The formative years of American anthropology were characterized by intellectual energy and excitement, the identification of key interpretive issues, and the beginnings of a prodigious amount of fieldwork and recording. The American Anthropological Association was born as anthropology emerged as a formal discipline with specialized sub-fields; fieldwork among Native communities proliferated across North America, yielding a wealth of ethnographic information that began to surface in the flagship journal, the American Anthropologist; and researchers increasingly debated and probed deeper into the roots and significance of ritual, myth, language, social organization, and the physical make-up and prehistory of Native Americans. The fifty-five selections in this volume represent the interests and accomplishments in American anthropology from the establishment of the American Anthropologist through World War I. Featured are essential contributions by such well-known anthropologists as Franz Boas, Elsie Clews Parsons, A. L. Kroeber, Clark Wissler, Robert Lowie, James Mooney, John Wesley Powell, John Swanton, and Edward Sapir.
Examples of important ethnographic accounts and interpretive debates are also included. The articles in their entirety showcase the state of the sub-fields of anthropology-archaeology, linguistics, physical anthropology, and cultural anthropology-as they were imagined and practiced at the dawn of the twentieth century. Introducing this collection is an historical overview of the beginnings of American anthropology, by A. Irving Hallowell. Frederica de Laguna is a professor emerita of anthropology at Bryn Mawr College. Her books include Travels among the Dena: Exploring Alaska's Yukon Valley and Tales from the Dena: Indian Stories from the Tanana, Koyukuk, and Yukon Rivers.