-15). This poem, about a relatively
urbanized village, contrasts with the two about rural,
predominantly Itelmen Kovran in its greater emphasis
on the aesthetic features of the natural environment
and more specific focus on a single close relative in
relation to a single historical event. '° Her tie to a rela-
tive-in-the-place is less participatory than that ex-
pressed by Levkovsky or Cutorova, yet is nevertheless
an important aspect of her nostalgia.
Itelmen poet Nelia Suzdalova (born in 1937) simi-
larly included a poem about her native village
Sopochnoe in a prominent place in her first published
poetic collection (1 993). It followed the opening poem
"Dog Teams" from which the entire collection gets its
name, "Those dog teams sped away." The image of a
dog team disappearing in the distance metonymically
and symbolically refers to the loss of traditional cul-
tural life. Soviet government-enforced resettlements
of Itelmen villagers for the purposes of consolidating
the labor force and economizing on delivery of ser-
vices began in 1956 (Starkova 1976:32). The next
poem in the collection, entitled simply, "Sopochnoe"
reflects the feelings from that period and Suzdalova's
sense of loss with the closing of her village.
We have grown up and died on our land
And expected always to live here...
At the whispers of the forest,
we stood still in happiness.
There was no time to grieve.
But the time arrived—bad news.
The river became a mere legend.
In a foreign region, in a cold place
Centuries came to a halt.
Farewell warmth, goodbye, mountains.
And you too, moon, above our homeland,
An evil alien pushed a button.
And the strand broke.
(Suzdalova 1993:3-4)
Suzdalova emphasizes the continuity of ances-
try at her homeland, affirmed by life and death on
the land. The warmth and happiness associated
with this continuity contrast with the mechanical
coldness that replaced them and, as in Cutorova's
song, an arbitrary, unhindered power has caused
their loss.
272 PEOPLE, ANIMALS, AND LAND/ LOST VILLAGES
In all of these odes to villages the tie to the home-
land is through people and relationships to those
people, especially ancestral. Such sentiments seen and
heard expressed in these examples of published and
performed poetry, were also echoed in remembrances
that I recorded on various occasions. A respected
Itelmen elder, teacher and cultural expert, Yakov Lvovich
Zhirkov, for example, also spoke of life in the village of
Sopochnoe at a presentation for children. He spoke
on the occasion of Itelmen language week in the vil-
lage school:
In childhood I lived with my grandfathers
{dedy- male elders). There were many elders
there, grandmothers {babushki- female
elders), my parents. And I had to live in the
forest and out fishing. They brought me
everywhere with them, when it turned spring.
When I was little they took me fishing,
hunting, though I never really hunted and did
not become a hunter. I walked and wan-
dered but did not hunt. Everything around
me gave me pleasure. I looked at this
nature, at the richness that we had. Now
there is no village (Zhirkov 1 994).
It is important to note in this statement how the
relations with his elders tied him to the natural environ-
ment. His memory, the lost experience that he sought
to convey to today's children, was that of living and
working in the forest and on the tundra with kin and
fellow villagers. Another elder from Sopochnoe, Tatiana
Petrovna Lukashkina (born in 1918; Fig. 65), who lost
her parents in the Stalinist repressions, has similarly
focused much of her reminiscence of childhood on
the elder who raised her, her blind grandmother. Both
Tatiana Petrovna and Yakov Lvovich placed value
not on just the relative alone or just the place, but
primarily on their experiences of and with their rela-
tives in the village and its environs. The focus on recol-
lections of family and village life tied to the land is
reminiscent of sentiments about places recorded in
other parts of the world. Writing of Wamirans in Papua
New Guinea, Kahn notes that for them, places in the
landscape "resonate . . . deeply about the importance
of social relations and obligations based on feeding,
sharing and caring for one another" (1 996: 1 76; cf. also
Rosaldo 1980).
Lost Villages I: Living in the Past
With Suzdalova's poem and the recountings by Zhirkov
and Lukashkina we have come to sentiments about a
village closed several decades ago by a Soviet policy
decision. As we move to consideration of the signifi-
cance of such closed villages it is important to keep in
mind that people's recollections represent complex
images overlain by the profound effects of Soviet eco-
nomic and cultural programs. Attuned to effecting a
change of consciousness, much of the former Soviet
policy sought specifically to patch and replace ele-
ments of the social-economic fabric it was destroying.
For Itelmen in Kamchatka, increasingly year-round settle-
ments replaced summer/winter seasonal habitation and
state-run boarding schools (internaty) replaced local
schools. State-supported and managed clubhouse
("house of culture") activities, including the celebration
of holidays, came to replace both church attendance
and festivities associated with winter visiting. Brigade
work (organized production teams) replaced family-,
friendship- and need-determined cooperative produc-
tion, and so on (Starkova 1 976). In the wake of these
transformations, what seems consistent in recollections
and laments about the past is the sense of loss of
community tied to a place and associated with prac-
tical activity over time.
Despite socially engineered, "progressive" replace-
ments for various aspects of social life, most people
remember the closing of the villages as a devastating
blow." Over and over again, elders have said to me
that life was hard in earlier days, but it was better; we
"lived amicably" (zMf/ruzAj/io), they say. They acknowl-
edge that their fond memories are somewhat gilded
by the flow of time.'-^ They speak of how laborious
subsistence was, that they did not have readily avail-
able flour, bread and tea as appeared later. Yet they
nevertheless maintain that this time was happy, and
D. KOESTER 273
they associate this lost happier life with the move from
the villages.
Bruce Grant found loss of Native villages on Sakhalin
Island (another area covered by the Jesup Expedition)
to be comparably significant. The primary difference
was that the village closings in Sakhalin during the
19505 and 1960s took place on a much larger scale
there than in Kamchatka. He writes that Soviet inten-
tions to improve economic prospects in villages by
consolidating labor in efficient administrative centers
proved vain hopes:
Rather than strengthening and international-
izing, the resettlements produced a spirit of
absence felt on economic, social, and
personal levels. Rather
than moving forward,
they generated a retro-
spective force that
pulled many back (Grant
1993:244).
The closed villages came to
represent a longed-for, lost way
of life in Sakhalin, as they did in
Kamchatka. Moreover, Grant
found that the lost way of life
has been understood to be tra-
ditional. It is in part because of
this understood traditionality
that the closed villages have
become an object of interest
for cultural revivalists. Grant
cites the example of the lone
brigadier who, having refused
to leave when the resettlements
took place, now stands as symbol and metonymic
sign of traditional life (Grant 1995:134).
Itelmen people who today live in the villages of
Kovran, Verkhne Khairiuzovo, Tigil, Sedanka and even
in the city of Petropavlovsk (Fig. 79) still inhabit these
lost villages in their memories. Experiences on a daily
basis ranging from negative ones such as family ten-
sion, drunkenness, and economic hardship to more
positive ones of family celebration, collective singing
Sea of
Okhotsk
79/ Location of Lost Villages on Kamchatka
Peninsula, Russia, discussed in the paper
and dancing all evoke memories of contrasting and
comparable experiences in the old villages. Elders
commonly remark, for example, that there was no
drunkenness in their childhood villages. People drank,
they acknowledge, and enjoyed doing so, but the al-
coholic kind of public drunkenness now common was,
they say, unknown.
The experiences of entering new village life after
forced resettlement contributed greatly to the memo-
ries that create today's sense of loss. Soviet planners'
aim was not, in the initial move, to create (or recreate)
a village, but to provide a place for workers to live.
When resettled villagers arrived in Kovran in 1 960, they
found that promised housing
was not yet constructed and
they were placed in temporary
housing (barracks). Life was,
from all descriptions, difficult.
Local administrators moved
quickly to establish work as
the basis for social relations in
the relocated community. Stra-
tegically, their mission was to
replace older village social val-
ues with the value of work for
the greater society. The effec-
tiveness of this effort is articu-
lated in the first memories that
resettled villagers recount
—
self-worth and status among
peers were to be linked to dili-
gent labor and productivity.'^
Prestige was granted to those who worked hard,
achievements in production were recognized on a pub-
lic honor roll and prizes were awarded. Several Itelmen
elders recounted to me the thrill of a family member
receiving a "premium"—sometimes extra rations of flour,
and sugar and in one case I heard of, a new rifle. But,
although there were individual rewards, the differen-
tiation that took place is now also remembered in in-
tergroup terms. One woman told me repeatedly, when
Pacific
Ocean
'etropavlovsk
274 PEOPLE, ANIMALS, AND LAND/ LOST VILLAGES
recollecting her resettlement to Kovran, that the people
from her native village of Sopochnoe knew how to
work. She also said, however, that they had unfairly
been accused by Kovraners of being slackers. Neither
an ideology nor merely a command, this shaping of
relations by means of instilling a competitive work ethic
was given added moral weight, founded in praxis, when
internally segmented others were perceived in com-
parative, competitive terms. Public support was given
to intergroup competition by the publication of vil-
lage, kolkhoz (common Russian abbreviation for 'col-
lective farm'-ed.) and brigade production rankings.
This value of competitive work continues today
even in non-wage labor contexts. When I joined groups
of people traveling with kolkhoz tractors (the kolkhoz
was defunct but still alive in name) out to gather the
local "wild garlic," cheremsha, on what seemed in many
respects to be a community outing, some families
talked distinctly in productive terms. For these fami-
lies much of the conversation focused on how much
they could gather and how quickly. The emphasis on
productivity, whether constructed as competition
among siblings or among members of a work brigade,
refers back in time to the larger Soviet social economic
project in which rationalized, quantifiable production
aims were the goal. This focus on time-intensified pro-
duction contrasts starkly with the image of life in
Sopochnoe portrayed by Yakov Lvovich Zhirkov, how-
ever nostalgically embellished. His description of wan-
dering and working in the forests, composing songs in
response to the beauty of nature, lacked any sense of
urgency or competitiveness.
It would not, however, be right to say that the
work ethic was introduced with the forced migrations
in the 1 950s and 1 960s. Collectivization in Kamchatka,
including in remote Native communities, had already
occurred in the 1930s (Starkova 1976:30) and many
elders' recollections of productive activities rehearse
quantitative competitive notions. Moreover, the
instilling of competition did not constitute the intro-
duction of the idea, or the valuing, of hard work. Tatiana
Petrovna Lukashkina, who participated actively in the
Soviet project to modernize the lives of the Native
peoples of Kamchatka, has written that the Itelmen
were always a work-loving people (trudoliubivye).
Whether before or after resettlement, the social
relation created in the Soviet-inspired world of work
was not to the community but to the productive ap-
paratus. Though it would be too hasty to conclude
that social valuation by competitive work was entirely
introduced by the Soviet government, this value, nev-
ertheless, contrasts with the image given by Yakov
Lvovich Zhirkov. In his remembrance of a young boy
being dragged along to work in the forests and on the
river, "work" created ties to people he deeply respected,
the memories of whom tie him to his homeland. The
competitive work relations, in contrast, while giving
many a sense of self-worth, divided people and pro-
vided no sense of ties to a place.
When elders say that they lived more amicably in
the past it reflects this difference in productive rela-
tions. Whereas in the past subsistence activity tied
people to places through collective efforts with el-
ders, after resettlement, productive effort was pur-
posefully generated by prestige stratification. Status
was conferred individually and collectively and articu-
lated in recollections as inter- and intra-village group
difference. The social absence mentioned in the intro-
duction is sensed, I would suggest, largely in this tran-
sition from affective relations created through coop-
erative work to social differentiation created in state-
controlled labor.
Lost Villages II: Lost in Today's World
The second sense of loss emerges from the collapse
of support for Soviet village infrastructure during the
1990s, especially between 1991 and 1997. Many of
the factors of loss present in Itelmen villages in
Kamchatka have been discussed in the literature on
more general economic and social problems facing
Siberian indigenous people in post-Soviet Russia (Pika
and Grant 1999; Ryvkina et al. 1996; Zaidfudim et al.
D. KOESTER 275
1994). Kamchatka was spared the worst of the
catastrophic environmental damage that took place
during the Soviet period in Siberia, such as that
which occurred in the West Siberian oil and gas fields,
devastating landscapes and curtailing subsistence
based on natural resources (Trumbull 1 995; Wiget and
Balalaeva 1997; Feshbach and Friendly 1992:137-8).
On the other hand, significant environmental degrada-
tion due to industrialization and localized overpopula-
tion has taken place in Kamchatka. These days, people
need to make day-long trips to gather berries, fire-
wood is increasingly difficult to obtain and fewer and
fewer salmon are coming up river. Thus, it is important
to enumerate some of the consequences of with-
drawal of governmental support.
During the 1 950s and 1 960s, the Soviet govern-
ment orchestrated the construction of new villages
for Native people in Kamchatka consisting of small
wooden houses that required firewood for heating
or larger apartment buildings that required coal in
the winter. As electrification came, in the form of
fuel-dependent diesel generator stations, all house-
holds became equipped with stoves and utensils for
cooking with electricity. Radio was brought in by cable
and telephone along with it. Stores were supplied
with basic foodstuffs, including flour, pasta, tea, sugar,
cereal grains, and pickled and canned fruits and veg-
etables. The village of Kovran (Fig. 66) had its own
dairy, bakery, public bathhouse, post office and club-
house where movies were shown and people came
to meet. Helicopters regularly flew from village to vil-
lage and it was often possible for villagers to hitchhike
for travel to school, work or even just to visit relatives.
Ground transportation from the nearby airport in Ust-
Khairiuzovo was organized by the kolkhoz to meet
scheduled flights from Petropavlovsk. The end of the
Soviet Union meant that collapse of these government
services. In the five-year period from 1 992-7, except
for the houses, and occasional and unreliable service
from the telephones, the bathhouse and the post of-
fice, virtually everything I have listed has fallen away.
Village electricity was cut to three hours a day, the
bakery died fitfully from shortages of firewood, the
dairy's cows either died or were sold for meat or
private use, the clubhouse which burned down just
before this period was not to be restored (Fig. 68)
and the store, by 1996, sold little more than tea, con-
fections and vodka (Fig. 67). Travel became very diffi-
cult as helicopters began to fly only commercial and
emergency traffic, allowing fewer and eventually no
hitchhikers, and the regular "bus" from Ust-Khairiuzovo
became increasingly unreliable and eventually ceased
to run altogether. All of this would clearly give anyone
a sense of material loss.'"
The social sense of loss that I want to describe is,
however, a deeper feeling of isolation and helpless-
ness. I have written elsewhere about villagers' deci-
sion in 1993 to write a letter to the U.N. to ask for
assistance (Koester n.d.). The letter came out of a meet-
ing of school teachers with Itelmen Cultural Restora-
tion Council'"^ leaders to discuss the annual festival
Alkhalalalai. The topic of conversation constantly
turned from the festival to problems in the village. As
village leaders described their futile attempts to get
help from both the regional and the district adminis-
trations, those attending the meeting increasingly be-
gan to talk about being forgotten. They complained
of the difficulties of reaching ever-absent bureaucrats
over correspondingly unreliable phone lines, and the
impossible expense and time required to fly to the
regional capital town of Palana, some 270 km to the
north. Finally, as the idea to write to the U.N. emerged
one person said, "Our government has no use for us."
This summarized the collective sentiment and much
of the sense of lostness.
Kovran, like so many other Native Siberian com-
munities (Fig. 69), was for decades economically de-
pendent on supplies from outside and along with this,
after many years of hearing of "the proud feeling of
belonging in the one great Soviet Homeland" (Moiseev
1989:16), the sentiment developed that relationships
and reciprocal obligations built up in the construction
2 76 PEOPLE, ANflMALS, AND LAND/ LOST VILLAGES
of these Soviet villages were to the country and to the
government. Thus, the villagers did not just feel cut
off, they felt cast aside; their effort in living and work-
ing in the village no longer brought reciprocation from
the state and no longer contributed to a "feeling of
belonging" to the country as a whole.
Lost Villages III: Living in Closed Villages
From the time of the founding in 1989 of the first
Native organization in Kamchatka, the Itelmen Cultural
Restoration Council Tkhsanom, the longing for home
villages that I described in Part I played a significant
role in plans for restoration. People had persistent
dreams of re-establishing their lives on the sites of the
closed villages. The village ofSopochnoe figured promi-
nently in these plans. It was the southernmost village
in which the Itelmen language was spoken when
Waldemar Jochelson visited the west coast of Kam-
chatka in 1910 0ochelson n.d.:2). It consisted of about
fourteen households in the 1 930s and remained pre-
dominantly Itelmen speaking. A school was created
in Sopochnoe in 1924 when virtually no one in the
village spoke Russian. Then, in the 1 930s, school policy
was changed from encouraging Native languages to
banning of them on school grounds and at that point
the changeover took place very rapidly. Sopochnoe
is of particular significance because its descendants
have played such a prominent role in Native cultural
life in Kamchatka of the twentieth century. Tatiana
Petrovna Lukashkina, who was born in Sopochnoe, was
the first Itelmen woman to receive a higher education
(1934-8) and she was involved in the transformation
of Kamchatkan dance to forms appropriate for per-
formance on stage (Lukashkina 1991 :53^). After her
return from the Institute of Peoples of the North in
Leningrad in 1938, she spent the rest of her life as an
educator in outposts and small villages of the Kam-
chatkan north (Fig. 70). Sopochnoe was also the home
village of the first president of the Restoration Council,
Klavdia Nikolaevna Khaloimova (born in 1934) and of
others who were active in the beginnings of the cul-
tural restoration movement, including Boris Zhirkov
(born in 1 946), a noted dancer and local folklorist.
At the third annual Itelmen cultural revival con-
ference in 1989 a decision was taken to support
resettlement at Sopochnoe. In March of 1991 a
Native fishing artel (cooperative) named "Itelmen"
was officially registered with the regional administra-
tion. They received a fishing quota and began work at
the former village site of Sopochnoe in the summer.
The fishing went well by most accounts but the whole
venture ended badly. The artel got a low price for its
fish in Petropavlovsk so that there was very little return
for the workers. In the meantime, they had alienated
the local fish processing factory, whose fishing limit
they had usurped, by sending the fish to Petropavlovsk
rather than to it. And while the workers received very
little for their efforts, the director of the artel, brother of
the new Cultural Restoration Council head, received a
new snowmobile. This failure to pay the workers and
the new snowmobile was bannered in the local
papers as a sign of corruption or at least greed, and
with considerable innuendo, the Council head was
blamed (Kravchuk 1992). There were hard feelings
in the village, but the bad press was worse. The news-
paper coverage posed restoration as a ruse, a means
by which one Itelmen family could acquire access to
resources and this slant proved a deft move in inter-
ethnic politicking. The articles were written as exposes,
and supported and generated anti-restoration senti-
ment and exacerbated divisions within the Itelmen com-
munity.'*' Fondahl has written that similar reports de-
scribing ethnically based mismanagement had been
published in a newspaper concerning an Even Native
association with similar results (Fondahl 1 995).
Despite the failure ofthe artel, some families lasted
there for a while. The most valiant effort in this early
attempt was probably that of the son and daughter-
in-law of a revitalization activist. They built a home in
Sopochnoe and with two young children moved from
Kovran to live there on a full-time, and potentially per-
manent basis. The difficulties were tremendous. It
D. KOESTER 277
was not simply that there was no electricity, radio or
other conveniences of village life. Sopochnoe is over
1 00 kilometers—a minimum four days walk—from the
nearest village. Though most food, building materials
and firewood could be obtained in the area, any other
necessities had to be hauled and planned for well in
advance. It was particularly hard on the mother of the
household, who, for the children, felt the necessity of
maintaining a home on roughly a village standard of
living. After almost a year, and with relatively few re-
grets, they gave up and moved back to Kovran. In
comparison to the past, life in the village was too iso-
lated. It was not a village with others on whom one
might depend for assistance and comradery (Fig. 71).
And despite the existence of modern transport, there
was less interchange between the village site and other
places. The nearest neighboring village Moroshechnoe
was also closed, meaning that the density of people
in the area was so light that even with shorter travel
times made possible by mechanized transport, the
value of making the trip was too slight. Thus, all fami-
lies eventually left.'^
For the purpose of this analysis, what is striking in
the story of this failed attempt to revive village life in
Sopochnoe is the Soviet nature of the original organi-
zational plan. The villagers began by creating a work
brigade for the purpose of producing a certain amount
of fish that would then be delivered to a centralized
processing unit. Instead of returning to the village with
an understanding of living as they had in the past, their
return was predicated on industrially modeled produc-
tion that, they thought, would allow them to survive in
today's world market. High hopes for the resettle-
ment were dashed on the shoals of the commercial
fisheries business.
Much greater success has been obtained in the
reinhabiting of the area associated with another
"closed" Itelmen village, Moroshechnoe, located sixty
kilometers north of Sopochnoe (Fig. 72). Yuri [a pseud-
onym] was born in the village of Sopochnoe and spoke
Russian as his first language. At a very young age,
however, he moved with his family to Moroshechnoe
where the entire community was Itelmen speaking.
The village then consisted of about nineteen house-
holds strung along a sharp bend in the Moroshechnaya
River, over fifty kilometers upstream from the Sea of
Okhotsk. Like Sopochnoe, Moroshechnoe has produced
a number of people active in trying to revitalize Itelmen
cultural life in the 1990s. Yuri was not, however, par-
ticularly active in this movement. He and his wife spent
most of their working lives in a central Kamchatkan
village where they had moved to alleviate their young
son's extreme case of asthma. Yuri worked as a pro-
fessional hunter, working mostly with Russian hunters
from the area. During his years there he often dreamed
of having his own hunting cabin in the woods, back
where he had grown up. It was not, however, his
intention to try to rebuild his lost village.
His father had been a brigadier, in charge of the
fishing brigade of Moroshechnoe's old kolkhoz "In-
ternational." The fishing brigade worked at a fishing
encampment twelve kilometers upstream from the vil-
lage of Moroshechnoe itself. Yuri spent his summers
there, playing, working and swimming when young
and gradually taking on more responsibilities as he got
older. Not long after he learned to write he took on
the job of recording the kolkho^s catch and eventu-
ally keeping the fish camp's books. He became good
at math and was eventually offered the possibility to
study in Moscow. One summer in the 1940s, how-
ever, while they were stationed at the fishing site, his
father became ill and died. This, of course, had a pro-
found impact on the family, and each member, that is,
all of Yuri's siblings, have told me about the sudden-
ness of their father's death at this place (e.g., in
Petrasheva and Koester 1 997:1 0). One of the implica-
tions was that Yuri decided to stay behind to work
with his family rather than go to the Russian West for
further education.
Several years ago, during the winter, Yuri was hunt-
ing with his son, Volodya, and they stopped their snow-
mobiles near this fishing site. He recognized it as the
278 PEOPLE, ANIMALS, AND LAND/ LOST VILLAGES
place where they used to fish during the summer and
the place where his father had died. There is a small
spring there that never freezes over and it is thus a
good source of fresh water; they decided to camp for
the night. During the night Yuri dreamt that his father
came to him. When he awoke he remembered the
night's vision and decided that he would realize his
lifetime dream and have his hunting cabin at this
site. With the help of the Cultural Restoration Coun-
cil, he obtained rights to hunting territory in the vi-
cinity and built a small cabin. As conditions wors-
ened in his home village of Kovran, he and his family
began to see the site as more than a hunting cabin
and actually an economically viable refuge. They
built another structure to be their home, converted
the original cabin into a steam bathhouse {banya)
and constructed a storage shed {ambar) and green-
house as well. They now have a garden and an
ordinary outhouse in convenient proximity. The hunt-
ing territory and the river make possible a reason-
able living at the site. With three horses to take care
of, they now have someone living there—Yuri or one
or more of his younger male descendants or relatives
—
all year. This is necessary both to take care of the
horses and garden and to prevent theft from the store-
house and household.
In its fifth year (at the writing of this text) this rela-
tive success story was in part made possible by the
abysmal conditions in the village of Kovran. The loss
of infrastructure there, including electricity, regular tele-
phone service, pay for employment, etc. has meant
that life at an extremely isolated encampment, two
days walk from the nearest village, can be better than
in their home village. Socially this means that the
infrastructural relations founded on institutionalized
wage-labor and monetary consumption, collective
activity in the village clubhouse and home life that
was increasingly centered around entertainment by
electronic media have, for this extended family, been
replaced. Much stronger familial connections and ties
have reemerged through the use and sharing of local
natural resources. One of the connections that has
been "revitalized" with this return settlement is the tie
to the place of predecessors; loss is being replaced by
reconnection to a place where elder relatives had lived.
For Yuri and all of his siblings it is very important that
he has come to live in this place where his father died.
In late July, 1 994 I returned to Kovran from visiting
my friends at this settlement in Moroshechnoe. Kov-
raners were of course curious about my impressions
but their overwhelming reaction was to reminisce
about their own villages. I came across one group of
women standing on the stoop to their apartment build-
ing. Each in turn reflected on her own former village.
One asked me if I had been to her village of Belogolovoe
(closed in 1 972), upstream from Moroschechnoe. I
had and she looked up rapturously and said "Oh how
I would like to see it again ... to go there." She asked
if I thought it was beautiful. I said I thought it was.
Conclusion
In setting out to discuss the three different perspec-
tives on life in lost villages that I have presented, it was
not my initial intention to try to bring them all together
with a final unifying conclusion. It seemed to me suffi-
cient to describe the sensibilities people have toward
villages long closed, toward the villages in which they
live, and toward villages in which they have tried once
again to live. It has become clear to me, however, that
there is a connection among these differing feelings of
loss and sensibilities of absence. The Itelmen people
with whom I have talked have articulated a strong
sense of being connected to places through the past
and continuing inhabitance of elder kin and fellow vil-
lagers in those places. Their feelings for villages and
the natural environs that surround them are intimately
tied to elder relatives and friends with whom they
walked, hunted, fished, gathered berries, sang, danced,
loved and laughed. All three components
—
people, en-
gaging in activities with those people, and the land-
scape—are interlinked in creating social, material bonds
to homelands. The connections were riven by the re-
D. KOESTER 279
settlements in the 1950s and 1960s. As the Soviet
government encouraged and forced people to reori-
ent their productive relations from kin and fellow vil-
lagers to the kolkhoz, village and national (Soviet) ef-
fort, one of the primary means by which villagers felt
attachment to their natural surroundings as homeland
was pushed aside. Soviet forms of social life organized
on the basis of dedication to work and productivity
did not, however, come to replace these sentiments.
The attachments have been maintained, rather, in both
the memories of elders and practiced in weekend out-
ings by small family groups. Village restoration seems
to be succeeding on a small scale where ties to family
history have been realized (Figs. 73, 74).
I want to end with a song by Itelmen composer
Anatoly Levkovsky, a lullaby for his son, that explains
all of these ideas of ties to people in places and of ties
to the land through the experience of living and pro-
ducing in it with kin.
Lullaby
Sleep my son,
sleep dear boy,
Lying comfortably on your cradleboard,
sleep gives strength.
Then you'll see, my boy,
you'll see your homeland
Where we were born along with you,
where you will live.
All our grandfathers and fathers
lived here from time immemorial,
Caught fish for food
and hunted sea animals.
And you, son, when you grow,
you'll learn these things.
