Boas’s institutional affiliation shifted from his grounding at the American Museum of Natural History with a lesser affiliation at Columbia University to, finally, a solid affiliation with the university. This changing center of activity emerged more from issues of personality than from his own strategic planning. From his beginnings at the AMNH in 1896 to his ultimate falling out with Morris K. Jesup and Herman Bumpus in 1905 and his final resignation in 1906, Boas’s battles were many. He struggled with Jesup over the benefactor’s demands that Boas produce the promised volumes on the JNPE, particularly the summarizing volume, and with Bumpus over issues of bureaucratic control at the AMNH. His institutional struggles also extended to Washington DC, to his work with W J McGee over the formation of the American Anthropological Association; and to William H. Holmes, who had been appointed BAE chief in 1903, over financial support of linguistic research.
Boas’s battle with leaders at the AMNH and the BAE was set against a shifting national institutional landscape. There was a change in power centers associated with East Coast cities to broader, more national educational and geographical concerns. Boas was explicit about his intent to balance geographical and institutional representation. He wrote Frederick Hodge about the meeting of the Council of the American Anthropological Association to be held in New York City on October 29, 1903, “We shall have statements from California, Cambridge, New Haven, Brooklyn, New York, and I presume from Chicago: so it would seem curious not to have a report of the Government.” These geographical groupings would come to be called the Washington anthropologists, the Philadelphia crowd, the Boston group, and the New York gang. They would battle over resources and the right to speak for the increasingly important discipline of anthropology, and they would be joined by voices from the Midwest at the University of Chicago and the West Coast at the University of California, Berkeley.1
Attempting to entice Kroeber into taking the position of secretary of the newly formed AAA, Boas appealed precisely to the need to balance representation: “The one or two others who might be thought of did not seem desirable, because we want to avoid the appearance of the concentration of the work of the Society in one city.” Ultimately, George A. Dorsey of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago was named secretary, thus striking a balance midway between the East Coast and the West Coast. Propelled by personality and institutional conflicts, these changes ultimately forced creative developments. Boas took up his full professorship at Columbia University in July 1899 and shifted his time and energy to the Department of Anthropology in the first years of the twentieth century. During this period he emerged as the central figure for educating American anthropologists. What he had written to Jesup in 1898 had come to pass: he was training “the whole future generation of anthropologists” at Columbia University.2
“There are two objects to which my life is devoted,” Boas wrote Bumpus in 1902. “The one, the establishment of anthropology on a broad basis in our country; the other, the prosecution of researches among the rapidly vanishing people of our continent.” He continued, “Until two or three years ago it seems that the Anthropological Department of this Museum in conjunction with Columbia University would give the opportunity to carry out both of these objects, and for this reason I have centered all interests and activities in the promotion of these two institutions.” Boas asserted, “the accomplishment of these ends is a matter of great importance to our country and to science.”3
In 1898 Boas had made a pivotal career choice in order to realize his goal of developing anthropology in the United States. Baron Ferdinand Leopold von Andrian-Werburg had approached Boas about a professorship at the University of Vienna. On August 8, 1898, Boas replied, “I would like to send a word of explanation about our last conversation.” He continued, “If I were thinking of returning to Europe and if I may even get a proposal from Vienna, it would be acceptable.” Forthrightly, Boas admitted that he was held in place by his “hope to launch a thorough investigation” of tribes threatened with extinction: “I have invested much energy so I must not depart from it until success is ensured.” Once his “organizational task” was completed, Boas thought Europe would offer “the most advantageous conditions” for employing his “scientific work,” because the teaching and the educational background of the students were better developed than in America.4
For Boas, the enticement of a professorship in Vienna contrasted with his constant struggle at the AMNH. To his parents he wrote, “‘I am sick and tired of annual bargaining and will try finally to get a secure position.’” He did just that when he successfully finessed the offer from the University of Vienna into a professorship at Columbia University in the newly created department of psychology and anthropology. Boas did not, however, conduct these delicate negotiations alone. Putnam was at his side for advice; Jesup worked with President Seth Low of Columbia to achieve a stronger, shared position for Boas; and ultimately Jacobi finalized the arrangement by anonymously paying $2,500 toward Boas’s salary for the first two years.5
Boas wrote Putnam about his conversation with Jesup concerning the Vienna offer, “I spoke to him rather freely on the whole organization of the Museum, and in regard to the work of the different departments, as it appears to me. I was particularly anxious to impress Mr. Jesup with the fact that my present position is unsatisfactory in so far as both positions that I am holding are inferior positions, and that consequently I do not meet my colleagues on a basis of equality, and that, furthermore my position has no assurance of permanence.” Boas stressed “that the only remedy lies in improving my position at Columbia College, where I feel I ought to have a professorship. If I could obtain that position, it would also improve my income considerably, and thus make my place in every way more desirable.”6
Summarizing their conversation of November 28, 1898, Boas wrote Jesup that “I have delayed replying to the question that was put to me, as to whether I would accept the offer of a professorship in Vienna, because I feel that my field of activity here in the Museum and at Columbia College, may become a very satisfactory one.” Boas continued, “On the other hand, I cannot feel satisfied with the present arrangements, because both positions that I am holding are inferior in character, and do not give me the opportunity to work to best advantage. The uncertainty of the continuity of my work is its most unsatisfactory feature.” He had been told that his work at Columbia University “is only tentative, and by no means certain to be continued.” Additionally, since he was not “a member of the faculty,” he was hampered in “the development of my department of instruction.” In his view, the strength of his position lay precisely in drawing together his work at the AMNH and at Columbia: “I am training my students by the help of the material accumulated in the Museum for field work, and they will necessarily become the investigators for this Institution and for the Bureau of Ethnology. But this work can be carried out, only if Columbia University really develops its Anthropological Department. This development is of great importance to the Museum since we must get our field workers from among the men training or trained in the University.” Boas desired two things: to have support for “the carrying out of scientific work that it will take a series of years to complete. . . . for an investigation of those tribes of North America that are doomed to speedy extinction” and “to be appointed to a professorship at the University.” He concluded, “If these two points can be favorably settled, I feel that I shall be justified in declining the offer from Vienna.”7
