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- Title
"HAA DAAT AKAWSHIXÍT, HE WROTE ABOUT US": CONTEXTUALIZING ANTHROPOLOGIST JOHN R. SWANTON'S 1904 FIELDWORK ON THE TLINGIT INDIANS.
- Authors
Jones, Zachary R.
- Abstract
"The Tlingit evidently have a rich mythology which I shall be able to little more than touch" (Boas Papers 1904-01-13). So wrote anthropologist John Reed Swanton (1873-1958) to his mentor and fellow anthropologist Franz Boas after arriving in Sitka, Alaska in January 1904 as he began his fieldwork among the then little-studied Tlingit Indians. Swanton's statement about being able to "little more than touch" the rich mythology-- better termed oral literature1--of the Tlingit largely proved to be true. Swanton only spent three and a half months in Southeast Alaska documenting Tlingit culture, language, and oral literature. Even though his time was limited in Southeast Alaska, he produced two monographs: Social Conditions, Beliefs, and Linguistic Relationships of the Tlingit Indians (Swanton 1905a), which remains an early and detailed ethnography of the Tlingit, and Tlingit Myths and Texts (Swanton 1909), which stands as one of the largest publications of Tlingit oral literature in the Tlingit language in existence. Swanton was one of the first American anthropologists to study the Tlingit, making his publications of interest to scholars and the Tlingit who read his works today. Swanton was also a protégé of influential anthropologist Franz Boas and engaged in the then-nascent anthropological method of participant observation, making study of his work important to the history of anthropology.
- Subjects
TLINGIT mythology; SWANTON, John Reed; BOAS, Franz, 1858-1942; FOLK literature; TLINGIT language
- Publication
Alaska Journal of Anthropology, 2017, Vol 15, Issue 1/2, p126
- ISSN
1544-9793
- Publication type
Article