Franz Boas As Public Intellectual—Theory, Ethnography, Activism
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THE FRANZ BOAS PAPERS, VOLUME 1 THE FRANZ BOAS PAPERS DOCUMENTARY EDITION The Franz Boas Papers, VOLUME 1 Franz Boas as Public Intellectual— Theory, Ethnography, Activism Edited by Regna Darnell, Michelle Hamilton, Robert L. A. Hancock, and Joshua Smith REGNA DARNELL, GENERAL EDITOR University of Nebraska Press | Lincoln and London © 2015 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America Frontispiece image: Franz Boas on the cover of Time magazine a few years before his death. Courtesy Time magazine, May 11, 1936, © 1936 Time Inc. Used under license. Parts of chapter 4, “Franz Boas and the Conditions of Literature” by J. Edward Chamberlin, previously appeared in a different form as “‘The Corn People Have a Song Too. It Is Very Good’: On Beauty, Truth, and Goodness” in Studies in American Indian Literatures 21.3 (2009): 66– 89, © J. Edward Chamberlin. Chapter 15, “Franz Boas’s Correspondence with German Friends and Colleagues in the Early 1930s” by Jürgen Langenkämper, is based on “Ich fuerchte nur, wir verstehen einander nicht” and “Franz Boas’ Briefwechsel mit deutschen Freunden und Kollegen 1932/33,” which appeared in Friedrich Pöhl and Bernhard Tilg, eds., Franz Boas— Kultur, Sprache, Rasse: Wege einer antirassistischen Anthropologie (Wien: Lit, 2009), 2nd ed. (2011). Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data The Franz Boas papers / Regna Darnell, general editor. volumes cm.— (Franz Boas papers documentary edition) Contents: volume 1. Franz Boas as public intellectual: theory, ethnography, activism / edited by Regna Darnell, Michelle Ham- ilton, Robert L. A. Hancock, and Joshua Smith Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978- 0- 8032- 6984- 2 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 978- 0- 8032- 7199- 9 (pdf ) 1. Boas, Franz, 1858– 1942— Influence. 2. Boas, Franz, 1858–1942— Correspondence. 3. Ethnology. I. Darnell, Regna, editor of compilation. GN21.B56F75 2015 301.092— dc23 2015011301 Set in Charis by L. Auten. Contents List of Figures vii Acknowledgments ix Historiographic Conundra: The Boasian Elephant in the Middle of Anthropology’s Room xi REGNA DARNELL Part 1. Theory and Interdisciplinary Scope 1. Mind, Body, and the Native Point of View: Boasian Theory at the Centennial of The Mind of Primitive Man 3 REGNA DARNELL 2. The Individual and Individuality in Franz Boas’s Anthropology and Philosophy 19 HERBERT S. LEWIS 3. The Police Dance: Dissemination in Boas’s Field Notes and Diaries, 1886– 1894 43 CHRISTOPHER BRACKEN 4. Franz Boas and the Conditions of Literature 65 J. EDWARD CHAMBERLIN 5. From Baffin Island to Boasian Induction: How Anthropology and Linguistics Got into Their Interlinear Groove 83 MICHAEL SILVERSTEIN 6. The Boasian Legacy in Ethnomusicology: Cultural Relativism, Narrative Texts, Linguistic Structures, and the Role of Comparison 129 SEAN O’NEILL Part 2. Ethnography 7. Friends in This World: The Relationship of George Hunt and Franz Boas 163 ISAIAH LORADO WILNER 8. The Ethnographic Legacy of Franz Boas and James Teit: The Thompson Indians of British Columbia 191 ANDREA LAFORET Part 3. Activism 9. Anthropological Activism and Boas’s Pacific Northwest Ethnology 215 DAVID W. DINWOODIE 10. Franz Boas, Wilson Duff, and the Image of Anthropology in British Columbia 237 ROBERT L. A. HANCOCK 11. Cultural Persistence in the Age of “Hopelessness”: Phinney, Boas, and U.S. Indian Policy 263 JOSHUA SMITH 12. Franz Boas’s Correspondence with German Friends and Colleagues in the Early 1930s 277 JÜRGEN LANGENKÄMPER 13. Franz Boas on War and Empire: The Making of a Public Intellectual 293 JULIA E. LISS Part 4. The Archival Project 14. Anthropology of Revitalization: Digitizing the American Philosophical Society’s Native American Collections 331 TIMOTHY B. POWELL 15. “An expansive archive . not a diminished one”: The Franz Boas Papers Documentary Edition Project 345 MICHELLE HAMILTON Contributors 363 The Franz Boas Papers Project Team 367 Index 369 Figures 1. “Kuēʹqakila’s heraldic column at Qumtaʹsqē” 48 2. The Village of Nahwitti, Hope Island, British Columbia 49 3. Front page of first lesson, Harper’s Hebrew Correspondence School, Elementary course 88 4. Genesis 1:1 Hebrew text with translation, explanatory notes, and further observations 89 5. Exercises for students to submit via correspondence 90 6. Harper’s Manual: facing-page layout of Hebrew and English versions of Genesis 91 7. Concordanced exemplification of syntactic forms in Harper’s inductive syntax 93 8. Grassmann’s Rigvedic morpholexical concordance, by word roots and stems 95 9. Kathlamet (Chinookan) text with notes keyed to grammatical sketch 105 10. Dorsey’s rendering of La Flèche’s Omaha text, “How Rabbit Caught