From December 1898 through February 1899, Boas, Jesup, Putnam, and Low exchanged numerous letters that explored how the museum and the university might work more closely together, and how the professorship could be established. On December 31, 1898, Boas responded to Jesup’s request “to indicate in writing what work is practicable in this department of the Museum, in connection with the work of instruction at Columbia University.” Boas wrote, “Under the present conditions we are able to give students opportunity to do extended research work in physical anthropology and in ethnology. Our collections of crania, skeletons, and masks [plaster casts], are very extensive, and give good opportunity for a great variety of work. Our ethnological collections are now well arranged, and can be used to advantage for advanced instruction and for research.” With respect to “modification in University courses . . . to make the work at the Museum available,” Boas continued, “Dr. Farrand, in his courses at the University, has prepared a few men for advanced work, and it is likely that several of these will desire to avail themselves of the opportunities offered in the Museum. One of my students, who is working at the Museum this year, will probably continue to work here, and I expect that another one will desire to take up work in this Institution.” While there were only a few students who benefited from “the opportunities offered in the Museum,” this was linked directly to the length of time that Farrand and Boas had been training students: “Dr. Farrand’s work has extended over four years only, my work over three years only. Students were hardly prepared to do advanced work before this time.” Boas assured Jesup that his plan for “the closer affiliation of the work of the University and of the Museum” could be accomplished through a combination of opening the facilities at the AMNH to students and broadening “the preparatory work at Columbia University” and that the plan needn’t be put into place all at once.8
Boas replied to Low’s letter of February 20, 1899, “I am very thankful for the interest you have taken in the advancement of the subject of anthropology, and for the success of your endeavor.” He went on, “I only hope that I may be able to gradually develop anthropology in such a way that it may become a strong department of the University, and that it may materially contribute to the advancement of scientific research and of the scientific spirit in this country.” Boas assured Low that Jesup also desired “the fullest co-operation between the Museum and the University, so that I presume no obstacle will be put in my way in regard to giving the University a full equivalent in the way of instruction.”9
Finally, in May 1899, President Low wrote Boas, “It gives me pleasure to inform you that the Trustees at their meeting held to-day, unanimously adopted the following resolution: Resolved, That from and after July 1st, 1899, Franz Boas, Ph.D. be and hereby is appointed Professor of Anthropology, for the term of two years, or during the pleasure of the Trustees, at a salary of $2,500 per annum.” The letter continued, “The chair of Anthropology has been assigned to the Department of Psychology, making that . . . the Department of Psychology and Anthropology.” Low concluded: “Hoping that this appointment, though in its terms limited to two years, may lead in some way to a permanent provision for the chair.”10
As he had so often done, Jacobi kept watch over Boas’s struggles and progress from the sidelines and stepped in at just the right time. Douglas Cole recounts, “He had written to Low with an offer to pay $2,500 toward Boas’s professorial salary for two years. His sole condition was ‘that Dr. Boas should never know about this correspondence.’ . . . Boas had heard, accidently, from his niece, Nandi Meyer, that Putnam had called on Jacobi to discuss his professorship. The thought that Jacobi should still be assuming financial responsibility at this time in his life was painful.” Boas spoke with Jacobi, who, “‘in his redeeming way, declined all responsibility.’” As Boas wrote his parents, “‘I can do nothing about it except to make the most of the opportunity.’”11
When Boas first began to teach at Columbia in 1896, Alfred Louis Kroeber was a graduate student. He was teaching a course in eighteenth-century literature in the English department and freshman composition classes in the rhetoric department, and he was writing his MA thesis in English on “The English Heroic Play” (1897). Kroeber found his way to Boas’s seminar on American Indian languages. Theodora Kroeber writes, “Kroeber and two other young men enrolled.” Boas had the students “come each Tuesday evening to his home on 82nd Street, close to the museum, where, at the dining table lighted by a fringe-shaded lamp, he held his class.” Kroeber remarked on his two classmates that “one was an archaeologist from the Museum,” and the other “an adventurous nondescript who soon after rolled himself out of anthropology as suddenly as he had rolled in, and who required some quarts of beer in a can from the nearest saloon to overcome the tension of a two hours’ session with Chinook or Eskimo.” As Kroeber recounted to his wife, Theodora, “‘We spent about two months each on Chinook, Eskimo, Klamath, and Salish, analyzing texts and finding the grammar (with help and some straight-out presentation by Boas). I was enormously stimulated. Grammatical structure was interesting as presented; but to discover it was fascinating.’” Later in the course, Boas brought Esther Bein to the Tuesday night class to dictate, as Theodora Kroeber recounted, in “her dialect of Eskimo,” for the students to record it phonetically.12
Esther, an Inuit woman from Labrador, had come to the United States at the age of sixteen with her parents, Abile and Helena, and fifty-seven Inuit recruited by the promoters, Ralph Taber and Lyle Vincent, for exhibition at the Eskimo Village at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. While most of the Labrador Inuit returned home following the closing of the WCE, Abile, Helena, Esther, and her daughter, Nancy Columbia, who had been born in Chicago at the WCE, traveled the country. They were on exhibition in 1894 at the Austin and Stone’s Museum in Boston, the Eskimo Village exhibit at Huber’s Museum in New York, and at the Midwinter Exposition in San Francisco, and they visited the White House in May 1895.13 Finally, in 1895, at the end of their travels, the family came to New York City, where Esther met and married German-American Charles Bein, who hauled freight with his horse-drawn lorry. Undoubtedly, Boas, Abile, Helena, and Esther had met in Chicago at the WCE, where Boas had visited the Eskimo Village. In January 1896 Esther Bein sent Boas a letter: “I write you these few lines to let you know that my mother is not feeling very well.” Esther was hoping to be able to send her parents back home. In March Esther wrote, “I am pleased to hear that you are going to try your best to help them to get home.” In May Esther asked for a loan of “a few dollars that I can save for Doctor” for her mother. She asked if Boas knew when her parents could leave for home.14
As Kenn Harper and Russell Potter note, “With the family penniless and Helena recovering from a serious illness, Ralph Taber and Franz Boas . . . provided means for their passage home. Friends provided Abile with a parting gift—a hunting outfit, including a new gun—to allow him to start afresh in Labrador.” Boas apparently wrote Taber about Esther Bein’s desire to send her family home. Taber responded, “My arrangements have not yet been completed and I cannot say definitely whether I shall visit Labrador this summer or not.” He continued, “I would advise you to take the necessary steps for the return of the Eskimo, and when you have secured a sufficient sum for this purpose, I will aid you in arranging for their transportation and in getting them started.” He concluded, “You may count upon me to contribute $25 for their return.” Boas purchased the tickets for Esther’s mother, father, and daughter. Harlan Smith accompanied them to the wharf and saw them safely aboard the Silva, bound for Labrador.15
