On the train somewhere between St. Paul and Brainerd, Minnesota, Boas wrote Marie, “First to the North, when I went to the Eskimo, then to the East to Europe, now to the West to the Indians. I no longer desire to go to the South!” Armed with introductions to “all kinds of possible and impossible people,” Boas had boarded the train at Penn Station in New York, bound for somewhere “in or near Victoria.” Carl Schurz had obtained for him a free railroad pass on the Northern Pacific Railroad, and Jacobi had loaned him five hundred dollars. Boas planned to conduct three months of fieldwork, from September to December 1886, among Indian groups of the Northwest Coast, and to gather ethnographic artifacts to sell when he returned east, in order to repay Jacobi and to cover his additional expenses. As Boas explained to his parents, he had decided to go because Jacobi, Schurz, and others thought it was a good professional move. “Please join me,” he wrote, “in my wishes that I will be successful.” He concluded, “Now my name will again appear in some newspapers, and people will at least know my name.”1
Before leaving for the Northwest, Boas travelled to the Smithsonian to work on the editing of The Central Eskimo manuscript, about which he was “very unhappy.” He wrote Marie, “They are making so many changes. What I feel worse about is the fact that even if it were written in German, the same changes would be made.” He related that he always wrote “very briefly and directly,” but that the editor was “adding a lot of ‘stuffing.’” At Jacobi’s encouragement, Boas attended the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Buffalo. “I have been asked by many to read a paper,” Boas wrote Marie, “but I do not wish to, as my English is too poor and I have decided that the next time I speak I will do it well.” With reference to the failure of his lectures at Columbia in spring of 1885, Boas remarked with finality, “Until that time, I shall keep my mouth shut.” To his parents he wrote, pleasantly surprised, “I was glad to discover that due to my journey and my publications I am also very well known here.”2
Boas described what he saw when he stepped down from the Northern Pacific Railroad car at the end of the line in Tacoma, Washington, on September 17, 1886: “Other new cities may appear strange to one, but this one seemed still stranger. Burnt down forests extend into the city. Part of a street is built-up; next to it stand sad remnants of tall trees. The entire region between Helena and here, as a result of the senseless burning down of the woods looks unspeakably sad. The endless smoke indicates that fires must be raging more fiercely in other parts.” On board the small steamer North Pacific, he made his way from Tacoma to Victoria. On his first excursion in the city, as he wrote his parents, “I discovered pictures of my Bella Coola everywhere and soon found their source—an Indian trader who had had them re-photographed” from those taken the year before in Germany by Carl Günther. Boas located the trader and “immediately asked about the Bella Coola and heard that two were still here but intended to leave for home that evening.” Boas enlisted the help of two Bella Coola women (who had just been passing in the street) in finding these men: “I went with them, and after searching for a while I found my good friend Alkinous in a small house of a Bella Coola woman. He was of course very much surprised when he recognized me and said I must be a ‘smart man.’ It amused me to see the astonishment of the women when they heard me speak their language.” After searching a bit more, Boas found his other Bella Coola friend, Itlkakuani. Boas “gave him a letter for Captain Jacobson,” who had returned with the Bella Coola from Germany. Then Boas said, “Good-bye, after giving him greetings for his fellow tribesmen.”3
Boas went frequently to the outskirts of town in Victoria where the Indians lived. As he wrote Marie, “Tonight I was down in the settlement again.” In his 1889 article “Reisen in Britisch-Columbien,” Boas wrote, “‘The Indians who live close together here belong to the various language groups of the coast. And since they do not speak any English, they use a mixed language, the Chinook (Jargon), in which the conversation goes along easily.’” Boas found the Indians “reserved at first,” but, in their impoverished situation, they welcomed payment and worked with him. “I began to ask about the language,” he wrote. “In the beginning it is always hard work. But I soon found the pronouns and a few verbs. That is usually sufficient to break the ice.” Boas’s “old friend from Berlin, Itlkakuani,” was still in Victoria. “So I went to his tent,” Boas continued, “and began talking at once; I showed him my drawings from various museums, and it was soon apparent that they will be very useful.” In Victoria, “the kindest man I have ever met” took Boas in his wagon to talk with an Indian woman who was married to a white man. Boas gained her help “because of the manner of my introduction,” through the assistance of this gentle and “highly respected” man. “I asked only one question,” Boas related, “and the entire myth of the origin of the world descended upon me.” Of his collection of tales, Boas wrote, “This mass of stories is gradually beginning to bear fruit because I can now discover certain traits characteristic of different groups of people. I think I am on the right track in considering mythology a useful tool for differentiating and judging the relationship of tribes.”4
In Victoria Boas left behind items he wouldn’t need, boarded the Barbara Boskowitz on October 5, 1886, and sailed to Nawiti with “a colorful group” of Indians. Passing between towering mountains along the narrow waterway where pine forests reached down to the sea, the steamship docked at the small Indian village with seven houses. “The steamer whistle blew,” Boas wrote, “and before long we saw forms who, wrapped in brightly colored blankets, had been sitting idly in front of their houses jump up and run to the boats. Two boats were quickly launched and the men, wrapped in woolen blankets, rowed toward the steamer. The boats were loaded and we rowed to shore, while the steamer continued on her way.” As they came to shore, Boas overheard the Indians talking about him: “Since I looked relatively respectable they took me for a missionary. But I explained to them that I was no priest.”5
The day after his arrival, Boas attended “a great potlatch festival in the neighboring house.” The people received him in friendly fashion:
In the center of the room was a huge fire; on it stood a large kettle in which fish oil and halibut were being cooked. . . . The men and a few women sat on the platform, which encircled the room. A man sat on the left holding a large drum on which the sun, the crest of the host, was painted. . . . The Indians were all crouching with their backs against the plank. . . . They were packed closely together and sang to the beat of the drum. . . . The host stood alone in the middle and clapped his hands and sang.
