Herbert Lewis - Passion of Franz Boas
Herbert Lewis - Passion of Franz Boas
S. LEWIS
Professor Emeritus
Department of Anthropology
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Madison. WI 53706
x
then a group of scholars believes that they have a
IVtnew and better way to understand reality than
vY V their teachers and predecessors, it is quite natural that they turn on those forerunners and try to demonstrate their superiority. To them the previous generation
seems hopelessly old-fashioned, wrongheaded, and on the
wrong track
his battle against racism and ethnocentrism, even if his approach to science was in disrepute.
It is understandable that each intellectual generation
feels it must distance itself from its predecessors, something Boas himself understood and appreciated.' In the
I960s, however, criticism of Boas began to develop an additional dimension-an attack on the character of the man
himself. Leslie White (1966:26-28) accused Boas of a
number of unpleasant things, especially of being receptive
only to Jewish students and being prejudiced ainst
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reality both an attempt to combat anti-Semitism and an intellectual weapon in the struggle of Boas and the other
European Jews around him "for the domination of anthropology in the United States" (p. 139). He concluded that
the effort of Boas and his colleagues to combat racism was
just "another exploitation of colored peoples for the benefit
of white people" (p. 139).2
This paper appeared as a chapter in the influential work
edited by Dell Hymes, Reinventing Anthropology (1969),
and it reflected the general anger and dissatisfaction of the
late 1960s. Willis would later develop considerable respect
for Franz Boas, but this piece was one of those that set a
tone for succeeding discourse on the subject of anthropology and "the study of domninated colored peoples" (p.
146).
In the era of postcolonial and critical studies there is a
newer trope that sees Boas's work as even more harmful.
K. Visweswaran contends that Boas's "scientific antiracism" itself had terrible results. In a 1998 paper she writes,
"I suggest the disturbing possibility that the attempt to expunge race from social science by assigning it to biology,
as Boas and his students did, helped legitimate the scientific study of race, thereby fueling the machine of scientific
racism" (1998:70). What can be more of a condemnation
than that? What we used to think was "a good thing,"
Boas's many-sided attack on racism, we are now told was
in fact very bad-not just because others misused his science but because he got it so wrong.
It is true, of course, that the findings of science may be
co-opted and used by those with different and pernicious
agendas. I contend, however, that this has not been the case
with Boas's "scientific anti-racism." It has not been coopted and misused as Visweswaran believes, nor has she
given a coherent picture of how it occurred and what role
Boas's work could have played in it. In fact, the real point
of Visweswaran' s article is to present her own thinking on
the nature of "race" as a social construct and a potential political tool for the use of the dominated. The question is
why she felt it necessary to launch an irrelevant and inaccurate assault on Franz Boas in order to accomplish that
aim. 4
Similarly, Franz Boas's efforts to learn about Kwakiutl
(Kwakwaka'wakw) culture through the texts collected in
that language by George Hunt are subjected to harsh criticism by Charles Briggs and Richard Bauman (1999). Going far beyond earlier critics like Verne Ray (1955) and
Leslie White (1963), who had found Boas's efforts inadequate if not useless, Briggs and Bauman contend that these
texts were truly harmful. While denying that they intend to
damn Boas (p. 481), they find that his work "fit into the
larger contours of colonial domination that increasingly
deprived Native American communities of land, material
wealth, and cultural and linguistic autonomy" (1999:516)!
They find him "complicit in naturalizing white control of
Native American communities and the ideology of 'as-
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similation' " (p. 519) and they even claim that these Kwakwaka'wakw texts "formed crucialdimensions not only of
creating an American discipline of anthropology but of
constructing fin de siecle modernity as well" (1999:522,
emphasis added). All this because he urged George Hunt to
collect accurate descriptions of the technology, customs,
beliefs, laws, and stories of the Kwakwaka'wakw, in their
own language, concentrating on "traditional" and precontact material as much as possible.