You'll take this all in hand
and know how to use it.
Indeed, though our homeland is rich,
there are still limits to everything.
Your father will tell you where and how,
so that you can pass it on
for your grandchildren
Sleep quickly my son,
sleep quickly my dear boy
Lying comfortably on your cradleboard,
sleep gives strength.
(Levkovsky 1997)
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the people of the villages of
Kovran, Verkhne-Khairiuzovo and Ust-Khairiuzovo for
their hospitality and kind assistance, and especially the
people mentioned in this paper (pseudonymously and
otherwise) and especially Elena D'iakonova, NinaTolman
and Ceorgi Zaporotsky. I would also like to thank
Viktoria Petrasheva for a long collaboration and kind
friendship and her Institute, the Pacific Ocean Division
of the Department of Geography of the Russian Acad-
emy of Sciences (formerly the Kamchatka Institute of
Ecology and Nature Management), Robert Moiseev,
Director.
Notes
1. This paper was written for the Jesup
Expedition's centennial conference in 1997. Since
that time, numerous ethnographic accounts of
post-Soviet life that report relevant comparable
and contrasting experiences in the Russian Far East
have appeared in print or been completed as dis-
sertations. Because of space limitations I cannot
expand this paper to include reference to them
all.
2. Referring to the destruction in people's lives
that took place, Petra Rethmann (1997) has noted
the euphemistic quality of this notion of merely
"closing" villages.
3. The fieldwork on which this article is based
was conducted primarily in the villages of Kovran,
Verkhne-Khairiuzovo, Ust-Khairiuzovo and the city
of Petropavlovsk, with subsequent work in the
280 PEOPLE, ANIMALS, AND LAND/ LOST VILLAGES
villages of Tigil, Tilichiki, and short visits to other
places in Kamchatka.
4. The population of Kovran has declined over
the past decade from nearly 500 in 1993 to less
than 400 in 2002.
5. Unless otherwise noted, the texts quoted here
are my translations from Russian.
6. Literally, the song says that the people of
Kovran have "golden hands" {zolotye ruki) which
means more than just crafts, as I have translated.
They can do what needs to be done to make a
living and do it well.
7. The terms "Itelmen" and "Kamchadal" are over-
lapping ethnic designations for indigenous
peoples of Kamchatka. "Kamchadal" was the term
used historically by Russians for the Native inhab-
itants of Kamchatka. The term "Itelmen" was even-
tually formally recognized by the Soviet govern-
ment as the Native self-designation of the
people(s) who occupied the central part of
Kamchatka in 1927 (Murashko 1997:181).
"Kamchadal" has gradually come to be used spe-
cifically to mean indigenous Kamchatkans of
mixed Native and Russian (that is, Slavic Russian,
including Cossack, Ukrainian, etc.) ancestry. Some
of today's "Itelmen" are happy to be called
"Kamchadal" and some "Kamchadals" from village
of Tigil and the city of Petropavlovsk find "Itelmen"
acceptable. A detailed analysis of the history and
use of the terms can be found in: Murashko 1 996,
1997.
8. The Itelmen khodlla is a kind of chanting song,
usually mournful in tone, sometimes with meaning-
less syllables in the place of lyrics. Communities
were known to have their own particular styles (me-
lodic and rhythmic). KhodilysNeie sung while along
traveling, hunting, gathering and walking in the
woods or composed to be performed for others at
gatherings. They often expressed the emotional
state of the singer in relation to observations of
nature (there is an example in Steller 1996
[1774]:234). The khodily (<p\.) I recorded in 1993-
1996 sounded remarkably like khodily recorded by
Jochelson on the Ryabushinski Expedition in 1910.
There are no more than four or five Itelmen today who
still know, and even fewer who perform, these songs.
9. Tatiana Evstropovna herself explained in Rus-
sian the meaning of the poem to me from which
the translation here.
10. Close ties to nature have often been noted
as features of nostalgic remembrances in modern
society (Frykman 1986; Burgos 1996) and would
make an interesting point of comparison more
generally to remembrances of Soviet modernity
(Creuziger 1 996).
1 1 . Boris Chichio tells similarly of the devastat-
ing affects of Asiatic Eskimo (Yupik) village clos-
ings (Chichio 1 981).
12. Interpreting this period and these recollec-
tions is also complicated by Russian idealizations
of childhood that pervade pedagogical and popu-
lar literature and local understandings (Creuziger
1996; Wachtel 1990).
1 3. An intensive dedication to work was charac-
teristic of many of the public personas involved in
the development of the Soviet North. Writing in the
1930s after travels through the Soviet Arctic Ruth
Cruber described the energy of local party leaders
who in the pursuit of their duties regularly went with
only four hours' sleep per night (Cruber 1 939).
14. Since 1997 there has been improvement in
some area and loss in others. Lack of fuel has
caused villagers to tear down uninhabited hous-
ing to burn in their stoves. Electricity was restored
for a time with the connecting of a high power
inter-tie from the village of Ust-Khairiuzovo, but
that quickly fell into disrepair. The most signifi-
cant bright spot has been the phenomenal devel-
opment and popularity of the village's dance
troupe Elvel. They have performed in Berlin, Paris,
Moscow, San Francisco and numerous other
places as well as around much of Russia and
Kamchatka. Though they make relatively little
money for their performances, their travel and
small income have had a significant economic
impact in the village as a whole.
15. "Sovet Vozrozhdeniia Itelmenskoi Kultury"
{Council for Revival of the Itelmen Culture) was
founded in 1 989. It was at the time a government-
sanctioned organization. It has since become the
primary representative organization of the Itelmen
people and is affiliated with the Russian Associa-
tion of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON).
16. Fondahl has written that similar reports de-
scribing ethnically based mismanagement had been
published in a newspaper concerning an Even na-
tive association with similar results (Fondahl 1995).
1 7. Since that attempt however, with the house
D. KOESTER 281
built, Klavdia N. Khaloimova has returned to the
village site for extended periods and was once
accompanied by her elder aunt, Tatiana P. Luka-
shkina. Additionally, one man originally from the
village, has taken up more or less year-round resi-
dence alone, with visiting relatives to help out.
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8 1/King Island Impiat dancers perform in the Rotunda of the Smithsonian National Museum ofNatural History at the
opening ofthe "Crossroads ofContinents" exhibit, September 1988. Photographer, Jeffrey Tinsley
CURATORS, COLLECTORS, AND CONSUMERS
8 1/ The Russian-American "Crossroads of Continents" exhibit team examines the Northwest Coast collections at
the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad), Russia. Left to right: William
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286
Meritage /\nthropologLj in the "Jesup-Z^^ ra:
Exploring [\|orth f acific (^uitures through (^ooper^^tive [Research
WILLIAM W. FITZHUCH
In the late 1 970s the Smithsonian's National IVIuseum
of Natural History and the Russian (then Soviet) Acad-
emy of Science's Institute of Ethnography began dis-
cussions that would lead to a new type of scholarly
collaboration between anthropologists and museum
researchers from the United States and the Soviet Union.
This new approach followed decades of stagnant
scholarly exchange and the first partially-successful
re-start of Russian-American cooperation pioneered
by field exchanges led by Alexei P. Okladnikov and
William S. Laughlin in the Aleutian Islands in 1974
and in 1975 at Lake Baikal (Laughlin 1985). Focused
on the politically sensitive lands on either side of Bering
Strait, these discussions sought to advance Soviet-
American scholarship on and knowledge of cultures
and history, not only of the Beringian area, but of the
larger relationships and cultural patterns of the entire
Greater North Pacific Region (CNPR), the circum-North
Pacific Rim, extending from the Island of Hokkaido in
Asia to the Columbia River in North America.
Although the years preceding our efforts of the
late 1 970s had produced advances in anthropologi-
cal knowledge of this region as a result of scholarly
exchanges sponsored by the International Research
and Exchange Board (IREX) (see Michael 1979; Michael
and VanStone 1983), political difficulties with access
to field opportunities and research collections required
another venue if cooperation was to continue. The
decision to proceed with studies of museum collec-
tions, whose trans-Beringian histories themselves re-
quired collaborative Soviet, Canadian, and American
scholarship, eventually lead to a major exhibition.
Crossroads ofContinents: Cultures ofSiberia andAlasl<a
(1988-92), and a series of related publications. It also
offered a plausible option for the political stalemate
that had developed in the 1 970s during this final phase
of the Cold War era over access for American research-
ers to field locations in northeastern Siberia, and for
Soviet researchers in North America.
In the twenty years that followed the birth of the
Crossroads of Continents project, a number of institu-
tional and international initiatives were undertaken that
provided momentum toward the Jesup Expedition
Centennial years of 1997-2002. In addition to
strengthening the exchange of information and re-
searchers, and conducting joint projects of the sort
pioneered by Franz Boas, these initiatives included
museum collection study, traveling exhibits, media
programs, and museum training. Perhaps even more
important than scholarly development and public
education needed for a strategically and economically
important part of the world that was remarkably
poorly known, was the engagement of Native
peoples themselves in the research and public pro-
grams. By the end of the twentieth century it had
become clear that Native involvement at all levels
of the new cycle of research, collecting, archiving
of cultural resources, and education was the essential
new dimension of the jesup Centennial era.
Very early in the project we envisioned the Cross-
roads of Continents exhibit and catalog as an effort
to partially answer the scholarly need for the final
287
"summary" volume of the Jesup Expedition publica-
tion series—a volume that Boas and his colleagues
never produced (cf. Fitzhugh and Crowell 1 988: 1 5).
The exhibit was also planned as a platform for a
new cycle of comparative cultural studies and pub-
lic programs that emerged from the Crossroads
project to become the new Jesup 2 program an-
nounced by the Arctic Studies Center in 1 992 (Fitzhugh
and Krupnik 1993, 1994, 2001; Fitzhugh 1996). In
addition to new research and publications, Jesup 2
called for making museum ethnographic collections
and other cultural resources more widely available
in Alaska (and, where possible, also in Siberia and
the Russian Far East). It also advocated promoting
traveling exhibits and Native participation in museum-
based research and education through workshops and
training programs.
The prospects and circumstances of Jesup 2 are
vastly different from those originally proposed for
the original Jesup Expedition (or Jesup /) venture.
The primary goal of theJNPE was to build museum
collections and conduct research on the origins and
relationships of North Pacific peoples and cultures.
While these goals are still important, an additional
target for the next century must be the preserva-
tion of and shared access to cultural and linguistic
heritage. As in the Jesup-era, museums must have a
prominent role in this work, and values other than
strictly academic ones must be promoted. It is for
this reason that the focus of this paper is the past
and future role of museums as trustees of the North
Pacific heritage and cultural legacies. Museums whose
roles have been confined previously to research and
being trustees of cultural treasures must also become
pro-active agents in the re-connection of "lost cultural
treasures" with Native peoples in their homelands.
TheJesup North Pacific Expedition
The century since the Jesup North Pacific Expedition
(1897-2002) has seen profound change to the cul-
tures and peoples of the North Pacific region. On both
sides of Bering Strait political, economic, and techno-
logical change has transformed Native lives, brought
massive influxes of outsiders into previously autono-
mous ethnic territories, and imposed alien national struc-
tures on a diverse group of traditional societies. By the
middle of the twentieth century, schools, hospitals,
industrialization, militarism, and new ideologies had af-
fected every Native person along the North Pacific Rim,
from the Columbia River to Bering Strait to Hokkaido.
North Pacific peoples had much to lose in this
encounter, which arrived in an overwhelming on-
slaught. On the Asian side. Native groups had been in
contact with Europeans, directly or indirectly, since
the early 1600s and with complex East Asian soci-
eties for many hundreds of years earlier. On the
American side, contact with Europeans began
abruptly in the mid-eighteenth century. Yet by 1 900,
peoples in both regions had undergone massive
transformations that reached into almost every aspect
of their cultures, from technology to ideology.
The discovery of these cultures and rich new lands
amazed early explorers and propelled naturalists and
anthropologists to seek answers about the origins and
relationships between Alaskan and Siberian animals
and peoples. The idea of studying Beringian relation-
ships was not new to natural science. Biologists had
expressed interest in the similarities and differences
between American and Asian biota, and these ques-
tions had been a principal stimulus of the surveys
organized by the Smithsonian's Spencer Baird in
northwestern Canada and Alaska between 1 857 and
1887 (Rivinus and Youssef 1 992:81-97). Boas' para-
digm of cross-field regional survey and synthesis
marked a major advance over the descriptive sci-
ence that had characterized research in this area
previously (Fitzhugh 1982, 1994; Krupnik and
Vakhtin, this volume). Although JNPE results failed to
attain the theoretical goals of Boas' grand design, it
produced masses of information about a crucial, pre-
viously unknown region, and its museum collections
were a priceless benchmark and treasure-house for un-
288 CURATORS AND CONSUMERS/ CROSSROADS EXHIBITS
derstanding GNPR cultures and heritage.
The Boasian paradigm laid the foundation for the
development of anthropological science in North
America and remains important today. Implicit was
the belief that cultures could be understood by trained
observers, and that their components (ethnology,
language, archaeology, folklore, and human biology),
separately and together, could be analyzed to pro-
duce an objective representation of cultures, history,
and relationships. Although this view is still seen as the
basis for much modern anthropology, post-modernist
anthropology views this paradigm as partly flawed
by Western-observer bias and adherence to a unified
theory of culture. Today's anthropology, while anchored
in empirical science, has been strengthened by multi-
dimensional theory. Native science, and participation
of indigenous peoples.
Boas and the Post-Jesup Research Agenda
The scholarly output of the JNPE appeared as a se-
ries of volumes and research papers for over four
decades between 1898-1940 (see reviews in Krupnik
and Fitzhugh 2001 ; Krupnik 1 998, 2001 ). The princi-
pal and most substantive results were descriptive eth-
nographies and linguistic works. These volumes soon
became the primary research documents on the cul-
tures they described. For the non-Russian reading
scholars of many Native Siberian groups they re-
mained the only detailed scientific reports available
on these peoples throughout most of the twenti-
eth century. Even in North America, the reports pro-
duced under the Jesup Expedition banner by Boas,
Teit, Swanton, and others remain the primary eth-
nographies for these Northwest Coast groups to this
day. However, when one examines the origins of the
JNPE venture, one confronts a clear disconnect between
the theoretical problem focus of Boas' JNPE plan and
its scholarly antecedents. The questions of trans-
Beringian origins and relationships raised by Boas
were not to be found in the descriptive earlier works
of the 1800s, such as that of Veniaminov, Zagoskin,
and Edward Nelson in Alaska, and they are barely
detectable in the less anthropological but neverthe-
less significant monographs by Krasheninnikov, Steller,
and other naturalists and explorers of Siberia of the
1 700s. While this is not the place for a detailed cri-
tique of the Jesup Expedition's accomplishments, it
is worth noting that the genius of the Jesup program
was in its conception as a research plan, in its detailed
ethnography, and in its field collecting program, as
reported elsewhere in this volume.
However, as an anthropological synthesis, JNPE also
had serious shortcomings. For instance, by neglecting
to incorporate results from the extensive earlier or
contemporary research in Alaska that was con-
ducted by Edward W. Nelson, Lucien Turner, George
T. Emmons, John Murdoch, and others working for the
Smithsonian, the cursory and relatively unsubstantiated
attempts made by Boas to synthesize Jesup
Expedition's results (Boas 1 903, 1 905, 1 933) produced
some glaring deficiencies. The most prominent was
the re-affirmation of Boas' earlier pre-Jesup idea that
Eskimo had been late arrivals on the North Pacific
cultural scene from the Central Canadian Arctic (the
so-called "Eskimo wedge" hypothesis - see Dumond,
this volume).
Even though Boas and his collaborators failed to
fulfill the interpretive potential of their project, the re-
sults of theJNPE stimulated further research on the North
Pacific Native cultures and had a huge positive effect
on the development of the twin fields of "Eskimology"
and circumpolar studies. Throughout most of the
twentieth century anthropologists and folklorists
used JNPE data for studies of North Pacific, circumpo-
lar, and hemispheric culture relationships. "Jesup cul-
tures" were an important source of data for Hatt's (1914)
studies of circumpolar clothing styles. Folklorists such
as Hallowell (1926), Hatt (1949), and others utilized
JNPE data for studies of comparative religion, mythol-
ogy, and folklore. Jesup Expedition experiences and
personal contacts encouraged Waldemar Jochelson to
undertake later field research in the Aleutian Islands
W.W, FITZHUGH 289
and Kamchatka Oochelson 1925,1928,1933). It led
another Jesup team-member, Waldemar Bogoras
(1929) to write an important paper on circumpolar
culture theory; and it led eventually to studies such as
Sergei V. Ivanov's (1954) on Siberian representational
art and Tamara Mitlyanskaya's (1996) on Chukchi
folk art traditions.
From the archaeological perspective, it triggered a
host of comparative archaeological work (Quimby
1 947; de Laguna 1 932, 1 940) on Beringian prehistory,
culminating with Leroi-Courhan's (1946) ambitious
study of North Pacific technology. The latter attempted
to advance JNPE historical goals by a synthesis of
ethnographic and archaeological evidence but only
succeeded in demonstrating the inadequacy of un-
controlled archaeological data. During this period more
productive results in archaeology were being made
by Collins (1937), Cjessing (1944), Spaulding (1946),
Heizer (1956), Rudenko (1947/1961), Arutiunov and
Sergeev (1969, 1975), and others who used detailed
excavation techniques. It was here that real progress
on the goals of Jesup Expedition were achieved, even
though the results were painfully slow, due in part to
the nature of archaeological research but primarily
because of increasing political differences.
Fortunately, the other major legacy of the JNPE, the
collections of objects, photographs, sound recordings,
and ethnographic notes of the expedition, were being
carefully maintained, primarily by the American Museum
of Natural History in New York. Smaller "duplicate" col-
lections of the materials that were gathered by
Jochelson and Borogas were also shared with the Mu-
seum of Anthropology and Ethnology (MAE) in St.
Petersburg, which already had a North Pacific collec-
tion of its own, with special strength in Russian America.
Exhibiting North Pacific Cultures
In Paris, Berlin, and Copenhagen, North Pacific eth-
nographic materials had been displayed to the public
for nearly two hundred years prior to the JNPE, but the
resources were thin and documentation was poor.
More substantial North Pacific collections existed in
St. Petersburg at the MAE (Dzeniskevich and
Pavlinskaya 1 988). Among these were the collections
from Russian America made by Lavrentii Zagoskin and
ll'ia Voznesenskii in the mid- 1 800s. The latter was of
special value because a museum scientist who was
attentive to careful documentation secured it. Arctic
cultures had been displayed at the Smithsonian since
the 1870s; but it was not until the 1890s that they
began to be presented in depth (Fitzhugh 1997).
The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in
New York had few Northwest Coast or Alaskan col-
lections and no large Siberian materials before 1 890.
The arrival of huge JNPE collections gave the Ameri-
can Museum a truly comprehensive resource for ex-
hibiting North Pacific cultures (Kendall et al. 1997).
Unfortunately, like Boas' JNPE science plan, the
Jesup Expedition collections never found a compre-
hensive exhibit outlet at the American Museum. Boas
oversaw the installation of his famous "Northwest
Coast Hall," but he and his successors never at-
tempted to produce the exhibit of North Pacific
peoples that should have been the logical outcome
of the AMNH-financed JNPE program. The AMNH
exhibition program remained locked into the schema
of museum science that called for cultures to be
displayed in their traditional hemispheric blocks: the
Chukchi and Koryak were "Asian" peoples and were
therefore exhibited with the Asian groups; while the
Eskimo and Northwest Coast Indians were matched
with other North American groups even though, in
many ways, they were more 'Asian' than 'Ameri-
can.' Despite Boas' interest in trans-Beringian com-
parisons, Bering Strait remained the dividing point
rather than the hinge for cultures of Asia and the
Americas, conforming to the pre-existing geographi-
cally-based classification system of anthropological
museums. Of course. Boas' departure from the Ameri-
can Museum in 1905 to take a position at Columbia
University made his contribution to these matters moot
at best.
290 CURATORS AND CONSUMERS/ CROSSROADS EXHIBITS
Science, Natives, and the American Public
Throughout most of the twentieth century, museum
science followed the Boasian tradition. As personnel
and financial support grew, Russian and North Ameri-
can researchers returned to the unfinished work of the
JNPE, attempting to clarify the history of North Pacific
cultures through archaeological, linguistic, and
ethnohistorical studies. In this effort Native peoples
became informants, field team-members, guides and
navigators, and in a few cases joined the ranks of
researchers or curators. During this period a culture
of academic and museum science prevailed in north-
ern research that divided Native communities in Sibe-
ria and North America from pursuit of cultural research
in their own countries. Until the 1 960s, scholars rarely
consulted communities about research projects to be
undertaken. Similarly, they rarely presented their results
to local sponsors or made any special efforts to
disseminate project materials among local audiences
in ways that made it possible for Native people to
study or use anthropological data that was collected
by scientists. Research occurred mostly apart from
community interests, and scientists rarely addressed
local media and school or community meetings as
venues for outreach, information sharing, and com-
munity participation.
In some cases alienation resulted from the grow-
ing commercial trade in antiquities. Archaeologists
who had once purchased prize specimens from lo-
cal collectors began to condemn "pot-hunting" and
commercial digging, even after Native claim settle-
ments had given Native people legal title to these
resources. During the 1970s through 1990s, St.
Lawrence Island became a prime location for the
commercial market in artifacts, but other locations
in the Beringian region also participated in the an-
tiquities trade. Many sites were damaged or de-
stroyed; those in Cambell, St Lawrence Island, were
so devastated that they eventually were removed
from the U.S. National Register of Historic Sites. Social
damage was also caused by drugs and alcohol that
came with the ivory and artifact trade. And with a
relaxation of border control after 1 990, digging for
profit became a new quasi-condoned economy in
Chukotka, and the lucrative Japanese and Euro-Ameri-
can art market resulted in smuggling through Nome
and Cambell.
On the American side, the alienation of Native and
non-Native northerners was rooted in a long tradition
of top-down government policy-making. Examples
abound: the BIA schooling system which denied Na-
tive language and culture; Aleut removal from Aleu-
tian homelands in World War II; the 'near miss' of a
"peaceful" atomic blast at Cape Thompson near Point
Hope in northern Alaska in 1 959 (O'Neil 1 994); nuclear
detonations on Amchitka Island in the late 1 960s and
early 1970s; loss of lands and resources to state and
federal land-taking, etc. The passage of the Alaska
Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) in 1971 pro-
vided a measure of local control; but it was not until
the 1 980s and 1 990s that legal mechanisms, govern-
ment decentralization, and co-management strategies
began to turn the tide, and scholars adopted formal
ethical standards for social science research.
Culture offered one possible avenue for Native self-
determination, but in anthropology and museum stud-
ies the system continued to be strongly stacked
against Native interests. In Alaska, the collection of
objects that had begun during the period of early
exploring expeditions accelerated rapidly when
Smithsonian Institution's naturalists began to take up
residence after 1867. By the 1880s European collec-
tors like Adrian Holmberg and James Lowther (Earl
Lonsdale) were complaining that all of the choice
material had already been collected and what re-
mained was of poor quality and not fit for museums.
The "rush" for the Northwest Coast collections has been
well documented (Cole 1985). By 1900 most of the
old objects from Alaska and the Northwest Coast were
no longer in Native hands but in museum collections in
Washington, New York, Chicago, Victoria, or in Europe.
But there were some notable exceptions. Reverend
W.W. FITZHUCH
Sheldon Jackson built a local collection of Alaska
artifacts during the decades after 1 900 in Sitka, and
a good regional collection grew following the es-
tablishment of the College (later, University of Alaska)
in Fairbanks in the 1920s.
The situation was roughly similar in eastern Si-
beria, where systematic collecting began a bit later
than in Alaska, during the 1890s, when Nikolai
Condatti made an excellent collection for the MAE
from the Chukchi (Dzeniskevich and Pavlinskaya
1 988). Only in a few instances were regional collec-
tions gathered and kept locally, for instance, by
Vladimir K. Arseniev in the 1910s, in Khabarovsk
and Vladivostok. However, most ethnographic and
archaeological objects were sent back west to sci-
entific centers far from their home territories. It was
not until the 1970s that local voices began to be
heard calling for the retention or return of cultural
properties and the creation of local museums and
culture centers. Of course, throughout much of the
twentieth century both in Siberia and northwestern
North America it was not the loss of collections
that was the principal concern of Native peoples.
Rather it was the loss of language, traditional reli-
gion, and economic and political independence that
was the more direct threat to the existence of eth-
nic nationalities. In both cases these losses were
different and had different causes and effects.
Soviet Cultural Policy
Many of these problems also existed in the Soviet Far
East where, after the Russian Revolution in 1917,
Native cultural policy was more codified (Slezkine 1 994)
than in the laissez-faire North American political and
economic system. For the early Soviet social planners,
which included Waldemar Bogoras, who became a
powerful leader of the "Committee for the North," the
preservation of culture, which was believed to be an
essential element of ethnic nationality, was a high
priority of the Socialist state. However, Native cul-
ture was far more often condemned as "primitive"
and illiterate—something to be exploited and replaced
by modern social progress. For instance, incentives
were put in place to encourage vegetable farming in
Native communities in the 1 930s and fox farming dur-
ing the 1950s. Cultural education was taken on as a
socialist task conducted through the so-called "Red
Yaranga" system [a traveling educational and political
team, using a Native skin-tent, yaranga, as its mobile
headquaters—ed.].
As the Soviet system transformed itself into a more
rigid authoritarian regime. Native cultural heritage be-
came a state-defined and state-managed commod-
ity, and its roots in local societies were severed. Small
Native groups lost all hope of preserving their cultural
traditions (Arutiunov and Vasiliev 1994; Sokolova
1994). Here, unlike in Alaska, language, culture, and
history were offered in schools, but content was
planned to support state-determined goals concern-
ing the nature and content of new "socialist culture."
Native dance companies were instructed to present
traditional themes with formulaic Soviet music and
choreography; Native writers whose work expressed
Soviet political goals were promoted, and Native
mythology was reduced to the quaint "fairy-tales"
familiar in Russian literature.
Shamanism and other Native religions were offi-
cially repressed, considered being as socially dan-
gerous as private ownership of reindeer by big herd-
owners (kulaks). But in marked contrast to the theo-
retically "freer" political atmosphere in Alaska, which
was, in fact, deadly to Native religious traditions;
under the Soviet system, which was repressive to
religion in general, traditional Native religious be-
liefs continued either underground or as a folk genre.
Whereas Alaskan and Northwest Coast Native cul-
ture and religion were actively stamped out by en-
trepreneurial capitalism and the missionizing frenzy
of the 1870s-90s in an effort to recast ethnic
peoples into a Euro-American mold, Siberian Native
"culture" was elevated in an attempt to create Soviet
nationalities out of some tribal groups. This stands as
292 CURATORS AND CONSUMERS/ CROSSROADS EXHIBITS
one of the defining distinctions between the two po-
litical systems in their relations with their respective
ethnic populations.