While the host was singing, tending the fire, and minding the food, the chief stood and delivered “a long speech with raised voice and animated gesticulation.” The chief praised the host, who had given away two hundred dollars worth of goods at the potlatch. Soon Boas became aware that he had become “the subject of their speeches.” A young man who spoke English interpreted for Boas. Confused about the purpose of Boas’s visit, the people were worried that Boas “might be a government agent come to put a stop to the festival.” Previously an agent had told them that “he would send a gunboat if they did not obey” his orders and give up their festivals. Boas realized that he had to explain his presence: “So I arose and said: ‘My country is far from yours; much further even than that of the Queen.’” He didn’t care about the Indian agents, nor did he want to interfere with their festivals. He continued, “My people live far away and would like to know what people in distant lands do, and so I set out.” Boas’s speech was received well, for, he related, “all the chiefs have been coming to see me to tell me that the ‘hearts’ of all their people were glad when they heard my speech.”6
After sketching totem poles and dwellings, collecting tales, purchasing masks, and hosting a feast for the village, Boas departed Nawiti for Alert Bay with others by boat on October 17. Through intermittent stormy weather and frothy seas, the group was forced ashore one and one-half miles from Fort Rupert, where his traveling companions chose to stay. Boas traveled on with an Indian guide, who paddled the canoe and managed the sail. “More quickly than was to be expected,” Boas wrote, “the wind rose to storm’s height. All my life long . . . I shall remember this canoe trip. First we had to pass through heavy seas, after which we reached calm waters under the protection of land.”7
At Alert Bay the people on shore saw the boat approaching and jumped into the water to pull them to dry land. Boas recounted, “My Indian friend and I laughed about our trip, and he said to me: . . . ‘You were just like a deer, so quickly you jumped on shore!’” Boas lost no time getting to work. The afternoon of his arrival, he sketched houses and totem poles, and in the evening began collecting stories “like mad.” At the end of the day, as he recounted, “I slept like a log.” Over the next several days, Boas collected Kwakiutl family histories, learned about the cannibal figure in their mythology, purchased “a rattle belonging to a long story,” acquired more masks, began work on the distribution of the Indian groups, and wrote until, as he said, his fingers were lame.8
On October 26 Boas returned to Victoria to continue work with the Bella Coola. He wrote Marie, “I now know the Bella Coola language quite well and understand it.” With the help of a “dear Catholic priest,” Boas worked with a Tlingit woman and then spent time in his hotel room transcribing his growing collection of tales—by October 31 he had a total of 119 tales. In preparation for his trip to the village of Cowichan, Boas borrowed a camera from a photographer: “I hope the pictures will be better than the ones I took when I was among the Eskimo.” Likely the photographer was Oregon Columbus Hastings, who owned a studio in Victoria and who, in subsequent years, would work with Boas on photo documentation of northwest coast Indian groups. Departing from Victoria Station on the evening of November 3 Boas observed, “The railway journey, which took about two hours, is almost more beautiful than anything I have seen yet. The train passed through wonderful forests, along steep mountain slopes, over deep black canyons, and through lonely mountain scenery.” Arriving in Duncan at ten thirty in the evening, Boas found “no station house or anything resembling one.” Two men showed up to retrieve the mailbag, loaded Boas and his six pieces of luggage along with the mail into the wagon, and headed for Cowichan.9
The residents of Cowichan were suspicious of Boas and of his interest in photographing their totem poles and homes. With a commanding manner, he refused to pay for taking pictures: “This morning I had quite a scene in the upper village. I had my camera with me and photographed a handsome totem pole in front of a house. Shortly afterward the owner, a young man, appeared and demanded that I pay him, which naturally I refused to do, so that I should not deprive myself of the possibility of photographing whatever I might wish.” As Boas continued through the village, the young man offered to serve as his interpreter. “The whites look upon the Indians not as humans but as dogs,” Boas wrote, “and he did not wish anyone to laugh at things that were their laws, such as painted houses and articles used for celebrating their festivals.” Imperious in his manner, Boas showed no compunction in taking “two especially well-preserved skulls” from the old cemetery on the hill. He did the same in Comox, where he traveled next.10
Arriving in Comox on November 11, Boas found himself in “the saddest-looking village of any I have seen so far.” He concluded, “It is apparent that the inhabitants are dying out rapidly. There are ruins everywhere, and beautifully carved totem poles stand in front of empty shells.” Trying to puzzle out the complexity of the languages, Boas found that the Lekwiltok, who lived in the first village, spoke “the same language as the inhabitants of Alert Bay.” Boas located the Comox, who kept themselves apart, in “the last houses of the settlement,” besieged and enslaved, as they had been in the past by the Lekwiltok. Of the Pentlatch, he wrote, “There is only one family of these left, the last of the tribe.” Boas added, “I immediately made friends with them and am now learning this newly discovered language.” After five days he noted, “I now have about four hundred words in both the Comox and [Pentlatch] languages. I still have no texts but hope to get some soon. It is always quite difficult to get started in a language, but I shall be very happy if I can get one thousand words and a few texts in both.” Of his work with the Comox and the Pentlatch, Boas remarked to Marie, “I then will have covered all tribes of the seashore between Vancouver Island and the continent.” On his last Saturday in Comox, at the sound of the whistle announcing the arrival of the Barbara Boskowitz, Boas made his way to the pier: “Since I had a number of acquaintances on board, I wandered down to the boat. To my very great surprise, I met Jacobsen, the Bella Coola man from Berlin, who is on his way home. We were both delighted to meet and spent several hours in conversation. I was very glad to speak German again. It is nice to meet unexpectedly an old acquaintance in another corner of the world. Above all it is refreshing to meet someone who is glad to see you.” They spoke about Berlin and about Jacobsen’s time in British Columbia, where he lived, as Boas related, “all alone among the Bella Coola and has started a fishery and animal breeding station.”11
On December 2, Boas traveled by steamer to the copper-mining town of Nanaimo, where he continued work on languages. Finally, he returned to Victoria by train on December 10, and began preparations for his trip back to New York. From his initial days in Victoria, Boas felt certain that he was uncovering important information: “I am now convinced that this trip will have the results I desire. Today I have made many notes about masks and such things. A few spirits have wandered into my diaries.” However, he was struck repeatedly by a concern that would torment him throughout his decades of work on the Northwest Coast. He wrote Marie, “I don’t feel too happy because I know that my work here will remain unfinished since I have so little time.” In his letter-diary to his parents, Boas reflected that the “geographical part of my work has been about the most difficult. The names of the tribes were unknown, and, after I had found seventy tribes with the greatest difficulty, I had to arrange them according to language and dialect and determine their locations.” Toward the end of his time in British Columbia, Boas reflected positively, “Looking back on the whole trip I may say that I am satisfied. The ethnographic conditions of this province are now completely clear while before not much was known about them.” In his last letter to his parents from Victoria, Boas related that he was winding up his work, writing a few last letters, packing his ethnographic collection and his baggage. “It is a strange feeling,” he wrote, “to have again completed this type of work. Now for a year or longer I shall have to live on the memory of this quarter of a year.”12
Still uncertain as to whether he would be returning to Berlin, Boas told Marie, “In view of Germany, I have emphasized the geographical questions more than I needed to otherwise, and soon I shall publish a paper which my Herren Kollegen (colleagues) will like.” In addition to keeping “geographical questions” in the forefront, Boas had also taken the practical steps of sending off the schedule of his lectures for the next summer by steamer from Comox on November 18: “I shall announce the lecture as Ethnography of Northwestern America.”13