There is no room here to deconstruct this dense fiftypage paper, but we may ask how a series of recondite texts,
read by at most a handful of academic specialists, could
conceivably have had such world-constructing consequences. At a time when the Kwakwaka'wakw (and all
Native American communities) had been under white
domination for generations, when their way of life and
practices were under constant attack and had undergone
many changes, could the collection of texts, no matter how
ineptly done, possibly have had such consequences for
these peoples-and for "modernity" as well? Briggs and
Bauman can only assert it; they cannot demonstrate it.
Their paper represents a common pattern in deconstructionist and postcolonial scholarship: the attempt to demonstrate that some phenomenon that might seem positive or at
One might think that a teacher who supported and encouraged a black woman in the l 920s to get a Ph.D. through the
study and appreciation of southern Negro culture might be
lauded for this, but one would be wrong. As George
Hutchinson writes, "Yet Boas's very encouragement of
Hurston as an anthropologist has, in recent vears, been
used against him in arguments [long on innuendo, short on
evidence] about how she had to fight for creative independence!" (1995:70, also 462-464). Meisenhelder, for
example, blames Boas for "dictating the focus of her research and treating her as an aid or infornant rather than a
researcher in her owE} right" (1999:15), and she writes of
Hurston's "covert resistance" to him. At best, these assertions are based upon unnecessarilv harsh readings of a few
letter-s between Hurston and Boas, but they are typical of
the current discourse (e.g., Meisenhelder 1999:14-17; cf.
Podesta 1991:397).5
Holloway goes even farther, drawing upon the terrible
image of the Southern plantation, if not of slavery. writing,
"It is not unfair to see 'Papa Franz' as the paternal white
overseer to this black womarn student who called herself
Barnard's 'sacred Black cow' in a forthright and unambiguous acknowledgment of her status" ( 1987:2). What can
be more damning than this, if true? I suggest, however, that
such an interpretation is both unwarranted by the available
evidence and unhelpful for our understandinog of Hurston's
life or accomplishments. 6
Like Zora Neale Hurston, Ella Deloria, a Dakota woman
who work-ed closely with Franz Boas, has also gained belated recognition as an author. In this case. Janet Finn
(1995) believes there were problems in their relationship as
well, imputing cultural insensitivity and lack of understanding to Boas. (See more below.)
Thus, according to these accounts, not only did Franz
Boas hold back the advance of science and treat non-Jewish students and minonty women badly, but he. was also responsible for both the resurgence of "scientific racism" and
good,
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man who led the fight against racism and for the appreciation of other cultures. But we would be wrong again. Even
though Franz Boas can reasonably be seen as a forerunner
of certain key ideas that are held dear today, his critics on
the "postmodernist" side seem more unforgiving than
those on the "modernist" side.
A postmodemist rationale for such critiques might be
that they are important because they contextualize Boas's
work and his activities as a liberal beyond his own selfawareness. Such analyses are meant to show the unintended consequences of even high-minded scholarship in a
society such as ours. But these fashionable critiques are
often insensitive to historical context, eschew benign but
equally reasonable alternative interpretations, and are
cavalier about cause and effect. They rarely include a demonstration of the actual linkages between the written word
and the harm that these texts are said to have caused to "the
Other."
In the rest of the essay I offer a view of the Franz Boas,
with specific reference to his political activities and his relations with others, that I hope may encourage some readers to be more understanding of Franz Boas and more critical of the negative claims. His life was lived in the service
of precisely the values professed by many of his critics, and
he achieved positive results that few scholars have ever
matched. While it is certainly true that anyone's best efforts may go wrong, and one's scholarship may be misused
and perverted by others, I believe that Boas's critics have
so far failed to demonstrate that this has been the case.
