voices, it is often necessary to dethrone old authorities. It would be easy to consider Boas, often called the “father of American anthropology,” as a prime candidate for such dismissal. Indeed, some of what he wrote deserves critical analysis; however, a careful reading of his work on Native American art suggests that we take a more nuanced view. I propose that in the writings included in this volume, premised as they are on a resistance to premature theoretical closure and an egalitarian ideology, Boas created the space that Native people could ultimately occupy to assert their own voice.
It is appropriate to reassess Boas’s writings from the perspective we have gained as a result of the current crisis in representation and the reconsideration of the nature of art history and anthropology. Indeed, my own reading of his work has changed over the past several years from the moment I embarked on collecting his articles on art history for republication.7
This book has had a long history. In 1985 Janet Catherine Berlo invited me to participate in a College Art Association panel in Los Angeles on “Reevaluating Our Predecessors: Ethnographic Art Historians Look Back,” intended to assess, with an historical perspective, the contributions of some of the early interpreters of Native art. Later on that year, I was on another panel chaired by Berlo, “Native American Art History: Reassessing the Early Years,” held at the Native American Art Studies Association meeting in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I spoke at both meetings on the political dimensions of Franz Boas’s art history.8 I found his art history so interesting that I decided to edit a book of his essays.
Preparing the exhibit for “Chiefly Feasts” consumed much of the next several years and I had to put the Boas project aside. Finally, in 1992, the quincentennial of Columbus’s “discovery” of America and a year profoundly meaningful for Native Americans as the country reevaluated its history in light of their seminal role, I returned to it. The heightened consciousness of the historical relationships between Natives and non-Natives so prevalent that year motivated me to think more critically about how Boas represented Indian art. Insights derived from recent scholarship contributed additional dimensions.9 When I reread these articles in preparation for their publication, it became clear that many resonated with contemporary critical thought and the continued vitality of Kwakwaka’wakw artistic and cultural traditions.
I have framed this collection of articles, written between 1889 and 1916, with an introduction discussing the development of Boas’s art history ideas and a postscript. The introduction connects the essays reprinted here to portions of his classic Primitive Art and positions them in their historical moment. Because every later scholar of Northwest Coast art is, in one way or another, indebted to Boas, in my concluding essay I demonstrate the profound impact he has had on twentieth-century studies of Northwest Coast art. The relevance of his writings still today and the respect with which he is viewed by modern-day Kwakwaka’wakw demonstrate that his work complements the new voices of liberty. I think he would have recognized and delighted in those voices, loud and clear, at the opening of “Chiefly Feasts.”
In editing this volume, one of the most difficult problems the publisher and I encountered was how to handle the orthography of Boas’s early writings. The articles reprinted here contain numerous words from native languages, particularly Kwakwala, the language of the Kwakwaka’wakw. Because over time Boas changed his orthography, we initially thought it would be useful to transcribe Native terms into a common orthography such as that developed by the U’Mista Cultural Centre in Alert Bay, British Columbia. The difficulty of accomplishing this and its potential for confusion convinced us to take a different approach. In order to be faithful to the original texts, we have published Native words just as they appeared in Boas’s text.
The figures have been renumbered for this volume, and in one case—“Primitive Art,” chapter 8—the illustrations have been dropped to avoid duplication with other articles. Corrections or other alterations to achieve consistency in style are minor in nature and were kept to a minimum. I have omitted some of the italic type used for proper names in the original articles and have provided an occasional emendation to the text in brackets.
A very important book on Boas came out after my essays were in production and I would like to bring it to the reader’s attention. Franz Boas, Ethnologe-Anthropologe-Sprachwissenschaftler: Ein Wegereiter der modernen Wissenschaft vom Menschen [Franz Boas, ethnographer-anthropologist-linguist: a pioneer of the modern science of man] (1992) catalogues an exhibition on Boas at the Berlin State Library from December 17, 1992, to March 6, 1993. It contains essays by Michael Durr, Erich Kasten, and Egon Renner on Boas’s anthropology, ethnographic methodology, and role in the development of American anthropology. Of particular interest to the present study is Erich Kasten’s “Masken, Mythen, und Indianer: Franz Boas’s Ethnographie und Museumsmethode” [Masks, myths, and Indians: Franz Boas’s ethnography and museology] (pp. 79–102). The exhibition included letters, photographs, publications by Boas and his students, and artifacts Boas acquired from the Inuit and Kwakwaka’wakw, as well as contemporary Northwest Coast art.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank several colleagues who willingly read this manuscript and made excellent and valuable suggestions for improving it. First, I express my deep appreciation for the time and energy my two art historical colleagues and close friends Janet Catherine Berlo and Ruth B. Phillips devoted to these pages. Bill Holm and Wayne Suttles also read the manuscript and made extremely useful comments. In addition, I wish to thank other colleagues who read all or parts of the work: Michael Ames, Douglas Cole, Stanley Freed, Ira Jacknis, Arnold Krupat, Herman Lebovics, and Esther Pasztory.
Jay Powell offered useful advice on the orthography, and Wayne Suttles gave me a great deal of help in trying to adhere as closely as possible to Boas’s original spelling, while correcting obvious typographic errors.
Several individuals assisted in reproducing the illustrations for the book, and I thank them for their good work: Craig Cheset, Betty Derasmo, Dennis Finnan, and Joel Pollick. I would also like to express my appreciation to Geralyn Abinader for her help in coordinating this project. And, as always, let me thank my good friends and esteemed colleagues at the University of Washington Press.
1. The people whom Boas called the Kwakiutl today prefer the term Kwakwaka’wakw, which means “speakers of Kwakwala.” In this essay I use the preferred term.
2. The Kwakwaka’wakw elders who remember George Hunt describe him as distinguished and quiet; his brilliance is evident in his meticulous scholarship and thoughtful correspondences.
3. My two research assistants, Stacy A. Marcus and Judith Ostrowitz, did most of the archival work on these artifacts. They were assisted at different times by Peter Macnair, Gloria Cranmer Webster, and Wayne Suttles.
4. Ruth Phillips (1989) has recently elegantly demonstrated the new art history’s applicability to her study of Huron art. For more on new trends in art history, see Baxandall 1974, Belting 1987, Preziosi 1989, Hiller 1991, Berger 1992, and Phillips 1992.
5. For several interesting essays on new perspectives on “primitive art,” see Hiller 1991.
6. See the following for useful discussions of recent trends in anthropology: Ames 1992, Atkinson 1990, Clifford 1987 and 1988, Clifford and Marcus 1986, Geertz 1988, Kuper 1988, Marcus and Fisher 1986, Manganaro 1990, Maranhao 1990, Sanjek 1990, and Rosaldo 1989.
7. Through this review, I hope to contribute to the ongoing reassessment of the positive contributions anthropology and anthropological art history can make. Some scholars writing in Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present (Fox 1991) suggest means by which anthropology can usefully contribute to knowledge, while discarding elements no longer acceptable. Joan Vincent (1991:47) suggests that an historical analysis of early anthropologists like Boas, which connects their work to their social