In a last letter to Marie before his return, Boas wrote that he would return to New York on December 27. He continued, “I am feeling awfully funny. The big job is finished and if I have forgotten something or done something wrong, it cannot be corrected any more. All in all, I can look back to these past months with great satisfaction, but I am glad that they are over.” He added, “Marie, I don’t want to think about having to go back to Germany!” Boas admitted that, in some moments of quiet reflection, he imagined a future in Germany. “To be frank with you,” he wrote, “it would only mean satisfaction of a petty vanity. I don’t want to deny that I sometimes thought how nice it would be if my colleagues over there would recognize my achievements, which would be better than those of many of them.” These thoughts were “fortunately” fleeting. He reflected, “I prefer to picture myself working here to bring scattered efforts into focus scientifically and above all, in my small way, thus to work for the German idealism, which I possess and which is my driving force.” With determination, he said, “Darling, I don’t want to give up all hope until everything is over. I believe it is the better part of my soul, which wants me to do this work. I remember as if it were yesterday that I said once that it was not an urge for adventure which drove me to the Eskimos but the urge to gain so much recognition that I would be able in due time to contribute to the world, my way.” He would achieve this goal, Boas asserted, “however hard it may go.”14
Delighted to be back in New York and ecstatic at seeing Marie, Boas set to work in his room at Jacobi’s house, with frequent visits to libraries for research. By the end of the first seven days, he had sent “a paper with a large map to Petermanns [Mitteilungen] on which I have been working the whole week.”15 He was focusing next on an article for Science, “which must be finished this week.” As he had told Marie in August 1886, “I am writing a paper on ‘The Study of Geography,’ at which I have been laboring for 1 ½ years.” Completing it in the next two days, Boas delivered it personally on Friday, January 7, to the office of Science, into the hands of the editor, N. D. C. Hodges. Keen to gain a correspondent in Berlin, Hodges invited Boas to dinner to discuss a proposition. This was the break for which Boas had been waiting for so many years. He wrote Marie, “Dear Love! The dinner last night had an unexpected result. Mr. Hodges, editor of Science, wished to engage me as Berlin Correspondent. I said I could not accept without further thought as I am attempting to remain here. He then asked whether I knew how to draw maps and I told him of my work. He then asked me whether I would consider taking over the geographical part of Science and how much pay I would want.” Boas told him that he was unable to gauge the expenses in New York and thus could not immediately tell him the salary he would need. Hodges told Boas that he needed an “assistant editor and Science wanted to stress geography and finally asked me to present a plan for geographical papers.” Boas concluded, “Oh, Marie, will we succeed at last? Just think of it, my love. That would be in large measure what I had hoped for . . . here.”16
Boas left on his trip to the University of Pennsylvania, where he met Professor of Linguistics and Archaeology Daniel Garrison Brinton, who had invited Boas to dine with him. To his parents he wrote, “I should be very happy to get the position on Science because it would be the beginning of a geographical journal, which is absolutely necessary here.” He then went on to Washington and wrote Marie that he was investigating “the possibilities of printing maps and the prices at the Bureau of Ethnology and Hydrographic Office.” He was also checking into the financial viability of Science. The next two weeks were a whirlwind of activity. Hodges and Boas drafted a contract for this newly created position of assistant editor of Science. The formal contract, signed on February 1, 1887, stipulated that Boas was to prepare and supervise “the printing of maps in such manner as shall be a credit to the journals” and to provide “abstracts, translation, reviews of the journals and books in your departments and by your own writings, furnish for publication with such an accord as we shall from time to time deem desirable.” Boas would be paid $150 per month, and the agreement would extend for two years, after which “either party [was] to give the other six months’ notice of his unwillingness to continue it after February 1, 1889.”17
Boas wrote his parents, “Is it not strange that through a stroke of luck, I found the work I have wanted?” With enthusiasm he continued, “My position will give me an opportunity to arouse interest for my subject and to work for a study of it. If I have the ability, I can become the American Petermann.” He went on, “My task will be to use my section to interest Americans in Geography and further to make the journal as useful as possible for Europe, by printing new maps of America.” Indeed, he received many congratulatory notes. Albert Gatschet, a linguist at the BAE, wrote, “I am very happy to hear that you have gained a firm position at Science.” Robert Bell, assistant director of the Geological Survey of Canada, who had attempted unsuccessfully in 1886 to assist Boas in finding support for his ethnographic work in the North, wrote, “I am glad to hear you are to remain in America and to occupy such a useful post as assistant editor of Science.” George Mercer Dawson of the Geological Survey of Canada, who had also been very helpful to Boas, sent his congratulations when he saw the announcement in Science.18
Boas sent his formal request for emigration and urged his parents in a letter three days later that they not delay in helping with his emigration papers. The danger of war in Germany under Bismarck was great, and Boas could conceivably be called back for the draft. He wrote, “I am trying to get rid of my collection so that I can at least pay my travel expenses and have a little over. I am not thinking of getting married before I have repaid uncle [Jacobi] my travel expenses.” The night before, there had been “a big party,” where Boas’s collection was exhibited. One of the founders of the American Museum of Natural History, Albert S. Bickmore, was present, along with “the family Schurz [and] the family Putnam.” Boas continued, “I lectured for about two hours and I think the people were interested.” He added, “I was very proud of the compliment paid me by Schurz that I had learned a great deal of English but I am in no way satisfied with myself.”19
In another letter Boas wrote his parents, “I can scarcely believe that this continual struggle shall have come to an end and above all if you agree to my request that we shall be able to marry very soon.” He and Marie wanted to plan their wedding for the middle of March. Marie’s mother also wrote to Franz’s mother, “‘Franz loves Marie so much, and she belongs to him with all of her heart that it would have been a serious blow to them if they’d have to separate again and suffer through an uncertain, bitter period of separation!’” While she had viewed the early engagement as “‘a bit hasty,’” all was “‘secure and now both of them shall be rewarded with each other for the sacrifices made.’” She continued with a description of the flurry of activities in preparation for the marriage: “‘Last week, we were running about almost constantly to find an apartment and to buy Marie’s trousseau.’” Finding a suitable place for them to live was a challenge “‘since housing is the major expense.’”20
Boas’s sister Toni was not, however, in a celebratory mood about Franz’s having accepted “an inferior position in an inferior country.” Douglas Cole notes, “Toni had been the single sour note at the wedding.” She had remained with relatives in New York while Boas traveled to the Northwest Coast, and she had not had an easy time during her stay. While the trip had been intended as a vacation to help pull her “from her dejection,” it was instead a time of sadness for her. She was in New York when Aunt Phips died in January and for the marriage of her only brother in March. Toni “disliked America, both for what it was and for stealing her brother and his talents.” While Boas worried that her dyspeptic view would influence his parents’ opinion, his own enthusiasm was not dampened.21
On March 10, 1887, Franz and Marie were married in a simple ceremony conducted by a judge at the New York apartment of Marie’s mother. Boas immediately sent a telegram to his family in Minden: “Greetings from myself and wife.” Uncle Jacobi toasted the newlyweds at the reception for family and friends held immediately following the ceremony. For the next two days, Boas and Marie spent their honeymoon at the Krackowizer family home on the Hudson River, in the community of Sing Sing. On their return to New York City, Boas and Marie took up residence in a third-floor walk-up: a two-bedroom apartment on 196 Third Avenue, with a rent of $35 a month. Jacobi and Uncle Kobus had given them a $700 wedding gift to purchase furniture; and Boas’s father and Uncle Mons had given them $1,000, which went directly into the bank.22
Years later, in 1919, Boas wrote his eldest child Helene of these early years of marriage and of the economic challenges. Helene had communicated to her mother that she “ought not to have children until heaven knows when.” Boas queried, “Are not the duties to children, whom we love, the strongest incentives for us to use all our powers for their good?” He continued,
I do not like always to speak of our youth, but I have to, to explain to you how we lived. We married on the strength of two-year contract, with the yearly income of $1,800. I was in a foreign land without any assurance of finding a permanent position. When you were born [in 1888], I knew that my contract would expire in half a year and I would have to arrange my life in an entirely new fashion. When Ernst was born [in 1891] I had a regular income of $1500; when Hete was born [in 1893] I only had a temporary job at the World’s Fair. When Trudel was born [in 1897] I had a yearly contract with Columbia. If I had not felt my duty towards you all and Mama, I might have sometimes become discouraged. Without the courage to conquer, no one can make his way. I wish you had spoken to me about this so that we could have talked and I could have made my views clearer in talking to you than in writing.23