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There are two matters to which I am devoted: absolute intellectual and spiritual freedom, and the subordination of the
state to the interests of the individual: expressed in other
forms, the furthering of conditions in which the individual
can develop to the best of his own ability-as far as it is pos-sible with a full understanding of the fetters imposed upon us
by tradition; and the fight against all forms of power policy
of states or private organizations. This means a devotion to
principles of a true democracy. I object to the teaching of slogans intended to befog the mind, of whatever kind thev may
be. [ l1/6/39}1..
into practice.
that the ability to see the general human truth under the social
forms in which it occurs is one of the viewpoints that ought
to be most strongly emphasized. [letter to ACLS, 2/17/41,
emphasis added'
Franz Boas's perspective has been described bv George
Stocking, "as a struggle to preserve the cultural conditions
of the search for universal rational knowledge, and on the
cultural worlds" (1979:97). And throughout his career, almost 60 years, he labored ceaselessly to put these values
The Background
Franz Boas derived these core values from the world in
which he grew up, in Germany at a moment in history
when there was a strong politically liberal, intellectually
himself would probably have been hesitant to acknowledge the last, however [Glick. 1982; Liss 1997J.)
"The background of my early thinking was a Gernan
home in which the ideals of the revolution of 1848 were a
living force" (Boas l938a:201). This tradition valued science, knowledge, freedom, and the role of the freethinking
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reformer" (Liss 1996:179). Franz Boas joined this company in America in 1887.12
to have been the main motives. The draft probably also had
Considering the apparently heartfelt sentiments he expressed to Marie and to his uncle ("scientific activity alone
is not enough; I must be able to livingly create"), and his
subsequent behavior, it is very likely that he was thinking
at least as much of political progress as his personal academic advancement (Hyatt 1990:12; Stocking 1968:150;
cf. Barkan 1992:78-79).
Early Years: The Critique of Racism and
Ethnocentrism
Franz Boas came to the United States to stay in 1886,
and, although he rapidly won professional recognition, he
had a difficult time earning a living and finding stability for
the first decade. He held a number of temporary positions
until 1896, when he finally got posts in New York at the
American Museum of Natural History and Columbia University. During this time he had a growing family, with
four children (he eventually had six, but one died within
the first year), and he carried on an incredible pace of research, publication, and organization. His research included fieldwork in Northwest Coast ethnography, the
general study of Indian languages, and anthropometric and
statistical studies of the growth and development of children in Worcester, Massachusetts. He worked as an assistant editor of Science, started a program of research and
teaching anthropology at Clark University, and collaborated in the organization of anthropology at the World's
Columbian Exposition and the Field Museum in Chicago.
Boas played a leading role in founding the American
Folldore Society and editing the Journal of American
Folk-Lore, in raising the status of the Anthropological Society of Washington (Stocking 1968:283), and in furthering research on American Indian languages through the
Smnithsonian/Bureau of American Ethnology. During this
period he published a number of classic articles with portentous theoretical implications, and the book The Central
Eskimo, and many reports, monographs, and lesser articles.
His bibliography for the years 1886-96 contains 170 items
that range over the fields of physical and cultural anthropology, linguistics, psychology, geography, and meteorology (bibliography in Kroeber 1943). And throughout this
period he had to expend an inordinate amount of time and
energy on personal and professional struggles at Clark
University and the Field Museum, and with the Bureau of
American Ethnology (Hyatt 1990; Stocking 1960, 1968).
The idea that Franz Boas did not engage in overt political activity during his first decades in the United States has
become widely accepted. (Barkan is the most dismissive of
Boas's political concerns, writing, "the ivory tower remained a secluded haven for him during the next thirty
years" [1.992:89], but see also Baker 1997; Levenstein
1963; Stocking 1979) Given his employment problems
and the activities and accomplishments enumerated above,
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the fertility and the stature of the "Half-Blood Indian" surpassed that of either of the parental populations. in addition
to the contributions of this study to the studv of human heredity, it was a direct challenge to the arguments of the racists and the laws barring intermarrinae th were just then
being promulgated. Not long after, he would advocate intermarriage between black and white. What could be. more
political and daring in the racist climate of that time?
