Description
This is the comprehensive study of the Tlingit Indians by Lieutenant George Emmons, who was stationed in Alaska in the 1880s and 1890s. Drawing on her long personal experience with the Tlingit, noted anthropologist de Laguna has organized Emmons's unfinished manuscript and made significant additions.
Lieutenant George Thornton Emmons, U.S.N., was station in Alaska during the 1880s and 1890s, a time when the Navy was largely responsible for law and stability in the Territory. His duties brought him into close contact with the Tlingit Indians, whose respect he won and from whom he gained an understanding of and respect for their culture. He became a friend of many Tlingit leaders, visited their homes, traveled in their canoes when on leave, purchased native artifacts, and recorded native traditions. In addition to an interest in native manufacturing and in the more spectacular aspects of native life - such as bear hunting, Chilkat blankets, feuds, and the potlatch - Emmons showed the ethnographer's devotion to recording all aspects of the culture together with the Tlingit terms, and came to understand Tlingit beliefs and values better than did any of his nonnative contemporaries. He was widely recognized for his extensive collections of Tlingit artifacts and art, and for the detailed notes that accompanied them.
Author: George T. Emmons
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Published: 11/20/2020
Pages: 530
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 3.86lbs
Size: 11.42h x 8.80w x 1.25d
ISBN13: 9780295970080
ISBN10: 0295970081
BISAC Categories:
- History | United States | State & Local | General
- Social Science | Anthropology | Cultural & Social
- Social Science | Ethnic Studies | American | Native American Studies
About the Author
Frederica de Laguna, professor emeritus of anthropology at Bryn Mawr College, is the author of the three-volume Under Mount Saint Elias (on the Tlingit of Yakutat) and numerous other works on Alaska archaeology and ethnography.