As Harper recounts, when Boas had joined the AMNH in 1896 as assistant curator, “he asked Peary to bring back from his summer’s cruise one Inuk for a year’s stay.” Likely reflecting on the Bella Coola Indians with whom he had worked in Berlin and the Labrador Eskimos from whom he and others had collected materials in Chicago, Boas thought, as Harper related, that “such a thing had previously been done . . . without the individual suffering from it.” In May 1897, just as he was preparing to depart for the first season of the JNPE Northwest Coast fieldwork, Boas repeated the request that he had made to Robert Peary the previous year: “‘I beg to suggest to you that if you are certain of revisiting North Greenland next summer, it would be of the very greatest value if you should be able to bring a middle-aged Eskimo to stay here over winter. This would enable us to obtain leisurely certain information which will be of the greatest scientific importance.’” As Ludger Müller-Wille conveyed to me, Boas undertook continuing work on Inuit language and culture, particularly “Der Eskimo-Dialekt des Cumberland-Sundes” (The Eskimo dialect of the Cumberland Sound, 1894); his publications on folklore and religion (1894, 1900); and his volumes, “a long time in preparation,” on “The Eskimo of Baffin Land and Hudson Bay” (1901, 1907). Müller-Wille adds, “This is to say that he had a particular interest to have Inuit come and reside close by to be available for research.”16
Peary brought not one “middle-aged Eskimo,” but “‘three men, one woman, a boy, and a girl’”—Qisuk and his young son Minik; Atangana and her husband Nuktaq with their adopted daughter Aviaq; and Uisaakassak.17 Peary used the Eskimo as a means to raise funds for another voyage to the Arctic and charged an entrance fee for the thousands of people who boarded the Hope to see what was called “the Peary Eskimo.” As related in an article in the New York Times, “All of the Eskimos will leave the ship to-day and go to the Museum of Natural History, where they will arrange the exhibit of their implements. They will remain here until Lieut. Peary starts for the North again, which will be in July of next year.” Since Peary had made the decision on his own to bring the Eskimos to the United States, Jesup was in the uncomfortable position of finding that his museum was to serve as host for the unexpected guests. A memo from Bumpus noted, “‘It was felt that it would be unwise to place the Eskimos in an asylum or in a hospital because the artificial, and to them, unnatural confinement of such places would prove unfavorable.’” Jesup authorized the assignment of rooms for the “‘temporary occupancy of the Eskimos, who were placed in the custody of Mr. Wallace.’” Initially, the six individuals, sometimes referred to as “the Peary Eskimos,” were housed in a basement room at the AMNH. Throngs of New Yorkers came to the museum to see them. As reported in the New York Times, every visitor went “through a process of vigorous handshaking.” When “disappointed . . . that the Eskimos were not on exhibition,” some members of the crowd stretched out prone and peered through the grate into the basement room where the Eskimos were housed. Jesup turned to AMNH Building Supervisor William Wallace to find appropriate housing for the six individuals. Wallace moved them to his sixth-floor apartment in the museum that he shared with them.18
Within one month, all the Eskimos had been admitted to Bellevue Hospital from colds that had progressed to pneumonia.19 Some recovered enough to return to the museum, but others were not so fortunate. Harper relates, “On February 17, 1898, Dr. Boas received a letter from Bellevue Hospital—Qisuk [the father of Minik] was dying and the other Eskimos, who were all in the hospital again, should be removed from the institution and placed in a private house. Then, suddenly, Qisuk died that very day, before the move could be made.” Jesup owned a house in Highbridge in the Bronx, with a cottage on the property. The Eskimos were moved to the cottage and, as reported in the New York Tribune, “after some searching there was found in the city a woman from Labrador who could talk with the Esquimaus, though with some difficulty, for she was not familiar with many peculiarities of their dialect. This woman was engaged as housekeeper, and she has been in charge of the Esquimaus’ cottage ever since.” This was Esther Bein. Less than a month after they had moved to Jesup’s cottage, Atangana, the mother of the young girl Aviaq, died. As reported in the New York Tribune, the following question was posed to Boas: “‘When you found they were sick so much, didn’t you think of sending them North again?’” He replied, “‘Yes, but there was no opportunity to send them. There were ships going north as far as Newfoundland and Labrador, but that would not have been anywhere near their home, and we could not land them in a strange country. When Lieutenant Peary starts on his trip this summer he will take them back with him.’” Boas said, “‘We are very sorry about the deaths of the man and woman, but we know that everything was done for them to keep them well.’”20 Of the six Smith Sound Eskimo that Peary brought to New York, all died save for Minik, the young boy, and Uisaakassak. On July 2, 1892, Uisaakassak sailed back home on the Windward. He came to be called “the big liar,” because no one would believe his stories about New York, where “‘people lived up in the air like auks on a bird cliff. The houses are as big as icebergs . . . and they stretch inland as far as you can see . . . with innumerable canyons that serve as roads.’”21
Jesup valued his stature in the community and the respect that came to him from his position as president of the AMNH. With the glare of publicity, he felt himself unwillingly drawn into the tragedy of the Smith Sound Eskimos. Almost simultaneously he became aware of Wallace’s shady dealings, which involved kickbacks from contractors he had employed for work at the AMNH. Jesup spent $71,000 of his own money to settle claims against the museum, some of which dated to the 1890s. Wallace resigned from the AMNH on January 11, 1901. Seven months later, Jesup was still reeling from the ordeal, as he wrote Osborn and Bumpus on July 24, 1901: “‘The only mistake I have made . . . is in trusting and placing confidence in a man that I believed was honest, and trustworthy and loyal.’” He continued, “‘I am not strong in body or mind just now: this trouble has un-nerved me.’” Undoubtedly Jesup had been spurred by his negative experience with Wallace to promote Henry Osborn to vice president and to hire Herman Bumpus as director of the AMNH in 1901, both of whom were to keep a careful eye on all administrative details. Precisely at this time, Bumpus, in Jesup’s stead, began scrutinizing Boas’s expenditures for the JNPE, and Boas felt his collegial relationship with Jesup disintegrating.22
The reporter of the New York Tribune depicted Boas as being “in charge of the Esquimaus.” Boas explained, “‘It was believed that much valuable information of an ethnological character could be obtained from them, and that their presence here would be very instructive to scientists interested in the study of the Northern races. This has, in fact, proved true. Many things theretofore unknown have been learned regarding their language, their traditions and their personal characteristics.’” Due to the demands on his time for the organization of the JNPE, Boas did not himself work with the Smith Sound Eskimos but encouraged his student, Kroeber, to do so after they had moved to Jesup’s cottage in Highbridge:
I went up to see the Eskimos last night, and everything is ready for you to continue your work. . . . They are located on Feather-Bed Lane, which you reach by taking the cars to Washington Bridge, crossing Washington Bridge, and then taking the street to the north. . . . You will come to a parting of the roads, and there you will see to the right, a small brownish frame house. The Eskimos live in this house. . . .
Please let me know what arrangements you have made. I think I shall be able to go out with you once a week or so, and we will make some appointment for a time to discuss the material that you are going to obtain.