Beginning in 1894, Boas began to directly confront the
question of the differences between "primitive man" and
"civilized man," and racial differences and racial prejudices in a series of papers that eventuated in his 191 1 book,
The Mind of Primitive Man. The main arguments were:
"There is no fundamental difference in the, ways of thinking of prinitive and civilized man. A close 6connection between race and personality has nevertben established. The
concept of racial type as commonly used even in scientific
literature is misleading and requires alocal as well as a
biological redefinition" (Boas 1938b:v.
e0also argued
that. "achievements of races do not warrant us to assume
that one race is more highly gifted than another" (Boas
1894b; Boas quoted in Stocking 1974:227): that civilizations are the product of history, including diffusion and
chance, rather than biology; "that environment has an important effect upon the anatomical structur and physiological functions of man" (1911:75); that each "race"
contains so much variation within it that tie average differences between it and others are, much less than each contains within itself; and that racial prejudice is "the most formidable obstacle to a clear understanding" of these
problems (1911:245).
He concludes the book with a plea for greater tolerance
of other "forms of civilization" and sympay for "foreign
races" so that, "as all races have contributed in the past to
cultural progress in one way or another, so they will be capable of advancing the interests of mankind, if we are only
willing to give them a fair opportunity"' (1911:278). The
book was very influential and widelv read,
5one of those
"books which have changed men's minds-'( unzel 1962:
10; Degler 1989:17-I 9), basic for all who wanted to believe in the equality and common humankityof all peoples.
In addition, as Hutchinson points out, the leading liberalleft weeklies, The Nation and The New, Relpuic. both
closely associated with the Harlem Renaissance. "relied on
the Boas school for commentary and reviews concerning
anthropology and racial theory" (1995:209).
Boas's comparative studies of European imigrants and
their American-born descendants (e.g.. 1910-13, 1916,
1922) struck "a stunning blow at those who doubted the
power of the environment" (Degler 1989:3). Boas had a
lifelong interest in problems of growth, environment (especially health and nutrition), and heredity, beginning with
his studies of growth in Worcester in 1890, and in 908 he
received funds for a study of almost 18,000 newinimigrants
and their American-born children. The results, reported
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(One idea was to explore the potential economic and cultural role of Indian arts such as pottery making, basketry,
and woodcarving.)
Although he was not involved in an organized movement for Indian rights at this time, as early as 1898 he
spoke out against the outlawing of the potlatch in Canada,
and he continued to write against the prohibition of Indian
dancing and the use of peyote. In 1903 he wrote to Natalie
Curtis, "I think you are quite right in regretting that the cultural achievements of the Indians are not made use of in
their education. On the whole, the neglect to take into consideration the culture of the tribe has the effect that the
school-teaching that the Indians receive is a very thin veneer covering their ancient ideas, or, in less favorable
cases, it degrades the character of the Indians instead of uplifting them" (8/20/03).
He seems to have been concerned about Indian rights
and culture all his life, but he felt powerless to help. ("I had
a council with the Indians, who are really suffering because
of the stupid persecution of their customs by the [Canadian] government. I can do nothing about it, but promised
to do my best in Ottawa. I am not certain what I can do because the missionaries here are behind it all. It goes so far
that the children in school are not allowed to draw in the
traditional style of their people but [only] according to prescribed models" [to Emst, 11/18/30; Boas quoted in
Rohner 1969:291].) The first time anthropologists had any
hope of affecting government policy was during the New
Deal and the adrninistration of John Collier as commissioner of Indian affairs, but many were suspicious of Collier. In a letter to Collier (12/7/33), Boas speaks of the detrimental effects of the allotment system, of the leasing of
land, and of the failings of Indian boarding schools. "I
merely repeat a commonplace if I state that the contempt of
customs and beliefs of the Indians which is instilled in the
young is one of the elements that must be overcome."
In the fifth part of his research proposal he called for a
parallel study of the Negro population, also dealing with
"race mixture" as well as with child development, health,
and education. This study, too, would be directed toward
the amelioration of poverty, discrimination, and sociopolitical marginalization.
The project was not funded, but this proposal, made almost a century ago, shows that Franz Boas was urgingeven then-studies of change and of social, political, and
economic conditions for both scientific and practical reasons.
The image of him as a fact collector, merely interested in
"getting all the old customs before they died out," is quite
incorrect. He always had in mind the wider implications of
his studies, and this proposal was not an exception but a
part of his program for a scientific anthropology in the
service of mankind. This was in keeping both with his German liberal activist inheritance and with the sentiments
common in the contemporary Progressive Era in America.
