Dinosaurs in the Attic by Douglas Preston Read Free Book Online

Coast, he had already begun to see the beginnings of a decline, stemming from the desire of the Indians to possess Western technology, and from the growing suppression of Northwest Coast culture by the provincial government of British Columbia. In Asia he saw disease and starvation decimating the native populations whenever they came in contact with the West. What was happening in Siberia was a mirror image of what was going on in the Western United States—and Boas knew perfectly well what the final result would be. His overriding desire was to save every possible thing related to these societies for future study and ultimately for the common heritage of humanity.

    When he first came to the Museum, Boas may have seen that there was a chance President Jesup would not support a kind of shotgun approach to collecting in the area Boas was studying, the Indians of the Northwest Coast. Jesup was a man who liked definite goals and tangible results. Therefore, Boas presented Jesup with a definite theory that required testing—that the Indians of North America had entered the New World from northeastern Siberia across the Bering Strait.

    The origin of Native Americans was in fact one of the great unsettled questions in anthropology at that time. Some scientists identified them with one or another of the tribes of Asia or the South Pacific, while others insisted they were culturally—and perhaps racially—independent of the old World. Boas argued that the way to prove his theory was to send a major expedition to explore and study the cultures living along the entire North Pacific rim, from the Indians along the Northwest Coast of North America to the aborigines of eastern Siberia.

    Jesup seized upon the problem with great interest. He was growing old (in 1895 he was already sixty-five), and he wanted a major scientific discovery to come out of his presidency. His shrewd financial management of the Museum had left it flush with funds, and whatever money the Museum didn't have for an expedition, Jesup would find within his own pockets. Boas would now be able to accomplish his secret agenda while at the same time pursuing this important anthropological question.

    By 1897, Boas had organized the Jesup North Pacific Expedition. In the entire field of anthropology, nothing of comparable size or scope had ever been attempted before. Boas hired over a dozen anthropologists and assistants who fanned out among the tiny aboriginal cultures living along the circum-Pacific: the Ainu of northern Japan, the Tungus and Yakut of southern Siberia, the Yukaghir and Chukchee of northern Siberia and the Koryak of the eastern coast; the Asiatic and Alaskan Eskimo; and the Kwakiutl, Salish, Bella Coola, and Thompson Indians living along the Northwest Coast of Canada.

    Boas directed the fieldwork in North America himself, reserving the Kwakiutl and Bella Coola Indians as his own. On earlier expeditions to the area, Boas had made the acquaintance of George Hunt, a part-Kwakiutl man living at Fort Rupert in British Columbia. Boas asked Hunt to join the expedition, and the two men worked together, collecting objects; transcribing myths, and gathering ethnographic material. Whenever Boas went into the field, Hunt accompanied him and acted as advance man, interpreter, and guide. When Boas was not in the field, George Hunt collected and transcribed myths, which he sent to Boas through the mail and for which he received payment of fifty cents per page. He was deeply knowledgeable about Kwakiutl customs and myths, and contributed valuable material for Boas' resulting analyses. Allen Wardwell, in his book Objects of Bright Pride, turned up an illuminating piece of correspondence between Boas and Hunt. Just before Boas left New York for British Columbia in 1897, he sent Hunt a letter, which read in part:

It occurred to me that in laying out our work, it would be a very good plan to have the Indians clearly understand what we are about. For this purpose, I