Full Circle: CrossroadsAl the "Crossroads"
My personal journey to the Beringian crossroads be-
gan in the mid-1970s, when my studies of culture his-
tory and prehistoric human-environmental interactions
in Labrador broadened into cross-cultural work on
northern maritime cultures. As organizer of a sympo-
sium on "Prehistoric Maritime Adaptations of the Cir-
cumpolar Zone" for the 9th International Congress of
Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences in Chicago
in 1973, and editor of the ensuing volume (Fitzhugh
1 975), I met some of the Russian archaeologists work-
ing in the North Pacific, including Sergei Arutiunov, Valerii
Alexeev, and Ruslan Vasil'evskii, as well as many Ameri-
can scholars working in Alaska, including Don Dumond,
Christy Turner, Robert Ackerman, Allen McCartney, and
others. Shortly afterwards, as Arctic curator at the Na-
tional Museum of Natural History, I became intrigued
by the potential of the Smithsonian's large, under-uti-
lized Arctic ethnographic collections for research and
public education. Working with Susan Kaplan, then on
a post-doctoral position at the Smithsonian, I explored
the phenomenal collections from Western Alaska ac-
quired by Edward W. Nelson in 1 877-81 . This resulted
in our joint exhibit and catalog, Inua: Spirit World of tine
Bering Sea Es/c/mo (Fitzhugh and Kaplan 1 982), for which
Ron Senungetuk, an liiupiat artist from Wales, Alaska,
provided assistance. Later, to reach the rural audience
in Alaska, I also assembled a smaller ('mini-lnua') travel-
ing version which traveled to villages in Alaska, Canada,
and Greenland in 1 983-87 (Fitzhugh and Kaplan 1 983).
Susan Rowley later organized an USIA-sponsored ver-
sion of this exhibit ('Euro-lnua') which toured to Eastern
and Northern Europe in 1 988. The experience with these
projects revealed a strong and growing interest among
Alaskans to be reconnected with their "lost heritage"
that had been squirreled away in the Smithsonian's
attic for more than a century. It was obvious that more
was needed than simply re-issuing modern reprints of
Edward Nelson's and John Murdoch's old ethnogra-
phies (Nelson 1983; Murdoch 1988); Native communi-
ties were looking for a more palpable connection with
the material and archival remains of their ancestors.
An opportunity to expand this program of 'heri-
tage re-connection' appeared most unexpectedly when
William C. Sturtevant and I began to take part in cul-
tural exchanges between American and Russian an-
thropologists being organized by the International
Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) during the
1 970s. Initially these exchanges had been planned to
familiarize scholars with research data resulting from a
generation of anthropological studies on both sides
of Bering Strait. Some of these projects had produced
revolutionary results, especially in archaeology
(Arutiunov and Sergeev 1969, 1975; Collins 1937,
1951; Larsen and Rainey 1948; Ciddings 1967;
Rudenko 1961). Intense interest also existed in areas
of physical anthropology, linguistics, ethnology, and
folklore. After a few years during which several sym-
posia were arranged by IREX (Michael 1 979; Michael
and VanStone 1 983), frustration had begun to grow
due to the lack of progress on the one goal that eluded
researchers from both sides: inability to gain permis-
sion to visit field sites and Native-populated regions
across what had by this time become a heavily milita-
rized frontier. The only positive results had been a se-
ries of exchanges led by A. P. Okladnikov and W. S.
Laughlin that unfortunately were extremely limited in
scope (Laughlin 1985).
In 1978 the author and William C. Sturtevant pro-
posed a new approach to the late Julian Bromley, then
Director of the Soviet Institute of Ethnography. Why
not develop, we suggested to the Russians, a type of
Beringia-focused collaboration that would not be so
politically sensitive? Such a program might foster
joint studies of ethnographic and cultural materials
that would have institutional goals that were broader
than the scholarly objectives of individual anthropolo-
gists. Why not design and produce a major joint
W.W. FITZHUGH 293
Soviet-American museum exhibition featuring tradi-
tional cultures of the Native peoples on both sides of
the North Pacific? Such a study would incorporate the
interests of Soviet and American scholars in gaining
access to previously unstudied collections with a spe-
cific, highly visible outcome. The Russians, who were
then eager for travel and research opportunities in North
America, could study the early collections of Siberian
peoples gathered by the Jesup Expedition and housed
in the American Museum of Natural History in New
York. The Americans, in return, could gain experience
with Soviet anthropology and study the large collec-
tions of Alaskan and Russian-American objects that
dated several decades earlier than any other system-
atic collections available from these regions in West-
ern museums. After the many deadlocked disputes over
field access, the Russians found this idea a most wel-
come shift of focus.
For the next nine years (1 978-87), teams of Soviet
and American scholars met periodically under the
auspices of IREX to plan a project that in the best
meaning of cultural exchange accomplished much
more than create an exhibition. In reality, "Crossroads
of Continents" proved to be an effective research and
education venture that served as an ideal bridge dur-
ing the difficult transitional period in Soviet American
relations in the last phase of the Cold War, from the
late 1970s to 1990. In addition to providing for the
continuation of scholarly exchanges, it highlighted the
achievements and shared history of Native cultures in
portions of North America and Eurasia that had been
engaged in contacts and exchanges for thousands of
years, beginning with the peopling of the New World.
It also happened that the project content had a
highly symbolic political message as our respective
countries were groping toward rapprochement.
For this reason, although we were careful to keep
the exhibition from straying into dangerous political
waters, the planning of the exhibition nevertheless was
a political process, including the acceptance of its
title. From the North American side, Americans and
Canadians immediately accepted "Crossroads" as the
central theme. On the Soviet side, however, there
was some concern that the use of a title that im-
plied open borders until the twentieth century would
only accentuate the darker realities of the Soviet
period.
A further concern of Soviet officialdom was the
desire of American and Canadian curators to include
the Ainu people of Sakhalin, the Kuriles, and Hokkaido
to the list of Native cultures of the North Pacific to be
exhibited. Yes, all parties agreed that the Ainu were to
be considered as culturally affiliated to North Pacific
indigenous peoples; nevertheless the Russian side
refused to condone their inclusion as this would
lead to "political problems" connected with the
Soviet expulsion of the Ainu from Sakhalin in 1946
and the taking of the southern Kurile Islands from
japan in 1945. As the Soviet side expressed it, the
Ainu were "barely touched" by the Jesup Expedition,
and since the JNPE had become the historical bedrock
for Crossroads, it was not appropriate to include the
Ainu. Faced with adamant opposition, we retreated,
realizing also that our officially bilateral project, though
operationally trilateral due to Canadian collaboration,
could not accommodate further organizational com-
plexity with the inclusion of Japanese partners. As it
happened, we were able to fill the cultural gap in our
coverage of North Pacific peoples in "Crossroads"
several years later by organizing a special Ainu ex-
hibition and catalog (Fitzhugh and Dubreuil 1999).
With these hurdles crossed, in 1979 William
Sturtevant and I prepared a proposal that outlined the
exhibition project and themes. Initially, the plan was
received positively by the Russian Academy of Sci-
ence, but in 1980, discussions broke off for a year
during the period of the Soviet invasion of Afghani-
stan. New proposals were submitted in 1981 and in
the fall of 1 982 a delegation of ethnologists from the
Institute of Ethnography including Sergei Arutiunov,
Vladimir Vasil'ev, and llya Curvich came to inspect Si-
berian collections at the Smithsonian and the Jesup
294 CURATORS AND CONSUMERS/ CROSSROADS EXHIBITS
Expedition collections and archives at the American
Museum of Natural History. This was followed in 1 983
by a reciprocal visit of North American curators includ-
ing William Sturtevant, Bill Holm, George and Joan
MacDonald, William Fitzhugh, andJames VanStone (Figs.
81,82, and 87), to study collections in Moscow and
Leningrad. It was at this time that George
MacDonald, then Director of the Canadian Museum
of Civilization in Ottawa, suggested we title the exhi-
bition "Crossroads of Continents."
The Russian team made two more visits to the
States in 1984 and during the second meeting in
December 1984 made a careful evaluation of the
AMNH Siberian collections. This institution turned out
to be steadfast partner as these exchanges unfolded.
The legacy of thejesup Expedition could not have been
more unstintingly fulfilled by the AMNH administration,
curators, collections, and archival staff (and eventually,
their exhibition and educational programs) as we be-
gan the hard work of resurrecting the Jesup collections
from storage and presenting them for research and to
the public'
During the Crossroads project these exchanges,
on both sides, were funded for the duration of the
project by IREX and were managed by Dr. Wesley Fisher
and his staff. We also began to receive grants from the
Smithsonian's Special Exhibition Fund and in 1986 a
formal protocol agreement was signed by both sides
that stipulated that the Smithsonian's National Museum
of Natural History would mount the show and the
Smithsonian's Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) would
travel it to five venues in North America. April 1986
found the exhibition team and conservator Vera
Espinola in the Soviet Union to make the final selec-
tions of objects, all of which were to come from the
collections at the Museum of Anthropology and Eth-
nography (Kunstkamera) in Leningrad, then the part
of the Academy of Sciences' Institute of Ethnogra-
phy structure. Aron Crowell and Valerie Chaussonnet
Joined the American curatorial team, and the late
Russian Americanist, Sergei Serov (1940-92), was
designated Crossroads project coordinator for the
Soviet side (Fig. 86). Sergei Arutiunov and I were
the respective project directors for the Soviet and
North American teams.
In the fall of 1 986 the Soviet group returned to the
United States to make the selection of objects from
the Siberian collections at AMNH. The final hurdle in
securing Soviet permission so that their artifacts could
come to North America was a serious disagreement
that developed over the issue of reciprocity. During
the project's development it had always been un-
derstood that the exhibit would be produced in
Washington and after the North American tour would
travel to the Soviet Union. However, at the last minute
Soviet authorities disavowed this understanding and
declared that there could be no Soviet tour because
the Russian Ministry of Culture, whose museums were
the only possible sites for exhibiting Crossroads, had
not participated in the project's development, and
resented the opportunities garnered by the Russian
Academy of Sciences in this process. At the last
minute, in mid-1 987 the impasse was bridged by high-
level American diplomacy with the-then Soviet chief
leader Mikhail Gorbachev, that required the Soviet
Ministry of Culture and Russian Academy of Sciences
to come to an agreement on budgets, space, and
scholarly travel. With these hurdles cleared—at least
on paper—the production of a catalog began, the
MAE collections were sent to the Smithsonian, and
plans were made for a major scholarly symposium to
take place at the time of the opening.
Crossroads of Continents: Cultures of Siberia and
Alaska opened on September 18th, 1988, at the
Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in
Washington, DC (Fig. 80). Emphasizing cultural di-
versity but also featuring historical trends and com-
parisons, the exhibition succeeded in demonstrating
the long history and complex developments across
this continental divide. It educated North Americans
about the Native peoples of a part of the world that
was hardly known to them, and it demonstrated
W.W. FITZHUGH 295
both the shared history of its peoples and the need for
scientific collaboration in its modern anthropological
study. It also conveyed the message that the political
barriers that had been erected at Bering Strait during
the twentieth century were anomalous in the longer
history of cultural contacts across this crossroads re-
gion. After the Smithsonian venue, the exhibition trav-
eled for four years to the American Museum of Natural
History in New York City, the Seattle Center, the An-
chorage Museum of History and Art, the Eideljorg Mu-
seum in Indianapolis, the Roy Rogers Museum in Los
Angeles, and the Canadian Museum of Civilization in
Ottawa, ending in 1992 (Fig. 85). Hundreds of thou-
sands of visitors saw the exhibition, and more than
100,000 catalogs were distributed.
During the course of the tour, a large number of
Russian scholars visited the United States and Canada
where they lectured, instructed docents, and conducted
research. Many of these venues organized scholarly
symposia, which were attended by Russians and Ameri-
can scientists. Although the exhibit had been devel-
oped primarily by ethnologists from the Institute of
Ethnography's Moscow headquarters, a number of cura-
tors from the venerable Museum of Anthropology
and Ethnology (Peter the Great Museum, or
Kunstkamera) in St. Petersburg were able to visit
North America. Many Americans met the first Rus-
sians they ever knew through these exchanges and
formed new impressions about Russians that were
quite different from the image of the Cold War Sovi-
ets derived from the American Government and
media.
"Big" ("Bolshof) Crossroads was a product of the
central institutes and museums, and their scholars
and curators. Sergei Arutiunov and Sergei Serov (Fig.
86) from the Institute of Ethnography directed the
Soviet component from Moscow. The St. Petersburg
(then Leningrad) MAE supplied collections but took
a smaller role in planning although its curators par-
ticipated in the catalog and the North American tour.
For many unfortunate reasons (timing, place, poli-
tics, etc.), Native participation in the curatorial work
and exchanges on both sides was almost nil.
When the Soviet system collapsed in 1991-2, our
plan for a reciprocal tour in Russia met the same fate
as the Soviet government. The administration of the
Institute of Ethnography and its parent Academy of
Sciences had no financial resources for supporting the
tour, especially given the uncooperative attitude of
the Ministry of Culture. Not having benefited from the
planning phase and the U.S. tour, the new Russian Min-
istry of Culture (the heir of the former Soviet Ministry)
had no interest in providing an internal platform in Rus-
sia for an exhibit organized by a bureaucratic rival, the
Academy of Sciences. Corporate sponsors were no-
where to be found, and costs of transport and secu-
rity within the new Russia had become prohibitive.
SITES and the Smithsonian concluded that the exhibi-
tion could not be sent to Russia. IREX was unwilling to
honor the agreements we had signed with the old
Soviet authorities, and the reciprocal opportunities for
research and scholarly exchange that Americans had
hoped to reap from the reciprocal tour of the exhibi-
tion in Russia were irrevocably lost . Although this was
a painful development, most people agreed that the
benefits of the North American tour had been consid-
erable and that much good had come from the exten-
sive contacts with Russian scholars in America. The
project officially ended in 1992 and the Russian ob-
jects were shipped back to Russia after the exhibit's
last venue in Ottawa.
"Mim-Crossroaif^' in Alaska and Siberia
The collapse of the Russian tour made it impossible for
us to gain national exposure for our joint efforts in
Russia. But it did not diminish our interest in having the
'Crossroads' message heard there, especially in the
Russian Far East. Our previous experience touring a
small version of the Inua exhibit in Alaska during the
1 980s suggested that a "mini-Crossroads" exhibit might
also be feasible in the Russian Far East. For this project
we intended to rectify two glaring omissions of the
296 CURATORS AND CONSUMERS/ CROSSROADS EXHIBITS
"Big Crossroads" project: failure to involve Native
collaborators and to have the show presented in local
museums in Native North Pacific homelands.
Crossroads Siberia/Alaska (or 'Mini-Crossroads,'
as we generally called this new project) was
launched for the special purpose of presenting
"Crossroads" themes of cultural interactions and
mutual influences across the North Pacific to local
audiences in Alaska and the Russian Far East. As
such, it carried forward the project begun by Boas
and thejesup North Pacific Expedition, bringing jesup
and subsequent results on North Pacific cultural heri-
tage back to the peoples of this region. Unfortu-
nately, the task of bringing Native people into the
dialog about preservation, origins, and enhancement
of their cultures had never been on the original
expedition's agenda, framed as it was under the
paradigms of "salvage museum anthropology" of the
late 1 800s. In keeping with this declared goal of the
new project, several Alaskan scholars and Native cul-
tural experts were invited to write sections of a new
exhibit catalog featuring Alaska Native cultures (see
Chaussonnet 1 995). The list of contributors included
Jana Harcharek from Barrow, Rachael Craig from
Kotzebue, Larry Kairaiuak and Darlene Orr from
Nome, Gordon Pullarand Richard Knechtfrom Kodiak
and Anchorage, Barbara Svarny Carlson from the
Aleutians, Melinda Chase, Miranda Wright, and Bernice
Joseph from interior Alaska, and Nora Marks Dauenhauer
and Richard Dauenhauer from Juneau. In addition to
objects selected from the Smithsonian, we also chose
collections from local Alaskan museums. Incorporation
of Russian Far East materials and curators was more
complex and was accomplished by a tour of regional
museums in the Russian Far East during March of 1 990,
funded by the Smithsonian, the Alaska Humanities Fo-
rum, and the Alaska State Council on the Arts. The
research team that visited the Russian Far East included
Valerie Chaussonnet, William Fitzhugh, the late Richard
Jordan, James Dixon, Roger Powers, and Darlene Orr
(Fitzhugh 1995:6-7; Fig. 89).
This amazing trip from the Bering Strait to Vla-
divostok took place during a time of glasnost and
perestroika during the last years of the old Soviet Union
and was organized by Valerii Shubin of the Sakhalin
Regional Museum in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Much of its
cost was borne by that institution and others along
our route. The tour gave us a first-hand look at regional
museums and their collections in Provideniya, Anadyr,
Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Novo-
sibirsk, and Magadan. We were the first Western an-
thropologists to visit some of these museums, and
Vladivostok was then still a closed city to outsiders.
Typically, we met curators, cultural experts, and local
officials, but few Native people. We found every insti-
tution willing to loan objects and expertise and willing
to take part in the 'mini-Crossroads' Far Eastern tour.
Valerii Shubin and his museum's Director, Vladislav M.
Latyshev, offered to coordinate the planning and as-
semble Siberian collections.
In the end, Provideniya, Anadyr, and Novosibirsk
were unable to participate in the mini-Crossroads'
project; but collections were assembled from local
museums in Magadan, Petropavlovsk, Khabarovsk,
Vladivostok, and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Two years later
the late Nikolai N. Dikov of the Magadan Northeast
Research Institute brought these materials to Alaska.,
in his hand luggage, considering it prudent—indeed,
'customary by Russian standards—not to inform U.S.
Customs. The American collections were assembled
from the University of Alaska Museum in Fairbanks, the
Kodiak Area Native Association in Kodiak, and the
Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and
National Museum of the American Indian. The Smith-
sonian, NSF, NEH, National Park Service, and other or-
ganizations financed the traveling exhibition.
The exhibit was curated magnificently by Valerie
Chaussonnet in 1994 and toured to fifteen regional
museums and culture centers in Alaska under the guid-
ance of local organizer Jean Flanagan Carlo between
1 994-6. These museums included almost every regional
center in Alaska, such as Barrow, Nome, Bethel, Sitka,
W.W, FITZHUGH 297
Kodiak, Juneau, Fairbanks, Anchorage, Homer,
Ketchikan, and others. A beautiful catalog was also
issued (Chaussonnet 1 995). The exhibit itself had a huge
impact on Native Alaska. During various phases of
production and the Alaskan tour we hosted several
Russian colleagues in Washington and in Alaska.
The lessons of Crossroads Alaska were evident in
the tremendous response given to this exhibit as it
traveled from town to town in Alaska. In the decade
since the 'mini-lnua' tour of the 1980s we had learned
more about how to package small traveling shows,
especially about the need for curricula development,
school tours, tours for children given by elders, educa-
tion resource kits, and the importance ofvisual resources
like photographic albums and videos. The energy of a
local tour coordinator was crucial for raising local
and national funding for education components and
for local coordination. Terry Dickey, Wanda Chin, Leonard
Kammerling, and other staff of the University of Alaska
Museum in Fairbanks assisted us masterfully in these
areas.
We also learned that small exhibits (if one can call
twenty-five large bright purple crates a small exhibit
package!) could safely be shipped around Alaska in
any season if the artifacts are selected for this task, are
permanently installed in climatically-buffered cases, and
are given careful conservation monitoring). There is no
reason why such traveling exhibits cannot safely be
presented in any place in the North. Given careful plan-
ning, issues of object security can be met even under
rigorous conditions of northern environments. Unfor-
tunately we also discovered that touring small ex-
hibits in this manner is also very expensive: Cross-
roads Alaska/Siberia cost more than $500,000 to
produce and circulate in Alaska alone. Reports of
this tour are found in various issues of the Arctic
Studies Center Newsletter for the years 1 994 to 1 997.
With this experience in Alaska the Arctic Studies
Center organized the next 'mini-Crossroads' tour—^this
time in the Russian Far East, in 1 996-7. This project
was undertaken by Igor Krupnik, who began the
planning effort with the Russian Institute for the Cul-
tural and Natural Heritage in Moscow through the gen-
erous assistance of its Director, Yurii Vedenin, and As-
sistance Director, Pavel Shulgin. However, following a
highly successful planning meeting of regional museum
directors in early 1 997 in Khabarovsk, hosted by Nikolai
Ruban, Director of the Khabarovsk Regional Museum,
the tour quickly became an Arctic Studies Center-Rus-
sian Far East enterprise, with venues planned at
Khabarovsk, Blagoveshchensk, Vladivostok, and
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Krupnik directed the primary orga-
nizing group with assistance from Deborah Hull-Walski
and Greta Hansen of the Smithsonian's Anthropology
collection staff, and the Arctic Studies Center's Anne
Stone. The primary collaborators on the Russian Far
East side included Nikolai Ruban (assisted by Dr. Anna
Ponomareva, Khabarovsk Museum chief Ethnography
Curator) and Vladislav Latyshev, Director of the Yuzhno-
Sakhalinsk Regional Museum. Olga Shubina, of this lat-
ter museum, took on the extremely important and dif-
ficult role of Russian tour coordinator, and performed
miracles to ensure the safety of the collections.This
project, which to my knowledge was the first travel-
ing exhibition to tour in the Russian Far East, quickly
revealed the great potential as well as the pitfalls of a
regional approach to exhibition sharing and museum-
based education in this region. The problems were
many. Besides the obvious lack of funds, there was a
critical shortage of Native participation and 'Native
voice' in the Russian tour planning and in public
education and museum programs. A Native-based
cultural agenda was much less important in the local
museums' agendas than appealing to the general
Russian public, and the exhibit was often presented
with only token involvement of local Native cultural
leaders, limited to the opening public ceremonies.
Whereas our local Russian partners were not always
able to match the full scale of educational program-
ming plan we had mounted in Alaska, the 'mini-Cross-
roads' experience implanted models for future devel-
opment of these concepts. Perhaps most importantly,
298 CURATORS AND CONSUMERS/ CROSSROADS EXHIBITS
the exhibition familiarized Russian museum curators
with conservation requirements, installation technol-
ogy, and educational programming that will be useful
in future efforts (Figs. 90, 91 ). Our Russian partners did
a masterful job protecting and traveling the exhibit
and, not the least, raising local funds for its transport
and care. Other than the crucial payment of the
exhibition's insurance bill by the Russian Ministry of
Culture, the entire tour was locally supported.
Our part, to get the exhibition cases and objects
to Russia and to get the North American collections
home cost a mere $50,000! Igor Krupnik deserves
great credit for editing the Russian language version
of the catalog (Krupnik 1 996), for courting the support
of the Russian Ministry of Culture, for successfully ar-
ranging for the catalog's printing by the United States
Information Agency, and for managing the entire tour
process by phone and fax. Among Krupnik's contribu-
tions was his success in securing Russian Native au-
thors for the Russian language catalog, including
Vladimir Etylen and Tatyana Achirgina-Arsyak from
Anadyr, Valentina Dedyk-lvkavav from Palana, Tasyan
Tein from Magadan, Lyudmila Ainanafrom Provideniya,
Anatoly Alexeev from Yakutsk, Nadezhda Laigun from
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Nadezhda Kimonko, Antonina Kile,
Valentina Samar, and Valentina Fedorova-Diatala from
Khabarovsk and the Amur River region. This was the
first time—at least, to my knowledge—that Native
people from both sides of the North Pacific were able
to present their respective cultures under one cover
and with a similar format. Looking back one can
truly say that accomplishing the Russian Far East
tour was a minor miracle, to the great credit of Olga
Shubina and her colleagues, Igor Krupnik, and the
Smithsonian staff.
Siberian Museums and Native Peoples
In addition to its role in regional cultural education.
Crossroads Alaska/Siberia provided curators from Si-
beria and Alaska with opportunities to exchange
visits, meet Native groups, study collections, and
learn each others' museums. As mentioned above, the
process started in 1990 when a team of American
curators was able to visit several Russian Siberian mu-
seums from Provideniya to Vladivostok to Novosibirsk.
This trip gave us a glimpse of provincial Russian
museums at an historic turning point in Soviet/Russian
history, and we found them, like the rest of Russia at
that time, in the midst of self-examination and re-
newal. Most of the old system and institutional ar-
chitecture prevailed, but curators and directors were
searching for new directions. All were interested in
collaborating with a traveling version of Crossroads
even though few people in these areas of Russia
had ever heard of the larger Crossroads show or
seen its catalog.
Most important, the regional museum system at
that time was still part of the bigger cultural program
of the Soviet State. Unlike Alaska and the Northwest
Coast, where museums functioned in more diverse, in-
formal, entrepreneurial ways, Soviet regional museums
received state support and were seen as important
educational institutions that purveyed state-sanctioned
knowledge. Budgets were modest but assured, and
directors and curators concentrated on collecting and
archiving cultural materials, conducting research, and
producing exhibits, local publications, and education
pamphlets. Regional museums always had three inter-
nal departments with three corresponding exhibit sec-
tions: natural science, pre-Soviet history, and Soviet
history. Since ethnography and archaeology were
always relegated to the "pre-Soviet" history. Native
culture, as far as museums were concerned, officially
was not a part of modern life or of its museum dis-
plays. Russian Far East regional museums sponsored
substantial archaeological and ethnographic research
in their local areas and were often the designated
repositories for these projects. Over time local Sibe-
rian museums came to possess important research
collections.
As progressive as this structure was compared to
the United States Government's seemingly dedicated
W.W. FITZHUCH 299
aversion to cultural education, Soviet Native people
were rarely appointed to positions of authority in
Soviet regional museums. During the Soviet era re-
gional museums usually followed policies deter-
mined by the local Communist Party line. Even dur-
ing the Clasnost times, the situation we observed
was largely the same as that described for the pre-
vious Soviet period in the Russian Far East. Museums
had opened exhibits on the atrocities of the old re-
gime, but Native voices were almost non-existent, and
exhibits of Native culture were exhibits of Native cul-
ture rather than exhibits by or with Native people. These
observations of the 1 990 tour may be now obsolete,
as by the time Laurel Kendall and Alexia Bloch visited
some of the same museums in 1998, local conditions
had changed markedly (Kendall and Bloch n.d.). Bud-
gets were cut significantly and money was scarce ev-
erywhere; but many programs were blooming with
local support.
Overall, one might say that during the past cen-
tury Native cultures maintained themselves at
roughly comparable levels across the North Pacific
Region. While North American Natives never experi-
enced Stalin's murderous purges and police state
repression, they suffered greatly from official neglect
and from loss of lands and subsistence resources.
They found their cultures and languages ridiculed
and repressed by the dominant majority, and in many
places they often occupied a comparable position
with their Siberian counterparts at the bottom of
the local economic and social ladder. Where Soviet
Native peoples had their cultures artificially controlled
and were forced into Soviet modes of behavior, Ameri-
can Natives had their cultures trampled by private
industry and government, and lost much to disease,
alcohol, and poverty, as also was the case in Siberia.
