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Franz Boas TWENTIETH CENTURY LIBRARY HIRAM HAYDN, EDITOR Published: FRANZ BOAS by Melville J. Herskovits by Haridas T. Muzumdar OSWALD SPENGLER by H. Stuart Hughes SIGMUND FREUD by Gregory Zilboorg JOHN DEWEY by Jerome Nathanson MAHATMA GANDHI JAMES JOYCE by W. Y Tindall CHARLES DARWIN by Paul B. Sears ALBERT EINSTEIN by Leopold Infeld GEORGE BERNARD SHAW by Edmund Fuller FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY by Rene Fueloep-MiUer WILLIAM JAMES by Lloyd Morris THORSTEIN VEBLEN by David Riesman In Preparation: KARL MARX by Max Lerner ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD by Stanley Newburger HENRI POINCARE by Tobias Dantzig JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES by Seymour Harris FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE by James Gutmann CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS MELVILLE J. HERSKOVITS Franz Boas THE SCIENCE OF MAN IN THE MAKING CHARLES SCRIBNER'S CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, NEW YORK SONS, LTD., 1953 LONDON v 1953, BY SCI^IS ^ER/S SO3STS IPrinted in the && United States of zrt a A arty form ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is a pleasure to acknowledge the assistance given me in the preparation of this work by the staff of Deering Library, Northwestern University, where the Boas reprint collection is housed; to Mr. Albert C. Gerould, Librarian of Clark University, for making available the rare copies of early catalogues of that when Boas taught there; to Mr. Macmillan Company, New York, for institution, covering the years Henry McCurdy of the sending to me the Mind of Primitive Man, and file of reviews of the second edition of Boas' of his Race, Language and Culture; Alexander Lesser, Executive Director of the Association on Indian Affairs, with whom I was able to check my impressions concerning Boas' participation in programs of action having to do with the American Indian. M. J. H. and to Dr. Evanston, Illinois 7 November, 1952 CONTENTS I. FROM THE COLOR OF WATER TO THE STUDY OF MAN 1 MAN, THE BIOLOGICAL ORGANISM 25 HI. MAN, THE CULTURE-BUILDING ANIMAL 46 IV. MAN, THE CREATOR 73 H. V. THE SCIENTIST AS CITIZEN 102 APPENDIX BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE 123 CHRONOLOGY 127 SELECTIVE INDEX 129 Boas CHAPTER ONE FROM THE COLOR OF WATER TO THE STUDY OF MAN the 20th of June, 1883, the schooner Germania, a veteran of the polar seas, sailed once more from Hamburg, bound for the far north. In 1869-70 she had transported an expedition to East Greenland, and in 1882 the personnel of a German polar station had travelled in her. Now she was return- ON ing, to bring these men home after their long winter's isolation. this time she carried a young physicist-geographer and his And on Cumberland Sound. physicist-geographer was Franz Boas, and his trip was to have consequences far beyond its immediate objective of geographical exploration. For in the hard Arctic winter he was to spend with the Eskimos, Boas was to discover values in their personalities and ways of life that constituted a challenge he would devote the rest of his life to meeting. servant, their way to The young Three years after his return, he wrote this paragraph: After a long and intimate intercourse with the Eskimo, it was with feelings of sorrow and regret that I parted from my Arctic friends. I had seen that they enjoyed life, and a hard life, as we do; that nature is also b