1: the indigenous population that raised questions, particularly concerning their origins and interrelatedness

2: the western territories, manifest destiny, and the American interest in expansion

3: slavery (distinguishes the US from Europe) 

He was brought up in the 18th century, during the Enlightenment and valued the use of reason and logic. He was also familiar with the work of Carl Linnaeus, who extended his classification system to races.  Slavery was intrinsic in his upbringing, as was contact with Native Americans, who would stop at his father's house on their way to congress.

TJ's work dealt a lot with defining empirical features of Native Americans v. blacks.

He was already asking questions about nature and nurture (he believed Indians could be assimilated)-- anticipating bio anthro and cult anthro.

He did brief "fieldwork," collecting native vocabulary on Long Island in 1791 and commissioning Lewis & Clark to collect information on tribes encountered in their travels.

He did archaeology in a very modern way (discussed in Notes on the State of Virginia)

He started asking questions about mounds and did archaeology to investigate skeletal material. 

He believed that the difference between Indians and Europeans was learned, and that Indians could become European-like.

The differences between men & women, and between whites & blacks, however, he believed to be fixed (natural).

He wrote on North America's inferiority to Europe: the indigenous people, the climate, the domesticated animals, etc.   He argued against European investment in the Americas.

Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia were essentially a response to his writings. 

-zoology

-biology

(new spp. were identified)

-ethnographic, esp. linguistic

(work with Nez Perce) 

-He supported the conservation of dialect, and thought dialect diversity as important as diversity of beliefs.

-He thought the sutdy of Indian language could help determine where they came from... and this contributed to his theory that they were one of the lost tribes of Israel.

-He thought the standardization of American language would stifle the country's development 

-unique kind of hands-on research

-direct contact with communities

-observing & asking (participant observation: observing war dance of Lakota, living according to rules of Mandan people; use of informants)

-recording 

 -even underwent some interpretive drift (believing the superstitions of the people one is studying)

in terms of a hierarchy: Europeans, then Asians, then Native Americans, then blacks

the definitive categories are based on appearance and supported by science 

The supporting of stereotypes based on race and ethnicity by scientific data, even if it is skewed or even unscientific.

Samuel Morton was one of its founders. 

-ideas of primitivism (Lewis's commentary on crudeness of Mandan-preferred battle axes)

-ideas of exchange (Lewis traded his dog away)

-nuances of differing societies within Native Culture (Sioux attacked them after the Hidatsa and Mandan warned them about the attack) 

Who wrote Crania Americana and why is it significant?

Henry Schoolcraft

It examines how tribes like the Osage, Delaware, and Cherokee get along, even though he was not even asked to gather this information.  He also writes about the settlers and their lack of manners and intelligence.  It shows a transformation, with experience, from a Romanticized and "noble savage" point of view to a sort of appreciation for how tough frontier life is. 

-kinship (clans, matrilineal descent)

-unilineal evolution (Ancient Society)

Lewis Henry Morgan wrote it.  It considers the progress of humanity a sequence from savagery to barbarism to civilization, based on empirical conditions that establish "ethnical periods."

It also heavily influenced the theories of Karl Marx. 

He received the first academic position in anthropology in 1884 (along with Brinton)... at Oxford University.

He wrote  How the Problems of American Anthropology Present Themselves to the English Mind, in which he discussed the old-fashionedness he found in America, the question of convergent evolution in human culture, and his positive perceptions of the Bureau of Ethnology.

Contributions: early archaeology (shell heaps, fruitless quest for early human sites)

founding figure in organizations

mentor, brought many women into the field (like Alice Fletcher)

Questions: looked all over for evidence of early (prehistoric) man in North America 

If the Native Americans were a degenerate race (according to the Bible) who could have built these huge mounds?

Some thought the Native Americans might have killed the lost tribe of israel, who had built these huge mounds.  Others hypothesized that it might have been the Vikings, or the Welsh.  These alternative theories negated Indian claim to the land.

-Lewis & Clark (Sacajawea, Old Toby)

-Alice Fletcher (Wajeba)

-Matilda Coxe Stevenson (Zuni people)

-Alfred Kroeber (huge proponent)

- Edward Sapir (Tutelo, Ishi)

-Elsie Clews Parsons (offered money and gifts to "secret" informants) 

-John Wesley Powell (Utes & Shivwits)

-Alice Fletcher (Sioux)

-Frank Hamilton Cushing (Zuni)

-James Mooney (Paiute, Kiowa, Cherokee)

-Margaret Mead 

-Lewis and Clark, linguistic work

-Alice Fletcher, Dawes Act 

-Henry Schoolcraft (even married a half-Ojibwa woman)

-Edward Sapir

-Paul Radin

-Ruth Landes 

-John Wesley Powell (compiled vocab dictionary)

-Alfred Kroeber 

-Edward B. Tylor

-James & Matilda Coxe Stevenson

-Frank Hamilton Cushing

-Elsie Clews Parsons

-Ruth Benedict 

-Alice Fletcher (camped with them)

-James Mooney

-Ruth Landes 

Precursor to later anthropological and scientific organizations.