Thus, by 1990, Native cultures in the Russian
Far East suffered both the continued repression of the
Soviet past as well as the crushing weight of a strug-
gling economy, in which local people were frequently
impoverished outsiders. Unfortunately, Soviet museum
policy did nothing to help Native people maintain
their culture anymore than the government helped
them maintain a voice in local affairs. By this time in
Alaska, cultural programming and revitalization had
surged forward during the twenty years since the
Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act had opened
the way toward more intensive resource develop-
ment and Native "corporate" independence. Al-
though Native Alaskan cultural life and its museum
expressions then, as today, was far from being a
"bed of roses," significant strides had been made in
self-determination and economic independence.
Fortunately, there are indications that the situation
in Siberia is now also improving for its Native people,
at least as far as the preservation and documenta-
tion of their cultures is concerned.
Heritage Anthropology: Past and Future
Over the past twenty-five years, since the Arctic
Studies Center began producing museum-based out-
reach programs, the importance of reconnecting cul-
tural heritage materials gathered and preserved in
museums with ongoing living traditions has become a
surprising new and revitalizing force in museum an-
thropology. Institutions whose raison d'etre since
their founding more than one hundred years ago had
been to collect vanishing cultures and educate or
entertain the public have had their missions deeply
transformed. Academic scholars and museum cura-
tors have discovered that the world [out there] has
dimensions not conceived of by the founders who
charted anthropological and museum research for the
past century. The discovery that these collections could
be useful for more than simply preserving the remains
of cultures being absorbed into the mainstream of so-
ciety or for scientific studies of human history has been
a surprising revelation to a field that has prided itself
on understanding and serving its constituents and its
audience.
For years that audience has consisted of mu-
seum visitors and other scholars who used museum
300 CURATORS AND CONSUMERS/ CROSSROADS EXHIBITS
collections and archival materials for generally altruis-
tic goals of entertainment, appreciation, research, and
erudition. Now, within the span of little more than a
decade, a new pulsing vein of culture and tradition has
become evident, arising not in the sometimes dowdy
halls of museums and curators' stalls but in the recon-
nection between museum objects and records and
the people from whom they originated. Somehow,
most of the societies and cultures that had become
the targets of salvage anthropology—at least, in
the North—have survived the twentieth century and
have emerged with a passion to re-invigorate their
heritage and to learn from or absorb parts of their
past into their modern lives.
The history of anthropology and museum col-
lecting in the North Pacific during the past century
provides a striking panorama of the forces that have
shaped cultural studies and the use of cultural ma-
terials. Unlike most other areas of the world where
complex societies had already heavily impacted tra-
ditional life, cultures of the North Pacific in the late
nineteenth century were still largely intact. Here the
past 100 years of change has been paralleled by a
remarkable record of anthropological and museum-
based documentation. Few areas of the world are
so well represented in terms of material cultural and
historical records.
During the century since theJesup Expedition teams
surveyed the North Pacific, anthropology and museum
studies have come full-circle, with Native peoples
emerging to reclaim their stake in their heritage and in
this process. This transition went through several stages:
from the "salvage documentation" of the vestiges of
traditional cultures for purely historical and academic
reasons (as practiced by Boas); to the "pro-activist eth-
nography and cultural construction" by government-
employed scholars of the early Soviet era (initiated
by Bogoras); to the purely scientific investigations
of cultural origins as practiced by scholars like Henry
Collins, Frederica de Laguna, and Sergei Rudenko;
to the more reflexive museum and publication
projects of the late 1 900s, like Inua: Spirit World of the
Bering Sea Eskimo, Crossroads of Continents and its
'mini-Crossroads' versions. Chiefly Feasts: The Endur-
ing KwakiutI Potlatch (Jonaitis 1 991 ), The Living Tradi-
tion of Yup'ik Masks: Agayuliyararput — Our Way of
Making Prayers (Fienup-Riordan 1 996), and Looking
Both Ways: l-ieritage and Identity ofthe Alutiiq People
(Crowell, Steffian, and Pullar 200 1 ). Today the peoples
of these regions, as elsewhere, are rediscovering their
past and are finding materials that inspire their future.
This is the real and lasting legacy of the Jesup Expedi-
tion. The re-establishment of the connection between
culture-bearers and their museum and archival heritage
is emerging as a powerful new force that re-purposes
museums and opens new responsibilities for curators
and their new local constituencies.
Facing a paradigm shift that also includes the poli-
tics of repatriation, museum workers need to reassess
their goals and methods of operation. While the out-
comes are not clear, new technologies, especially the
Internet, imaging, and information technologies offer
powerful new tools for bringing museum treasures out
of the archives and back into the mainstream of Na-
tive life and to the many other audiences seeking en-
richment with cultural heritage materials. Programs of
this new era, like the evolving permutations of the
"Crossroads of Continents" program, have helped re-
chart the route and find new partners. The original Jesup
Expedition was instrumental in this effort, and I imag-
ine Boas might not have been displeased to see the
results of this new kind of museum anthropology that
brings collections and Native peoples together again
across Bering Strait after having drifted so far apart
during the intervening century.
Notes
1 . As it turned out, AMNH support for Russian
and Native Siberian researchers who were studying
these collections was to extend many years into
the future, culminating in efforts that lead to the
Jesup Expedition Centennial conference of 1 997 and
this publication.
W.W. FITZHUCH
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1 998 Jesup Genealogy: Intellectual Partnership and
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1985 Russian-American Bering Sea Relations: Re-
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1 946 Archeologie du Pacifique-Nord. Materiaux pour
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1 996 Native Carvers and Outsider Artists: Patterns
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Nelson, Edward W.
1 983 Eskimo about Bering Strait. With Introduction
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Smithsonian Institution Press.
O'Neil, Daniel
1 994 The Firecracker Boys. New York:St. Martin's Press.
Ousley, Steven, and Richard Jantz
2001 500 Year Old Questions, 100 Year Old Data,
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1 947 The Sadiron Lamp of Kamchatka as a Clue to
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1 l(3):202-3.
W.W. FITZHUGH 303
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1 992 Spencer Baird ofthe Smithsonian. Washington,
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Rudenko, Sergei I.
1947 Drevniaia kul'tura Beringova moria i
eskimosskaia problema (Ancient Culture of the Bering
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Leningrad: Clavsevmorput'. (Translated English edi-
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Slezkine, Yuri
1 994 Arctic Mirrors. Russia and the Small Peoples of
the North. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
Sokolova, Zoia P.
1 994 Recent Ethnic Processes among the People of
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Spaulding, Albert C.
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Robert S. Peabody Foundation for Archaeology,
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304 CURATORS AND CONSUMERS/ CROSSROADS EXHIBITS
82/Jim VanStone's "method" for selecting ethnographic objects for the Crossroads of Continents exhibit—in this
case, a Tlingit war helmet from the MAE collection. Museum ofAnthropology and Ethnography (KunstWammer), St.
Petersburg, Russia. 1983. Photographer, Jean-Loup Rousselot (ASC Collection)
W.W. FITZHUCH 305
83/Aleut laborers working for the Jochelsons excavate the whalebone walls ofan ancient
Aleut barabara at the Aglagax site on Umnak Island (NAA 2003-20969). From an album
presented by WaldemarJochelson to the Department ofAnthropology of the National Mu-
seum (also jochelson 1925:32)
306
yA^ieut /\rcliaeoiogtj and (^Luitura! ["jeritage:
T"^^- L'Sgact) of the ^'esup f\|orth facific r'xp edition
STEPHEN LORING
AND DOUGLAS W. VELTRE
As the far-reaching goals of the Jesup North Pacific
Expedition ONPE) of 1897-1902 developed, their ini-
tial scope narrowed to the extent that the research
venture had eventually only a marginal presence in
southwestern Alaska. Nevertheless, subsequent re-
search in this area owes a considerable intellectual debt
to the foundations laid by JNPE researchers and to its
overall scholarly paradigm. In particular, Waldemar
Jochelson and Dina Jochelson-Brodsky, who have had
extensive Siberian experience and had worked with
the JNPE, brought the broad anthropological approach
of the Jesup Expedition program to the Aleutians in
1909-10 (Fig. 83).
In this paper, we first examine archaeological
research in the Aleut region preceding that of the
Jochelsons. Next we discuss the specific efforts of the
Jochelsons, whose Aleut-Kamchatka Expedition of
1909-11 addressed a number of themes that have
figured significantly in subsequent Aleutian research.
These include the nature and timing of human coloni-
zation of the region; the nature of human maritime
adaptations; and the cultural, linguistic and biological
relationships and continuities between the past and
the present. Third, we look at archaeological research
done between that of the Jochelsons and about 1 970.
Finally, we review work done since 1 970, in particular
exploring the significant ways in which the contribu-
tions of the Jochelsons and other early researchers
have combined with recent legislative developments
to influence contemporary archaeological and cultural
heritage efforts in the Aleut region and to help shape
Aleut identity in the modern world.
The Aleut region is that area of southwestern Alaska
that was the traditional home of the Aleut people (a
name which is discussed below). It includes the tip of
the Alaska Peninsula from Port Moller westward, the
Shumagin Islands group south of the Alaska Peninsula,
and the entire Aleutian Islands archipelago, some
seventy islands extending 1 ,600 km from the end of
the Alaska Peninsula westward towards the Kamchatka
Peninsula (see map Fig. 5). This area comprises a dy-
namic landscape shaped by glacial and tectonic pro-
cesses, including volcanism, earthquake activity, and
sea-level changes (McCartney and Veltre 1 999). At
the junction of the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering
Sea, where marine upwelling provides nutrient-rich
water, the Aleutian Islands ecosystem hosts one of
the world's most productive fisheries and highest con-
centrations of pelagic birds and marine mammals. The
bountiful marine resources available to human hunters
and gatherers figured significantly in the early coloni-
zation of the archipelago and continue to shape re-
gional social, political, and economic agendas.
Archaeological, biological, and ethnographic data
show a cultural continuity in this region for at least the
last 4000 years (cf Laughlin 1963, 1980; McCartney
1 977, 1 984). Aleut oral tradition also suggests that
the Pribilof Islands, north of the Aleutian chain in the
Bering Sea, were known to the Aleut people prior to
the islands' discovery by the Russians in 1 786 and
307
1 787. However, the limited archaeological research
to date there has found no evidence of utilization of
these islands by anyone prior to the Russian period,
when they were settled by the Aleut (Vettre and Veltre
1986; Veltre and McCartney 1994, 2002).
At the time of contact in the mid-1 700s, the Aleut
population likely numbered some 1 2-1 5,000 (Lantis
1984:163). The traditional economy was focused on
the sea as the provider of nearly all food and raw ma-
terials, with marine mammals, ocean and anadromous
fish, marine invertebrates, birds, and eggs providing at
least ninety-five percent of the diet (Laughlin 1 980:49).
Larger winter settlements and smaller seasonal camps
were along the coast. Extended families, possibly or-
ganized according to principles of matrilineal kinship
(Lantis 1 970), lived in semi-subterranean houses.
In contemplating the legacy of the JNPE as it per-
tains to the Aleut region, we focus our remarks on the
history of archaeological research in the Aleutians,
mentioning only briefly the wider sphere of anthropo-
logical issues embraced by the Boasian school. Archae-
ology in the Aleutians began in the 1 870s with the
pioneering work of William Dall and Alphonse Pinart.
Their revelations on the antiquity of Aleut occupations
stimulated interest in the Aleutians as a possible gate-
way for people entering the New World and greatly
influenced Franz Boas' (1 905:91 ) statement of thejesup
Expedition goals: "one of the great problems of eth-
nological science is the relation of the American race
to the races of the other continents" to be revealed
through the comparative study of contemporary Na-
tive people, physical anthropology, and archaeology.
While in Boas' original conception of thejesup Expedi-
tion research program the Aleutians were sched-
uled for attention in 1901 (see Fig. 4, p. 17), that
survey never materialized.
The Beginning of Archaeological Research in
the Aleutians
Anthropology and geography were the pre-eminent
intellectual bases of eighteenth and nineteenth centu-
ries' expanding Western colonial enterprises. The dis-
cipline of archaeology has, until recently, been a
peculiar and exclusionary system of knowledge that
has served to extend Western intellectual hegemony
over the past and has, for the most part, failed to
capture the imagination and interest of people in
northern communities. Nevertheless, by extending
perceptions of the viability and existence of social
(tribal, ethnic) institutions into the past, archaeol-
ogy can play an important role in the preservation,
formation, and interpretation of social identities. The
Boasian anthropologists were much closer in time to
the pre-contact past with their notions of traditional,
static culture, and they expected archaeology to con-
firm ancient land tenure and perceptions shaped by
ethnography. While Aleut community members have
always been involved in the interpretation of their past
(as guides, interpreters, informants, field-workers), it is
only recently, as anthropologists have begun to sur-
render their position of authority and control, that they
have taken a more active role in the construction of
their past.
Archaeology in the Aleutians arguably begins with
the collecting activities of the French ethnologist
Alphonse Pinart who carted off a collection of remark-
able wooden masks and associated objects from a
burial cave on Unga Island in the Shumagins in 1 871
(Pinart 1875). Knowledge of the Unga discoveries
quickly spread and piqued the interest of William Dall,
captain of a U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey vessel
in charge of a Smithsonian-sponsored scientific sur-
vey of the Aleutians from 1 871 to 1 874 (Dall 1 875a,
1875b, 1878).
Dall was the epitome of a systematic naturalist.
Trained by Louis Agassiz, he first came to Alaska in
1 865 (when he was twenty-one) to work with and
eventually lead the Western Union International Tele-
graph Expedition (Merriam 1 927; Dall 1 870). Dall was
a splendid exemplar of the intellectual eclecticism
of nineteenth century naturalists. While primarily a
specialist on shells, his Alaska research also included
308 CURATORS AND CONSUMERS/ALEUTIANS
publications on birds, fish, mammals,
cetacean parasites, and meteorology,
all's archaeological investigations, con-
ducted sporadically as bad weather and
logistics constrained his official survey
work, pioneered the systematic excava-
tion of shell middens (Dall 1873, 1877).
His deep cuts in stratified midden depos-
its suggested a significant antiquity of the
region.
In the Aleutians the question of the
origins of the Aleut people structured
early research, with the possibility that
the earliest colonizers crossed from Kam-
chatka Peninsula to the Aleutian Islands
via the Commander Islands. While Dall did
not believe in the Asian colonization of
the Aleutians, the intense debate surround-
ing the issue of the origin of humans in
the New World and their possible migra-
tion routes figured significantly in Aleutian
research prior to World War II.
There is an interesting aside to Dall's
research. In 1 872 he arranged to adopt
a fifteen-year old orphan from lliuliuk
(present-day Unalaska), George Tsaroff
(Fig. 84), who returned with Dall from Alaska
in 1 873. Impressed byTsarofF s cleverness, Dall arranged
for him to be educated at the University of Michigan.
In 1 878, Tsaroff came to Washington as an "assistant"
where he was placed in charge of the Smithsonian's
ethnological hall. There he served as a guide to the
collections: "himself forming an extremely interesting
exhibit—that of a native Indian, well educated and in-
structed, and able to explain the special objects and
applications of many articles manufactured and used
in his own country" (Baird 1 881 :69).
Tragically, Tsaroff contracted consumption and
died in 1 880. His tenure as a museum guide and living-
link between ethnography and museum collections pre-
cedes by twenty-three years the celebrated case of
Fig. 84/ George Tsaroff, soon after starting to work at the Smithsonian
Institution, ca. 1 878 (NAA-SI 80-1 3437)
Ishi, the "last" of the Yahi Indians, who was befriended
by Theodora and Alfred Kroeber and who performed
a similar function at the University of California Mu-
seum of Anthropology at Berkeley (Kroeber 1 961 ).
Initiated by Dall, anthropological interest by the
Smithsonian in the Aleutians was furthered by the
collecting activities of Lucien M. Turner, an employee
of the U. S. Army Signal Service who was stationed in
the Aleutians in 1874-5 and again in 1879-81. He
established meteorological stations on Atka and Attu
Islands. Continuing in the broad natural science
collecting tradition of Dall, Turner made large impor-
tant collections of birds, fish, mammals, insects, and
plants for the Smithsonian. His anthropological
S. LORING AND D W. VELTRE 309
contributions included the acquisition of large ar-
chaeological and ethnological collections and Aleut
vocabularies (Baird 1 883). While Turner's collections
have never been systematically analyzed or even
described, they form a very valuable legacy for the
insight they provide on Aleut culture in the Western
Aleutians.
Another component of the Smithsonian interest
in the Aleutians was the work of the pioneering
naturalist Leonhard Stejneger (1 85 1 -1 943), whose
research on the extinct fauna of the Aleutians, in-
cluding Steller's sea-cow and Pallas' cormorant
(Stejneger and Lucas 1 889), presaged interest in the
consequences of human hunting and foraging prac-
tices on Aleutian ecosystems.
The Fieldwork of Waldemar Jochelson and
Dina Jochelson-Brodsky
In preparing for the work of the JNPE, Boas traveled
to Europe in 1 898, where he was introduced to
Waldemar Jochelson (Vakhtin 2001:80-2). While
somewhat of a political liability, Jochelson was an
extraordinarily gifted and experienced Russian eth-
nographer. He had worked with northern peoples
of Siberia while in exile (between 1886-95) and in
residence in Yakutsk (1895-7) prior to Joining the
Jesup Expedition research program. While on his JNPE
assignment, Jochelson was accompanied by his wife,
Dina Jochelson-Brodsky who had trained in medicine
at the University of Zurich and who took responsibility
for the expedition's health as well as for the acquisi-
tion of anthropometric and biological data. Dina
Jochelson-Brodsky also produced a portion of the
photographic record of the expedition's travels in Si-
beria. The Jochelsons were in Siberia from the summer
of 1 900 through the summer of 1 902 working among
the Koryak, Even (Tungus), Yukagir, and Sakha (Yakut)
peoples (Boas 1 903:1 02-9; Jochelson 1908, 1926).
Their collections were primarily ethnological but also
included physical anthropology (plaster casts of
faces and measurements), photography, folklore and
musical recordings, human skeletal remains and ar-
chaeological materials acquired from graves and re-
cently abandoned villages, zoological specimens (in-
cluding a 220 lb mammoth tusk!), and meteorological
observations Oochelson, in Boas 1903:109).
The Jochelsons' experiences with the JNPE led
directly to their involvement with the Ryabushinski
Aleut-Kamchatka Expedition of 1909-11, modeled
closely on the Jesup Expedition protocol (Jochelson
1912). The Ryabushinski Expedition was under the
auspices of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society
(Fig. 92) and was financed by the Russian banker
Feodore P. Ryabushinski (Theodore Riabouschinsky). It
sought to pick up where the JNPE had left off in resolv-
ing the historical, cultural, and biological relations among
Aleut, Eskimo, and Asian peoples. Foremost in its re-
search agenda was a determination of Aleut origins in
which the role of archaeology featured prominently.
TheJochelsons arrived in Unalaska injanuary 1 909. They
conducted archaeological investigations on Attu and
Atka Islands during the following summer, and then
spent the next winter at Nikolski village on Umnak
Island conducting linguistic research and collecting pho-
nographic recordings of traditional Aleut myths and
stories Oochelson 1912; Bergsland and Dirks 1990;
Korsun et al. 2001 ). In the spring of 1 91 they made a
brief visit to the Pribilof Islands before returning to
Unalaska and thence to Kamchatka, where they spent
a year conducting archaeological excavations
Oochelson 1928).
During their Aleutian fieldwork the Jochelsons were
assisted by Alexei M. Yachmenev, the "Aleut chief of
Unalaska, " and other Aleut elders (making them the
first to acknowledge the role of elders in the pro-
duction of knowledge). Two volumes based on the
Aleutian fieldwork were forthcoming, one on the his-
tory, ethnology, and anthropology Oochelson 1933),
the other on the results of their archaeological re-
search Oochelson 1 92 5). The Aleutian fieldwork, fol-
lowing the broad Boasian agenda established by the
JNPE researchers, included archaeological excavations,
3 1
CURATORS AND CONSUMERS/ALEUTIANS
ethnological observations and collections, anthropo-
metric measurements, and the collection of Aleut my-
thology, oral traditions, language, and music (Figs. 93
and 94).
Smithsonian Redux
For a decade beginning in the late 1920s, the
Smithsonian's indomitable Ales Hrdlicka made annual
archaeological expeditions to Alaska. Hrdlicka was in-
terested in the problems of racial history and origins,
especially as they were applicable to finding the
origins of human occupation of the New World, the
origin of Eskimo cultures in Alaska, and the nature of
prehistoric exchange, interaction, and migration.
Hrdlicka worked in the central and western Aleutians
during three successive field seasons in 1936, 1937,
and 1938 (Hrdlicka 1945). He dug at a number of
ancient Aleut sites and conducted physical an-
thropological and biometrical observations in Aleut
communities, especially those in the Near Islands group
of the western Aleutian Islands and in the Commander
Islands in Soviet territory.
Due to his zeal for recovering human skeletal re-
mains, Hrdlicka never had a very good reputation
among Native Alaskans. This research, regardless of
the valid scientific questions the "data" sought to
address, was conducted with little regard for Native
concerns (Loring and Prokopec 1994). His enthusi-
asm also resulted in archaeological procedures that
were far from satisfactory, even by the standards of
his day. To his credit, however, Hrdlicka did retain much
of the faunal material exposed during his midden ex-
cavations.
Research from World War II to 1970
The pioneering work of Dall, the broad-based JNPE-
inspired investigations of the Jochelsons, and the ex-
peditions of Hrdlicka were mostly undertaken without
substantial Aleut involvement, except for the sig-
nificant role of local people in sharing their cultural
expertise and providing oral recordings for the
S. LORING AND D. W. VELTRE
Jochelsons (Bergsland and Dirks 1 990:1 0-1 5). Likewise,
the archaeological research methodologies of these
early researchers often left much to be desired by
modern standards. Nevertheless, the groundwork laid
by these scholars set the stage for a wide range of
anthropological research in the post-World War II years.
It also left an important legacy for recently emergent
efforts at perpetuating Aleut cultural heritage.
The World War II years and the years following have
arguably witnessed more changes in Aleut culture than
any period since the early Russian era (cf. Veltre 1 990,
1 999). In 1 942, Aleuts from far-western Attu Island
were taken as prisoners by the Japanese, and all
other Aleuts from St. Paul and St. George in the Pribilof
Islands and from villages west of the Alaska Peninsula-
some 881 individuals—were taken by the U. S. military
to internment camps in southeastern Alaska for the
duration of the war (Kohlhoff 1 990; Veltre 1 992). This
was a period of severe deprivation and hardship,
keeping the Aleut people away from their homes for
several years, even long after the Japanese threat had
been eliminated. Following the war, several Aleut
villages were never reoccupied, while many of those
to which the Aleut did return saw substantial changes
in communication, education, economy, and the eth-
nic makeup of their communities. Although the Aleut
returned to villages where pursuit of traditional lifestyles
was increasingly difficult and where, in some cases,
they were on the verge of becoming ethnic minorities
in their own communities, they nevertheless emerged
from wartime internment with new knowledge and
skills stemming from their contacts with the people,
economy, and politics outside of the Aleut region.
For the first twenty-five years following World War
II, Aleuts in many communities became more and more
assimilated into the larger world. In the Pribilof Islands,
the fur seal industry continued to be the mainstay of
economic life, while in the villages along the Alaska
Peninsula and the Aleutian Islands seasonal cash em-
ployment in the growing fishing industry mixed with
traditional subsistence pursuits sustained the widely
3 1 1
dispersed population. During this time before 1 970, a
few small archaeological research projects were un-
dertaken throughout the region. In addition, two larger
efforts were begun—a long-term and multidisciplinary
series of investigations in and around the village of
Nikolski on Umnak Island by William Laughlin and his
colleagues beginning in 1 948, (cf. Laughlin 1 975), and
a program of archaeological surveys and excavations
on Amchitka Island conducted as part of the U.S. Atomic
Energy Commission's underground nuclear testing pro-
gram from 1 964-72 (Sense and Turner 1 970; Turner
1970; Desautels et al. 1971; Cook et al. 1972). Al-
though undertaken with the knowledge and general
support of the Aleut people, these projects were initi-
ated and conducted almost entirely without direct Aleut
consultation and involvement.
Research Since 1970
It was not until the 1 970s that the Aleut people were
able to exercise meaningful influence and control over
archaeological research in their region, and it has been
only in very recent years that they have begun to take
a more proactive role in determining the direction of
such research efforts. These changes have come about
largely due to the passage of several pieces of federal
legislation.
The Alaska Native Claims SettlementAct. The most
significant of this recent legislation is the Alaska Na-
tive Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) of 1971, a law
having direct relevance to cultural heritage in at least
two main areas. First, ANCSA established regional and
local Native for-profit corporations. As elsewhere in
the state, legal title to certain lands in the Aleut region
was given to the regional for-profit Aleut Corporation,
while title to other lands went to each of thirteen local
Aleut village for-profit corporations. The Aleut
Corporation's lands are distributed throughout much
of the region, while each village corporation's lands
are for the most part immediately surrounding that
village. Because these regional and village lands in-
cluded the archaeological sites on them, Aleuts for
the first time owned outright a significant portion of
their cultural heritage. Thus, while prior to the passage
of ANCSA archaeologists needed only to obtain a fed-
eral Antiquities Act permit to pursue their work in most
of the Aleut region, now archaeologists wanting to
conduct research on regional or village lands were re-
quired only to go to the Aleut landowners to obtain
permission, the details and conditions of which would
be up to the parties to negotiate.
While archaeological projects on Aleut lands have
been undertaken with the explicit permission of local
and regional Aleut entities since 1971, few have in-
volved the Aleut people directly in the planning,
field, or analytical stages of work. This is primarily be-
cause the Aleut have historically not had extensive
participation in the educational and research traditions
of the universities and government agencies that typi-
cally sponsor such efforts. Also, real-life practical dif-
ficulties faced by residents of the region, who might
have to decide, for example, whether to forego sum-
mer employment or subsistence pursuits to spend
weeks or months away from home at a remote ar-
chaeological field camp, have made participation dif-
ficult.
Over the last few decades, however, this situation
has changed somewhat, as Aleut entities have begun
to see how archaeology can be of service to them.
The first regional Aleut Corporation-sponsored ar-
chaeological project (Frohlich and Kopjanski 1975)
occurred in 1 974, shortly after passage of ANCSA,
when archaeologists were funded to conduct site
surveys in the central and western Aleutian Islands
as part of efforts to apply for 1 4(h)(l ) sites (see be-
low). Since then, several additional—and mostly small-
scale—archaeological and ethnohistorical projects have
been initiated and underwritten by the regional corpo-
ration to address other questions it deemed signifi-
cant. These included, for example, research into his-
torical Aleut land use patterns on Attu Island, done as
part of World War II restitution (Veltre 1 988), and an
archaeological survey to examine the condition of
3 1 2
CURATORS AND CONSUMERS/ALEUTIANS
possibly vandalized archaeological properties on Adak
Island (Veltre 1 997a).