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Negro culture. He envisioned and worked for an Encyclopedia of the Negro Race, an African institute and African
museum (combining public exhibits with scholarly research on Africa and African Americans [Beardsley 1973:
60]), and "the adoption of a 'black studies' curriculum at
Columbia" (Hyatt 1990:96). He was involved with G. Carter Woodson of Howard University and his Center for the
Study of Negro Life and History, stimulating and trying to
fund research, and supporting and training Negro scholars
such as Alain Locke, Arthur Huff Fauset, Abram Harris,
and James F. King. (For fuller accounts of Franz Boas's
many activities in the struggle against anti-black racism
and for the improvement of the situation of African Americans, see Baker 1998; Hyatt 1990; Williams 1996. See
Willis 1975 on Boas and Negro folklore, and Hutchinson
1995 on Boas, Herskovits, and the Harlem Renaissance.)
Boas's students included Herskovits, whose contributions to the study of the "New World Negro" as well as to
African studies in America are extraordinary; Zora Neale
Hurston, whose interest in southern Negro culture was fostered and partly funded and directed by Boas and his other
students; David Efron, whose study Gesture, Race and
Culture (1941) demonstrated the cultural and class basis of
gestures; and Otto Klineberg, a social psychologist whose
work on the limitations of intelligence testing, with its
built-in cultural biases, should be far better known today.
Klineberg's work, inspired and directed by Boas, is of central importance because it forms the experimental basis for
the claim that intelligence testing is culturally biased and a
poor indicator of group differences-still a central issue.
The Bell Curve by Herrnstein and Murray (1994) represents precisely the sort of ideas that Boas fought hardest
against. That book exists not because of anything Boas did
but because the lessons that he and his collaborators taught
us have been forgotten (Boas 1931: Klineberg 1935).
The "race problem" involved more than blacks and Indians, however. Prejudice was directed toward immigrants
from everywhere but northwest Europe, especially against
those from southern and eastern Europe and Asia. The socalled nativist movement became a central issue in American life in this period, as prominent "Anglo-Saxon" writers
and political figures wrote about Anglo-Saxon superiority
and the imminent demise of "the great race" if these "lesser
breeds" were to continue flooding America's shores. Boas
contested these ideas in the press and on the speaker's
stand. 6 He questioned the premises and promises of
eugenics, another major enthusiasm of the time (Boas
1917a).
The problem of racism and prejudice remained among
Boas's central concerns all his life, until the moment of his
death. Paul Rivet, the French anthropologist who was being honored at the luncheon at which Boas died, reports
that his last words were: "One must never tire of repeating
that racism is a monstrous error or an impudent lie" (1943:
313). 17
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Columbia's imperious president, Nicholas Murray Butler, saw this as an opportunity "to rid himself of an implacable enemv" (Hyatt 1990:127), so he and the board of
opinions, and he led a movement to develop new guarantees of faculty govemance at Columbia.'"
These don't exhaust Boas's wartime activities by any
means. Among other things, he campaigned on behalf of
European scholars who were adversely affected bv the
war, especially for German and Austrian anthropologists
who had been caught on the wrong side of the lines and
were interned. ' And after the war he led efforts to support
art and science in Germany and Austria. which included
collecting books for libraries in those countries and getting
food relief to Vienna, At first he worked through the Germanistic Society, of which he was the founder, and then he
helped establish the Emergency Society in Aid of European Science and Art.
On January 30, 1922, Boas wrote to W. H. R. Rivers,
one of Britain's leading anthropologists and a physician.
suggesting a plan for a massive study of the problem of seriously inadequate nourishment and increased morbidity
457
and mortality among the populations of Central and Eastem Europe. He hoped that Rivers could get the support of
the Royal Society for a study of "pathological conditions,
actual food amounts, medical observations [bones, tuberculosis, growth.," of the relations between social conditions and nourishment, and of growth and physiological
and psvchological function. Noting that the "after effects
of this period of partial starvation will undoubtedly be felt
for many years," he urged that this study be done for practical purposes, for prevention and improvement of current
conditions, and for basic scientific understanding of such
problems.