Working as housekeeper for the Smith Sound Eskimos, Esther Bein also served as Kroeber’s translator for his work on Eskimo folktales. Drawing partially from this collecting, as well as from bibliographical research, Kroeber presented a paper at the American Folklore Society meetings at Columbia University in 1898, published as “Animal Tales of the Eskimo” in the Journal of American Folklore (1899). He then published “Tales of the Smith Sound Eskimo” (1899), also in the Journal of American Folklore. In the latter article he began, “The following tales were collected during the winter of 1897–98 from the Smith Sound Eskimo then in New York city, in charge of the American Museum of Natural History.” In “The Eskimo of Smith Sound” (1900) Kroeber wrote, “The following pages consist in the main of the results of investigations carried on in the winter of 1897–98, under the direction of Dr. F. Boas, among six Eskimo from Smith Sound, brought to New York by Lieut. R. E. Peary.” He continued, “The boy Minik, ten years old. . . . called the ghost of a dead person . . . a torngang”; and if one saw such a ghost, one would die immediately. The Smith Sound Eskimo, Kroeber related, said that the angakoq (shaman) had no power in the United States because there were no tornat, or spirits of the dead, in this land. Kroeber had quoted Minik, the youngest of the Smith Sound Eskimo and the least knowledgeable of the intricacies of his native culture, but the individual who had acquired the greatest facility with English.23
In September 1908 the consul-general of Denmark wrote Boas at the suggestion of William Wallace to inquire about Minik, “I have seen Mr. Wallace and the boy, and the last mentioned declared to me that he was very anxious to get home.” He continued, “The Danish Government, as you will perhaps be aware, takes a paternal interest in the welfare of the Eskimos, and has instructed me, after the case had been brought to its notice, to make full inquiries and report, but before doing so, I should be very grateful if you would give me whatever particulars you have about this case so as to enable me from outside sources to get an independent opinion respecting the particulars as to the manner in which these people were originally brought here and kept in New York.” Boas replied that he would be happy to talk with him, but there is no further correspondence in the Boas Papers.24
Minik returned to Greenland in August 1909. Word spread among the inhabitants of North Star Bay that Minik, the son of Qisuk, about whom all had heard stories, had come back. Gustav Olsen, a Dane and the first missionary to the Polar Eskimo, wrote in his diary of the arrival of the Jeanie, “‘On that ship was an Eskimo named Minik who was returning home. He was one of the ones that Peary had taken away when he was a child. He has completely forgotten his language. He came ashore here but we have seen very little of him. He has only the clothes on his back.’” While he was able to relearn the language and the ways of his people, Minik never really found his place among them, nor did he find it in the United States. The Arctic explorer Peter Freuchen, who had met Minik, observed, “‘In America he had longed for Greenland, and now that he was in Greenland he wanted to be back in America.’” Minik sailed south, one of the few passengers on board the decrepit Cluett. He arrived in New York harbor on September 21, 1916. Two years later, on October 29, 1918, Minik died from bronchial pneumonia as a complication from the Spanish influenza that he had contracted while working as a lumberjack in Pittsburgh, New Hampshire. Afton Hall, Minik’s close friend from the sawmill where they worked, had taken Minik to his home after they both contracted influenza. A nurse and doctor looked after Minik, Afton, his mother, and his father, who were all ill. Afton buried Minik in the Indian Stream Cemetery on October 30, 1918.25
While Minik and Wallace had repeatedly petitioned the AMNH for the burial of Minik’s father, it was not until July 1993 that, as Harper writes, “the bones of four Polar Eskimos were loaded aboard an American military transport aircraft at Maguire Air Force Base in New Jersey and transported to Thule Air Base in northern Greenland. The journey that had taken over a month in 1897 was accomplished in a few short hours.” The repatriation of the bodies resulted from the attention attracted by Harper’s Give Me My Father’s Body: The Life of Minik, the New York Eskimo, first published in 1986.26
What remains for us of the stories from Qisuk, Atangana, Nuktaq, Aviaq, Uisaakassak, and Minik? Is it the pathos of these six Eskimos taken from their homeland by the explorer Peary? Is it outrage over the abuse of power by scientists and administrators with respect to the disposition of the dead bodies of the four Eskimos? Is it recognition that the press both kept the story alive and sensationalized it for their readership? Or is it, as Edmund Carpenter reflects, knowledge triumphing over misbegotten belief? There are no easy answers to these questions, but there clearly was a trail of travesty, and the sad end to this trail leads to the cemetery in Qaanaaq, Greenland, where a bronze plaque declaims, “They have come home.”27 In a communication to me, Müller-Wille highlighted the difficulty as to “how these events can be assessed and evaluated 120 years later,” and he posed another question: “What went on in the heads of Peary, Boas, Kroeber, Wallace, Jesup, and Bumpus—all were Kinder ihrer Zeit (children of their time). That is not to say that people did not reflect, certainly Boas did if not as explicitly and extensively as we sometimes hope for. . . . Clearly, he did adhere to the overpowering premise that prevailed in the 19th century that things needed to be done in the name of and to the advancement of science.”
In May 1901 Boas had written to Zelia Nuttall about his plans and vision for the development of American anthropology. Among other points in his detailed letter, he emphasized the important place of the BAE for work in linguistics:
I have, furthermore, always retained a certain connection with the Bureau of Ethnology, through which I have been enabled to expand our work over lines which do not properly fall in the scope of work in the Museum. I refer particularly to work in linguistics. One of the most important steps that I have taken in this direction is to suggest to the bureau the publication of a handbook of American languages, which I am to edit. . . . Through this undertaking I hope to be put in a position to push the necessary linguistic and ethnological work very considerably.28
In April 1901 Boas had begun a correspondence with McGee about “publishing a handbook of North American languages.” Boas wrote, “I think I have trained now a sufficient number of young men to make it possible to take up work of this kind . . . and I should like to suggest to you that the Bureau take up this work with a plan of bringing out a publication of this sort say in about five or six years.” With McGee positively disposed to his idea, Boas summarized their recent discussions: “I will undertake to prepare for the Bureau of Ethnology a handbook of North American languages, which is to contain descriptions of all the fundamental languages, taking on in order what ideas are expressed in each language, what material and processes are used, and how these are applied for the expression of certain ideas. Each sketch is to be accompanied by a number of pages of texts, fully explained by means of grammatical notes.” Boas proffered his article on “Sketch of Kwakiutl” as a template for the work on the Handbook of American Indian Languages (1911). He wrote McGee, “What I have in mind [is] to describe the language in an analytical way, giving the fundamentals of the phonetics, grammatical processes, and grammatical categories.” He continued, “It would be my wish to follow the sketch of each language with a text of about a thousand words or so, fully annotated, and with references to the corresponding paragraphs of the grammatical sketch.”29
Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Samuel Pierpont Langley appointed Boas as honorary philologist of the BAE, effective July 1, 1901. In May 1901 Boas wrote BAE ethnologist-in-charge McGee, “I have made the final arrangements for linguistic field-work for the coming summer. According to our agreement, I shall pay the men who are to do the work all of their travelling expenses, the total amount to be expended from sources not coming from the Bureau of Ethnology being at least equal to the amount expended by you.” With such an expansive undertaking, Boas stressed the need to draw on the cooperation of many institutions: “For this reason the work during the past year has been organized in co-operation with the American Museum of Natural History, Columbia University, Harvard University, and the University of California.”30