-Thomas Jefferson was president

-Samuel Morton was a member

-Frank Hamilton Cushing 

-Lewis Henry Morgan, president

-Frederic Putnam, permanent secretary & president

-Frank Hamilton Cushing 

-Margaret Mead 

-Frederic Putnam

-Elsie Clews Parsons (first woman president, but died before inauguration)

-Robert Redfield, president

-Margaret Mead, president 

-John Wesley Powell, founder

-Francis La Flesche, hired to study Osage Indians

-Matilda Coxe Stevenson, staff ethnologist

-Frank Hamilton Cushing 

-James Mooney

-Paul Radin 

-Alice Fletcher

-Elsie Clews Parsons 

Alice Fletcher.

Includes notes on culture traits, like attire, demeanor, physical characteristics, marriage habits, and coming-of-age rites. 

What were Alice Fletcher's views on assimilation? 

Matilda Coxe Stevenson.

It was one of many origins stories recorded (kind of a trend at the time).  She was also clearly careful not to characterize the Zuni as having weird beliefs-- which was a fairly new and tolerant idea.

The idea that when you get something from someone, you should give them something back (for example, a story for a story).

Frank Hamilton Cushing employed this method, and in time, he saw his stories being incorporated into the Indian mythology. 

Frank Hamilton Cushing.

Has many "coyote stories," which were a form of origins stories found all over western America. 

Said that each head of an Indian family would receive 160 acres of farmland, or 320 acres of grazing land.  Everything else would be considered surplus.

Alice Fletcher helped to write and implement it. 

Alfred Kroeber

Shows his early studies with Californian Indians... Related to Ishi later on. 

There is a connection between the grammatical categories of language and how people perceive the world.

(ex: Eskimo having so many words for snow) 

Edward Sapir.

Tutelo was part of the Siouan language family-- and Lewis & Clark, Alice Fletcher, and James Mooney all studied the Sioux.  Also, he names his informant, which was a Boasian tendency that has disappeared today... except sometimes when studying North American Indians! 

-attended college AND taught college although her family was extremely wealthy and her mother was a super-socialite and her father was extremely anti-feminist

-her marriage didn't work out... partly because she worked while married :-O

-contempt for organized religion

-preferred nudity

-chilled with men... alone! 

Elsie Clews Parsons.

One of earliest studies of berdache (man-women) and introduced questions about what constitutes gender, makes sense when you consider how much of a badass ECP was. 

-Samuel Morton's scientific racism and use of skeletal materials

-Matilda Coxe Stevenson's publication of secret materials

-Mooney's "gentle trickery" of Swimmer and others

-Ishi's autopsy

-Elsie Clews Parson's bribing of informants 

Anthropologists thought of themselves primarily as scientists, perhaps largely because of their scientific backgrounds:

-Powell: geology

-Lowie: chemistry

-Putnam: ornithology/ichthyology

-Stevenson: minerology

-Cyrus Thomas: entymology 

-responsibility to the people and animals they come in contact with

-responsibility to scholarship and science (SECONDARY to humanity)

-responsibility to the public 

-both were collectors... of:

stories, material culture (back to Lewis & Clark), kin terms (Morgan... to Lowie and Radin), geneology, skeletal material

Paul Radin.

Shows continuity from the pre-Boasians like Morgan and Powell who were also collecting kin terms, all the way to Radin (and Lowie, who wrote on Kiowa terms of kinship... even Landes) 

Ruth Benedict.

Emphasized that folklore cannot be taken at face value; that they may not reflect actual beliefs. 

Melville Herskovits.

It showed the move of the second generation Boasians to outside of North America, and was also a discussion of a pretty controversial and strange idea (The Zuni La'Mana of his generation).  Like berdache, woman-marriage is now a classic topic of anthropology.

1st generation = focus on American Indians (mostly)

2nd generatoin = geographical and cultural scope broadened (set knowledge base for today's "area courses") 

There was also a shift from salvage ethnography to caring largely about cultures in the present 

-measured heads of Harlemites to disprove racial inferiority

-folklore in Florida

-hoodoo folklore in New Orlenas

-Caribbean 

Zora Neale Hurston.

It uncovered the mysterious, and also assessed why some cultures retained more of their culture than others (related to cultural drift) 

-culture's effect on the individual (social behavior norms, gender roles)

-adolescence 

-personality formation 

phenomena which result when groups of individuals having different cultures come into continuous firsthand contact, with subsequent changing in the original culture patterns of either or both groups

-encompasses assimilation, diffusion 

-land allotment

-mandatory boarding schools for Indian kids (today, a human rights violation) 

The melding of two apparently disparate or contradictory beliefs

(Studied by Herskovits and Hurston with regard to African religion) 

Unique form of reincarnation, no eternal damnation.

With ritual, the soul migrates into a new body.

Remains of animals are used for curses, amulets, aphrodisiacs, and esp. healing.

Involves spirit possession, which is essentially an altered state of consciousness. 

-how the environment shapes people

-most important cultural traits are how you get your food, tools, etc.

-cultural change is about environment, not just language and cultural traits

-always interested in aridity (water supply)