He had earlier urged Charles B. Davenport to join him in
an effort to get funding for a major study of U.S. army soldiers before they were discharged, in an effort to test questions of heredity versus environment.' Although Davenport was a leading proponent of eugenics and racial
determinism, he was one of the major figures in the organization and funding of American biology, and Boas had to
try to cooperate with him.
Boas's involvement in all of these projects should help
dispel the myth that Boas saw anthropology as just the
study of "primitives," of languages and cultuires in danger
of extinction. of the quaint and exotic. "the Other."
Once the war was over, he sent a letter to The Nation
publicly denouncing the action of the War Department and
four individual anthropologists who went to Mexico to engage in espionage using the cover of their science (Boas
1919a). John Dewey advised him not to send the letter on
the grounds that he would be suspect because of his German origins and this might lessen his usefulness for good
causes in the future (319/17). This act was costly to Boas,
as he expected; he felt impelled to resign from the National
Research Council and suffered reprisals from the American
Anthropological Association and the Bureau of American
Ethnology as well (Hyatt 1990:131-l34; Stocking 196g:
270-307). Butler retaliated by firing Goldenweiser and refusing to hire another anthropologist. But Boas had insisted
on acting on his principles.
Although he vehemently opposed World War L, he was
understanding and humane in his attitude to those who
went to war. Boas's son Ernst, who later became a prominent physician, enlisted as a medical officer when he realized that he might be drafted. The letters that Boas wrote to
him are directed against the war and the stupidity of politicians, but they are understanding of Ernst and his dilemma.
July 24,1917I have no right to criticize you and can understand your decision. But I am sorry that you yielded to torturing uncertainty
and the pressure of circumstances. and thru your voluntary
entry into the army have given your silent approval to the war.
It is not a question [it goes without saying?] that your army
service will bring us womsome times, in this period of universal torture and cares. My dear boy. no matter what you do,
my best wishes go with you.
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Next came the problem of Heine, his younger son. August 15, 1918Heine is naturally all wrought up Labout the draft]. I believe
his attitude is determined by the fact that he does not want to
be a coward, and that he will therefore seek the service that he
most fears. I shall try to convince him that it takes more courage to act right than to appear courageous. Whether that will
help is another matter. If my father had tried to persuade me in
this manner when I was young I would not have followed his
advice. If I can convince him I should like to try to get him in
the ambulance service. You are all wrong when you say that it
makes no difference whether one kills oneself or whether others do it. You would speak differently if you had thrust a
bayonet into the abdomen of a man who also just does that
that he is compelled to do.
the 1937?22
1.19 19b:249]
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addition to active campaigning for child welfare. he contributed to institutions himself and sought the contributions
of wealthv people (letterto Mrs. Dwight Morrow 1/17/33).
In addition to his many political and public service activities, he continued a remarkable pace of research, writing, editing, and publishing. flis last major publication projects included General Anthropology (editor and major
contributor), 1938c; the editing and organization of many
of his major papers as Race, Language, and Culture, 1940a;
A Dakota Gramnmar, with Ella Deloria, 1941; Kvakiutl
Tales (posthumous 1943); and he was working on a volume to be called Kwak:itl Ethnography when he died.
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one another. If
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financial support ... [for his wife and child]. It is the very
least that you can do on behalf of your child." He tells him
to stay out of New York in order to avoid conflict with his
ex-wife. "If you will accept this plan please write me. If
not, I am sorry I shall not do anything further in regard to
your case. I think your whole future depends on the question whether you can make up your mind to accept obligations that any decent man has and live accordingly." Goldenweiser's telegram reads, "Accept your message in spirit
and in letter. . ." (5/27126-7/2126).