Likewise, some Aleut village non-profit and for-profit
entities—like the St. Paul TDX Corporation, the Ouna-
lashka in Unalaska Corporation, and the former Unalaska
Aleut Development Corporation—have supported ar-
chaeological investigations in their communities as part
of their emerging interests in local history. One example
of this was a project in historical archaeology and
ethnohistory on St. Paul Island (Fig. 96). An initial
archaeological survey of Russian and American pe-
riod settlements on the island in 1 994 (Veltre and
McCartney 1 994, 2002) was followed by excavations
at one former village in 2000 and 2001 . Archaeologi-
cal efforts were combined with recording oral histo-
ries from community residents (Veltre and McCartney
2000, 2001). Instigated and underwritten in large part
by the people of that community, this project served
their dual desires to understand better their island's
history as well as to determine if archaeological re-
sources could somehow be incorporated into their eco-
nomically important tourism industry.
Other projects which have done a great deal to
further the goals of Aleut-initiated archaeology have
taken place at several sites in the City of Unalaska
under the guidance of Richard Knecht, Director of the
Museum of the Aleutians. Working with the coopera-
tion of both the City and the Aleut village corporation,
the Ounalashka Corporation, which owns the land on
which many of the sites are located, professionals and
volunteers are able to balance archaeological pursuits
with their work and family commitments (Fig. 95). Such
broad-based support, combined with logistical ease,
has enabled Knecht to undertake large-scale excava-
tions at a number of sites over the last seven years
(Knecht and Davis 2001; Knecht 2003). Like the St.
Paul survey and excavations described above for the
Ounalashka Corporation, such research efforts further
not only cultural heritage goals but strategic ones as
well, since the sites have been located in prime areas
for future economic development.
ANCSA Section 14(h)(1). The second way in which
ANCSA has affected Aleut cultural heritage is in its
provision that title to culturally important lands not
otherwise included within village or regional land
selections could be transferred to the regional Aleut
Corporation. This was accomplished through the
Act's Section 1 4(h)(l ), a relatively minor feature of the
overall legislation, but a major force in matters of con-
temporary cultural heritage throughout Alaska from
the mid-1 970s to today.
Section 1 4(h)(l ) of ANCSA provides for the transfer
of title to regional Native corporations of archaeologi-
cal and other historical sites not otherwise selected
by local or regional Native corporations. By the filing
deadline in the late 1 970s, the Aleut Corporation had
submitted approximately 400 individual claims for ar-
chaeological sites, the vast majority of which had never
been investigated archaeologically. Importantly, the
work of the early archaeologists in the region was
critical to the Aleut Corporation's efforts: had many
site locations not been noted by Dall, Jochelson, or
Hrdlicka, they most likely never would have been
applied for by the Aleut Corporation. Field investiga-
tions of Aleut site applications by BIA ANCSA archae-
ologists took place largely between 1 983 and 1 989
(although some work continued until 1 998), with
crews mapping surface features, photographing site
localities, and plotting their locations on detailed
maps of the area. The only excavations that took
place as part of these surveys were very limited
tests.
Reminiscent of Jochelson's earlier interest in oral
traditions as well as archaeological remains, an in-
tegral and important part of the BIA ANCSA site inves-
tigations was gathering oral testimony from the present-
day Aleut residents, usually elders, from communities
close to the sites being investigated. This testimony
was used to bolster claims of significance for particu-
lar sites. The audiotapes recorded in the Aleut region
remain a valuable—and untapped—resource on Aleut
culture and history.
S. LORING AND D. W. VELTRE 3 1 3
An important consequence of the ANCSA 1 4(h)(l
)
surveys is that the sites conveyed under this provision
will become the property of the Aleut Corporation,
whose explicit permission will be a prerequisite for
conducting archaeological research. To date, Aleut
Corporation leaders have been very supportive of
archaeological research, recognizing therein an oppor-
tunity to enhance understanding of Aleut heritage.
One current archaeological initiative undertaken with
Aleut Corporation permission is the Western Aleutian
Human Paleoecologyand Biodiversity Project, an interna-
tional and interdisciplinary research program initiated
in 1 992 to focus on the Near Islands, the westernmost
group in the Aleutian chain (Loring 1 994; Corbett et al.
1 997). Building upon earlier Smithsonian scholarship in
the region by Dall, Stejneger, and Hrdlicka (which fo-
cused on the possibility that the Aleutians served as a
pathway for human entry into the New World), this
research collaborative seeks to understand the
emergence of cultural complexity in this remote
archipelago—one of the most geographically isolated
landscapes ever colonized by maritime hunter-
gatherers.
The research also seeks to utilize innovative data
recovery techniques from deeply stratified, well-pre-
served village midden deposits to acquire detailed
Holocene distributional and demographic data on
biodiversity. The analysis of faunal remains, especially
from avian and marine mammals species, provides an
opportunity to examine paleoecological changes at
both the local inter-island level as well as in the greater
North Pacific region as a whole. The research challenges
the assumption of ecological and cultural stasis in the
archipelago and reexamines the cultural and biologi-
cal relationships between the Aleutian Islands and the
Asian continent in light of the research initiatives of
theJNPE.
Repatriation Legislation. Two relatively recent pieces
of federal legislation have also had an important im-
pact on Aleut cultural heritage. These are the National
Museum of the American Indian Act of 1989 and the
Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation
Act (NAGPRA) of 1 990. These laws, which parallel one
another in purpose, provide for the repatriation of
human remains, associated funerary objects, and ob-
jects of cultural patrimony from the Smithsonian Insti-
tution and other repositories around the country to
Native American groups.
As an initial result of this legislation, the Aleut (like
many other Native groups) are learning for the first time
about the existence of collections of materials from
their region. Aleut entities ranging from the regional
Aleut Corporation to the various village councils and
corporations have been inundated with inventories of
specimens sent by over one hundred institutions.
However, because these two repatriation laws are
complex and costly to deal with for institutions as
well as for Native groups, their full effects have not yet
been felt in the Aleut region. Further, since there is no
statute of limitations for making repatriation requests,
regional and local Aleut groups have so far taken a
conservative and cautious approach to the entire
issue, learning from the repatriation experiences of other
Native groups. To date, a small number of National
Park Service NAGPRA Documentation Awards have
been made to local Aleut groups, one being the Aleut
Repatriation Commission, an entity set up specifically
to deal with repatriation matters for a coalition of
villages.
Aleut Cultural Identity. Concomitant with the
processes discussed above has been another change
instigated by the empowerment engendered by ANCSA
and other legislation. In recent years many Native
groups in Alaska (as well as indigenous groups world-
wide) have begun to dispense with use of the names
given to them by outsiders—either other Native groups
or westerners—and to return to more traditional
autonyms. In the Aleut region, this has meant that the
traditional names Unangan(m the eastern dialect) and
Unangasim the Atka, or central, dialect) have begun to
be Used (often in the form Unangax) by some Native
residents, since "Aleut" was never used in pre-Russian
3 1 4 CURATORS AND CONSUMERS/ALEUTIANS
times to designate the people of the region as a
whole. It was only after the arrival of Russians that
"Aleut" became broadly—and confusingly—employed
to include not only the Aleut but also Native residents
of Alutiiq-speaking areas of south-central Alaska.
Whether Unangax will gain widespread acceptance
among the Aleut is unknown at this time, although a
survey of elders in the region in the summer of 1 997
showed support for use of the term, and one local
group—the Qawalangin Tribe of Unalaska—fully backs
its use (Barbara Svarny Carlson, pers. comm.). What is
clear, however, is that for some Aleut people today
the use of the term is a matter of substantial cultural—
and political—significance.
Conclusions
Throughout Alaska today. Native people are reassert-
ing their rights of self-determination and are working
both to strengthen and to reestablish connections to
their traditional pasts. This is certainly the case in the
Aleut region, where land ownership and control of
archaeological properties have provided the basis for
the Aleut people to take a more active role participat-
ing in, and developing goals for, cultural heritage
projects of many kinds. For the first three-quarters of
this century, at the same time that federal assimilationist
policies and outside economic interests were increas-
ingly undermining traditional aspects of Aleut culture,
anthropologists, archaeologists, and linguists were
attempting to document both the distant past as well
as traditional aspects of contemporary Aleut life. Thus,
Aleuts today, in their pursuit of cultural heritage ef-
forts, are building an understanding of their past in part
upon the foundations laid by earlier researchers in the
region. The oral tradition research of Barbara Svarny
Carlson, for example, has made extensive use of the
recently published stories recorded on wax cylinders
by Waldemarjochelson some 90 years ago (Bergsland
and Dirks 1 990).
One recent and important development for cultural
heritage pursuits in the Aleut region was the decision
in early 1 998 by the regional non-profit Aleutian/Pribilof
Islands Association (A/PIA) to establish a formal Cul-
tural Heritage Department. This program is currently
pursuing a broad and creative range of cultural heri-
tage goals, including developing a comprehensive Aleut
resources librar/, working to revitalize the Aleut lan-
guage, and furthering repatriation issues. In 1 999 the
A/PIA co-curated the installation of a case study on
Aleut history and culture in the Native North American
Hall at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural
History. The exhibit marked the return to the
Smithsonian of Aleut scholarship and self determina-
tion in providing an Aleut perspective that followed,
by 1 20 years the insights furnished by George Tsaroff.
It is worth noting that even the Cultural Heritage
Department owes its existence to ANCSA, since a
significant portion of its operating budget comes from
BIA 14(h)(1) funds which were contracted to A/PIA
(Veltre 1 997 b).
It is clear that the survival of the Aleut as a distinc-
tive cultural group will involve two particular efforts.
On the one hand, in a process that began perhaps two
decades ago, the Aleut have become increasingly
interested in learning about their pre-contact and post-
contact cultural heritage. This has been done largely
through archaeological efforts, but has also been pur-
sued through other ethnohistorical endeavors, such as
the study of museum collections of ethnographic speci-
mens, recording of local oral histories, family heritage
projects, stewardship programs, and the like. More-
over, the Aleut have relatively recently begun to view
archaeological research as a means to investigate
questions of specific interest to them, such as those
dealing with historical land use.
On the other hand, the Aleut have begun to res-
urrect traditional cultural activities—traditional in
spirit if not in actual content. Skin boat building and
traditional house building projects—as have been
undertaken in Atka, St. Paul, and Unalaska—and similar
undertakings are examples of this. Perhaps nowhere
is interest in past traditions more evident than in
S LORINC AND D W VELTRE
3 1 5
the rediscovery—and, largely, the re-invention—of
Aleut dance that began in 1995. Since that time,
dance groups have emerged in at least three Aleut
communities, Atka, St. Paul, and St. George, the danc-
ers combining the very limited ethnohistorical informa-
tion regarding older Aleut dance forms with elements
of contemporary Alaska Native dance (Fig. 97). This
synthesis has generated enormous pride among the
Aleut throughout the region.
Finally, the survival of Aleut culture seems predi-
cated on Aleuts' abilities to maintain a distinct self-
identity, rather than on the content of that identity.
That is, while this identity may be rooted in part on
specific cultural traditions having demonstrable roots
in their pre-contact past, it may just as well be based
on modified or newly emergent cultural forms. When
understood in light of the historical and legislative pro-
cesses by which the Aleut people have come to have
more control over their own lives, the legacy of the
Jesup Expedition and related early anthropological
ventures in the Aleut region lies both in the founda-
tions they provided for subsequent more formal in-
quiry as well as in the wealth and diversity of informa-
tion they collected which is now forming an important
basis of modern Aleut cultural heritage efforts.
Acknowledgments
There are many entities which deserve thanks for their
help over the years with our individual research projects
mentioned in this paper. These include the Aleut orga-
nizations which made our work possible through per-
mission to work on their lands and in kind support:
The Aleut Corporation, the Aleutian/Pribilof Islands As-
sociation, the Ounalashka Corporation, the TDX Cor-
poration, and the St. Paul Tribal Government. In addi-
tion, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, especially the
Captain and crew of their research vessel Tiglax, have
provided logistical support and permission for some
of our field projects. For their generous in kind assis-
tance, thanks go to all the folks at Reeve Aleutian Air,
PenAir and Northern Air Cargo who have safely, and so
efficiently, transported our equipment, crews, and speci-
mens. Finally, we wish to acknowledge Allen McCartney
for his inspiration and collaboration over the years.
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3 1 8
85/ "Crossroads of Continents" exhibit on tour at the Anchorage Museum of IHistory and Art, 199
1
3 1 9
86/ A dear friend, Sergei Serov (1940-1992), Rus-
sian Crossroads exhibit coordinator and Latin Ameri-
can culture expert, seen here helping mount archaeo-
logical specimens during one of the American museum
venues. Photographer, William Fitzhugh
87/Reception for the North American Crossroads team at the Museum ofAnthropologyand Ethnog-
raphy (MAE) director's office in St. Petersburg, then Leningrad in 1983. MAE director, Rudolf Its,
stands at his desk under the portrait of Vladimir Lenin. Other participants include (sitting left to
right): Joan MacDonald, Bill Holm, William Sturtevant, Sergei Arutiunov (Institute of Ethnography,
Moscow), James VanStone, George MacDonald. Photographer, William Fitzhugh
320
88/Andres Slapinsh, Latvian film producer, mailing ethnographic films among the Eveni< people in
East Siberia. Several Slapinsh's videos were used for the public programs accompanying "Cross-
roads ofContinents" exhibits. Slapinsh was killed by Soviet troops in the winter of 1991 while filming
an independence rally in his native Latvia
89/ The "Mini-Crossroads" team departing on its tour to Siberia. Nome, 1990. Left to right: Roger
Powers, Darlene Orr, Valerie Chaussonnet, James Dixon, William Fitzhugh
3 2 1
90/ Mini-Crossroads exhibition being unloaded from a Russian Yal<-40 transport
plane. Vladivostok, Russia, August 1997. Photographer, Olga Shubina
91/ Mini-Crossroads in Russia: school tours at the exhibit, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, December 1997. Photographer,
Olga Shubina
322
92/Jochelson's display of the re-
sults of the Ryabushinski
Expedition 's archaeological work
in the Aleutian Islands and
Kamchatka at the Imperial Rus-
sian Geographical Society in St.
Petersburg. Model of a section
from the shell-midden atAglagax
on Umnak Island reveals the deep
stratigraphy ofmany Aleut village
sites (NAA 2003-20968)
93/ Informal photographs ofAleut are almost non-existent in Jochelson's photography making this picture of
Aleut children most unusual. It appears as the very last image in a photograph album that he presented to the
National Museum which suggests that he was cognizant of the continuity between the archaeological materi-
als he excavated and the contemporary Aleut communities he visited (NAA 89- 1 1 741).
3 2 3
94/ WaldemarJochelson with Aleut laborers in a deep midden cut, probably on Umnak
Island, 1909 (NAA 89-11750)
324
95/ Excavations at the Margaret Bay archaeological
site by Rick Knecht have revealed a stone-walled Aleut
house dating to ca. 3100 B.P. A structure of more
recent vintage stands in the distance. Photographer,
Douglas Veltre.
96/A portion of the village of St. Paul in the Pribilof Islands, with fur seals resting on the
beach in the foreground. Photographer, Douglas Veltre.
97/ The Atka Dancers (Atxam Taliigisnikangis) at the Aleut Elders' Conference, Unalaska,
1996. Since their founding in 1995, the Atka Dancers have performed at numerous na-
tional and Alaskan venues. Photographer, Douglas Veltre
3 2 5
98/ Yakut artisan, Anna Nikolaeva dressed in a fur
coflt or buuktaakh son, whicli she produced following
the photos from the AMNH collection. Front view.
326
/ 1/ Woman's fur coat created by costume designer
Lena Gogoleva for characters in the Yakut/Sakha op-
era Nyurgun Bootur, performed by the Yakut Theater
of Ballet and Opera
327
102/ Musqueam house post purchased by Harlan Smith, 1898 (AMNH 42936)
103/ Susan Point, House Posts, 1997. University of
British Columbia Museum ofAnthropology, Vancouver,
B.C. Nbz 838, 837. Photograph courtesy Susan Point
and Bill McLennan.
328
> *
1 04/ Masset village, Haida, 1 879. Photograph by O. C. Hastings (RBCM, PN- 1 0980)
3 29
7 05/ Alert Bay, Kwakwaka 'wakw, 1910. Photographer unknown (RBCM, PN-10189)
330
/ 06/Ellen Neel (1 91 6-1 966) in 1 950. Photograph cour-
tesy Phil Nuytten.
108/ Ellen Neel, Totemland Pole, 1950. Photograph
courtesy Phil Nuytten
109/MatthiasJoeCapilano, Thunderbird Dynasty Pole,
Stanley Park, Vancouver, British Columbia, 1936.
Photograph courtesy of Vancouver Archives
IN N 103.1
3 32
1 1 0/ Susan Point (b. 1952) in 1997. Photograpli courtesy ofSusan Point and Bill McLennan.
1 1 1/ Susan Point, Common Thread, 2000. Spirit
Wrestler Gallery, Vancouver, BC. Photograph courtesy
Susan Point, Spirit Wrestler Gallery, and Kenji Nagai.
In fvt^niom of Vladimir |vanov~(Jnarov, ] ^^/—lOOO
MARJORIE MANDELSTAM BALZER
Vladimir Kharlampovich Ivanov-Unarov, sixty-four,
scholar of the art and spiritual culture of indigenous
peoples of the North, died in Yakutsk, Sakha Republic
(Yakutia), Russian Federation, December 29, 2000. His
careful fieldwork and refined scholarship covered a
range of peoples, from the Evenk, Even, Yukagir, Chukchi
and Yakut (Sakha) of his native republic, to peoples of
North America. Author of numerous monographs and
articles, including Yakut Bone Carving and Problems of
Folk Ornamental Art, his knowledge of the peoples of
the Far North was deep as well as broad.
Continuing the tradition of meticulous ethnogra-
phers of the nineteenth century, he brought back to
life the Jesup North Pacific Expedition's volume by
Waldemarjochelson The Yukaghir and the Yukaghirzed
Tungus by translating it into Russian and having it trans-
lated into Yukagir for the remaining indigenous com-
munities of the Sakha North. He was active, with his
wife and colleague Zinaida Ivanova-Unarova, in the Jesup
2 project that brought indigenous peoples and schol-
ars together at the American Museum of Natural His-
tory in New York in 1 997. Famously productive, he
was one of the only people in the history of founda-
tion grants to complete a MacArthur-funded project
before his supporters expected.
Vladimir bridged multiple disciplines with his per-
ceptive, boundary-crossing intelligence, and bridged
multiple cultures with his contributions to international
communication. A mentor and friend to many, he en-
couraged colleagues in the Sakha Republic to make
7 / 2/ Vladimir Ivanov-Unarov (1937-2000). Photog-
rapher, Marjorle Mandelstam Balzer.
the leap into collaborative work with American and
European scholars. After several trips to the U.S., he
was pivotal in returning the knowledge and wealth of
spiritual and material culture kept in American muse-
ums back to his people through successful academic
and public lectures and slide shows. He was a founder
and mainstay of the department he headed in the Acad-
emy of Sciences Institute of the Problems of Minorities
of the North, and was often asked to take on more
3 34
administrative responsibility than he wanted. Originally
trained as a geologist before gaining a degree in Art
History, Vladimir's combined scientific and humanities
focused approaches were fieldwork based, ethno-
graphic, and flexible. One of his last projects included
helping to adapt a cultural studies curriculum to the
needs of the Sakha Republic.
Gentle and generous, Vladimir's great empathy
and brilliant analysis of the symbols that make lives
meaningful made him one of the most important men-
tors and examples of my life. At one breakfast he
patiently explained the symbolism and history of the
beautiful wooden Sakha challices (choron) that hold
fermented mare's milk. That breakfast lasted for hours,
going nearly until lunch.
I am deeply privileged to have been welcomed
into the love of his multigenerational family. Each time
I enthusiastically would come home with news of
meeting a Sakha, Even, Evenk or Yukagir colleague in
Yakutsk, Vladimir would provide wonderful back-
ground on the significance of their work and the kin
networks and political backgrounds of their families.
His perspective on life in the republic was invaluable. I
recall him at his happiest playing with his grandchil-
dren, and teaching them how to get onto the Internet.
He is survived by his wife and colleague Zina, "son the
doctor" Maxim, his daughter Marina the artist, and their
partners and wonderful children.
335
1
"y~!ie f^evitaiization of the *]~raclitiona!
(^uiture of fNjortfieast Siberian peoples
Ko!e of the Jesup f~ xpeditioi
VLADIMIR IVANOV-UNAROV
AND ZINAIDA IVANOVA-UNAROVA
From papers published in Russian anthropological jour-
nals at the beginning of the twentieth century, it is
apparent that teams of the Jesup North Pacific Expedi-
tion (JNPE) had operated in the Northeast of Russia in
1 898-1 902. Unfortunately, this expedition was hardly
mentioned during the Soviet period of Russia's history.
Data on and references to the expedition's materials
were censored primarily for political reasons. The former
leader of the Siberian portion of the JNPE, Waldemar
(Vladimir) Jochelson, after being officially permitted to
go the U.S. in the 1 920s to complete his Jesup Expedi-
tion monograph about the Yukagir, failed to return to
Soviet Russia. Until the middle of the 1 980s the overall
scope of the Jesup Expedition, the value of its Siberian
collections as well as their present fate, remained all
but unknown in the former Soviet Union, particularly in
the regions where the JNPE teams once operated.
How We Became Acquainted with the
Collections of the Jesup Expedition
During Soviet times, any thought of traveling from
the authors' native city of Yakutsk to New York to
study the JNPE Siberian collection would have been
equivalent to thinking about flying to the moon. But
the great transformation that occurred in Russia dur-
ing the past decade changed everything, including our
lives. On February 3, 1991, then-US Ambassador to
Russia, Jack Matlock, and his wife Rebecca Matlock
stopped for two days in Yakutsk on their way to
Khabarovsk, a city in the Russian Far East. They came
not as official visitors but as guests of the newly
established local association, "Sakha omyk" (Sakha
Nation). The Americans, who were interested in the
culture and art of the Native peoples of Siberia, paid
a visit to the Artists' Union of the Republic of Sakha
(then, Yakutskaya ASSR). We, as art historians, quickly
organized a small display of indigenous art and in-
troduced the guests to local artists. During our con-
versations we asked Ambassador Matlock about
the current location of the Jesup Expedition's Siberian
collections. He promised to find out and let us know.
But Mrs. Matlock suggested that we could visit New
York and search for the JNPE Siberian treasures our-
selves. For the first time this previously unthinkable
venture seemed possible.
In 1 992 few Russian curators and art historians had
the opportunity to leave the country on work-related
trips. But luck was with us and we received a grant
from the Soros Foundation for travel and a two-month
stay in the U.S. Thus, in November and December of
1 992, we were able to work full time in the collections
of the American Museum of Natural History in New
York. The American Museum astounded us with its
openness. Laurel Kendall, curator of the Asian and
Siberian collections, did everything possible to ensure
that our work with museum materials, including not
only the ethnographic objects but also archival docu-
ments and historical photographs, would be produc-
tive. She encouraged us to take photographs and
to make photocopies of many historical documents,
336 CURATORS AND CONSUMERS/ SIBERIA
such as personal letters and diaries of the Jesup Expe-
dition participants that were stored at the AMNH ar-
chives. Only someone who has once worked in the
museums and archives of the former Soviet Union can
fully appreciate the level of friendliness and hospitality
we encountered at the AMNH.
The Siberian Team of the Jesup Expedition
The work oftheJesup Expedition is sufficiently described
in the literature (Boas 1 903, 1 905; Freed et al., 1 988a,
1 988b). We will focus here on a few details that have
not been covered and also, but very briefly, on those
aspects necessary for an understanding of the issues
we deal with in this article.
The main goal of the Jesup Expedition, formulated
by Franz Boas, was to look for the origin of American
Indians and for their possible routes into the New World
from Northeast Asia using ethnographic evidence as
well as folklore and linguistic data, and to study the
physical anthropology of the local people. In accor-
dance with this basic goal. Boas assigned to expedi-
tion participants strictly defined tasks in the collection
of field materials. In order to study the connections
between the Native peoples of North America and
Northeast Siberia it was necessary to find scholars who
were both familiar with the culture of the studied
peoples and willing to work with the expedition,
often in rugged and remote areas. For the northeast
Siberian part of theJNPE, these two requirements were
met quite successfully. The then-director of the Rus-
sian Academy of Sciences' Museum of Anthropology
and Ethnology in St. Petersburg, Prof. Vasily V. Radloff
(Radlov), recommended Waldemar Jochelson (Vlad-
imir I. lochelson, 1855-1937) and Waldemar Bogoras
(Vladimir C. Bogoraz, 1865-1936) to Boas as highly
qualified specialists with excellent first-hand knowledge
of the region (see more in Cole 2001:37-9; Vakhtin
2001:78-82).
Jochelson and Bogoras were former political dis-
sidents, who had been sentenced by the Russian
court to spend several years in exile in northern Yakutia
for their participation in the revolutionary Populist
movement. Their place of exile eventually became
both the location for and the object of self-initiated
scientific study. The innovative idea of "going to the
people" turned into an active interest in research on
the languages and culture(s) of the local populations.
In 1894, Dimitri Klements, then the Chairman of the
East Siberia Branch of the Russian Geographic Society
encouraged them to Join the Yakut (Sibiryakov) Ex-
pedition, organized with funds from the Russian gold-
mining magnate, Alexander M. Sibiryakov. Klements'
task for Bogoras was to collect data on the Chukchi,
the Even (Lamut), and the local Russian-speaking
(Creole) populations of northern Siberia. Jochelson lived
more than two years among the Yukagir people (1 895-
1 896), traveled with them on their annual migration
routes, documented two Yukagir languages, and put
together a dictionary of 9000 words and over 1 50
folklore texts (Shavrov 1935:49). One of Jochelson's
field Journals from 1896, when he lived among the
Upper Kolyma River Yukagir, is now preserved in the
AMNH archive (AMNH-DA, Box A). A small notebook,
entitled 'Travel notes No. 3," contains valuable infor-
mation but is written in small, Russian handwriting that
is hard to make out. We prepared a few passages from
the journal for publication in a recent issue of the Yakut
(Sakha) literary journal Ilin (Ivanov-Unarov and Ivanova
1998).
In addition to the Yukagir, Jochelson's interests in-
cluded the Yakut (Sakha) people. During his years of
exile in Yakutia he became acquainted with many of
the Yakut cultural workers and representatives of the
Yakut intelligentsia. He also knew the Yakut (Sakha)
language. According to several reports, the Yakut
(Sakha) language was then the primary mean of com-
munication in many areas of Yakutia, even for the local
Russian population.
In the fall of 1 898 Jochelson received a letter
from Boas, offering him a three-year contract with
monthly pay of $100 and $4000 for field expenses
during the time he served with the Jesup Expedition
V. IVANOV-UNAROV AND Z. IVANOVA-UNAROVA 337
(Vakhtin 2001:80-1).' Intense correspondence began
at this time between Boas and Jochelson, giving a
picture of both their relationship and the course of
the proposed fieldwork (these letters are now kept
in Jochelson's file in the AMNH-DA archives). Accord-
ing to the contract, all scientific data, ethnographic
collections, and field journals were to become the
property of the American Museum of Natural History
in New York.