Ever mindful of the need to work toward the professionalization of anthropology, Boas joined forces with McGee in creating a national and professional journal of anthropology. Together they drafted and signed the co-ownership agreement for the American Anthropologist. “I am in hopes,” Boas wrote, “that the establishment of the journal may prove beneficial to the development of anthropology on our continent.” Initially with 156 subscribers, Boas and McGee struggled to maintain the journal financially. Ultimately, they found themselves divided in opposition as to the disposition of the journal that they had birthed, coddled, and owned.31
The Anthropological Society of Washington, founded in 1879, had begun publishing the American Anthropologist in 1888. However, as Daniel Lamb writes, “the needs of anthropology in America had outgrown the media of publication,” and the Anthropological Society of Washington, with “limited financial resources . . . could not afford to increase the size of its magazine, or make it national in scope.” At the 1897 winter meeting of Section H of the AAAS, a committee was appointed to consider the creation of an anthropology journal. By February 1898, with McGee as president of Section H and undoubtedly with the support of Boas, the decision was made to retain the title American Anthropologist, with the sole distinction of the addition “New Series.” On the last page of the last issue of the old series of the American Anthropologist, the editors noted that “it has been the aim of the Anthropological Society of Washington to render the new journal all the aid that lies in its power; and its officers and members, in expressing their appreciation of the support given its own journal during the eleven years of publication, urge that its subscribers extend their patronage to the new and enlarged series.”32
In January 1899 Boas and McGee signed the document of incorporation for the American Anthropologist, New Series. They were “equal partners in the constructive ownership of the said Editorial Board for and during the year 1899,” and for three years from the date of signing.33 Boas was consumed in a flurry of work on the American Anthropologist: well over half of his 1899 professional correspondence—222 of 329 letters—dealt with the journal. Financial problems began at once: “It was soon obvious that subscriptions would not cover the costs the first year, even with the lump sum contributions” from the Anthropological Society of Washington.34
As co-owners of the American Anthropologist, Boas and McGee were responsible for raising funds to cover the deficit; in the first year, that was approximately $1,000. With characteristic focus and energy, Boas threw himself into fund-raising. In an effort to increase interest in the American Anthropologist, Boas attempted to revive the all-but moribund American Ethnological Society. He wrote the twenty people living in New York City who had been affiliated with the society, “It is now several years since the American Ethnological Society has held any meetings, and still longer since the society has done any active work.” Boas invited them to attend a meeting in his office at the AMNH on December 14, 1899, “to consider ways and means for a re-organization of this society.” Hoping to augment the numbers, Boas was including those who had been attending the Anthropology Club, which had been informally meeting in his home since 1896. On this topic Boas wrote Jesup, “I spoke to you last week on a plan which I have in mind, to develop what anthropological interest there is or can be around in this City in such a way, as to make it useful to the Museum.” Boas planned to propose to the members of the Anthropology Club, and to those who met to revive the AES, “that the old society make over all its property which is at present deposited in the Museum, to the Museum,” and that the Anthropology Club combine membership with the AES. Boas concluded his letter to Jesup, “Anthropology is developing so rapidly that a society of this kind is bound to come, and I believe, it is a wise move to affiliate it with the Museum now, as long as we can control the movement.”35
By 1900 the AES had increased from the twenty people Boas had contacted for the original meeting to seventy-one members of the revived society. Sadly, however, this did not yield the financial benefit in paid subscriptions. The summary of Boas’s activities in 1900 noted that “his correspondence with the Treasurer who was quite irresponsible, failed to pay bills or collect dues or keep appointments with [Boas]. After [the] meeting of [the] Board was called, he left town and his brother took over. Meanwhile [Boas] paid some of the bills himself.” In October 1900 Boas reported a deficit of $550: “We shall therefore have to raise again a very considerable amount.”36
So it continued with Boas cajoling friends and colleagues to contribute to the American Anthropologist and repeatedly reminding them of promises made but not fulfilled. He also enlisted others to take part: Stewart Culin to raise money in Philadelphia, Dorsey to fulfill his promise to raise money in Chicago, and Hodge to see if Jesse Walter Fewkes had written to the philanthropist Augustus Hemenway. Then there were the letters to follow up on the reminders. Noting the need for an additional one hundred subscriptions, Boas prodded Stewart Culin regarding his promise to obtain subscriptions from Philadelphia, “The American Anthropologist is in a very bad financial position at the present time, and I do not know whether it will be necessary for us to discontinue the publication.” With the additional subscriptions promised by Culin from Philadelphia, “we may hope to carry the unavoidable deficit a few years longer, until the subscription-list is still further increased.”37
With the American Anthropologist scarcely viable financially, McGee proposed to Boas the formation of a national anthropology society, linked to the journal and perhaps eventually able to provide enough members for “the maintenance of the journal.” Referring to his conversation with James McKeen Cattell, who served as editor of the AAAS publication Science, McGee wrote, “On thinking over the matter discussed . . . in the course of a conversation with Professor Cattell in which he quite independently suggested that the time has come for the establishment of an American Anthropological Society, it has seemed to me that the present may offer an auspicious occasion for moving toward a national organization of anthropologists.”38
McGee seized the initiative and wrote to all who had attended the meeting that had been held in Chicago in Dorsey’s office at the Field Museum of Natural History on December 31, 1901. They had gathered, McGee wrote, to discuss “the subject of American Anthropology and the possible means of securing better coordination of effort among American anthropologists.” The participants included “Dr. Franz Boas and Dr. Livingston Farrand, representing a delegation from the American Ethnological Society in New York; Dr. George A. Dorsey, Dr. George G. MacCurdy, Dr. Frank Russell, Professor Frederick Starr, and Dr. Stewart Culin, representing a delegation on behalf of Section H of the American Association; and Dr. J. Walter Fewkes and myself.” In his copy of the letter, Boas had penciled the marginal notation “Roland B. Dixon, representing a delegation from the Anthropological Society of Washington.” This discussion “turned on the condition and prospects of the American Anthropologist.” McGee continued, “Had the duration of the conference permitted, the question would have been raised by either Dr. Boas or myself, whether the time has not come for definite movement in the direction of a national organization of anthropologists.” McGee maintained that those at the Chicago meeting were “thoroughly representative of American anthropology in personnel and in object.” He continued, “I venture to propose that the participants in this conference constitute themselves a nucleus of an American anthropologic association, and proceed toward the organization of such a body.” Moving quickly to formalize his proposal, McGee drafted a constitution, which covered three main points—first, that the society would work with local organizations; second, that the proposed council would be “large enough to include all active professional workers in anthropology in the country”; and, third, that the association would “assume the issue of the American Anthropologist in case such course be deemed wise by the new body and agreeable by the present owners and editorial board.”39
In his response, Boas suggested that “it might be better to wait a year or two” before attempting to organize a national anthropological society. Boas felt very strongly the need to “bring in all the financial aid that we possibly can,” but he expressed the fear “that, if the national society is established on the proposed basis, we may endanger the permanent interests of science by yielding to our temporary needs.” Wary of duplicating the work of the AAAS, Boas was particularly concerned about diluting the force of the professional anthropologist: “It seems to my mind that what is most urgently needed is a national society of anthropologists in which the amateur element is rigidly excluded.”40