By November 1887 the new letterhead for Science declaimed in capital letters, “Map-Making in All Its Branches, Under the Supervision of Our Geographical Editor.” Boas worked energetically to connect Science with scholars in Germany and in Canada and to strengthen the ties with those in the United States. Fischer wrote, “I can certainly understand that you are pleased to have now found a permanent position, a sphere that suits you and that you are now in the position to take the second step, . . . to be married. Who knows if you will not come back to the Fatherland sooner than you think and then I can meet your wife.” Fischer wrote that he would be glad to submit articles: “If I understand you correctly, you would support contributions by German geographers?” He said that he would “gladly provide occasional posts” and that he would tell others at the next meeting of geographers when he would have “the opportunity to speak with experts about your business.” Hermann Wagner from Göttingen reflected, “I had no idea that you wanted to permanently settle in America,” but he guessed at the reasons since prospects for employment were dismal in Germany. He continued, “In your position as . . . co-editor of Science, you have ample means at hand to fulfill the promise which you gave me on departure, which concerns the takeover of our Geographical Yearbook.” Thus, Boas became editor of the North American section of the Geographisches Jahrbuch. Even Kiepert, his erstwhile nemesis at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität of Berlin, wrote in his capacity as editor of Globus that he would encourage the publisher to establish an exchange with Science.24
Working five and a half days a week at the office of Science, Boas was also trying to reorganize the American Ethnological Society (AES), founded by Albert Gallatin and John Russell Bartlett in 1842. In its initial years the AES served as the “center of anthropological interest in New York City” but had rapidly deteriorated following Gallatin’s death in 1849. Writing under the title of Geographical Editor of Science, Boas contacted many people, some of whom had been associated with the remnants of the original American Ethnological Society. Alexander Cotheal, who was president of the American Ethnological Society, responded, “I should rejoice to see the Ethnological Society restored to activity and at the next meeting will bring your communication to its notice.” Boas was initially unsuccessful in reviving a nearly moribund society whose members were still trying to put flesh on its bones, but he continued in his efforts through the next two decades, when he became editor of the new publication series of the AES in 1906. Boas was, as Marian Smith noted, “the moving force behind the society’s rejuvenation.”25
Boas became widely known through his position at Science and his attempt to revive the American Ethnological Society. He was invited to participate in the founding of the American Folklore Society and the launching of the Journal of American Folklore. In December 1887 William Wells Newell, the central force in the organizational effort, wrote Boas, “Your name does not appear on the list of membership of the proposed Folklore Society. I wish the Society might have the benefit of your support and advice, and take the liberty of enclosing a circular.” Boas was not in attendance at the January 4, 1888, meeting in Cambridge, where the American Folklore Society was founded, but Newell informed him by letter that he had been appointed to “a Committee to arrange for a Journal.” Newell observed, “I suppose that our plans are understood, and that the Committee will be the Editors.” Newell served as editor of the Journal of American Folklore, and Francis James Child (of Harvard), Thomas Frederick Crane (of Cornell), and Boas served as assistant editors. Proud of this appointment, Boas wrote his parents that the next day the American Folklore Society was to be founded in Cambridge: “I shall have the honor to be proposed as an editor.”26
In December 1887 Horatio Hale wrote Boas to ask if he could “undertake a piece of scientific work on behalf of the British Committee for the Advancement of Science.” Hale continued, “At the Montreal meeting of this association, four years ago, a Committee of the Section of Anthropology was appointed to collect information concerning the aboriginal tribes of Canada, and a small appropriation was made to defray the expenses of the work.” While E. B. Tylor in England was titular chair of the committee until its dissolution in 1898, the Canadian members of the committee carried out the majority of the work. As secretary and research director, Hale worked closely with the chair, Sir Daniel Wilson, president of Toronto University; Robert Bell, assistant director of the Geological Survey of Canada; and with the director of the Geological Survey, Dr. George Mercer Dawson.27
In his letter to Boas, Hale stipulated that the committee was interested in “a full report respecting the tribes of British Columbia.” With “the large amount of information” that Boas had already amassed, Hale surmised, “two or three months might be sufficient for this work.” Hale expected Boas to provide “an account of each of the eleven or twelve linguistic stocks in that region.” He anticipated that Boas would compile the following: “an outline of the grammar with a . . . vocabulary—and a description of the physical traits, character, traditions social and tribal organization, customs and arts of the people of each stock—and of course an ethnographic map.” The members of the committee expected Boas to compile a report for the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) meeting to be held the following August, though Boas was free to defer the full report for a year and submit only a précis.28
Undaunted by Hale’s ambitious plans for two to three months of intensive survey work, Boas replied, “I feel honored by the confidence you place in my knowledge of the ethnology of British Columbia, and thank you for suggesting my name for carrying out the work requested by the British Association for the Advancement of Science.” He would “be delighted to take up the work,” but he first needed to speak with his employer to ascertain “whether I can get away from here for so long a time.” By the end of February Boas wrote Hale of his acceptance. “I have asked Mr. Hodges whether he can let me go for two months,” Boas related, “and I am glad to say that he has no objection.” He would leave for British Columbia on May 25, 1888. To his parents he wrote, “I am really looking forward to get into the ‘field’ again for a short time.”29
In the early months of 1888, Boas was working intensely with Newell on the creation of the first volume of the Journal of American Folklore and negotiating with Hale for the field trip to the Northwest Coast. Growing dissatisfied with his position at Science, he wrote several drafts of a letter to the publisher, Charles Scribner’s Sons. He began one draft with startling candor: “Gentlemen, I intend to discontinue my connection with Science. . . . My reason for doing so is this. When I became connected with ‘Science’ it was understood that we were to develop a map department, but I find that Mr. Hodges, the publisher of ‘Science,’ cannot carry out my plans, and therefore I look about for a more satisfactory occupation.” In another iteration of this letter, Boas removed the reference to Science and to his disappointment with Mr. Hodges and instead pitched his idea for developing a journal about travel and exploration, “similar to the French Le Tour du Monde and the German, Globus.” He requested “a personal interview” in order to explain his plans more fully.30
In receipt of Scribner’s February 3 polite rejection letter, Boas nonetheless persisted. He detailed the practical nature of his plan so that they might “revise” their decision. Boas envisioned providing illustrations and maps for the journal that could then be used in Scribner’s other publications. He pointed to the revenue that Charles Scribner’s could garner from the advertisements placed in his “journal of travels”—for “sporting goods, outfits for parties, surveying and drawing instruments, watches, saddles, . . . photographic outfits, books of travel, provisions, certain classes of dry goods, medicine, etc.” Scribner’s turned Boas down again, politely but firmly.31
Marie was pregnant with their first child. Boas felt great pressure to find purchase for his plans to develop mapmaking and geography in the United States, broadly conceived, including a commercial venue, and to do it profitably. It was for naught: Scribner’s had rejected him, and Mr. Hodges of Science would not or could not accommodate Boas’s plans. Nonetheless, no matter how frustrated Boas was, his position as geographical editor at Science was important as a mark of his professional status to those in Canada who were sponsoring his fieldtrip to the Northwest coast. Robert Bell wrote Boas, “I was glad to hear you are to have an opportunity of making ethnological investigations so congenial to your tastes and at the same time to enjoy a holiday. I presume you will retain your connection with Science.”32