In his letter of reply, Jochelson agreed to the overall
plan for the expedition. Judging by Boas' response,
Jochelson also submitted a series of his own sugges-
tions, broadening the tasks set by Boas in the collec-
tion of materials and in subsequent publications. Boas
responded appropriately, though somewhat severely,
insisting that Jochelson should fulfill the tasks as they
were assigned to him. He reminded Jochelson that,
according to the original contract, Jochelson's primary
Job for the American Museum was the survey of the
Koryak; his visit to the Yukagir was only to collect
artifacts. Boas did not have any objections to the
collection of additional material as long as it did not
interfere with the fulfillment of Jochelson's basic task.
Boas also stated that the museum did not have any
interest in publishing Jochelson's materials other than a
monograph about the Koryak; but that if there were
to be a publication about the Yukagir it should be
quite short."
During the preparation and actual fieldwork of the
Jesup Expedition, Jochelson managed to convince Boas
and, it seems, AMNH President Morris K. Jesup , of the
necessity of broadening the study area, to include—in
addition to the Koryak and Chukchi—other Siberian
peoples, such as the Yukagir, the Even (Lamut), and the
Yakut (Sakha).
In August of 1 899, Jochelson and Bogoras met in
St. Petersburg and worked out a plan for their coop-
erative field research. Jochelson notified Boas of this in
a letter on October 30.^ Given Bogoras's knowledge
of the Chukchi language, they proposed that they would
work together for one and a half years with the Koryak,
whose language is close to Chukchi. Bogoras would
concentrate on study of the Koryak language and
the collection of folklore texts. Jochelson would make
anthropometric measurements, take photographs,
and collect ethnographic objects for the Museum.
After the joint survey of the Koryak, they would set
off separately—Jochelson to the land of the Yukagir to
the west and Bogoras to the Siberian Eskimo (Yupik)
country to the northeast, along the shores of the
Bering Strait and the Arctic Ocean. Boas did not ap-
prove their plan to work together, and they ended up
working separately.
In March 1 900, Jochelson received a letter from
Morris K. Jesup saying that Jochelson was to be in
charge of the (North) Siberian section of the expedi-
tion and stipulated the pay Jochelson would receive.''
In August of the same year, Jochelson, his wife Dina
Jochelson-Brodsky, and two other members of his field
team, Alexander Axelrod and Norman Buxton, arrived
in the small town of Gizhiga on the coast of the Sea of
Okhotsk to study the local Koryak (Fig. 7). A month
earlier, Bogoras, accompanied by his wife Sofia, arrived
at the mouth of the Anadyr River to begin his work
with the Chukchi.
As a result, the two Siberian teams of the Jesup
Expedition gathered a huge amount of information
about not only the Chukchi and the Koryak but also
the Yukagir, Even (Lamut), and Yakut (Sakha). Alto-
gether, some 6400 items they had collected were
delivered to the American Museum of Natural History
in New York. According to Jochelson's final report, 91 7
of these were Yakut (Sakha) objects, 300 were Yukagir,
and more than 5000 were from the Koryak, Even,
Chukchi, and Siberian Eskimo. In addition, there were
hundreds of photographs, phonograph recordings,
and other research materials. Besides the two origi-
nally planned monographs on the Chukchi (Bogoras
1904-9) and Koryak (Jochelson 1908) for the JNPE
series, two more monographs were eventually pub-
lished on the Yukagir Gochelson 1 926) and the Yakut/
Sakha Gochelson 1933).
338 CURATORS AND CONSUMERS/ SIBERIA
The Siberian Collection of theJesup Expedition
The ethnographic objects collected by Jochelson and
Bogoras some 100 years ago were quite significant
for academic and museum researchers who were in-
terested in Native Siberian peoples. They also seemed
"exotic" and exciting to the general European and Ameri-
can public. But at the time they were collected, these
were quite ordinary items, used routinely for both daily
life and festivals. Today, after a hundred years that have
seen profound changes in these cultures, the signifi-
cance of the Jesup Expedition collections has changed
dramatically, first and foremost for the bearers of these
cultures.
The Sakha (Yakut) Collection
878 items from the JNPE collections are identified in
the AMNH catalog as "Yakut." These are not only pieces
of Native art but also many everyday objects, without
artistic embellishment, as well as models and toys.
The most complete samples represent Yakut/Sakha
decorated clothing, silver decorations, wood carvings,
ceramic objects with ornamentation, and traditional
horse gear.
There are also several ivory carvings, which the
AMNH records identify as "Russified" objects. Interest-
ingly, there is a storage box made of mammoth ivory
that is almost an exact copy of a box from 1 799 that
is in the State Historical Museum in Moscow. It differs
in only a few minor details, namely, the subject matter
depicted on the sides of the box. We believe this piece
was made by a Yakut ivory carver, most probably by
Leontii Popov. Though Yakut ivory objects from the
eighteenth century were commonly copies of can/-
ings by northern Russian carvers from the town of
Kholmogory, there were already at that time certain
features that clearly distinguished Yakut artists, espe-
cially in technique, ornamentation, and subject matter.
On the whole, objects from the Yakut (Sakha) col-
lection at the AMNH are typical and quite familiar,
and not significantly different from objects in other
museums. This further substantiates the stability of the
Native traditions. However, within the Yakut collec-
tion at the AMNH there are many unique objects that
do not exist in museums in Russia.
The collection illustrates the variety of women's
winter and summer/fall fur coats. Altogether there
are thirty-two coats and fur robes in the American Mu-
seum. Six of these are so-called "khotoidookh son" ("fur
coat with eagle") the likes of which do not exist in any
museum in Yakutia (Sakha Republic). Local artists are
very interested in this type of traditional women's dress,
although they had never before seen them. Having
only before heard about this type, they are now creat-
ing their own modern versions based on items in the
AMNH collections. For example, in 1992 Anastasia E.
Sivtseva, an acclaimed Yakut seamstress, sewed a fur
coat for the exhibition "Kudai Bakhs/ with an eagle on
the back showing head, claws, and wings. In this case,
the Yakut fur robes from the American Museum collec-
tion provided her with an original example of this type
of fur clothing. They were acquired in the Middle-
Kolyma iSrednekolymsk) and Verkhoyansk districts in
northern Yakutia. It is most likely that they are from the
second half of the nineteenth century. There is there-
fore no doubt that they represent the old type of Yakut
sangyakh. These have been mentioned in the literature,
including a mention by the famous Yakut historian,
Sehen Bolo.^ Jochelson, who acquired these fur robes
from the northern Yakut calls them "kybytyylaakh son"
apparently the name his informants used for them. This
means simply, "fur robe with an inset."
It is well known that the eagle is a sacred bird for
many peoples, including the Yakut and many North
American Indians. Among the Yakut, its name may not
even be spoken aloud. The folklorist and founder of
Yakut literature, A. Kulakovskii, wrote that the Yakut
do not dare pronounce aloud the word "khotoi" (eagle),
calling it instead "toion" that is, "master." As a result, in
many Sakha/Yakut settlements the word "khotoi' has
been completely forgotten (Kulakovskii 1979:79, 92).
At the same time, the technique for making the robe is
reflected in the name "kybytyylaakh son" recorded by
V. IVANOV-UNAROV AND Z. IVANOVA-UNAROVA 339
Jochelson, which is kyhytan tigii, "sewn inset." The robes
from his collection are made from a variety of materi-
als. For example, one robe is made of quite expensive
lynx fur (AMNH # 70/8525). On the back it has a slit
typical of all Yakut fur robes and coats. However, the
slit is absent in all the other "eagle robes" from the
Jochelson AMNH collection; instead, it is replaced by a
mock slit—an ornamental fur stripe. This is strongly
reminiscent of the northern type of caftan. An inset of
dark brown otter fur is sewn on the back of the "eagle
robe" (AMNH # 70/8525), reminiscent of a bird's spread
wings. The other robes are made of dark brown Sibe-
rian marmot fur, white reindeer fur, and calf and foal
hides. All the robes have the same inset made of darker
fur in the form of open wings; this is why they are
called "khotoidookh son" (fur robe with eagle).
The belepchi (AMNH # 70/8826) that Jochelson ac-
quired in the village of Churapcha is another rare item.
Belepchi is an article of clothing no longer made. Sakha/
Yakut men wore it over their trousers, both for warmth
and as a component of festival wear. There is only one
specimen preserved in the local museum. It was found
in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century grave
of a man. Sakha ethnographer F. Zykov sees a parallel
between Yakut men's belepchi and women's belebshi
among the Buryat, Kirgiz, and Kazakh (Zykov
1993:268). At the same time, the Kirgiz epic "Manas"
mentions bei'demchi as male armor. It should be noted
that Jochelson acquired most of the items for his Yakut
(Sakha) collection in the village of Churapcha on the
left bank of the Lena River, 200 km north of the city
of Yakutsk. He justifiably thought that ancient Yakut
tradition would be best preserved here and argued
this in his letter to Boas. The Jesup belepchi is particu-
larly valuable because, unlike the single surviving ar-
chaic specimen recovered from the grave, this was a
type that was actually worn in Jochelson's time.
There are also decorated "ribbons for the fiancee's
room." They are two leather straps, almost four meters
long, but only about two centimeters wide, decorated
with beads and round metal plates and finished on the
end with a fringe of suede leather (rovduga). Their
significance is now forgotten, even by the elders.
The AMNH collection also contains engraved sil-
ver Jewelry with the engraving in good condition.
Among the unique artifacts made of wood and birch
bark, there is a complete set of summer birch-bark
covering for a Yakut urasa (summer dwelling). Jochelson
suggested to Boas in a letter that he would like to
build a full-size urasa in the American Museum court-
yard, using the precise model that he had acquired for
his Yakut collection. If Jochelson had indeed built this,
it would today be the only authentic, non-recon-
structed Yakut urasa in the world.
The Even (Lamut) Collection
There are 481 artifacts in the AMNH Even catalog.
Most of these objects were collected by Bogoras' wife,
Sofia Bogoras, in the village of Markovo on the Anadyr
River. She made several trips there from the fall of 1 900
to April 1901, while her husband, along with a Cos-
sack and a local guide, was on a long trip to Kamchatka
in search of Chukchi and Koryak materials.^
In addition to these, there are also several Even
items acquired by Jochelson. During a trip in two boats
on the Sea of Okhotsk to the mouth of the Nayakhan
River he discovered a sixty-one tent Tungus (Even) camp.
There he succeeded in collecting ample ethnographic
data about Even people who were living along the
Sea of Okhotsk coast. He wrote Boas about this in his
letter-report from Kushka.'
We made a detailed study of Jochelson's collec-
tion of Even clothing and have concluded that it is
typical for reindeer Even in cut and style, though the
character of the decorations shows a certain Koryak
influence.
The Yukagir Collection
Comprised of 342 artifacts, it is unique in that it con-
tains practically every type of clothing and daily use
objects of a small Native nation that was in danger of
cultural extinction. Jochelson was fully aware of this
340 CURATORS AND CONSUMERS/ SIBERIA
and he stated many times that he considered his
JNPE volume, The Yukaghirs and the Yukaghirized
Tungus (1 926) a memorial for a vanishing people. Fol-
lowing his earlier work among the Yukagir on the Rus-
sian Sibiryakov Expedition he wrote: "In a few decades
the Yukagir language could disappear and the tribe
would under these conditions, cease to exist, a part
dying and a part dissolving into other tribes" Cochelson
1 900:xv).
In our view, the most valuable items in the JNPE
Yukagir collection are the numerous birch-bark objects,
including maps and letters engraved on bark as well
as wooden and birch-bark animal figures.
The Koryak and Chukchi Collections
The very rich Koryak and the somewhat smaller Chukchi
collections were acquired by Jochelson and Bogoras.
The collecting process was unbelievably difficult be-
cause of the climate, lack of roads, and attitude of
the local people. Bogoras almost died of influenza
on his return trip from Kamchatka in the winter of 1 90 1
.
The Koryak, who were on friendly terms with Jochel-
son, made sure that none of their traditions would
be violated or dishonored in the collecting process.
Nevertheless, Jochelson's Koryak collection contains
several shaman drums and also samples of burial cloth-
ing, acquired in the village of Kamenskoe in northern
Kamchatka. According to Koryak beliefs, the latter must
not be shown to anyone.
Jochelson was evidently charming and persuasive
as a collector and field worker. For proof of this here is
another example: When he arrived in the Yakut village
of Churapcha at the beginning of May 1 902, the local
residents gave him not only a complete urasa (birch
bark summer dwelling), but they also held a ysyakh
festival especially for him. This festival was usually held
two months later, at the end of June, before haying
began (Fig. 1 1 3).
Berthold Laufer, another Jesup Expedition Siberian
collector, on his earlier trip among the Amur River
people (1898-9) assembled a small collection from
V. IVANOV-UNAROV AND Z. I VANOVA- U NAROVA
the local Evenk people who lived along the Amgun
River, a tributary to the Amur River. Altogether, eight-
five Evenk artifacts collected by Laufer are listed in
the AMNH catalog along with many from Laufer's
objects acquired among the Nivkh, the Nanay, the
Orok, and the Ainu.
One Hundred Years after Jesup 1
Although the European takeover of the Arctic began
long before the start of the twentieth century, it at first
did not move particularly quickly nor did it have any
decisive impact. Thus, despite several destructive
events, the peoples who inhabited the arctic regions
usually had time to adapt to this tempo and to pre-
serve the integrity of their cultures, traditional econo-
mies, their beliefs, customs, and rituals, clothing and
utensils, and decorative art. But in the twentieth cen-
tury the social shocks and intensive exploitation of
natural resources in the North brought irredeemable
losses to the Native people at all levels.
A number of factors have brought on the current
crisis for the traditional cultures of the Native people
of the Russian Arctic. The Soviet government's declared
program for northern indigenous people of "transition
from primitive social structure to socialism, by-passing
the stage of capitalism" meant that the specific
characteristics of these small nations and their cul-
tures were ignored. This caused a quickening in the
destruction of their way of life; a way of life that had
adapted over millennia and was ideally suited to the
extreme conditions of the Arctic. Many aspects of
Native legacies were lost and there was the distinct
threat of complete assimilation and/or extinction for
the smaller indigenous nations such as the Yukagir.
Beginning in the 1930s the destruction of the so-
cial and economic fabric was hastened by the seizure
of property, the formation of collective farms {kolkhozes)
and "state-farms" (sovkhozes), the enforced transition
to a settled way of life and "villagization." This was
accompanied by a process of banning and hounding
out traditional beliefs, customs, and rituals that were
34 1
seen as out-dated, archaic, and even savage. This
censure of Native spiritual traditions delivered a heavy
blow to the indigenous people and triggered the loss
of a substantial component of their cultural legacy.
The Eurocentric theory of cultural evolution was firmly
established as an ideological paradigm in the former
Soviet Union. According to this theory, with the ap-
pearance of professional art and literature, traditional
folk art becomes merely historical atavism and ought
to disappear. It was thought that this was a natural
step in the progressive development of a people and
their culture.
This stereotypical viewpoint has unfortunately
proved very persistent and is still held by many schol-
ars even today. Supporters of this theory advised
Native artisans to replace their traditional ornaments
with modern Soviet emblems. They embraced the so-
called authored, creative approach to artistic produc-
tion and demanded of folk art that it be innovative
and modern. The vulgar, materialist approach to folk
art focused on the external form of the artwork, com-
pletely ignoring the semiotic content that had been
worked out over centuries. It is well known that in
each specimen produced by a folk artist, in every motif
and in the composition of ornaments there is a definite
symbolic meaning. This is the essence of folk art. Even
though the semantics of the many ornamentation
motifs had already been forgotten in the nineteenth
century, the folk artists intuitively did as their an-
cestors had done. In this way, the continuity of tradi-
tional artistry and artistic thought was preserved.
Unfortunately, many transitions introduced by the
Soviet system and, particularly, the mandatory board-
ing schools (intematy) for Native students tore children
from their parents and accustomed environment, and
changed peoples' lives. The centuries-old system of
aural-visual transmission of crafts and knowledge from
generation to generation was destroyed. This break in
the transmission of tradition led to the disappearance
of some forms of folk art and to the artificial mutation
of others. At the same time, as the continuity in trans-
mission of tradition was destroyed, the informational
boom caused great harm to folk art. It facilitated the
introduction of many foreign elements into Native art
(such as materials, technology, ornamental motifs, etc.),
which, in turn, undermined traditional culture from within.
This is directly evident in the case of Even and Evenk
culture, whereas the Yukagirare in danger of completely
disappearing as a culturally distinctive group.
Here we cite the story of the Berezov group of
Even who managed to maintain until very recently a
special, unique oasis of traditional language and cul-
ture. This group of nomadic reindeer Even remained
fully isolated until the mid-1950s, when they were
discovered by the Soviet security services and re-
incorporated into the highly regulated life of the Yakut
Republic. Due to decades of deliberate isolation, the
Berezov Even, unlike other groups of Even in Yakutia,
had preserved their language and traditional culture.
One of the authors (V. I-U.) visited the village of Berezovka
—to which these people had been relocated—in the
late 1980s. Communication with several elder women
of the village had to be through an interpreter because
they knew neither Russian nor Yakut. In this they differ
from other indigenous people of northern Yakutia (Sakha
Republic) who commonly prefer to speak Russian or
Yakut rather than their own language.
The relation to language and culture today can be
assessed from a survey conducted by the second co-
author [Z.I.] in two northern districts (ulus) of the Sakha
Republic, the Srednekolymskii (Middle Kolyma), and
Nizhnekolymskii (Lower Kolyma), in March 1 997. Seven
adults who consider themselves Native artists com-
pleted the survey, as did fifty-three high-school stu-
dents in grades 8 to 10. In Berezovka, the village vis-
ited by Vladimir Ivanov-Unarov ten years earlier, the
older women still speak primarily their native Even
language; but now they also know a little Russian and
a little Yakut. They live sedentary lives and raise the
children in the family. Sewing and decorative traditions
have been handed down from the older generation,
but some women think them outdated and therefore
342 CURATORS AND CONSUMERS/ SIBERIA
do not concern themselves with teaching the children
these handicrafts. Thirteen- and fourteen-year old Even
children speak Russian at school and Even at home.
Only one of the girls in the survey reported that she is
learning Native sewing skills from her grandmother.
Once again, it was the artificial isolation of the
Berezov Even that helped them preserve their tradi-
tional decorative art. Unfortunately, a tendency toward
innovation and a desire to satisfy the tastes of audi-
ences at folk-art exhibits, who are delighted with
abundant bright beads and color, will soon lead to
the use of quantity decor in their work.
Tundra Yukagir made up the majority of the
population in the Lower Kolyma area at Jochelson's
time (1895-1902). Today, of the twenty-five thirteen
to fifteen year-old students surveyed in local schools
in the towns of Cherski, Andriushkino, and Kolymskoe,
only four considered themselves Yukagir, and two of
them have Russian fathers. They do not know their
native language and speak only Russian. They all have
negative attitudes toward the traditional culture of
handicrafts.
Nevertheless, since the mid-1980s there has been
an intensive growth in ethnic consciousness among
many peoples of Russia, including the indigenous small
nations of the Russian North. Native intellectuals, in-
cluding professional writers and artists are among those
leading the movement for the preservation and revival
of ethnic culture.
During the Soviet period the loss of Native cultures
did not proceed at the same rate among all the groups.
Thus, the Sakha people, who were the majority popu-
lation in Yakutia until the 1960s, were granted a cer-
tain limited level of administrative autonomy in the
early 1 930s. For the most part they preserved their
language and some of the traditional features of their
way of life. Today, in comparison with other Native
nations of the Sakha Republic, the Sakha people have
been quite successful in reviving their cultural legacy.
The popular festival ysyakh was revived and has come
to be a focus of ethnic cultural life, including songs.
dances, games, clothing, ceremonial dinnerware and
utensils, decorations and foods. Related forms of folk
art are correspondingly beginning to be revived.
Traces of the old customs have been presepv/ed
somewhere deep in people's memory. For several de-
cades it seemed as if shamanism had long been cut
out of the lives of Siberian peoples. In recent years,
however, shamans have reappeared in Yakutia as well
as numerous psychic healers who fill the role that sha-
mans once filled. Moreover, it appears that active sha-
mans still practice among the isolated, migratory
groups of the Evenk in southern Yakutia, continuing to
fulfil their traditional functions as protectors of the clan,
soothsayers, and healers.
Today, in the Republic of Sakha there is an offi-
cially recognized Association for Traditional Medicine,
headed by the contemporary Sakha shaman, Vladimir
Kondakov, and a Center for Traditional Medicine whose
doctors have medical training and also know tradi-
tional folk methods of healing.
We cite another example. During the 1 980s, many
students in Yakut folklore were talking about the fad-
ing out of the storytelling tradition among the Sakha
people. At that time there remained only a few elders
who were accomplished at improvisational storytelling.
In the past few years, however, as a result of the in-
creased interest in folklore and the growth in ethnic
consciousness, the situation has changed dramatically
as if some hidden resources were emerging from deep
in Native memory. There are young people and even
children with the gift of performing traditional epic folk
tales. Many people have stepped forward to perform
various old rituals and half-forgotten practices that de-
mand great improvisational competence.
In Yakutia today much effort is being put into the
revival and preservation of the culture of the Native
people. There is emphasis on the development of song
and dance traditions and all forms of professional art.
A special presidential program supports talented young
people who tour all over the world winning honors
and awards. The so-called Academy of Spirituality was
v. IVANOV-UNAROV AND Z. IVANOVA-UNAROVA 343
established in 1997 by a decree issued by Mikhail
Nikolaev, then the President ofthe Sakha Republic. Many
professional artists, writers, performers, composers, and
even the local bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church,
have become members of the Academy. However,
not one representative of the traditional folk culture or
practitioner of the traditional religion is a member. Sev-
eral Centers for Folk Art have been established, and
there have been many conferences on Sakha religion;
however, these have neither official acceptance nor
adequate financial support. But at least they have not
been banned.
All the same, the obstacles on the path to cultural
revival are mounting. Alongside the economic hard-
ships produced by the general social-economic break-
down in Russia, there are also the difficulties connected
with the loss of cultural continuity. Efforts to revive
Native decorative arts are stalled because many con-
temporary artisans no longer know the traditional skills
and have lost cultural information related to the old
practices. In 1 996, at a seminar for Native folk artisans
and seamstresses in the town of Srednekolymsk in
northeastern Yakutia, we witnessed the tremendous
interest that exists in the recovery of the lost tradi-
tions. It seemed that many modern artisans do not
know the traditional techniques and technologies of
working with fur and leather, of sewing and decorat-
ing ethnic dresses. They use eclectic, quirky decora-
tive motifs. The seminar participants thus were very
excited to see the slides we made at the American
Museum in New York of traditional objects from the
JNPE Jochelson's collection.
The Present-Day Value of the JNPE Siberian
Collections
The Siberian collections of the Jesup Expedition are
now the most priceless resource for the traditional art
and crafts of the Native people of northeast Siberia
who have suffered enormous cultural losses during the
twentieth century. Since our research at the American
Museum of Natural History, we have frequently had
occasion to speak of the Jesup Expedition collection
on the media and at the various meetings with folk
artisans. These conversations strengthened our con-
viction that the knowledge of this collection is of
critical importance today for the bearers of the cul-
tures represented in the Jesup Expedition collection.
The case of the artisan mentioned above, Anastasia
Sivtseva, is a good example. Several pieces of her art-
works and fur clothing have been acquired recently by
the AMNH. After seeing pictures of traditional eagle
robes in the Jesup Expedition collection, she acknowl-
edged that she neither visualized nor made the "fur
robe with eagle" properly. Another artisan, Anna
Nikolaeva, sewed a buuktaakh son coat following a
copy ofJochelson's photograph, "Yakut Woman in Feast
Dress" (AMNH, # 70/73 1 4 and 70/73 18,181 8-9; Figs.
98 and 99). She also made a beautiful birch bark
container after Jochelson's "Birch Bark" (AMNH # 70/
8862; Fig. 100).
In a recent performance of the Yakut national
opera Nyurgun Bootur, the main characters were
dressed in national clothing made by the costume de-
signer Lena Gogoleva. The styles she used for coats
and ornaments were based on the photos and draw-
ings we had made of objects in Jochelson's collection
at the AMNH (Fig. 101). Unfortunately, since there were
no good quality slides and photographs available for
the Yukagir and Even artifacts, we were unable to gen-
erate the same amount of interest in these objects or
to make them as widely known.
It is to be hoped that Bogoras' and Jochelson's
monumental monographs in the Jesup Expedition
series. The Chukchee, The Koryak, and The Yukaghir
and the Yukaghihzed Tungus\N\\\ become available in
full translation for a Russian-speaking audience, includ-
ing the Native peoples of Russia. Bogoras' The Chukchi
and Jochelson's The Koryak were already reprinted in
Russian (Bogoras 1 991 ; Jochelson 1 997), although not
in their original JNPE format and in small print. In 1 996
we were commissioned by the Institute on Problems
of Northern Peoples in Yakutsk to translate another
344 CURATORS AND CONSUMERS/ SIBERIA
Jochelson's JNPE monograph, The Yukaghirs and the
Yukaghirized Tungus Oochelson 1 926). The translation
was done with help from a grant from the MacArthur
Foundation, but publication is still pending.*^ This is,
indeed, a unique and so far the only major source on
Yukagir traditional ethnography, social life, family rela-
tions, and spiritual and material culture. It is especially
significant that this book was written on the basis of
almost four years of personal observations among the
Yukagir, at a time when their language and many of
their traditions were still alive. Yukagir poet and phi-
lologist, Cavril Kurilov, wrote a special Foreword to
this modern translation ofJochelson's famous book,
and his brother, the artist Nikolai Kurilov, redrew the
original drawings. Both of the Kurilov brothers are
highly respected cultural leaders of the modern
Yukagir nation. They believe they are descendants
of the shaman Somon, whom Jochelson met on his
trip and named Shomonov (Shamanov) in Russian
transcription.
In our translation we maintained all of Jochelson's
original text, only adding several contemporary notes
and corrections in the Footnotes section. Unfortunately,
because of the long time between the recording of
his Yukagir field data (in 1895-6 and 190 1-2) and the
final preparation of his monograph for the JNPE series
(published in 1926), Jochelson allowed a few errors in
attribution of some artifacts to slip in. For example, a
few Even objects were identified as Yukagir. Sergei
Ivanov later used these incorrect attributions in gener-
alizations about the special characteristics of Yukagir
ornamentation in his monograph on the ornamenta-
tion styles of the Native people of Siberia (Ivanov 1 963).
These were recycled in the recently published mono-
graph, Odezhda yukagirov {C\oth\r\g of the Yukagir) by
L. Zhukova.
It would also be of great value to bring the copies
of the original Jochelson's photographs and an excel-
lent photo exhibit. Drawing Shadows to Stone, to Yakutia.