The battle lines were drawn. McGee did not have formal training in science, let alone in anthropology. A strong supporter of the contributions to science by local societies, McGee embraced an inclusive approach. He envisioned making room for local societies and amateur anthropologists. With his unrelenting push for professionalism in anthropology, Boas insisted on an exclusive approach, one in which admittance to the society would be based on members having “contributed to the advancement of anthropology either by publication or by high-grade teaching.” Boas expressed his view succinctly: “By admitting the general public to a national society, its scienfitic character would be at once endangered; and I consider this the prize end in such a society.” George Stocking remarks that Boas “viewed the founding of the Association not in narrow organizational terms but rather as part of a much broader process, to which he devoted the better part of his adult life: the professionalization of American anthropology.” Stocking continues, “By virtue of his position [at the BAE] McGee was the organizer of much of the anthropological work in this country. Considering his own origins and his long association with and leadership in the A.S.W., an organization of quite broad character with a large amateur element . . . , McGee was hardly likely to be receptive to arguments for professional exclusiveness. He was in fact fighting for the birth of an organization built along lines with which he was familiar and in which his own leadership would be assured.”41
There was more at stake for McGee than the founding of a national anthropology society. As Curtis Hinsley delineates, McGee’s position at the BAE was in peril with the decline of John Wesley Powell’s health before his death on September 23, 1902. McGee’s place in government had been directly linked to Powell. When Powell retired from the U.S. Geological Survey and moved to the Bureau in 1893, he brought “McGee as protégé and heir apparent.” In 1894 Powell had a second operation on his right arm, where he was wounded during the Civil War. During this period, from 1894 to 1902, McGee operated as “ethnologist-in-charge,” a title that he had given to himself, not thinking “ethnologist,” was sufficient for his position. Hinsley remarks, “As Powell withdrew, his protégé took control of the Bureau, dictating Powell’s correspondence and composing the annual reports. ‘I knew it all,’ he testified. ‘I drafted every plan of operations, and wrote every report, and drafted every important letter, letters from Major Powell as well as from myself.’” As Powell’s stenographer noted, after 1895 Powell “did not dictate ‘more than the smallest percent’ of the letters he signed. During the summers, when Powell was in Maine, ‘every particle of control’ remained in McGee’s hands.” Hinsley quotes McGee’s letter to Powell’s widow:
In his office life I knew the condition better than anyone else, and sought in every way to have his best side kept outward. The fact remains that since the final operation on his arm in Baltimore [in 1894] the Major never wrote a report or any other important official paper; for while sometimes he was undoubtedly able to do so, he was oftener unable, and even in his best hours the strain of the work and the need for gathering half-forgotten details would have been injurious . . . during the later years of the Bureau he seldom saw the reports until they were shown to him in printer’s proofs.42
McGee found validation through affiliation with scientific societies. When McGee had moved to Washington in 1883, he immediately joined the Anthropological Society. Over the years, he delivered twenty-two papers there and served as officer for fifteen consecutive years. He was the “driving force” in the National Geographic Society, the Geographical Society of America, the Columbian Historical Society, and, of course, the organizing force behind the AAA. As Hinsley writes, “At the founding of the Washington Academy of Sciences in 1898, McGee was the only person belonging to all twelve constituent societies.” Despite the society affiliations, “McGee never felt accepted in Washington. His daughter remembered that ‘for years my environment had no more use for my father than if he had been a coal-heaver.’”43
Having taken an almost immediate dislike to McGee, Secretary of the Smithsonian Langley was determined that McGee would never succeed Powell as the director of the BAE. One month after coming to the BAE, McGee had challenged Langley on a budgetary issue. As Hinsley recounts, “Langley grew to despise and distrust the new ethnologist. While Powell lived, the tense and suspicious relations between the Smithsonian staff and the BAE did not erupt into open conflict, despite accusations of shoddy business methods in the Bureau.” In 1902, with Powell’s health in decline, Langley wrote Daniel Coit Gilman in the latter’s capacity as the founding president of the Carnegie Institution (1902–4) “that after Powell’s death he intended to purge the Bureau.” Langley wrote similarly to his aide Richard Rathbun, “‘The possible death of Major Powell is so near a contingency, and the unfortunate affairs of the Bureau have aroused such opposition in Congress to its continuance . . . that I am more disposed than heretofore, if possible, to say that Mr. McGee must not hope to occupy [the directorship] while I am responsible for his official acts.’”44
McGee read the tea leaves correctly: that with Powell’s death he would lose much of his power. Likely, McGee saw the organization of the AAA as a way of maintaining his otherwise threatened position in anthropology. In a veiled reference McGee wrote Boas, “As you surmise there was a reason why I was most anxious for early action, yet it was one which I hesitated to explain fully in semi-public writing. I am convinced that when you come down you will deem it a weighty one, even if you do not share my feeling that it was paramount.”45 While Boas would be fiercely supportive of McGee with respect to his position at the BAE, he nonetheless resisted McGee’s efforts to found the American Anthropological Association. Across the divide of difference, McGee urged Boas to the view “that the contemplated Association should live for tomorrow as well as today, and strengthen the science of man by activity in other directions as well as in the narrow path represented by meetings of working anthropologists with attendant publication.”46
McGee sent letters to the other anthropologists who were voting on the formation of the American Anthropological Association, with strategic sequencing. In this way, he managed to garner support for his point of view. Stocking opines that McGee had “no subtlety,” and that, in McGee’s view, his position “was the only correct one.” McGee, Stocking surmises, “attempted what in historical retrospect seems like a rather transparent flanking maneuver.” By submitting his proposal “first to those conferees definitely favoring the inclusive policy, and to MacCurdy and Starr, whose positions had wavered, McGee had succeeded in getting the signatures of six of the ten conferees before the convinced opponents of inclusiveness had even seen the revised document.” Boas called McGee on his manner of soliciting opinions: “I fear that the method of correspondence which has been selected by necessity in order to bring out opinions is not the best, because I should assume with the same certainty with which you express your opinion that all these men are decidedly of my opinion.”47
With an “almost fanatical perseverance,” McGee successfully achieved his goal of gathering the support for the creation of the American Anthropological Association. In his carefully designed move to collect the necessary signatures before presenting the draft constitution to Boas, McGee wrote that “it now begins to look as though the movement will mature, and that we shall have a satisfactory organization within a few months.” In an attempt to assuage Boas, he concluded: “I regret exceedingly that all are not in complete harmony as to policy,” but never has there been “perfect agreement among the organizers in the preliminary stages.” Far from being assuaged, Boas was livid. He fired off a letter to McGee:
I confess that your mode of procedure surprised me very much, and I wish to express my strongest disapproval of it. You have not treated me with that openness to which I am accustomed from you. After all that had preceded, I had a right to see your draught of incorporation, which was not sent to me, and to be advised of the proposed meeting. The method which you have adopted of negotiating with the members of the Committee that met in Chicago has not allowed a fair expression of opinion, and it seems to me that the methods which you have employed are those to which we are accustomed in the warfare of political parties, but not among scientists who have the advancement of common interests at heart.