the Sun in a Trap” 109 11. Boas’s text of “Sednalo Qaxodlulo” as published 110 12. Kathlamet (Chinookan) text with notes keyed to grammatical sketch 111 13. Pages 20– 21 of Boas’s 1890 Lower Chinook notebook 114 14. Pages 546– 547 of Boas’s 1894 Kathlamet notebook 115 15. The text in figure 14 as rendered in Boas’s “Kathlamet Texts,” page 39 116 16. Edward Sapir’s Kiksht (“Wishram”) notebook 2, page 17 118 17. Sapir’s Nootka notebook 19, page 29 119 18. The Franz Boas Papers Project Team 366 vii Acknowledgments The conference that gave rise to this volume of revisionist essays on Franz Boas was supported by a Workshop Grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). The contributors served as an initial planning group for the documentary edition of the Boas Professional Papers that this volume inaugurates. A SSHRC Part- nership Grant to General Editor Regna Darnell and the University of Western Ontario has supported the collaboration of the American Phil- osophical Society, holder of the Boas papers, the University of Nebraska Press, the University of Victoria, and the Musg̲amagw Dzawada̲‘enux̲w Tribal Council. University of Nebraska Press senior acquisitions editor Matthew Boko- voy proposed a critical edition of Franz Boas papers to Darnell at the time of his appointment in 2008 and has worked tirelessly alongside the research team to obtain funding and to create a seminal resource for the social science and Indigenous communities. Virtually the entire staff of the American Philosophical Society has become involved in “the Boas project” in some way. We single out Martin Levitt (librarian), his executive assistant Sandra Duffy, Timothy Powell (director, Center for Native American and Indigenous Research), Brian Carpenter (senior archivist, CNAIR), Bayard Miller (the archivist who has digitized the Boas Professional Papers), Richard Shrake (technical advisor extraordinaire), Annie Westcott (director of meetings), Linda Musumeci (director of grants and fellowships), and Keith Thomson (executive offi- cer). The library’s advisory committee on indigenous research has devised innovative protocols for the treatment of culturally sensitive materials that parallel the commitments of the Franz Boas Documentary Edition. We are grateful for the diligence and commitment of our Indigenous Advisory Board: Ryan Nicolson (Kwakwa̲ka̲‘wakw), Deanna Nicolson (Kwakwaka̲ ‘wakw),̲ Marianne Nicolson (Kwakwaka̲ ‘wakw),̲ Johnny Mack (Nuu chah nulth), Rachel Flowers (Lyackson ), Patricia Vickers (Haida, Tsimshian, Heiltsuk), Angie Bain (Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs), Robert Hancock (Metis), Dean Jacobs (Anishinaabe), and espe- cially IAC chair Susan Hill (Mohawk). The Musg̲amagw Dzawada̲‘enux̲w Tribal Council is a welcome partner in our efforts toward treatment of ix culturally sensitive materials, return of intellectual property through Digital Knowledge Sharing (DKS), and training and mentoring of Native American and First Nations scholars. We thank our graduate assistants, Paulina Johnson (Plains Cree, anthro- pology), Evan Habkirk (history), Jessica Knapp (public history), Jona- than Doering (theory and criticism), and Sarah Moritz (anthropology, McGill). Undergraduate work study students have been diligent in pre- paring initial transcriptions: Michael Cook, Dianne Le, Zachary Miller, Kristopher Connolly, Raquel Farrington, and Savroop Grewal. Rick Fehr, acting director of First Nations Studies at Western, supervised the work study students. Anthropology Administrative Officer Jean M. Taylor went and contin- ues to go beyond the call of duty despite an overwhelming workload of which this project is only a small part. We are humbly grateful. Our invaluable project and office manager, Adair Harper, designed the website (www.franzboaspapers.uwo.ca). We have obtained invaluable assistance from the Society for Documentary Editing, particularly from Beth Luey and Bob Karachuk. Many thanks also to the Documents Com- pass team at the University of Virginia, whose Doctracker documentary editing database has become an integral part of our workflow. Special thanks go to Mary MacNeil, whose expertise, patience, and warmth were crucial to setting up our version of Doctracker. Substantial changes in the documentary edition team are under way as we move into coming volumes. We will particularly miss Martin Lev- itt, librarian of the American Philosophical Society, and his ever- cheerful miracle- working executive assistant, Sandra Duffy, but wish them both well in retirement. Marty has generously lent his vision, gravitas, and long- term commitment. Our erstwhile project manager, Adair Harper, leaves an indelible mark on the shape of the documentary edition and its research team. M. Sam Cronk has joined the team and been critical to final preparation