Boas dug into his work at Science so he would be prepared in advance for his time away during the summer months in British Columbia. He was also working on some of the languages of Vancouver Island, with Marie helping him by arranging words written on slips of paper in alphabetical order. He wrote his parents that he had been focusing “during the last weeks . . . only on Indian language,” because he needed “to know about it for his next field trip.”33 While he didn’t identify the “Indian language” in his letter to his parents, Boas was gathering vocabulary on the Salish, Kootenay, and Kwakiutl. Henry W. Henshaw of the BAE had sent him Salish names—“nothing more than geographical terms attached to bands or isolated settlements.” Dawson wrote about the connection between Kwakiutl and Salish and sent the map he had created with native geographical designations on it. “The Indians,” he wrote, “became quite interested in giving me all names they knew as we went along shores in canoe.”34
With trepidation about leaving Marie, who was six months pregnant, Boas departed from New York, bound for Ottawa, on May 25, 1888. He visited with Robert Bell and then boarded the Canadian Pacific Railroad with a pass from the BAAS for travel to Vancouver. Boas wrote to his parents of his frustration, “At the last moment I had to change my plans completely,” in order to make “a survey of all tribes.” He disdained this approach, because “it must of necessity be very superficial.” Boas had intended to focus on the Kootenay and to meet the objectives of the BAAS by obtaining “information regarding the distribution of the tribes” with a visit to “the Salish people of the interior.” At the end of April Hale had reiterated the committee’s interest in “a general outline or ‘synopsis’ of the ethnology of the whole Province.” In May Hale was even more emphatic about what he did not want to receive from Boas—that being “a minute account of two or three tribes or languages.” Hale continued, “We wish to have from you a general synopsis of the ethnology of the whole of British Columbia, according to the linguistic stocks. We do not expect you to visit every part of the Province; but we think that with what you have already seen of it, and what you can learn from the natives and white residents and from books, you should be able to give an ethnological description of the whole region, from north to south, without omitting any stock.” He also wanted “fuller” information on the “physical traits of the natives.” In addition to recording anthropometric measurements by following “Virchow’s scientific formula,” Hale advised, “it would be well to describe the complexion, features, and general appearance of the natives of the various tribes in ordinary language, noting their difference if any, which of the ‘European natives’ . . . do they resemble, and in what aspect?” The committee was not “expecting too much,” Hale opined, “in asking for a general report from you in the ethnology of the whole Province.”35
Hale had set the rules of engagement in his first letter to Boas on December 30, 1887, where he stipulated the interest of the committee in “a full report respecting the tribes of British Columbia.” In his eagerness for both employment and a return to the Northwest Coast, Boas had accepted these terms. Still, he had clearly shaped the objectives according to his own expectations, grounded in his experiences from his previous work in the region. Hale was stubborn; Boas was also stubborn, or, as he said of himself, of “persistent will.” Their clashes emitted sparks of anger and frustration in equal measure during the 1888 and 1889 fieldwork. The conflict started with the initial agreement for the time to be spent in the field. While Boas had arranged to take a two-month leave from Science, Hale complained that his proposal had been for “two or three months’ work, not including the time in transit.” The conflict continued to more substantive matters. After detailing the approach that Boas was to follow, Hale added, “You must not think me over-particular in these suggestions. They are the result of considerable experience; and I think I have a pretty good idea of what the Committee will desire.” The latter point was the trump card: Hale was the research director for the committee of the BAAS. He was the piper calling the tune; Boas had no choice but to follow his directions, complain as he might in his letters home.36
The tension reached its peak in the 1889 fieldwork. Boas told his parents about Hale’s “lack of consistency.” He wrote, “I am afraid the results of this trip will be pretty pathetic because I have to follow such senseless instructions.” In scarcely controlled anger Hale wrote Boas in the midst of the 1889 field season, “I cannot understand why you should persist in causing me an immense amount of useless trouble, as well as much annoyance, by objecting to my instructions which you are expressly engaged to carry out. Kindly go on, hereafter, with your usual energy and ability, in the course which, after much experience and careful consideration, I have marked out for you.”37
Hale did loosen his grip on the reins, but only after Boas had secured his standing. After the first two summers in the Northwest Coast, Boas had firmly established his fieldwork reputation in British Columbia, been employed by Clark University beginning in November 1889, impressed E. B. Tylor with his work, and gained financial support from the BAE. In a striking change of tone, Hale wrote Boas in May 1890, “I will not hamper you with specific instructions. You will consider yourself entirely at liberty to act on your own judgment.” Jacob Gruber writes of the conflict between Hale and Boas, “In these exchanges, of course, one must remember that [Hale] was a man of seventy-two, with some fair distinction in the field, addressing a Boas of thirty whose work had not yet found him a position in the establishment.” Hale likely regretted that, but for his age and the state of his health, he would have taken up the research in British Columbia. This would have been a continuation of the work he had done in the territory of Oregon, where he had mapped “the ethnic and linguistic diversity of the native peoples on the west coast from California to British Columbia” in 1842. In sum, Boas-the-Younger was able to engage in the research that Hale-the-Elder wanted to do. In frustration, Hale aspired to control and to direct Boas, and to claim at least part of the results of Boas’s work. “The comprehensive character of Dr. Boas’s report,” Hale wrote to Dawson, “was due to my suggestion.” He continued, “I recommended that his first report should be a general one, covering the whole Province, and illustrated by an ethnographic map. The understanding is that his future reports will be devoted to distinct and, as far as possible, exhaustive monographs on the several tribes, taking them in the usual convenient order. I am glad that this plan has your approval.”38
Hale tried to exercise control and Boas reacted as he always did to external constraints that thwarted his wishes, with red-hot anger. Boas remarked on “another letter from Hale” that he had received toward the end of July 1889: “I pondered long after reading it, about what I should do.” He decided to write letters to Hale, Dawson, and Tylor, and then thought better of it and tore up the letters, “because I thought it would not be the right thing to do to write them while I am here.” Five days later, he again wrote to Marie, “You cannot imagine how angry I am with Hale’s instructions. Apparently he is not familiar with the existing literature on the coastal tribes, otherwise he would not state that the tribes of the west coast are the least known.” Boas continued, “The opposite is the fact. The outcome of this trip will be very meager, I am afraid, just because I have to follow useless instructions.”39
During the first field trip funded by BAAS in 1888, Boas had made frequent reference to his hope “that Professor Hale will be satisfied with my work.” With resignation, Boas added, “If not, I cannot help it.” Clearly pleased about his study of the languages, Boas wrote Marie from Vancouver, “Up to now I am quite satisfied with my results. I . . . am studying the Tsimshian language frantically. Tomorrow morning, I hope to find a Kwakiutl and a Haida; and then I will be ‘fixed’ all right.” Still in Vancouver the following week, Boas had worked with a “Tlingit lady” for three hours, “but then she began to mutter.” He had hoped to begin work with “my Kwakiutl, George Hunt”; however, in his capacity as interpreter, Hunt had been called to “a court sitting.” In this first mention of the man with whom Boas would work for over four decades, Boas expressed frustration: George Hunt had not shown up after the court closed, and Boas went in search of him. “After much trouble,” Boas wrote, “I finally succeeded in getting Mr. Hunt for a morning and obtained all kinds of worthwhile information from him.”40
From the place where he was staying in Port Essington, Boas wrote, “Tsimshian is about the only language spoken in this house. . . . I have never had a better opportunity to learn a language; I learned more yesterday than in a week elsewhere.” Traveling back to Vancouver on board the Cariboo Fly, Boas found a Bella Bella “who is willing to tell me things, so that my days are not entirely wasted.” In mid-July Boas went to Windemere on the Columbia River, where he “found a few Kootenay” and “engaged an interpreter.” Succumbing to the stereotype of appearance and dress, Boas wrote in his letter-diary, “These are the first real Indians that I have seen: red skin, eagle noses, the famous blanket, moccasins, . . . and deer skin jacket, with hair hanging loose or braided.”41