From Boas’s perspective, it was “entirely inadmissible to force the constitution representing points of view of a small group of individuals upon the anthropologists of the country.”48
In his concerted attempt to garner support, McGee had made sure that his views were widely disbursed to the scientific community. In “An American Senate of Science,” published in Science, McGee argued for the formation of a national organization through a selection of “delegates chosen by the voluntary scientific associations of the country.” In 1902 McGee continued his appeal through announcements in the American Anthropologist, “Proposed American Anthropologic Association,” and “Anthropology at Pittsburgh.” Boas, in turn, presented his views to the Anthropological Society of Washington on the formation of a national anthropological society and published a copy of this address in Science. Boas wrote McGee, “I wish that a copy of this paper would be sent to all those whom you invited to co-operate in the establishment of an anthropological society, together with your propositions.”49
Stocking opines that McGee “was more nearly right in his estimate of future developments than was Boas.” But, he reflects, “in achieving his goal, he seems to have been willing to go quite far—one feels without completely realizing how far—in the direction of political ‘sharpness’ and even duplicity.” On March 24, 1902, the articles of incorporation for the American Anthropological Association were signed by “Stewart Culin of Philadelphia, George A. Dorsey of Chicago, J. Walter Fewkes of Washington, W J McGee of Washington, and Joseph D. McGuire of Washington,” and recorded in the “Office of Recorder of Deeds, Washington, D.C.” The officers of the new society were elected on June 30, 1902, at the organizational meeting held in conjunction with the AAAS in Pittsburgh. With, as Hodge represented McGee, “almost unlimited ambition, and ever ready, whatever the cost, to resent any seeming interference with it,” McGee had cunningly and strategically maneuvered against Boas, who had his own surfeit of stubbornness. McGee won the day. The American Anthropological Association was established, and McGee was elected president for the first three years.50
McGee had secured his position nationally with anthropologists almost simultaneously with his loss of power at the BAE. In 1902, in McGee’s first year as president of the American Anthropological Association, his mentor and supporter John Wesley Powell died. “On September 15, Mrs. Powell,” as Hinsley writes, “summoned McGee to be with the old Major in his final hours; he passed away on September 23.” Powell had wanted McGee to succeed him as director of the BAE, and most American anthropologists, along with McGee, had assumed that this would happen. Langley was of a different mind. As Regna Darnell writes, “Langley, however, considered McGee a second-rate scientist and an unreliable administrator.” He appointed Holmes as chief of the BAE. With this one administrative appointment, Langley dissolved the position of director, diminished the importance of the BAE, and strengthened his own decision-making powers, as secretary of the Smithsonian, over the BAE. In a letter to Boas, Langley emphasized that the bureau had developed as “a personal creation of Major Powell’s, over which he had a personal charge unusual in other Government bureaus.” As Powell’s health declined, Langley was advised by his superiors “that no one should be again placed exactly in his position or termed ‘Director’ as he was with the implications the word covers.”51
With a “clear preference” for McGee as director of the BAE, Boas expressed “support for his linguistic and mythology work, and hoped for its continuance; he was fully prepared to befriend McGee against [Holmes], the man who had taken his place in Chicago; and he deplored the possible domination by the [U.S. National Museum].” Boas mounted an ambitious but fruitless campaign in support of McGee. To President of the Carnegie Institution Daniel Coit Gilman, Boas wrote in October 1902 that the “subordination” of the BAE to the Smithsonian was “a most unfortunate step, which will hinder the advance of anthropology.” Boas continued, “We are justly proud of the work of the Bureau of American Ethnology, which has often been held up by foreign anthropologists as a model for their governments.” In his November 1902 article in Science Boas wrote, “Since 1893 Dr. W J McGee has been acting for Major Powell, and training to become his successor. According to all principles of good government, he should have been advanced to the position of director. The appointment of another man, no matter how good he may be, to the position brings about discontinuity in the work of the bureau, which I consider dangerous, not alone to the best interests of anthropology, but to those of science in general.” Anthropologists, Boas noted, “respect Dr. McGee for the ability, straightforwardness and success with which he had conducted the bureau under peculiarly difficult conditions.” Boas added, in a cutting critique of Langley, “Personal inclination of the appointing officer has once more outweighed the principles of continuity and stability.”52
In spring 1903 Holmes uncovered irregularities in the office of accounts and property. Chief Clerk Frank M. Barnett was charged with misappropriation of BAE funds and summarily fired, and by the summer he was on trial for forgery and embezzlement. By July this had led to “a general inquiry by Smithsonian officials into the operations of the Bureau during the Powell-McGee tenure.” Throughout the long, hot Washington summer, the committee compiled over one thousand pages of testimony from, among others, Boas in his capacity as honorary philologist, Matilda Coxe Stevenson, Frank Hamilton Cushing, William Dinwiddie, Jesse Walter Fewkes, and, of course, McGee. Hinsley writes, “The investigation ranged widely but returned again and again to McGee’s shortcomings as administrator and scientist. Boas returned to New York after his testimony, convinced that the investigation was a witch-hunt. The records tend to confirm his suspicion.”53
In his testimony, Boas stressed the cooperative nature of the work undertaken by the BAE, the AMNH, and Columbia University. As Curtis Hinsley and Bill Holm write, “The collaborations, he explained, had provided linguistic material for the BAE and ethnographic data for the Museum at a minimum cost.” The committee members scrutinizing the BAE understood very little about the Powell-McGee-Boas partnership. Boas attempted to explain his students’ fieldwork: “‘They get specimens; they get explanations of the specimens; they get connected texts that partly refer to the specimens and partly refer simply to abstract things concerning the people; and they get grammatical information. The line of division is clear; the grammatical material and the texts go to the Bureau, and the specimens with their explanations go to the New York Museum. There is no conflict of any sort.’” The officials of the Smithsonian Institution were intent on remaking the BAE into an institution of practical purpose. They found Boas’s “methods unorthodox,” and the funding of the endeavors with government money suspect. They were particularly befuddled by Boas’s “constant recall of materials.” In sum, not only had McGee’s position at the BAE been imperiled, but also Boas’s partnership. Hinsley and Holm note, “That lack of understanding eventually helped to undermine Boas’ joint enterprises with Washington, and indeed contributed to the demise of Bureau anthropology as a stimulating source of activity in the first decade of the new century.”54
In a last desperate attempt to solicit assistance, Boas wrote to Carl Schurz, a family friend and well-connected in political circles, “Evidently the appointment of the new chief implied disapproval of Mr. McGee and the opinion that he was responsible for defects which in a great measure were the outcome of Secretary Langley’s failure to remedy the faulty organization of the Bureau. In June or July of this year almost a year after the new appointment was made the Secretary appointed a Committee of employees of the Smithsonian Institution to investigate the former administration of the Bureau and to make suggestions for an improvement.” No help for McGee was forthcoming. Hinsley concludes, “The committee’s verdict was predictable. . . . The blistering indictment found him guilty of unsystematic financial methods, carelessness and possible corruption in purchasing manuscripts, chiefly from Boas and Fletcher; gross negligence of the manuscript collections; and hostility toward Langley.”55
