society.”
41. For a fascinating account of how international expositions reinforced a racial hierarchy with scientific credibility, see Rydell (1984).
42. Some of the better known of these are A. L. Kroeber, Ruth Benedict, Robert Lowie, and Margaret Mead.
43. As George Stocking has pointed out (1968:270–308, 1985:114–15), there was a brief reaction in the anthropological establishment against the antievolutionism of Boas and his students at the end of World War I. This reaction was, of course, ultimately unsuccessful.
44. This is not dissimilar to some of Tylor’s ideas. See Lowie 1937.
45. However, as Torgovnick (1990:249) points out, Boas’s progressive, egalitarian ideas need repeating in today’s world.
46. See, for example, Foucault 1972 and Lyotard 1984.
47. Several Northwest Coast ethnographers, including Margaret Blackman, Frederica de Laguna, Philip Drucker, Wilson Duff, Michael Kew, and Wayne Suttles, have produced works that acknowledge acculturation and its consequences.
48. In an especially assertive critique, Virginia Dominguez (1992) insists that any discourse on culture is elitist, even when what is being described as culture is populist. As Dominguez states (pp. 34–35), “It is tempting to read the use of ‘culture’ to refer to nonelite circles or to large, diverse communities as an adaptation of a populist, anthropological sense of culture. But the fact is that in these situations ‘cultures’ are being evaluated and placed on some hierarchical scale of comparative value with an objectified European culture sitting pretty at the top. This is the elite European/Eurocentric sense of culture masking itself as populist.”
49. Lila Abu-Lughod (1991) accepts the premise that the notion of culture carries with it a vehicle for separating different peoples and thus maintaining a state of hierarchy and proposes that anthropologists “pursue, without exaggerated hopes for the power of their texts to change the world, a variety of strategies for writing against culture” (pp. 137–38).
50. Fox (1991:100–101) briefly discusses Boas’s art history, noting that Kroeber and Radin both thought Boas did not do enough actual history of art.
51. It is, for example, bewildering to read all of Boas’s Kwakiutl materials, which offer vast amounts of information about myth, art, religion, social organization, and technology, without presenting a neatly packaged representation of Kwakiutl “culture” that can be understood as a unified whole. See also White 1963, 1966 and Goldman 1975:vii–xi.
52. In “Irony in Anthropology: The Work of Franz Boas,” Krupat’s principal focus is “the trope identified by the West for the expression of skepticism as a response to uncertainty” (1990:135).
1. Tattooing of the Haida
This brief note on Boas’s presentation to the New York Academy of Sciences on Haida tattooing includes an early statement by Boas on his belief that the Kwakiutl originated some motifs which the Haida developed to the highest stage.
Stated Meeting.
The President, Dr. Newberry, in the chair.
Thirty-five persons present.
Dr. Franz Boas exhibited a number of photographs of tattooed Indians from the Queen Charlotte Islands, B.C. This people, the Haida, are the only ones in the habit of tattooing their whole bodies—wrists, arms, breast, back, legs, and feet—the designs being conventional representations of animals, the “crest” of the person on whom they are tattooed. The tattooing is done by puncture and by rubbing soot into the wounds. The patterns are exactly analogous to the paintings and carvings of those people. Tattooing is not unknown to the neighboring tribes, but chiefly confined to marks on the wrists and eventually on the ankles. Such designs are found, for instance, among the Tsimshian. Tattooing on the arm and breast is also found among the Nutkas [Nuu-chah-nulth] of the west coast of Vancouver Island, but in this case it is connected with religious practices, not with the social organization—the totems of the people—as it is among the Haidas. A photograph of a Nutka was exhibited, showing a human figure on the breast. The same individual had long, parallel cuts running from the collarbone down to the belly, and from the shoulders all along the arms. These wounds are inflicted at the initiation of the young man into a secret society and are called “Tlo-koala,” a word borrowed from the Kwakiutl language.
Besides these photographs of tattooed men, others illustrating a few types of Indians were shown, and attention was called to the broadness of their faces, the light color of their skins, and the shortness of their heads. Deformed heads are found only as far north as Milbank Sound and Gardner Channel. A few photographs of excessively deformed heads from the north point of Vancouver Island showed the effects of bandaging, which results in a great elongation of the occipital part of the head.
Replying to a question of the chairman, Dr. Boas stated that the style of art of the northern Tlingit, the Haida, Kwakiutl, Nutka, and Salish can be easily distinguished. He believes that certain designs originated among the Kwakiutl, but reached their highest stage of development among the Haidas. The Salish have some peculiarities not shared by any of the other tribes.
The President referred to his own observations on the carvings among some twenty tribes of that region, and to the artistic skill displayed by those along the coast, whose work bears a decided resemblance to that of the races of Central America—possibly indicating a genetic relationship—and contrasts strongly with the inferior skill in carving shown by the inland tribes of our Northwestern territory.
Reprinted from Transactions, New York Academy of Sciences, pp. 115–16, 1889.
2. The Use of Masks and Head Ornaments on the Northwest Coast of America
Boas first briefly discusses the difficulty of obtaining information on the meaning of Northwest Coast art. Then he categorizes three types of masks: the helmets found in the north (among the Tlingit), masks attached to housefronts and totem poles, and dancing masks. Two classes of dancing masks of the Bella Coola and the Kwakiutl are those worn at potlatches and those worn during the winter ceremonials. The remainder of the essay is a description of the winter ceremonies of the Kwakiutl with references to some of the paraphernalia worn by participants.
This essay represents a preview of Boas’s 1897 “Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians” and his 1898 “Mythology of the Bella Coola Indians.” In those later publications, he used somewhat different linguistic notations from those he uses here.
Our museums contain large collections of masks from the Northwest Coast of America, but it is only occasionally that the descriptions and catalogues give information as to their use and meaning. On my first visit to British Columbia, in 1886, I paid special attention to this subject. A considerable collection of drawings and photographs of masks, which I carried with me, did not help me materially in my investigations. I frequently showed the drawings to Indians whom I expected to be conversant with everything referring to this subject, but it was only in rare cases that they recognized the masks and were able to give any information as to their use and meaning. Very soon I arrived at the conclusion that, except in a few instances, the masks were no conventional types representing certain ideas known to the whole people, but were either inventions of the individuals who used them, or that the knowledge of their meaning was confined to a limited number of persons. The former hypothesis did not seem probable, as the same types of masks are found in numerous specimens and in collections made at different times and by different persons. Among the types which are comparatively frequently