Boas went to the provincial prison, where, with the permission of the mayor of Victoria, he measured Indians. In addition, he brought “the Indians to the photographer,” O. C. Hastings, to have portraits made of them “nude to the waist.” Two weeks later, in Port Essington, Boas “discovered a photographer [Mr. Brooks] as I was wandering about in the evening. He had come from Victoria to photograph all the sawmills and salmon fisheries.” Boas continued, “I got hold of him right away and had him photograph five beautifully tattooed Haidas,” in both front and back views. The anthropometric work, the portrait photographs, and the measurement and classification of crania and skeletons were all part of what was then designated as anthropology, separate from ethnology, which comprised the study of languages, folklore, and customs. Of this focus on anthropometrics, Boas wrote his parents that he was “with all my heart at my work, which turns out to be very successful.” From his last week’s work, he added, “the anthropological results were the best so far.”42
In Victoria, Hastings, the photographer who had photographed the prisoners, took Boas by boat to an island in the harbor just outside of the city, “where there are Indian skulls.” Other grave robbers had beaten them to it: “We discovered that someone had stolen all the skulls, but we found a complete skeleton without [a] head. I hope to get another one either today or tomorrow.” Boas continued, “It is most unpleasant work to steal bones from a grave, but what is the use, someone has to do it.” Boas “locked the skeleton into” his trunk until he could “pack it away.” The grave robbing haunted him: “I dreamed of skulls and bones all last night. I dislike very much working with this stuff; i.e., collecting it, not having it. I shall of course defer all measurements on dead material until sometime later. I am as well known here in Victoria as a mongrel dog.” While he had intended to wait on measuring “the dead material,” Boas couldn’t resist removing the skulls—“which I had stolen”—from his trunk and measuring them.43
In Cowichan, Boas had made contact with William Sutton and his younger brother James, both of whom robbed graves and sold the ill-begotten skulls and skeletons to the ready market of North American scientists. Knowing that Boas was a potential customer, William Sutton made his collection available. Boas wrote, “I . . . measured frantically all day long—about seventy-five skulls. . . . I hope I shall receive an affirmative answer from Washington so that I can buy it.” On his return to Victoria from a two-week stay in Port Essington, Boas took advantage of the stop in Comox to walk across a muddy expanse, exposed in the low tide, to a small village. He had persuaded the photographer, Brooks, to accompany him so that he could “photograph the village while I tried to get a skull.” Boas continued, “I wanted him to do this in order to distract their attention. . . . Of course I did not tell the photographer (a stuttering idiot) what I wanted until we were there. I took a skull and the entire lower portion of the man.”44
Boas had written to the BAE to see if “they would consider buying skulls this winter for $600; if they will, I shall collect assiduously.” Otherwise, Boas wrote, he “would not do it.” From her vantage point at Alma Farm, Marie “worried that all the skulls Franz has collected will be lying about in their home until Franz has had time to measure them.” With a positive response from the BAE, Boas purchased the entire collection of crania and skeletons from the Suttons. In preparation for his departure home, Boas packed the crania, skeletons, and ethnographic collections in twelve large boxes, registered them with customs, and sent them to the AMNH for storage until he could determine the disposition. With what he had collected himself and had purchased from the Suttons, Boas had in total “85 crania and 14 complete skeletons.”45
Before his departure from Vancouver, Boas had arranged to have William Sutton organize further looting of skeletons. Sutton wrote Boas about the dangers and travails that his two brothers and another party had faced “in procuring native remains.” Sutton noted that there were very few remains in the places that Boas had identified. They had to pay “some of the Indians . . . a dollar apiece” to lead them to the burials in “caves and such out of the way places.” Sutton continued, “Some half-breeds at Fort Rupert started quite a disturbance and tried to incite the Indians to shoot them. Mr. Spencer of Alert Bay [brother-in-law of George Hunt] laid complaint before [the] Superintendent of Provincial Police, and I have had quite a lively time to prevent an investigation.” In total his two brothers and the other party had “managed to get together (49) skeletons including crania (excepting one), and seventy-four crania including a number of pelvis bones; making in all one hundred and twenty-three individuals.” He assured Boas of the care taken in packaging: “Every skeleton is in a box by itself, having made boxes especially for them.” Sutton continued, “We have been at a great deal more trouble and expense than I anticipated, but the collection is no doubt well worth the trouble as there are some most extraordinary heads. I would like to get them off my hands as soon as possible as I am afraid of the authorities confiscating them, there has been such a disturbance over them, they may be compelled to take action.” For the “forty-nine skeletons with heads,” he asked twenty dollars apiece, for a total of “$980 and seventy heads including some pelvic bones @ $5 would amount to $370 making in all $1350.” Sutton wrote that Boas would have “a complete collection from one end of the island to the other.” Eager to be free of these stolen remains, Sutton asked Boas to let him know if he “can arrange to take them right away.”46
Indeed, Sutton had reason to be concerned. In January 1889 he wrote, “The Indians of Cowichan lately discovered that some of their graves have been molested and have been raising quite a rumpus. Information was laid and a search warrant obtained to search the mill premises for the bodies, but nothing was found.” Incensed by the desecration of their burial sites, the Indians hired a lawyer to represent them: “Action has been taken against my brothers, and I expect to have a good deal of trouble, as the Indians have employed a lawyer to work up the case.” Sutton did ship the collection of crania and skeletons at his own expense to Boas and awaited payment, which he received in installments over the next twenty-two months. While expecting to interest the BAE or the AMNH in the collection, Boas did not sell the crania and skeletons until 1894, when the Chicago’s Columbian Museum—later known as the Field Museum of Natural History—purchased them for $2,800. Boas’s “collection of crania,” as it was designated, was of minimal use, due to missing labels and uncertain provenance. George Dorsey, who had moved from his position at Harvard, where he had taught anthropology, to the Field Museum in 1896, wrote Boas, “Your collections of skulls and skeletons in their present condition, while perhaps ‘useful’ are not valuable as ethnic specimens. Several skulls have no labels and no ‘locality’ is assigned. The bones are not numbered.” Dorsey appealed to Boas for “anything and everything which will make perfect the data of your collection—with such data it is a most valuable collection of rare skulls and skeletons; without, a collection of bones.”47
Boas returned from his 1888 fieldwork in the Northwest Coast to Alma Farm on August 1. Happily, he was received by Marie, who was eight months pregnant. Less happily, he received a termination letter from Science. In six months he would have no job. Hodges wrote, “You chance to come back on the very day that our contract comes for a written notice if either wishes it discontinued on the 1st of February.” To limit the expenses of Science, Hodges was compelled to let Boas go. “You will understand,” Hodges continued, “that I take this course with no account of any dissatisfaction [with] you, for my respect for your labors constantly” has grown.48 Continuing with his work at Science for the next six months, Boas grew increasingly disillusioned. In November he wrote that it was “deteriorating from week to week.” By December, Boas remarked in a letter to his parents, “Science has become almost exclusively a trade journal.” He would be very happy “to sever connections with it,” but with no other source of income and with Marie and three-month-old Helene to support, he could not do so.49
Boas bent his efforts toward trying to find employment. He wrote Powell about his British Columbia fieldwork, “The material I collected among the Tsimshian is very good, as I happened to meet a good interpreter, a woman who knew English perfectly.” He continued, “Besides this I have now material of all Salish dialects of British Columbia and of the [Kootenay] inland.” He added, “Besides linguistics I paid attention to the study of religion, sociology, etc., and collected 85 crania and 14 complete skeletons.” In mid-August 1888 Boas traveled to Cleveland for the AAAS meetings, where he gave a paper. This was his first talk in English at a professional meeting since the disastrous lectures at Columbia College in 1885. Adept at networking, Boas “met many old acquaintances and made new ones from all over the country.” In a chance encounter on the train to Cleveland, Boas met G. Stanley Hall, who had just a few months before assumed the presidency of the newly established Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Intent on developing an American university on a German model, Hall took note of this young scientist with superb German educational credentials. One year later Hall would write Boas offering him a position at Clark University; Boas would receive this letter when he was again in the field in Northwest Coast British Columbia.50