This exhibit was produced by the AMNH curators
for the opening of the conference dedicated to the
Centenary of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition in
New York (Kendall et al. 1 997). In the winter of 1 998
a conference was held in Yakutsk on the occasion
of the national festival Ysyakh. At this conference,
we showed Jochelson's photograph of the Ysyakh
opening ceremony in May 1902 in the village of
Churapcha (see Kendall et al. 1 997:91-2, Fig. 1 1 3).
This photo from the AMNH collection was kindly
given to us by Thomas Miller, one of the organizers
of the Drawing Shadows to Stone Exhibit. Jochelson's
photo attracted great interest because it was taken
1 00 years ago when the Ysyakh festival was still a
living tradition and not a yearly festival with invented
and staged performances. This photo and several
of Jochelson's other Jesup pictures, along with our
comments and a brief story of the Jesup Expedition,
were reproduced recently by the Yakutsk-based
Journal Ilin (Ivanov-Unarov and Ivanova 1 998).
The importance of the Jesup Expedition's ethno-
graphic collections is that it represents the classic
legacy of the traditional cultures of the Sakha,
Koryak, Chukchi, Even, Evenk, and Yukagir peoples.
The Yakutsk-based Institute on Problems of North-
ern Peoples of the Russian Academy of Sciences
recently initiated an international research and pub-
lication program entitled Circumpolar Culture of the
Peoples of the Arctic and North: Monuments of Cul-
ture of the Peoples of the Arctic. The goal of this
project is to lay the groundwork for a series of ba-
sic encyclopedia-style volumes on each of the Na-
tive peoples of the North and the Arctic. The AMNH
Jesup Expedition collections can make an invaluable
contribution to this project. For this reason, project
outlines include the publication of summary cata-
logs of the JNPE collections on each nation of Siberia,
with photographs and detailed description of the
objects. Once published locally, in Yakutsk and in
Russian, these catalogs would constitute a crucial
contribution to the revival of the cultures of the in-
digenous peoples of Siberia once depicted by the
Jesup Expedition.
V. IVANOV-UNAROV AND Z. IVANOVA UNAROVA 345
Acknowledgments
We would like to express our gratitude to the Soros
Foundation for enabling us to study the collection of
the Jesup Expedition in New York in 1992. Special
thanks go to the many people on the AMNH staff:
Laurel Kendall, curator of the Asian Ethnographic Col-
lections; Thomas Miller, former Scientific Assistant; Ann
Wright-Parsons, Senior Scientific Assistant; Belinda Kay,
former head of the American Museum's archives; Nina
Root, former head of the AMNH Library; and Thomas
Baione, who generously helped us with photographs
for the Russian translation of Jochelson's monograph
(1 926). With their help we were able to study in depth
the AMNH Siberian collection, to familiarize ourselves
with the archives and photographic records, and to
amass the necessary sources and illustrations for a
Russian translation of Jochelson's monograph—all in
two months. We are especially thankful to Marjorie
Mandelstam Balzerand Harley Balzerfrom Georgetown
University, whose friendship comforted us during
our visit in America. We are also very grateful to the
MacArthur Foundation for a grant to our home Insti-
tute on Problems of Northern Peoples in Yakutsk for
the translation of Jochelson's JNPE monograph. The
Yukaghirs and the Yukaghirized Tungus (1926). Igor
Krupnik provided critical assistance in the final editing
of this paper and in our often arduous communication
with our colleagues and conference organizers in the
U.S. David Koester who translated this paper deserves
our final thanks.
Notes
1. Boas to Jochelson, 28 October 1898 (AMNH-
DA, Jochelson's collection. Box A). In this letter
Boas suggested to Jochelson that he arrived in
New York by February 1, 1899, in order to re-
ceive fieldwork instructions. He was then to head
for the northern shore of the Sea of Okhotsk in
the spring of 1899 to study the Koryak. Accord-
ing to preliminary plans, he was to take the sum-
mer of 1899 to the end of winter 1900 for the
survey of the Koryak, adding a short visit to the
eastern Yukagir (see copy of the letter in Vakhtin
2001 :81).
2. Boas to Jochelson, 5 December 1898, AMNH-
DA. This correspondence is now published in
Vakhtin 2001:80-2.
3. Bogoras and Jochelson to Boas, 30 October
1899, AMNH-DA. See Vakhtin 2001:84-5.
4. Jesup to Jochelson, March 24 1900, AMNH-
DA.
5. In his description of ancient Yakut clothing,
Bolo writes that "[l]n ancient times Yakut robes
were 'tangalaidaakh son' , onoolookh son', buuktaakh
son', and 'buurukteekh son', but in addition to these,
according to some legends, there was also
'khotoidookh son.'" (Bolo 1994:94).
6. Jochelson to Boas, 27 November 1902,
AMNH-DA, Jochelson collection, Box A.
7. "We also made a very successful trip by sea
in two boats to the mouth of the Najachan river,
where we found a Tungus camp of 61 tents. It
was a great opportunity for ethnographic work,
unfortunately I couldn't stay long. The ethnologi-
cal collection is now 1 440 artifacts (including 1 73
from the Tungus)." Jochelson to Boas, 21 July-3
August 1 901 . AMNH-DA, Jochelson collection, Box
A.
8. As of winter 2003, this manuscript remained
unpublished, due to the minuscule budgets of
today's academic institutions and presses in the
Sakha Republic and to the shortage of funds from
potential sponsors.
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348
The Invention and Terpetuation of Culture
~y~Ke ^oasian [ egactj and | wo ZOth Centurtj Woman ~l otem fole CLarvers
ALDONA JONAITIS
In 1898 Harlan Smith collected house posts from
the Musqueam reserve in Vancouver, British Colum-
bia (Fig. 102). Like other British Columbia artifacts
from the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, they be-
came part of the American Museum of Natural
History's vast Northwest Coast collections.' In 1997,
the University of British Columbia's Museum of An-
thropology asked Salish artist Susan Point (born
1952) to carve two new Salish house posts based
on those collected one hundred years earlier. In keep-
ing with the secretive nature of specific family pre-
rogatives to which she had no right. Point was care-
ful not to copy the AMNH models exactly but in-
stead drew inspiration from them to create two new
Salish fourteen-foot house posts (Fig. 1 03) with their
own unique original power (McLellan 2000:94-7).
But unlike the originals, which had been once erected
within the Musqueam house, these were exterior
public sculptures that stood on the Museum ground,
among totem poles from other Northwest Coast
First Nations.^
Most monumental Northwest Coast art was, and
continues to be, made by men. Women usually make
baskets, textiles, leatherwork and beadwork. Point's
creations, and those of another Native woman artist,
Kwakwakalwakw Ellen Neel (1916-66), challenge
this gender-based labor division by carving the
iconic Northwest Coast sculpture - the totem pole.
And, beyond that, their artworks contest some basic
principles that have governed aboriginal art studies
since the time of Franz Boas.
As Boas's life-time project was to understand pre-
contact Northwest Coast culture, he sought the most
unacculturated artifacts. Only items that we might char-
acterize as embodying timeless traditionalism were
considered worthy of collecting and study. Those
emerging from the colonial encounter were to be dis-
regarded, as products of a new, polluted tradition. To
analyze culture historically. Boas tried to identify in-
ventors of a traditional element, like the totem pole,
and reconstruct its historic diffusion over time and ge-
ography. In his view, certain creative groups such as
the Kwakwaka'wakw and Haida stood at the center
and others, like the "imitative" Coast Salish lan-
guished at the margin. The essentialist premise un-
derlying this approach has characterized much dis-
course on Northwest Coast cultures and art, in which
types are real, but variations on those types are
judged peripheral, derivative and imperfect.^ The "es-
sential" totem pole is that which is fixed in the con-
temporary imagination as what a totem pole should
be: a tall, freestanding column developed during the
Golden Age of cultural purity. As abundant anthro-
pological analyses have demonstrated, essentialism
and timeless traditionalism disregards the dynamic
nature of cultural interactions.
A typical sightseer who enjoys being photo-
graphed next to a totem pole in a Vancouver, Victoria
or Seattle park likely believes the carving to be an-
cient, and, if clearly new, the representative of an an-
cient tradition widespread across the Northwest Coast."
In reality, few poles existed at first contact, and then,
349
probably, only among the Haida. They became more
numerous and larger as new wealth from the fur trade
necessitated more impressive expressions of status
and metal tools enabled taller poles to be carved more
quickly. From the one or two poles observed in Haida
Cwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands) communities in the
1 790s, totem poles proliferated so, by the mid-nine-
teenth century, these villages became forests of to-
tem poles (Fig. 104). During the nineteenth century,
the totem pole concept spread to the mainland of
British Columbia, inspiring first the Tsimshian and only
at the end of the century the Kwakwaka'wakw (Fig.
105). Totem poles were popular in the southernmost
part of the Alaska panhandle, but the northern Tlingit
disdainfully dismissed them as "foreign." And exterior
poles never became part of the Coast Salish artistic
repertoire at all. Totem pole carving ceased among
the Haida, Tsimshian and Tlingit by the late nineteenth
century, but a few communities among the Kwak-
waka'wakw, Nuu-chah-nulth and Citksan continued
making poles for their own purposes into the twen-
tieth century Qonaitis 1999:106-1 10).
Beginning in the late nineteenth century, the non-
Native Euro-American public became familiar with
totem poles at world's fairs like the Chicago World
Columbian Exposition, in museums such as the Ameri-
can Museum of Natural History's North Pacific Indian
Hall, and along the popular Alaska Inside Passage
steamer routes. ^ Although many poles standing in mu-
seum galleries are nineteenth century carvings removed
from their original villages, most poles seen today in
parks, along roads and outside buildings are the re-
sults of programs conceptualized and managed by
museums, governmental agencies and private organi-
zations that hired carvers to restore, copy or carve
original poles. Only during the past two decades have
First Nation communities themselves raised new poles
on their own lands.
Boas had large quantities of Northwest Coast ma-
terial culture collected during the Jesup North Pacific
Expedition, including totem poles. Many objects from
the Jesup Expedition collections appear as illustrations
in his various art publications, including his major Primi-
tive An, first published in 1 927,' Better known for his
paradigm-shifting anthropological writings and impres-
sive competence in ethnology, linguistics, folklore and
physical anthropology, Boas made significant contri-
butions to scholarship on aboriginal art including his
groundbreaking study of the formal and iconographic
components of Northwest Coast art and speculations
on the history of the Northwest Coast totem pole.
Boas found totem poles interesting as objects
which could be subjected to historic analysis. In 1888,
shortly after this first visit to Vancouver Island, Boas
suggested that:
I am inclined to believe that another custom
of the North West Americans besides their
dances originated among the Kwakiutl. I
mean the use of heraldic columns. This view
may seem unjustified, considering the fact
that such columns are made nowhere with
greater care than in the northern regions,
among the Tsimshian and Haida, and farther
north and south they are less frequent and
less elaborately carved. The Haida, however,
frequently took up foreign ideas with great
energy, and developed them independently...
It appears that the tribe has a remarkable
faculty of adaptation (Boas 1888:195).
Boas ascribed to the Kwakwaka'wakw, then as now
clinging tenaciously to their traditions, the honor of
inventing the totem pole, and suggested that the
Haida, who by that time appeared thoroughly ac-
culturated, had simply adopted the idea and elabo-
rated upon it. Later, as a result of a far more careful
historical reconstruction of the region, Boas modi-
fied his thesis of Northwest Coast cultural develop-
ment in Primitive Art (Boas 1 955; first published 1 927)
and gave the Haida, Tlingit and Tsimshian credit for
originating the elaborate symbolic style which diffused
north and south. Despite Boas' early inaccurate read-
ing of history, his premise that one group invented
poles that then spread to other groups signaled a new
historical consciousness that would pervade subse-
quent studies of the totem pole. Of course, this history
350 CURATORS AND CONSUMERS/ FEMALE CARVERS
did not cease at contact, and late eighteenth century
Haida carvings, early twentieth century Kwakwa-
ka'wakw monuments, innovative creations by mod-
ern artists like Ellen Neel and Susan Point, and the to-
tem poles of future generations all represent products
of intellectual and material exchange that contribute
to the ongoing "invention" of culture. Those exchanges,
moreover, were not only among First Nations people
but also between the original Northwest Coast resi-
dents and their colonizers.
Ellen Neel
In Primitive Art, Boas asserted that "It is not safe to
base our arguments [on Northwest Coast art history]
on models or on objects made for the trade," of which
abundant examples were at that time in circulation. "I
shall use, therefore, exclusively, older specimens which
have been in use" (Boas 1955:209). Such disinterest in
the modernization of First Nations people precluded
Boas from understanding the wealth of meaning em-
bodied in commodified art such as model totem poles
made expressly for the tourist market.^ These are not
bastardizations of authenticity, nor the pathetic works
of a shattered people completely dominated by their
colonizers. Chris Cosden and Chantal Knowles state in
the introduction to their study on colonialism in New
Guinea:
Chemists make a distinction between a
mixture and a reaction. A mixture is a
solution in which different chemicals com-
bine, but retain their original form, whereas a
reaction creates something new out of its
original constituent parts. Colonial New
Guinea was a reaction to which all parties
contributed, so that there can be no ques-
tion that all had influence and agency.
(Gosden and Knowles 2001 :xix).
An important concept here is agency, the power of an
individual or group to affect its own destiny. Going on
to criticize those who insist on an essentialist concept
of culture, Gosden and Knowles assert that "Anthro-
pologists have tried to undo or ignore the reaction
and focus upon one part. New Guineans, creating a
partial and static picture in the process." The model
totem pole that Boas rejected as an unacceptable cul-
tural "mixture" was in reality a "reaction" replete with
agency.
One of the most well regarded mid-twentieth cen-
tury model totem pole maker was Ellen Neel (1916-
1966), a Kwakwaka'wakw carver from northern
Vancouver Island (Fig. 106). Neel's well-known artist
grandfather, Charlie James (1867-1938) taught the
young girl how to carve and by her teenage years, she
was selling model poles to visitors in her native Alert
Bay. In 1943, Neel married, moved from Alert Bay to
Vancouver, and in 1946, began carving and selling
model poles to help support her family. With the assis-
tance of her six children, Neel produced numerous small,
modestly priced models to sell to department stores
and souvenir shops. In 1948, the City of Vancouver
Board of Parks Commissioners permitted her to carve,
display, and sell her works in an abandoned military
building in Stanley Park. She gradually became more
and more well known for both her model poles and
full-size carvings, including a sixteen foot pole which
Neel and her husband donated to the Alma Mater So-
ciety of the University of British Columbia (UBC) and a
large pole for the Pacific National Exhibition, an annual
fair.9
Tourism is deeply implicated in the history of
totem poles, for as early as the 1 880s, steamship com-
panies beckoned prospective clients with descriptions
of the abundant poles they would see on their Inside
Passage cruise. Recognizing the value of poles for tour-
ism, a group of British Columbians along with the-then
Vancouver Mayor Charles Thompson formed an asso-
ciation and formally adopted the name "Totemland"
to trademark the province, promote tourism, and
encourage the use of totem poles on license plates,
stamps and, especially, advertisements. So receptive
was the community that a local newspaper wrote
optimistically, "The BC totem may become as famous
as the Idaho potato" (K. Phillips 2000:1). The goals of
this group were published as follows:
A. JONAITIS
To collect in writing and disseminate the
legendary history, customs and philosophy
of our native Indians; also to encourage and
preserve their ancient weaving, painting and
sculptural arts; to promote the use of a
Thunderbird Totem and the slogan
Totemland as the symbol of the colour and
romantic interest of the British Columbia
Indian together with their singular
totemology and unique wood-carving art; to
advise, encourage and support the British
Columbia Indians in overcoming obstacles
that may stand in the way of their attain-
ment to the enjoyment of full citizenship (K.
Phillips 2000:25).
The Totemland Society asked Ellen Neel to design the
model pole which would become its official emblem
(Fig. 108).
Neel created a unique two foot pole for that orga-
nization. A thunderbird sits on atop an egg-shaped
globe prominently depicting western British Columbia
with Vancouver Island, and a human figure kneels un-
derneath. In creating this pole, Neel integrated sym-
bols and sculptural forms from her own heritage with
a distinctly western geographical representation. Un-
derstanding the non-Native desire to know the "story"
of any pole, Neel explained its iconography as a narra-
tive of the thunderbird giving British Columbia to the
first man. Neel herself reproduced this vividly painted,
highly original pole a number of times as gifts, while
her popular image of Totemland appeared on society
letterhead, scarves, T-shirts, ties, and a Royal Albert
china dinner service.
One could judge this pole as a "degradation" of
a treasured aboriginal artistic tradition appropriated
by the colonialist class — but that would be wrong.
As her friend Phil Nuytten (1982:47) commented,
Neel, who never took herself too seriously anyway,
"laughed a lot about the Totemland Poles." Accord-
ing to Nuytten (personal communication 2003) Neel's
artist uncle Mungo Martin half-seriously, half-jestingly
referred to it as a "white man's pole" but then agreed
with his niece that "a white person wouldn't know
the difference anyway," and they both laughed.
Perhaps Neel recognized the underlying fatuous-
ness of this commission — or at the very least its silli-
ness. But a serious message underlies this artwork as
well, for the globe on the Totemland Society's pole
depicts only Vancouver Island and the nearby main-
land, not even the entire totem pole region of British
Columbia. In the middle is Kwakwaka'wakw territory,
situating Neel's own tribal land at the center of the
world (Phillips 2000:69-70). Nuytten (personal com-
munication 2003) also points out that the human un-
derneath the globe has a uncanny resemblance to the
European concept of Atlas with the world on his shoul-
ders; Neel seems to have appropriated a non-Native
concept and transformed it into a very Kwak-
waka'wakw-like image. Every official who proudly
displayed this pole, every T-shirt emblazoned with its
image, every piece of Totemland china declared, to a
largely white audience who may very well not have
understood, the fundamental centrality of the
Kwakwaka'wakw, their traditional ownership of this
land, and their new ownership of a European symbol.
Ellen Neel was certainly a major mid-century Na-
tive artist, admired by her contemporaries. However,
since her death in 1966, she has effectively vanished
from the discourse on Northwest Coast art. An epi-
sode in totem pole history may provide insights into
why that might be. Two versions exist of the story of
University of British Columbia's efforts to have several
of their Northwest Coast totem poles restored. Ac-
cording to Phil Nuytten (1982:9-10, 52-53), the UBCs
Totem Pole Committee approached Neel first, asking
her to restore fifteen poles. This collection had special
meaning for Neel, as one had been carved by her grand-
father CharlieJames, and another by her relative Mungo
Martin. During that summer Neel restored four poles
from Fort Rupert, including James'. Because her busi-
ness had suffered during her absence and as a creative
artist, she found replication uninspiring, Neel sug-
gested that the next summer the Museum of Anthro-
pology hire her uncle, Mungo Martin, for this job
—
which they did (Fig. 107). Audrey Hawthorn, wife of
352 CURATORS AND CONSUMERS/ FEMALE CARVERS
Harry Hawthorn, Director of the Museum of Anthro-
pology from 1947-1974, offers an somewhat differ-
ent account of Martin's hire, stating that he had been
selected from the very beginning, and that the Mu-
seum had also approached Neel to be his assistant;
"she was not, however, in a position to assist Mr. Mar-
tin on restoration work at that time" (Hawthorn 1993:9-
1 0). With those words. Hawthorn effectively erases
Neel's contributions to the Museum of Anthropology
totem pole restoration project.
The museum, with a clear vision of its general role
in cultural preservation as well as this project's historic
significance, played a major role in overseeing the ac-
tual restorations. Such conscious attempt to recreate
the past provided opportunities for museum anthro-
pologists to appear as "cultural saviors." Harry Haw-
thorn directed Martin "to return to the style of the first
phase of contact, using steel tools but painting spar-
ingly," so, Martin abandoned his customary covering
of bright paint (which his Kwakwaka'wakw custom-
ers apparently liked) and colored only certain fea-
tures. In a pamphlet explaining Martin's work in
1 952 replicating poles in Victoria's Thunderbird Park,
anthropologist Wilson Duff asserted that by remain-
ing outside in the park, the old poles would have
soon decayed:
It was decided to obtain skilled Indian
carvers to carve exact copies of the best old
poles, and some new ones, to replace the
old exhibits and produce a permanent and
representative outdoor display of this unique
art for the benefit of future generations. By
employing native craftsmen and having them
work in public view in the park, he
programme accomplished the added aims of
keeping alive native art and providing a
public educational attraction (Duff n.d.:29).
It was thus the museum, not Natives, who "kept the
culture alive" by hiring an authentic Indian, Mungo
Martin, "one of the few surviving authorities in the old
ways of life" (Duff n.d.:29). Despite his rudimentary
English the highly personable Martin, along with his
equally charming wife Abayah, became extremely
popular with visitors to both the Museum of Anthro-
pology and the British Columbia Provincial Museum,
now known as the Royal British Columbia Museum.
Mungo Martin, conforming beautifully to the "Vanish-
ing Indian" myth which harmonized nicely with the myth
of the totem pole as an ancient tradition on the verge
of disappearance, became the most well known and
highly regarded Northwest Coast Native of his time
(Class 2000).
Ellen Neel never became a significant player in the
official history of British Columbia's totem pole projects,
perhaps because, unlike Martin, she did not adhere to
the timeless traditionalist stereotype favored by an-
thropologists and the public. Indeed, Neel was one of
the first Natives to actually challenge the disappearing
Indian trope to which Duff so compellingly refers. At a
1 948 conference on Native art and culture, Neel dis-
missed the concept that Native art is dead, calling it
"one of the great fallacies where the art of my people
is concerned." She continued "For if our art is dead,
then it is fit only to be mummified, packed into mortu-
ary boxes and tucked away into museums... Whereas
to me, it is a living symbol of gaiety, the laughter and
love of color of my people." Innovation and change
had always been aspects of her artistic tradition. It is
striking that, in contrast to Harry Hawthorn's instruc-
tion to reduce the amount of color for historical verisi-
militude, Neel and the contemporary Kwakwaka'wakw
"love" color. She pointed to the national identity inher-
ent in her work: "Our art continues to live, for not only
is it part and parcel of us, but can be a powerful factor
in combining the best part of Indian culture into the
fabric of a truly Canadian art form" (Nuytten 1 982:50).
Neel spoke good English and instead of wearing
ceremonial regalia, even at events, dressed in clothes
more appropriate for a 1 950s housewife. Moreover,
by marrying a white man, she lost her Indian status
according to Canadian law. Instead of purporting her-
self like Martin as a high status aboriginal, she pre-
sented herself as Mother, supervising her six half-Na-
tive cildren as totem pole apprentices. Her art, while
A. JONAITIS 353
capable of being quite traditional, also at times ven-
tured into the unexpected, as in the Totemland pole.
Ellen Nee! did not make poles that alluded to the golden
age of authenticity, did not fit nicely into the category
of "disappearing Indian" so favored by the museums,
and despite her lineage, did not go down in history as
a truly "authentic" Native.
Today Nee! is rarely mentioned in the literature,
and the biography offered in Nuytten's The Totem Pole
Carvers {] 982) remains still her only significant source. '°
The most important catalogue of contemporary North-
west Coast art, The Legacy {\ 980) praises CharlieJames
and Mungo Martin, but fails to even mention Ellen Neel.
Steven Brown, in his survey of Northwest Coast art
history to the present includes Neel along with eight
other male carvers in a list of Kwakwaka'wakw artists
of her generation, but illustrates none of her work
(Brown 1 998: 1 5 5). Just as Hawthorn excluded her from
the history of the Museum of Anthropology's pole carv-
ing projects, the literature has, in effect, erased her from
the history of Northwest Coast art. In contrast, her
uncle Mungo Martin has been transformed into its
super-star.
Susan Point
A very different reception was given a contemporary
woman artist, Susan Point (born 1952) member of the
Musqueam band of Salish (Fig. 110). In 1 981 , she took
a jewelry-making course at Vancouver Community Col-
lege, where she learned to make northern-style silver
bracelets and rings. Courses were not offered in Salish
art which was not greatly valued at that time. Because
she recognized the impressive artistic tradition of her
people, Point visited museums and began making prints
based upon traditional Salish images. In 1991, she
crafted the first Salish-style monumental carving in de-
cades, a twelve-foot house post for the First Nations'
House of Learning on the University of British Columbia
campus. Then she embarked upon adventures into new
media including glass and produced Common Thread,
a remarkable seven foot house post of glass depicting
the moon, stars, our planet earth and an assortment of
animals— wolf, raven, wolverine and sturgeon (Fig. 111).
Unlike Neel, Point has received many accolades.
She has had solo exhibits at the Museum of Anthro-
pology in Vancouver, Steilacoom Tribal Museum in
Washington, and the Canadian Museum of Civilization
in Hull, and has participated in numerous group exhib-
its in Canada, the United States, Japan, and Europe. She
was one of three contemporary Northwest Coast Na-
tive artists featured in Indianer Kunstler der Westkuste
Kanadas {Native Artists from the Northwest Coast), a
major exhibition in Zurich in 1989 (Gerber and Katz-
Lahaigue 1989)." And she is the subject of a beautiful
coffee table book published in 2000, thus being one
of the few Northwest Coast artists validated by a per-
sonal art monograph (Wyatt 2000). In that catalogue
Peter Macnair writes, "more than any other contempo-
rary Northwest Coast artist . . . Point has been success-
ful .. . due to her desire for new challenges, her willing-
ness to explore new mediums." As a truly brilliant art-
ist, Point deserves every honor bestowed upon her.
But as she herself says, "Coast Salish art is relatively
unknown to most people today . . . much of the Na-
tive art associated with the Pacific Northwest Coast is
from principle tribes of northern British Columbia" (Point
1996:132-3).
Why was then Salish art unrecognized as a major
art tradition before Susan Point revealed its excellence?
Why was so much more such attention paid to more
northerly Northwest Coast art from the Kwak-
waka'wakw to Salish? As Wayne Suttles has indicated
on numerous occasions, Franz Boas and his succes-
sors created the stereotype of "imitative and passive"
Salish as "a pale reflection of the 'real Northwest Coast'
to the north" (Suttles 1987:xii; 257).'^
Boas wrote the art section of Teit's Jesup Expedi-
tion publication, and in that asserted that the Salish
were "a receptive race, quick to adopt foreign modes
of thought," perhaps due to "a low stage of develop-
ment of their early culture, or to social conditions unfa-
vorable to the continued growth of their own culture"
354 CURATORS AND CONSUMERS/ FEMALE CARVERS
(Boas 1900:390,387). He also characterized Coast
Salish art as "cruder" than that of the Northern tribes
(1 900:389). This art became stigmatized as less com-
plex, less interesting, and less aesthetically valuable
than either "baroque" Wakashan or elegant northern
Northwest Coast art.'^
Perhaps because family-owned images were con-
sidered more private than they were farther north, the
Salish carved only interior house posts, never exterior
totem poles.'" But, since tourists to Vancouver—a true
capital of "Totemland"—wanted totem poles, through-
out the twentieth century, poles made farther north
filled the city's museums and parks. The art of local
Salish was ignored. Before Susan Point began carving
Salish-style monumental art, only one totem pole by a
Salish carver, the Thunderbird Dynasty pole stood in
Vancouver's Stanley Park. In 1936, Squamish Chief
Matthias Joe Capilano made this pole for a group of
Vancouver citizens who were planning to erect Haida
and Kwakwaka'wakw poles in Stanley Park, and
wanted one made by a local artist. Matthias Joe chose
as his model not the minimalist carvings of Salish house
posts, but instead created a Kwakwaka'wakw type
of pole with assertively carved and vividly painted
images surmounted by an open-winged thunderbird
(Fig. 109). Most poles publicly declare the crest privi-
leges of an extended family; but this one depicted
mythic beings associated with the Salish creation story
-thunderbird, its wife, son and daughter, and the sea
monster. It also commemorates not a major tribal
event such as a potlatch, a wedding, or the death of a
chief, but instead the first meeting of Captain Vancouver
and the Salish people on June 1 3, 1 792. S.W.A. Gunn,
author of the 1965 booklet on Stanley Park poles ap-
provingly appraised this pole, which, with thunderbird
imagery communicating the story of the Creation, "com-
memorates the meeting of the Indians and the white
man [which] opened up an entirely new world for both"
(Gunn 1965:22-3).