Ella Deloria has been justly rediscovered (as Zora Neale
Hurston has) many years after her death. But Boas knew
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how good she was when he first met her in 1915. He hired
her to work with him and his students translating Lakota
texts in one of his courses. (It was her first paying job, as
she later reminded Boas.) Boas contacted her in 1926 and
asked if she would be interested in working with him on
the Dakota language. Their collaboration and correspondence continued from that time until he died. He encouraged her, he found money for her, and he supported her
work in the field and for her stays in New York, where she
could write up her material with more scholarly resources
than she had in Kansas. She also taught some courses at
Columbia (Medicine 1980, 1999; Schildkrout 1989:553).
In 1935 and 1936, Boas urged Ella Deloria to come to
New York for work, and from her letters to him it seems
clear that she really wanted to. She kept setting dates to
come but then would write to postpone her trip. Finally she
wrote that she could not come because of her responsibility
to her family, especially her sister, who needed her. Based
on this incident, Janet Finn accuses Boas of cultural insensitivity: he was pressing her to come to New York, putting
her in a difficult position when she could not and would not
leave her family (1995:136-139). But it is clear that she
hadn't told him of those obligations earlier nor was she
generally averse to travel and residence away from her
family. She had studied at Oberlin College in Ohio and Columbia Teachers College in New York and had happily
stayed at Columbia on several occasions. 2 3
Finn assumes that Boas, as a white man, wouldn't understand the power of kinship obligations that kept Ella
Deloria close to her familv. But a letter that he wrote to his
sister Toni, when she was ashamed to accept his help when
she needed it, gives a different picture. He wrote,
It depends entirely upon how strongly one feels about family
solidarity which sterns from a person's love for his parents,
his attachment to common childhood experiences, his attitudes toward life and his character traits which were implanted in him as well as in all the other members of the family. If the feeling of belonging together is still strong within us
and if it has not been killed by outside circumstances which
have forced us into [other] paths then I can not understand
your feelings [of unwillingness to accept help]. [10/29/06]
In fact, in his graduate student days Boas had declined
an opportunity to work at the laboratory of Hermann von
Helmholtz, the leader in the field of psychophysics, in order to remain closer to Toni at a time when she was quite ill
(Cole 1999:51). Janet Finn, working with a cultural stereotype of Boas, makes assumptions about him that, although
fashionable, are probably untrue. Boas had his own powerful sense of family loyalty, and there is every reason to believe that he understood the importance of kinship and
community to Indian people as well.
Finn also writes, "While Deloria's labor supported
Boas's ethnographic agenda, her role as informant seemed
to be valued more than her role as a scholar" (p. 137). I can
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that gave hera more secure and more honored life. Her last
letters to Boas are full of the satisfaction she felt as a result
of her researches, her increasin2 visibility, and her contacts
and sense of collegiality with other anthropologists such as
Ruth Benedict, Edward Kennard, Otto Klineberg, Gladys
Reichard. and Ruth Landes.
Ella Deloria wrote to Boas regarding a tribute to him
that had appeared in the New York Times in 1939, "It is
beautifuil, isn't it, but not a whit more than you deserve.
Please allow me to add my feeble bit to the well merited
praise. who have really known you rather better than many.
through many years of profitable association with you. I
would not trade the privilege of having known you. for
anything I can think of' (7/17/39). She later wrote, "You
have always been my best friend and hav'e helped me to do
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103, No.
highest ideals of his (and our) culture and time. These are:
concern for the dominated and oppressed, respect for "others" as individuals as well as for other cultures; tolerance
and humane dealing; and respect for the eternal quest for
knowledge about ourselves and the world. Despite all the
uncertainties and decenterings, the reversals and questionings of values of the current moment, at base, I believe
most of us would still want to be judged by how well we
served these interests.'
Notes
Acknowledgtnents. I owe a debt to the American Philosophical Society for an Andrew Mellon Resident Research
Fellowship and for pernission to publish material from their
collections. I must also add personal thanks to Beth CarrollHarrocks, Rob Cox, and Roy Goodman of the APS Library
staff for their professional and friendly support. In addition I
wish to thank Walter Goldschrnidt, Dr. Norman F. Boas,
JUNE 2001
LEWIS
/ THE
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- JUNE
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