While at the AAAS meetings, Boas wrote several drafts of a letter to Tylor, to propose a multiyear program of research and collection in the Northwest Coast. In one draft he wrote, “It happens that my present contract with Science ends next spring. I should gladly avail myself of this opportunity to devote my time more fully than I have done so far to ethnology and to carry on my researches on the Canadian tribes in a systematical way.” Boas opined, “About 3 years would be sufficient to study the ethnology of B.C. in reasonable detail.” In another draft of this same letter, Boas stressed, “You will undoubtedly be aware that the inquiry, if to be done at all, must be done at the earliest possible date, as what little there is left of native culture is disappearing rapidly.” He proposed compiling a collection of “the arts and industries of the various tribes and the style peculiar to each,” as well as continuing with “ethnological, linguistic and anthropological work.” Boas concluded, “I think three months or so, for each [linguistic] stock would be sufficient to reach satisfactory results. The actual cost of collecting such material I estimate at from 700 to 900 dollars per annum.” Tylor responded tentatively, yet positively, to Boas’s proposal: “There is some prospect of the British Association Committee being able to go on with the exploration of British Columbia.” Tylor said that Boas’s letter would prove useful to him “in the negotiations at the British Association.”51 Boas succeeded in gaining funding for additional work in the Northwest Coast. Hale wrote, “From the renewal of the grant, and from what Mr. Bloxam and Dr. Tylor write, it is evident that your report has given good satisfaction.” The committee, Hale conveyed, was “desirous of securing your services for another year (at least) and will do it so far as the means in their control will allow.” Clearly Boas had gained the support of Tylor and of “others on the committee,” who wanted him to continue “your researches in British Columbia until the ethnology of that region has been thoroughly studied.”52
Boas spent the fall months of 1888 and the early months of 1889 piecing together work to support his family. As the time approached for his job to end at Science, he and Hodges reached an agreement for Boas to contribute “three columns of geographical and ethnological matter and notes on various subjects” each week, and a sketch map “every third week,” for which he would receive a monthly salary of fifty dollars. Boas also successfully reached an agreement with Powell, for temporary employment at the BAE at a salary of one hundred and fifty dollars a month, to work “up my Indian material for him.” Additionally, Boas was elected as secretary to the Deutscher Gesellig-Wissenschaftlicher Verein von New York at an annual salary of four hundred dollars.53
Boas also made plans to bring Marie and baby Helene home to his parents and sisters in May. Overcome with excitement, Boas’s mother wrote, “Such a glorious surprise. Such rejoicing has not been in the family for years. You want to come here and we are to see you and your child!” Boas’s mother planned for every detail of their visit with particular attention to her granddaughter. She wrote, “You will see that I shall be the most sensible and not spoil the child. I was always very strict with you children. But Toni, Hete and Anna will be quite foolish and try to outdo one another. And Papa—he of course will let her dance all the time.” On May 2, 1889, Boas, Marie, and baby Helene, accompanied by Marie’s younger sister, Alice, boarded the SS Rugia for their trip to Germany. Midway through their voyage a fire broke out in the after-hold and resulted in a terrifying night and an uncomfortable forty-eight hours on deck for the passengers. With all the excitement of the Atlantic transit, they arrived happily and safely at the Berlin apartment of Boas’s parents.54
While Boas could stay only until the end of June, Marie, Helene, and Alice remained until August 1889. Leaving the baby in the care of her grandparents, Marie accompanied Boas to Hannover on June 24, where he traveled to England to visit with Tylor in Oxford. On the evening of Boas’s departure, his mother wrote the two of them, “My dear children, I have just bathed your sweet baby and now she is asleep, having finished her bottle to the last drop. We have been following you on your journey all day long. You are probably eating your mid-day meal in Hannover now. We will see you again tomorrow night, Marie. I wish you a good journey, my dear boy, and hope all your plans will succeed.” Boas arrived in New York just long enough to collect his mail and then was off for the Northwest Coast for fieldwork from July to September.55
Boas had gone “West to the Indians” for the first time in September 1886, with independent funding, full of hope for finding his place in America, and full of dread that he wouldn’t find employment and would have to leave Marie for a return to Germany. In 1888, newly married, and in 1889, with Marie expecting their first child, he traveled back to the Northwest Coast with BAAS support. In all three field trips and in those to come, as with his time in Baffin Land in 1883–84, Boas suffered from being separated from his family. At the same time, he relished in the challenges of fieldwork. It was not at all, as some have maintained, that Boas did not like fieldwork. In June 1888 he wrote his parents from Victoria about how hard it was to be apart “from one’s wife.” He continued, “But I am with all my heart at my work, which turns out to be very successful.”56
In 1889 he wrote Marie from Victoria, referencing his fieldtrip the previous year, “Do you know that [next week] will have been one year since I came back? Darling, I am so tired of all this traveling and wish I could stay at home with you next year.” He missed being with baby Helene, seeing her first tooth come through her sore gums, being together with Marie on their baby’s first birthday. Using two terms of endearment for Helene, “Bublichen” and “little worm,” Boas wrote Marie, “Darling, Friday I received your letter of July 16 with a lock of Bublichen’s hair. Oh how happy I was! So the little worm says ‘tik tok’ and has two teeth! How she must have changed.” Trying to visualize his daughter, he asked, “Darling, does Bubli still hold her arms back when she runs?” With the anxiety of a parent absent from his baby, he pondered, “I wonder if Bubli will remember me when I come back?” Over and over in his letters to Marie from the field, he counted the days until they would be reunited. From Alert Bay, he wrote, “After today there are still thirty-three days to go, just one-third of the period I shall have been gone. Sweet wife, if I only could be with you; I am sick and tired of traveling.” Using the name they had chosen for a boy, he rejoiced at the news that Marie was pregnant with their second child, “I am so glad that you finally wrote about Ernst.” To his sister, he reflected on his aspirations to be a good father. He hoped “to have time to devote to his children, and not be a stranger to them as is so often the case with fathers.”57
From 1886 to 1889, while he struggled to find or to create a position that would support his work in geography—specifically in cartography—he was pulled inexorably toward ethnology and anthropology because there was funding to support his work. In a proposal to Hale in 1889 that was ultimately not funded, Boas suggested a means to combine his interest and training in cartography with his ethnographic work, particularly “in making characteristic maps of mountainous regions from reconnaissance work, as will necessarily form a great part of Geographical work in B.C.” Boas proposed working May through September on both ethnologic work among “various tribes,” and on geographic work. “This work can be successfully combined,” Boas continued, “with geographic work and I should suggest to you to make a proposal to the Geological Survey to that effect, that 4 months in summer be devoted to geographic work.”58
While Boas continued to hope that his “map business” would succeed, it did not. It was his “Indian material” that garnered attention. As if moving pieces on a chessboard, Boas was claiming a territory for himself. This was comprised of fieldwork in the Northwest Coast of British Columbia, a focus on the study of languages, of mythology and folktales, of art styles in architecture and crafts, and of meticulous anthropometric work. All this was to show how one group of Indians was connected to or distinct from another. Cartography would not be a central part of this undertaking, as he was beginning to realize: “I only wish my map business were also under way, so that I could drop Science altogether, but at present I cannot do this.”59
Boas’s mother asked him “whether the uncertainty of my financial prospects does not make me feel uncomfortable and whether I would not prefer a permanent position.” Boas responded with resignation, “This cannot be helped.” He continued,
Two years that I have been here is a short time, and one cannot accomplish much in that time. But I have succeeded in being known and accepted as an expert in my field here, I have not lost contact with the scientific world in Germany, as a matter of fact I have strengthened it, and I have accomplished more than I could have accomplished over there. . . . But it is due only to my work on Science and in the West, that I became connected with the Folklore Journal, the [Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie] and presumably also with the Canadians.