In reality, the Capilano monument represented one
of the first poles that embodied an explicitly political
statement, for what appeared to be celebrating an
historic event was actually a subtle assertion of ab-
original land rights. During the early 1 900's, Coastal
First Nations people had been exceptionally active at-
tempting to obtain sovereignty over their land; in 1 906,
a delegation of Salish chiefs made an unsuccessful trip
to London to petition King Edward II to change gov-
ernmental policy. In 1912, the Coast Salish, along with
the Nishga, Haida and Interior Salish, joined together
to form the Allied Tribes of British Columbia to contest
the province's land allocation policies. Squamish chief
Andrew Paul, along with Haida Peter Kelly, labored es-
pecially diligently for this, but ultimately to no avail. In
1927 the Allied Tribes disbanded, in part due to their
failure to achieve their goals, and in part due to a new
section of the Indian Act making it illegal to solicit
funds to pursue land claims (Kew 1990:166). In this
context of continual rebuffs to their appeals, the 1 936
Matthias Joe pole served as a quiet, legal mechanism
to proclaim Salish rights to the Vancouver region. This
statement, like the position of Kwakwaka'wakw terri-
tory on Neel's Totemland totem pole, probably went
over the heads of most observers.
In recent years, aboriginal people worldwide have
been more vociferously defending ownership of their
lands and insisting on more voice in government, edu-
cation, and the arts. Australian aborigines. New Zealand
Maoris, Scandinavian Saami, Canadian Inuit have all be-
come significant forces within their countries. Concomi-
tant with these actions of empowerment, Native
people have used their artistic traditions to express
identity, celebrate heritage, and, at times, make politi-
cal statements. This was certainly the case on the
Northwest Coast, where the totem pole has assumed
yet new meanings as Native Americans and Canadi-
ans join in this worldwide movement.
The British North American Act (1867) and the In-
dian Act (1876) denied First Nations their sovereignty
and defined them as wards of the state. In keeping
with the national and international aboriginal sover-
eignty movements, British Columbia Natives, along with
A. JONAITIS 3 5 5
other Canadian First Nations sought to win back their
independence as autonomous units with self-determi-
nation in political, social and economic affairs. This was
slow in coming, as only in 1982 did First Nations ap-
pear as a category of citizens in the Canadian consti-
tution. Its Article 35 now explicitly states, "The exist-
ing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples
of Canada are hereby recognized and confirmed... In
this Act, 'aboriginal peoples of Canada' includes the
Indian, Inuit and Metis peoples of Canada" (quoted in
Cerber 1 988:1 22). Ownership of the land and the right
to control its resources, remain to this day highly
contentious, as British Columbia Natives never signed
treaties with the federal or provincial governments
for their land, and have brought their land claims to
court.
In this contentious political atmosphere, Susan Point
received a major commission in the early 1 990s to
create artworks for the International Terminal at
Vancouver International Airport in Vancouver, BC. At
the top of the escalator arriving international passen-
gers must descend is a monumental, 16-foot diameter
spindle whorl of red cedar (1 994) hanging suspended
over a waterfall symbolizing Salish rivers (Fig. 1 14).'^
Several messages — greetings, flight, subsistence —
are conveyed by two large eagles constrained within
the circle enveloping in their wings images of the Coast
Salish people who hold salmon within them. At the
base of the escalator, two welcome figures (1 996, see
title page), the male and female ancestors of the
Musqueam, stand facing the spindle whorl and cas-
cade to greet arriving passengers. On the backs of
each figure a panel. Flight, depicts eagles of glass, and
humans with upraised arms.
Point's images embody several messages intended
for the new visitors. Ever gracious, the Musqueam wel-
come them to their land. The eagle, a motif found in
earlier Salish art straddles the ancient with the modern
by alluding to natural and man-made flight. The salmon
and water signify not only the traditional economic
basis of the Salish, but the contemporary struggles for
fishing rights. The very position of these images as the
first monumental carvings that greet newcomers, com-
municates clearly and vividly that they have arrived on
Musqueam land; with this welcome, the Salish are plac-
ing claim on ownership of the land. Point has taken
the motifs of her ancestors and created a work that
not only stands as an exceptional work of art but also
makes some very contemporary politically charged
statements. It is likely that the public, sensitized to
aboriginal land claims issues, finally grasp this mes-
sage that has been conveyed by various Northwest
Coast art works.
The "Essential" Totem Pole
While the Northwest Coast Indians were carving and
raising poles, Europeans, Canadians and Americans
were creating an abstraction - the [essential] totem
pole. Early on these carvings became signifiers of tradi-
tion, embodiments of authentic Nativeness, compel-
ling presentations of the mythic world. Tourist litera-
ture for well over 100 years has represented the to-
tem pole's antiquity and connection to nature; the more
romanticizing passages in the literature project upon
the pole a kind of aura that transforms them from ordi-
nary to extra-ordinary.
In their Boasian quest for ethnographic purity, past
scholars have sought a neat encapsulation of clearly
defined types, and rejected or, at least, placed a lesser
value on, hybridized forms. Adhering to a preconceived
model of cultural purity discredits most, if not all, cul-
tural hybridities, and disregards the dynamic nature of
cultural interactions. In the popular imagination, the
"essential" totem pole should be a tall, freestanding
column of great antiquity, carved by Indians for Indi-
ans. In the quest for this totem pole, and the genuine
Indian who makes it, Ellen Neel has been ignored and
Salish art degraded. Neel's poles, made strictly as
commodities, were judged not authentic and, for that
matter, neither was the modern Ellen Neel herself.
However, the more recent dismantling of such stereo-
types and acceptance of creativity, originality, and
356 CURATORS AND CONSUMERS/ FEMALE CARVERS
challenges to the status quo have allowed space for
Susan Point's innovative artistic expressions.
Let us address the issue of Neel and Point's gender.
Because men are traditional carvers on the Northwest
Coast, any woman carver is not traditional - and thus
in the eyes of some, not "authentic." In addition, per-
haps, as Nuytten argues, Neel was erased from the
discourse on Kwakwaka'wakw art because she was
female working at a time before feminism applauded
endeavors such as hers (Nuytten, personal communi-
cation. May 2002). Some thirty years later, Point's gen-
der did not negatively influence the public's reception
of her works. However, one must ask whether the ap-
preciation of her work has something to do with her
being Musqueam. Her work emerges from the tradi-
tion of a marginalized group whose art has been
underappreciated. In contrast to the canonical tradi-
tions to which many contemporary Northwest Coast
Native artists adhere. Point enjoys enormous freedom
to experiment. This lack of constraints imposed by a
canon, coupled with the absence of Salish male artists
measuring up to her brilliance, creates a place for her
to be accepted and admired. It would be interesting
to speculate on whether, if Point were from a more
northern Northwest Coast group, she could success-
fully compete with recognized male masters of art
styles long admired and valued. I personally hope that,
with the enhanced consciousness of the contempo-
rary era, any great artist, regardless of tradition or gen-
der, would be recognized as such.
I have selected Neel and Point to discuss their roles
not only as women artists, but also their importance in
a revitalized history of Northwest Coast art. Fred Myers
introduces a volume on contemporary perspectives
about material culture by asserting:
Movement, destablization, and dynamics are
highly visible processes in the social life of
things. ... changes in the intersections of
different levels of circulation cannot be
studied simply as "breakdowns" - either from
art into commodity of from "culturally
authentic" to inauthentic - or as simple
appropriations.... The relocation of material
culture demands understanding that value is
never simply defined but is always involved
in global as well as local circuits of ex-
change, display and storage. This is espe-
cially important as objects move through
space and time with greater rapidly than
ever before, breaking down the analytical
categories that for so long have been used
to contain and define them theoretically
(Myers 2001:1 1-12.).
Both Neel and Point contributed to disassembling still-
prevalent stereotypes of "authentic Indians" and genu-
ine traditional Indian art, revealing as fictional the very
concept of ethnic purity. In the Boasian paradigm,
authentic Native artists would probably not have com-
municated political statements in their work. Neither
would they be innovative in terms of integrating west-
ern and non-western concepts. And they certainly
would not have made authentic art for commercial
purposes. But, in the globalized world of today, Native
artists like Neel and Point express resistance with art.
Neel makes her homeland the center of the universe,
whereas Point presents Vancouver as Musqueam terri-
tory. Both are innovative, creating new works of "re-
actions" between Native and non-Native concepts, with
Neel transforming a common item of tourist art into a
uniquely hybrid image of the Native and non-Native
worlds, and Point creating a Salish masterpiece from a
very untraditional medium, like glass. And both make
excellent art for non-Native sponsors; Neel for visitors
to Stanley Park and the Totemland organization, Point
for the Vancouver Airport Commission. What Boas
thought about the totem pole models as commodi-
ties, about the originality of the Salish, and, indeed,
about the timeless traditionalism of Native art itself,
has been turned on its head, opening the way for even
more innovative Northwest Coast totem pole carv-
ers—including women.
Acknowledgments.
This paper derives from talks given at the University of
Rochester in April, 2002 and Stanford University, May
A. JONAITIS 357
2002. The development of the totem pole will be the
subject of a book in progress that I am writing with
Aaron Class, the working title of which is Monumental
Myths of the Northwest Coast Totem Pole. I thank him
for his impeccable research and compelling ideas on
this subject. I also thank the Susan B. Anthony, Insti-
tute of Gender Studies and Janet Catherine Berlo, past
Susan. B. Anthony Professor of Cender Studies at the
University of Rochester as well as the Art Department
at Stanford University where I was Visiting Distinguished
Professor of American Art for providing the opportu-
nity to research, write and give these talks. I want to
express my appreciation for the generosity of Phil
Nuytten in sharing his recollections of his friend Ellen
Neel, Bill McLennan and Dan Savard for their assistance
with the photographs, Laurel Kendall and Igor Krupnik
for their editing of the manuscript and, especially, Su-
san Point for her permission to reproduce images of
herself and her works.
Notes
1. See Jonaitis (1988) for an extended review
of the American Museum of Natural History's
Northwest Coast art collection, including its sec-
tion originating from the Jesup North Pacific Expe-
dition Oonaitis 1988:154-213).
2. It is because they stand in public and visu-
ally resemble other carvings on the property that
I categorize Point's monumental columnar carv-
ings as totem poles.
3. I am indebted to Wayne Suttles who gave a
talk "Northwest Coast Art and Essentialism" at the
Otsego Institute for Native American Art Studies
in 1999 and introduced this concept of Boas and
essentialism, especially from the perspective of
his life long research on the Salish. See also
Michael Harkin's concept of Boas' "Kwakiutlism"
(Harkin 2001:100-102).
4. During his 1 996 interviews of visitors to the
stand of totem poles at Stanley Park, Aaron Class
verified these stereotypes.
5. The literature on impact of fairs, collecting and
tourism upon Native art is extensive. See in particu-
lar Cole (1 985), Rydell (1 984) and Lee (1 999).
6. The most outstanding recent totem pole
project at Qay'llnagaay, or Sea Lion Town, is the
six new poles erected at Skidegate on Haida Cwaii
(Queen Charlotte Islands) as part of a large-scale
cultural tourism project. Each pole represents one
of the main historic village sites of the southern
Haida - Skidegate, T'aanuu, SCaang Cwaii
Ninstints, Ts'aahl (ChaatI), K'uuna (Skedans), and
Cumshewa.
7. See Jonaitis (1995) for reprints of all Boas'
essays on art, selections from Primitive Art, and
articles on his art history and his influences on
twentieth century studies of Northwest Coast art.
8. The literature on tourist art is extensive, but
the two most important books on the subject
are Craburn's groundbreaking volume (1976) and
Phillips and Steiner's recent edited volume of the
current state of scholarship (1 999).
9. As a result of winning an award for this pole
at that fair, Neel began to receive orders for small
poles. By this time, her model poles were not
inexpensive, with a 14 inch piece selling for $30,
a 36 inch one for $1 50 (Nuytten 1982:57). When
the business was good, Neel, helped by her chil-
dren, filled an order from the Hudson's Bay Com-
pany for 5,000 poles.
10. Kimberly Phillip's unpublished master's the-
sis written at the University of British Columbia
Department of Fine Arts (K. Phillips 2000) is an-
other excellent source on Ellen Neel.
1 1. The other two artists were Joe Davis and
Lawrence Paul.
12. In Coast Salish Essays (1987:256, 266),
Suttles suggests that the results of the Jesup North
Pacific Expedition had a lot to do with the per-
petuation of these stereotypes.
13. I have always thought that if the Salish did
not live just south of the other Northwest Coast
people who produce such incredible art that they
would be thought of as an important North Ameri-
can art-producing people. In their publications, Bill
Holm (1991) and Steve Brown (1998) have made
significant contributions to the reassessment of
Salish art.
1 4. See Suttles 1 987: 1 00-33, for further devel-
opment of this idea.
1 5. There has been a wealth of material on Brit-
ish Columbia land claims. For a good source,
First Nations Land Claims and Treaties in BC by
the Vancouver Public Library (2002), on line at
358 CURATORS AND CONSUMERS/ FEMALE CARVERS
www.vpl.vancouver.bc.ca.
1 6. This was done with the assistance of two
other carvers, John Livingston and Jeff Cannell.
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360 CURATORS AND CONSUMERS/ FEMALE CARVERS
(Consumers, l^hen and !\Jow
GLORIA CRANMER WEBSTER
In the early 1 970s, I worked as an assistant curator at
the Museum of Anthropology at the University of Brit-
ish Columbia in Vancouver BC. One day, when I was
very busy, the late Wilson Duff came in and showed
me a raven rattle, saying, "Isn't it beautiful?" I agreed
that it was. Then he asked, "But how do you read it?" I
replied impatiently, "Wilson, I don't read those things, I
shake them." The title of this chapter could have been
"Shakers and Readers," because that is how the world
is divided for me. There are us and there are those who
write about or "read" us. Readers have very little rel-
evance in the world of Shakers, primarily because their
statements are so often wrong.
Franz Boas' arrival on the Northwest Coast of Brit-
ish Columbia marked the beginning of a long relation-
ship with our people, the Kwakwaka'wakw, more com-
monly known to the outside world as the "KwakiutI," a
term that is as inaccurate as calling the indigenous
people of this continent "Indians". Kwakwaka'wakw
is not a new word, as some Readers have suggested;
it has always meant all of the people who speak the
language, Kwakwala. I am a present-day Kwakwala
speaker and the word is certainly known to me and
other speakers with my level of fluency.
Boas collaborated with George Hunt in gathering
material relating to nearly all aspects of
Kwakwaka'wakw culture at a time when that culture
was losing its center. His dependence on Hunt's knowl-
edge of the Kwakwala language is repeatedly acknowl-
edged throughout their long collaboration. George
Hunt was my great-grandfather. His oldest son, David,
was my mother's father. We have always known that
George was the half-breed son of an English father and
a high-ranking £anget [Tlingit—ed.] woman from
Tangas, Alaska. Counter to some modern Readers of
our history who see this pedigree as an indication that
George Hunt was not a legitimate participant in
Kwakwaka'wakw culture, we take pride in our Alas-
kan connection. These ties give us the right, as Hunt's
descendants, to treasures brought to Fort Rupert by
Anisglaga, as my great-great-grandmother was known
to us. Hunt's marriage to Tlali^i'lakw (Lucy) was a
Kwagu'^ ceremony, with her family bringing kis'u, in-
cluding names, dances, and songs, to him, thus estab-
lishing his position in the society. Hunt's position be-
came stronger each time one of his sons married into
families rich in kis'u. Each of his daughters gave her
husband's family kis'u coming from Lucy's family as
well as from Anisalaga's family.
On March 20, 1905, Hunt wrote to Boas saying
that, "The Indian Agent is trying to get my three boys
to leave the Indians and turn to be white men, but the
Indians don't want for my boys to leave them." The
"boys" were my grandfather and his brothers Samuel
and Jonathan, all of whom had married chiefs daugh-
ters from different tribes of the Kwakwaka'wakw.
That the "Indians" did not want them to leave seems a
clear indication of acceptance, in my view. Further-
more, when George Hunt was dying, he called to-
gether the Kwag'u^ chiefs and asked that one of them
36 1
marry fat^g^a'widzamga (Francine), his second wife,
so that she would remain in Fort Rupert rather than
return to her home village. George feared that she would
not be well taken care of by her own people. Soon
after Hunt's death, Charlie Wilson, a chief of the Kwagu'^,
married Francine. It seems highly unlikely that such a
high-ranking person would honor the dying wish of
one who was not accepted.
Boas entered our world when people were experi-
encing drastic changes in their lives, including rapid
population decline due to introduced diseases, and
loss of land and access to traditional resource sites.
Missionaries and government agents added to the up-
heaval by attempting to "civilize" us in their residential
schools, and, in time, succeeded in pressuring the Ca-
nadian government to enact legislation prohibiting the
potlatch. In 1921 , the federal government took many
of our treasures from us, following a large potlatch
that had been held in violation of the law prohibiting
such ceremonies. In 1 980, we opened our cultural cen-
ter, in which is housed part of this Potlatch Collection,
returned to us by the Canadian Museum of Civilization.
We asked our old people what an appropriate name
would be for our center. It was at their suggestion that
we decided to call it the U'mista Cultural Centre. They
saw the repatriation of our treasures as a kind of
u'mista, that is, the return of people who, in earlier
times, were taken captive by other tribes and returned
to their homes, either through payment of ransom or
by a retaliatory raid. Fluent Kwakwala speakers are
familiar with the expression u'mis'wist'as that is used
when one is angry with or frustrated by another per-
son. It means, "may you go back to where you come
from."
Other Readers have made the U'mista Cultural Cen-
ter the subject of their reading in ways that have noth-
ing to do with what we did. We did not even think
about Readers when we designed the exhibit. Very
simply, the exhibit turned out the way it did for two
reasons: firstly, the only designer I wanted to work
with was not available; secondly, I did not feel that I
could tell the story of potlatch prohibition better
than those people who actually experienced those
terrible times. So, the exhibit texts are copies of
letters, petitions, and reports, both for and against
the potlatch. We did not need individual labels for
the masks because we know what they are. Then,
came the Readers who read all kinds of things that
were not there. We certainly were not trying to con-
fuse white visitors, or forcing any questions on them.
As for the Readers' claims that we left off the labels
for poetic impact, our Board of Directors, mostly
fishermen, would have laughed.
In terms of Kwakwaka'wakw society, Boas and
those who followed him were the consumers of our
culture. They took away knowledge and treasures to
distant places that had no connection to our world.
Today, we have become consumers of a different kind.
We are reclaiming what was lost during the "dark years,"
as our old people say. In recent years, on the North-
west coast, there has been a renewed interest in build-
ing canoes, an activity that had almost died out as our
people adapted to motorized vessels. The detailed
description of canoe construction recorded by Hunt
and Boas has been invaluable to novice canoe build-
ers. The missionaries almost succeeded in their efforts
to wipe out our language, so that we utilize the Boas/
Hunt texts in developing language material to teach
Kwakwala to both adults and children.
Another example of the value of the Boas/Hunt
material has to do with the construction of kerfed boxes.
When one of our carvers bent his first box, he sewed it
together with a twisted cedar withe. The next day, he
looked at his work and found that the withe had un-
raveled. It was only when he referred to the Boas/Hunt
volume on technology that he discovered the correct
way to twist the withe.
Although Boas and Hunt did not work extensively
with the HPdzakw of Bella Bella, their work is valued
there as well. A HPdzakw friend said, "Boas certainly
paved the way for doing business with our people in a
more inclusive way when one considers the way the
362 CURATORS, COLLECTORS, AND CONSUMERS
anthros [anthropologists—ed.] of today are doing busi-
ness." (P. Waterfall, personal communication, 1 996). Her
use of the material relates primarily to names, and she
told me that her grandfather had given her son his
name. Both her grandparents had very sketchy infor-
mation about the history of the name. She then turned
to the Boas/Hunt material and read it to the old
people, who became very excited, because hear-
ing it triggered additional information. She was then
able to combine their version with the information
from Boas and ended up with a complete history, which
her son memorized. He wrote it out in a book form,
completed with his own illustrations. She also uses the
Boas/Hunt material to cross-reference names, which
are still remembered while their histories are almost
forgotten. These few examples of the way we "con-
sume" the material produced by Boas and Hunt give
some idea of the distance between us, the Shakers,
and them, the Readers.
Following George Hunt's death in 1933, my father
Dan Cranmer worked with Boas and his daughter, Helene
Yampolsky, on the KwakiutI Grammar, published in
1947. Franz Boas died in 1942, and I quote from a
letter of condolence my father wrote to Mrs. Yampolsky,
dated January 9, 1 943: "The sorrowful tidings of your
deep affliction reached me today and, oh my dear
Helene, if only sympathy were like waves of light, how
the rays would pour from my heart to illumine the
gloomy veil of grief which wraps you in its somber
folds." In the letter, my father refers to Boas as "my
master," for whom he would sing mourning songs at
an upcoming potlatch. He also mentioned that the
Kwagu'^ of Fort Rupert had sung mourning songs
for Boas. I wonder how many people whom other
anthropologists have studied have the same feel-
ings of respect and affections that our people had
and still have for Franz Boas?
In 1 986, the descendents of Franz Boas and George
Hunt gathered in Alert Bay and Fort Rupert to cel-
ebrate the centenary of the first meeting of these two
remarkable men. Although the Hunts outnumbered the
Boas family by several hundred, we had a great time
getting to know each other. The Boas family pre-
sented us with copies of one thousand pages of
the correspondence between Franz Boas and
George Hunt, which has been of great value to us.
Other anthropologists followed Boas into our terri-
tory, but I cannot imagine such a gathering happen-
ing with their families.
1990 marked the 10th anniversary of the opening
of the U'mista Cultural Centre. At that time, my young-
est brother gave a potlatch during which Dr. Norman
Boas received his grandfather's name, originally given
to Franz Boas in 1 896. The name means, "speaking
well from the beginning." Norman's wife, Doris, received
the name Xwani, meaning, "swaying from side to side."
The name had been given to (a young Russian anthro-
pologist) Julia Averkieva when she accompanied Boas
on his last trip of 1 930-3 1 . The decision to give these
names was made by three of George Hunt's grand-
daughters, Agnes Cranmer nee Hunt, Helen Know, and
her sister Margaret Frank, both of whom were daugh-
ters of Emily, George's oldest daughter.
George Hunt traveled to New York in 1903, to
work with Franz Boas on the collections they had
accumulated for the American Museum of Natural
History. He kept a Journal of his trip, beginning with
his departure from Fort Rupert on January 24th. He
named each place at which the train stopped, of-
ten adding the number of miles he had traveled, the
population at each stop, and the elevation. Under
one of the entries headed, "1807 miles from Fort
Rupert," he wrote:
...and came to Keewatin and 1852 and we
passed Normen and now feel like if I was in
the world unknown for I did feel like I was
daid man from all my relations or something
like wounded duck with one wing broken.
No friend near to me. O I thought how foolish
I was to leave my near relations to go and
pleas other man and that I only got a very
short time to live in this world oh I felt sorry.
But I at last made up my mind to go through
with my trip.
GLORIA WEBSTER 363
Unfortunately, the entries stop before his arrival in
New York, but there are no further regrets expressed
about making the journey.
The exhibit «Chiefly Feasts», which opened at the
American Museum of Natural History in 1 991 , was an-
other chapter in the Boas/Hunt story. A year earlier,
the curator of the exhibit, Aldona Jonaitis, invited a
group of our old people to come to New York to look
at the treasures that had been selected for the exhibit.
Three of Hunt's grandchildren and two great-grand-
children were part of the group. So, 87 years after Hunt's
lonely visit to this museum, some of his descendents
came to do much the same work as he had done with
Boas. This was the first time most of our group has
seen the masks since they had been bought for the
museum by Boas and Hunt. It was also the first time
that George Hunt's detailed information on the collec-
tion was connected to individual masks, revealing that
many of them belonged to the same story. Trans-
lating my great-grandfather's notes was one of the
highlights of my involvement with the exhibit. Many
of Hunt's descendants attended the official exhibit
opening, and the Boas family was there as well. Norman
Boas spoke on behalf of his family and my brother
spoke on behalf of ours. Chiefly Feasts was our ex-
hibit; I had worked on other exhibits in large museums,
but Chiefly Feasts stands out as the one project to
which I really felt that our people had made a signifi-
cant contribution. My feeling has a lot to do with the
legacy of Franz Boas and George Hunt. The exhibit
was the beginning of a new relationship between Shak-
ers and a few Readers that I hope will become wide-
spread in the larger museum community. It brought
together two different kinds of consumers, each of
whom benefited from the experience in a very posi-
tive way.
In the last hundred years, the world of the
Kwakwaka'wakw has changed irrevocably. Today, in
common with most Native communities, we struggle
with many social economic and other problems. We
see the fishing industry that was the main source of
income on our reserves becoming more uncertain each
season, our environment being destroyed by industry
and development, while the issue of land claims re-
mains unsettled. At the same time, we strengthen
what was left of our culture after the white people
did their best to destroy it. In that task we are more
fortunate than most indigenous groups, because we
have a strong foundation to build on and for that
we owe much to Hi^dzakwal's (Franz Boas) and
Kixitasu' (George Hunt). Cilakas'la, ninigad 'wi'ump
—thank you, wise forefathers.
364 CURATORS, COLLECTORS, AND CONSUMERS

OTHER TITLES IN THE SERIES
Contributions to Circumpoiar /^nthropologt)
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Smithsonian Institution. Washington, DC. 2001. xvi+335 pp.
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and Daniel Odess. Arctic Studies Center, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. Washington,
DC. 2002. xvi+319 pp.
Vol. 3: Akuzilleput Igaqullghet. Our Words Put to Paper. Sourcebook in St. Lawrence Island Yupik Heritage and History.
Edited by Igor Krupnik, Willis Walunga, and Vera Metcalf. Compiled by Igor Krupnik and Lars Krutak. Arctic Studies
Center, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. Washington, DC. 2002. 464 pp.

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