Langley had written a note to himself in preparation for his testimony before the committee: “‘On [Powell’s] death a new day begins for the Bureau.’” Aware of Langley’s wishes, McGee wrote Boas that Langley and Holmes were “trying to make things so impossible for me as to compel me to get out.” McGee referred to Boas’s struggle in Chicago when Holmes was appointed director of the anthropology department at the Field Museum of Natural History, a position Boas had regarded as rightfully his. He wrote, “You saw Holmes’ cloven foot in Chicago but I see both of them and the forked tail as well.” Langley and Holmes succeeded in driving McGee out of the BAE and away from Washington. McGee wrote Boas, “After a session with ‘the Committee’ yesterday, the least disagreeable by the way of the series, . . . I tendered my resignation from the Bureau . . . and today the resignation is accepted.” Boas expressed shock at McGee’s resignation and despair over his absence from the Bureau. Hinsley surmises, “The committee placed entire responsibility for the shortcomings of the Bureau on McGee. As Boas pointed out, this was not completely just, since McGee had worked within limits set by Powell. Boas concluded that ‘whatever was good went to the credit of Powell and whatever was bad went to the discredit of McGee.’” Leaving Washington “under a heavy cloud,” McGee went to St. Louis as chief of the department of anthropology at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition.56
Boas had been wary about the geographical concentration of power for anthropology in the United States, a concern shared by other anthropologists. Daniel Brinton had been a strong dissenter in allowing the Anthropological Society of Washington to affiliate with the American Anthropologist, New Series. In his words, the proposal, “so grasping in character,” would make what should be a national journal into “‘the scholastic organ’ of the Society.” In his careful maneuvering to found the American Anthropological Association, McGee was determined to reach anthropologists beyond what he called, the “Chicago nucleus,” as well as to protect the Washington anthropologists. When Boas suggested that the Anthropological Society of Washington simply be converted into a national society, McGee expressed doubts that this proposition would be received favorably. Washington anthropologists, McGee wrote, were concerned about “feelings against Washington sometimes encountered in other parts of the country.” For his part, Boas expressed his “strongest disapproval” of McGee’s methods of canvassing anthropologists by referencing “the old objection to the application of political methods by the Washington scientists, and the belief in an endeavor of undue centralization of power in Washington.”57
At the turn of the twentieth century Boas felt poised to establish a professional basis for anthropology in the United States. Deliberative in the implementation of his plans, Boas responded to a letter from Zelia Nuttall, who was serving as intermediator for her friend, Phoebe Apperson Hearst, the first woman on the University of California Board of Regents. Hearst wanted to know, as Nuttall related, whether Boas “would consider the possibility of your going to California” and undertaking the founding of a museum and department of anthropology at the University of California. Nuttall added, “This would not exclude Mr. Kroeber, whose assistance would be needed, I should think.” Boas responded with a detailed letter about his work in New York and his plans for anthropology. At Columbia he had undertaken “a number of special lines . . . for carrying on field-work, and here I lay particular stress upon a training in linguistics, a general ethnological training, and knowledge of certain field methods of physical anthropology.” He continued, “I am confident that in this manner we shall be able inside of a very few years to give a young man a thorough all-round schooling, which cannot be had at the present time anywhere. Neither Berlin with its five anthropological professorships, nor Paris with its anthropological school, nor Holland with its colonial school, could give a proper training to the observers whom we need.”58
Boas surmised, “By pursuing this method, I have been able to train a small number of young men who are able to do pretty good work.” However, in his estimation, there was not a single ethnologist who had the fullness of training necessary to undertake the task of establishing anthropology in California. “I am very anxious,” Boas wrote, “that those who do take up the work should not be as unprepared as most of our generation have been.” Boas continued, “If you were to ask me at this moment who to put in charge of the whole field of Californian ethnology, I should be unable to name any man in this country whom I should consider capable of doing so. . . . I am very confident that five years hence either Mr. Dixon or Mr. Kroeber will have gained sufficient experience to do so.”59
Boas had wanted to retain “a certain amount of control” for a period of time. Whether this was for the establishment of the American Anthropological Association or for the development of the department and museum of anthropology at the University of California, Boas felt that he needed to exercise oversight: “I have the conviction that in certain lines at least I know exactly what is needed for furthering our knowledge of American ethnology, and I believe that the method which I am pursuing is more systematic than that followed by many others. It is only for this reason that I have ventured to concentrate in my hands a considerable part of the ethnological work that is being done on our continent.”60
Zelia Nuttall did not share Boas’s caution. With a sly move in her role as intermediator and likely working under the influence of Putnam, Nuttall wrote Hearst that Boas advised the immediate hire of Kroeber: “‘In the interest of science alone he advocates the employment, as soon as possible, of Mr. Kroeber. . . . I hope, that if at all possible this chance of securing this promising young man will not be missed and that he may be lost to us by being employed by another institution.’” Indeed, Kroeber was being considered for other positions, one as curator at the Field Museum of Natural History, and another, through Boas’s recommendation, for a four-month continuation of research in Berlin on his Arapaho work.61
Phoebe Apperson Hearst was keen to establish a museum for the antiquities that she had collected in her 1899 tour of Egypt, and Alfred Louis Kroeber was poised to step out on his own. Playing the role of institutional matchmaker as he had for Boas, Putnam wired Hearst, “‘Would your work for Kroeber be permanent character.’ He mentioned the Berlin offer, adding that Kroeber preferred California and that an immediate reply was necessary.” Hearst sent a telegram to Kroeber: “The position here permanent. Hope this message will reach you in good time.” Kroeber snapped up the offer, “I took California [because it offered] greater independence and a larger chance for activity.”62
In his reservations about the founding of the American Anthropological Association and his concerns about Kroeber taking up the development of anthropology in California, Boas exhibited his inherently cautious nature. Still, Boas accorded respect and autonomy to the younger scholars he had trained. When Putnam requested from Boas a critique of Kroeber’s “Languages of the Coast of California South of San Francisco,” Boas replied, “I beg leave to say that I consider Mr. Kroeber perfectly competent to judge of the value of the results of his researches. He has fully mastered methods of research, and at the present time is better posted on the languages of California than anyone else. For this reason, I believe that it would be an injustice on my part to edit his paper, and I return it without any remarks.” Boas concluded, “It seems to my mind that it is in the best interests of science to let young men who have had a good training develop without interference, because new points of view, which are so essential to a healthy development of science, are much more likely to develop among students who work independently.”63
With the clashes of personalities and the cacophony of voices, Boas could not clearly fathom the inexorable shift in institutional forces. He himself did not realize what he had already built—a sound footing for the development of professional anthropology in the twentieth century. With loss came gain. Putnam left his part-time position in New York for another in Berkeley and to give a “good part” of his time “to further the development of the department at the University.” He looked forward to being “instrumental in the work of another great centre of anthropology and California is the place for it.”64 Simultaneous with Putnam leaving the AMNH, Powell died, and McGee left Washington after he had been passed over for Holmes in the appointment as chief of the BAE. Boas had lost much of the financial support for his research from the BAE, and his relationship with Jesup at the AMNH had shredded. With these shifting institutional forces, Boas was pushed ever more firmly into the halls of Columbia University. From the museum and the bureau to academe, Boas would establish his base to build out the profession of anthropology in the twentieth century.