Johannes Dietrich Eduard Schmeltz, conservator of the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden, had invited Boas to serve as the North American editor for the Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie. The first volume was published in 1888 in Leiden, Leipzig, London, New York, and Paris. Boas’s affiliation was listed in the table of contents as “American Folklore Publication Society.” Under “Notes and Correspondence,” Boas published a short entry on “The Game of Cat’s Cradle,” as played by the Eskimo of Baffin Land, who “pass many an hour” twisting a looped thong of sealskin about six feet long into a multitude of shapes.60
In place of the security of a government position, Boas was prepared to take “the risk.” He desired to change his contract with Science in order to give himself more time for his scientific endeavors. He wanted to work with Powell on his Northwest Coast materials, but he wanted to be in control of his own time. “It is very satisfactory to me,” he wrote, “to be in the midst of scientific work, to work where I wish and use my ability in ways that I consider useful and to know that I owe this to my good luck and to my knowledge and activities.” Forever wanting to convince his parents, and perhaps also himself, he added, “The best position in Germany could not make up for this. You see, I was right. What I sought here I have found, a broader sphere of activity than I could have found [elsewhere].”61
While Boas was happy to have found a rich field of work in the United States, he remained a German scientist to the core of his identity. To his parents he wrote, “With respect to science, I still feel like a German. It is strange how different American scientists are from German scientists. They are more dilettantes and one notices immediately that the foundation is not the same.” He concluded, “There are, of course, also excellent people.” With a firm grounding in the German approach to science, and, more specifically, to geography, Boas was also shaping his approach to the study of ethnography. As if placing stepping stones on the path that would help lead him toward the central place he would occupy years later in American anthropology, Boas was crafting innovative fieldwork techniques; developing approaches to the study of languages; establishing the importance of the collection of texts, and crucially, the collection of myths and folktales in the native languages; and emphasizing the relationship between the groups that he referred to as “tribes.” In just the first few days of his 1886 field trip, when he had arrived in Victoria, Boas used to great benefit the drawings he had had made of ethnographic artifacts from museums in Berlin, New York, and Ottawa. He showed these drawings to his “old friend, Itlkakuani,” one of the Bella Coola whom he had met in Berlin the previous year. Of the use of the drawings Boas said, “It was soon apparent that they will be very useful.” Ira Jacknis writes, “The method Boas devised, now called ‘photo-elicitation,’ though relatively radical at the time, has since become one of the standard techniques of material culture research.”62
The essence of Boas’s approach to the study of languages, cultures, folklore, race, and diffusion of culture traits took shape in the first three field trips to the Northwest Coast of British Columbia in 1886, 1888, and 1889, and of course had foundation in his earlier work in Baffin Land. In a letter to Powell Boas detailed “the method to which I have heretofore adhered in field work.” He continued, “I endeavor to obtain vocabularies and grammatical notes and at once proceed to collect texts principally on ethnological subjects, which I make on the basis of further ethnologic and linguistic researches. I attempt to study the customs and traditions of each tribe in the greatest detail and later to proceed to make a card catalogue of all characteristic peculiarities of a tribe, which are finally tabulated. Then it appears that certain phenomena are always coexistent. These must originally have belonged together while newly developed or introduced phenomena appear in various combinations or [are] isolated.” In his first Northwest Coast fieldtrip in 1886 Boas had identified, “with the greatest difficulty,” seventy tribes; and had arranged them according to language, dialect, and location. In his study of languages, Boas began by eliciting pronouns and verbs, compiling lists of vocabularies, and recording texts phonetically in the native language. As Boas explained to Powell, concerning his study of the Chinook, “I propose to treat the language separately and to give a series of texts, a grammar and a dictionary of the same.”63
In his collection of tales and myths in the native languages, Boas had planted himself on fertile intellectual ground. He wrote his parents, “This mass of stories is gradually beginning to bear fruit because I can now discover certain traits characteristic of different groups of people. I think I am on the right track in considering mythology a useful tool for differentiating and judging the relationship of tribes.” Boas recognized the complexity in the study of narrative and linked this complexity to material culture and to ritual. In Alert Bay in 1886 he collected Kwakiutl family histories, purchased a rattle and collected the story that went with it, purchased masks and undoubtedly learned the stories associated with each, and worked on understanding the connections between the native groups.64
From Alert Bay, Boas had written to Marie about the offer he had received from Hall for a position at Clark University. He told her he would probably know before her return to New York from Germany “whether the Worcester matter will materialize.” Hall had not written to Boas “if he wants me as anthropologist or as geographer.” He advised Marie that, if he accepted the position, she would need to find, “a boarding house in New York where we could live until October.” He asked that she be sure “that I have a study because I shall have very much to do before we leave.” From Kamloops, the last stop of his fieldtrip, Boas wrote, “What do you say to my accepting Hall’s offer? I wish I could have talked the matter over with you! But there was nothing I could do about it.” He expressed the hope that she would “like it there and soon make friends,” and that “they will be satisfied with me and that the position will become a permanent one.”65
To his parents, Boas wrote about the practical aspects of moving, how they needed to buy new carpets, and how their furnishings were shabby. More important, he wrote about his anxieties and his hopes: “If I shall succeed in Worcester, i.e. if I will be able to lecture and teach well, of which I am not at all certain, I promise myself a great deal from the position, so it could become the center of my scientific activity.” Cautiously he added, “But that remains to be seen. For the present, I shall continue my association with Canada, as my reports are not yet finished.”66
In Washington Boas visited Powell, who congratulated him on the position in Worcester and inquired how much he would be paid. Boas wrote his parents, “When I said $1000, he said that is not enough on which to live.” Powell assured Boas that “as long as you are not getting more, you may count on getting $600 a year from us.” He added, “‘For a year or two I had in mind to have you here at the Bureau. I like your way of working and I can make use of you.’” Powell told Boas that “in a year or two he would be able to offer me a position.” In characteristic fashion, Boas added, “I said nothing but I know that I would prefer to work independently in Worcester.”67
Boas had decided on the topic for his lecture class: “The Anthropology of America.” Finally, in November 1889, Franz Boas would step into the classroom to teach his first students of anthropology at Clark University.68