Editing Franz Boas (section)

==Early career: museum studies==
In the late 19th century anthropology in the United States was dominated by the [[Bureau of American Ethnology]], directed by [[John Wesley Powell]], a geologist who favored [[Lewis Henry Morgan]]'s theory of [[cultural evolution]]. The BAE was housed at the [[Smithsonian Institution]] in Washington, and the Smithsonian's curator for ethnology, [[Otis T. Mason]], shared Powell's commitment to cultural evolution.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Woodbury |first1=Richard B. |last2=Woodbury |first2=Nathalie F. S. |date=1999 |title=The Rise and Fall of the Bureau of American Ethnology |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40170100 |journal=Journal of the Southwest |volume=41 |issue=3 |pages=283–296 |jstor=40170100 |issn=0894-8410}}</ref> (The Peabody Museum at [[Harvard University]] was an important, though lesser, center of anthropological research.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Video: Science, Education, and Character: Reflections on the First Fifty Years of the Peabody Museum, 1866–1916 |url=https://peabody.harvard.edu/video-science-education-and-character-reflections-first-fifty-years-peabody-museum-1866%E2%80%931916 |access-date=2022-07-24 |website=peabody.harvard.edu |language=en}}</ref>)
[[File:Franz Boas - posing for figure in USNM exhibit entitled - Hamats'a coming out of secret room - 1895 or before.jpg|thumb|Franz Boas posing for figure in US Natural History Museum exhibit entitled "Hamats'a coming out of secret room" 1895 or before. Courtesy of National Anthropology Archives. ([[Kwakiutl]] culture)]]
It was while working on museum collections and exhibitions that Boas formulated his basic approach to culture, which led him to break with museums and seek to establish anthropology as an academic discipline.

During this period Boas made five more trips to the Pacific Northwest. His continuing field research led him to think of culture as a local context for human action. His emphasis on local context and history led him to oppose the dominant model at the time, [[cultural evolution]].

Boas initially broke with evolutionary theory over the issue of kinship. [[Lewis Henry Morgan]] had argued that all human societies move from an initial form of [[matrilineal]] organization to [[patrilineal]] organization.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Stern |first=Bernhard J. |date=1946 |title=Lewis Henry Morgan Today; An Appraisal of His Scientific Contributions |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40399752 |journal=Science & Society |volume=10 |issue=2 |pages=172–176 |jstor=40399752 |issn=0036-8237}}</ref> First Nations groups on the northern coast of British Columbia, like the [[Tsimshian]], and [[Tlingit people|Tlingit]], were organized into matrilineal clans. First Nations on the southern coast, like the [[Nuu-chah-nulth people|Nootka]] and the [[Coast Salish peoples|Salish]], however, were organized into patrilineal groups. Boas focused on the [[Kwakiutl]], who lived between the two clusters. The Kwakiutl seemed to have a mix of features. Prior to marriage, a man would assume his wife's father's name and crest. His children took on these names and crests as well, although his sons would lose them when they got married. Names and crests thus stayed in the mother's line. At first, Boas—like Morgan before him—suggested that the Kwakiutl had been matrilineal like their neighbors to the north, but that they were beginning to evolve patrilineal groups. In 1897, however, he repudiated himself, and argued that the Kwakiutl were changing from a prior patrilineal organization to a matrilineal one, as they learned about matrilineal principles from their northern neighbors.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Boas |first=Franz, United States National Museum |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/254418370 |title=The social organization and the secret societies of the Kwakiutl Indians |date=1897 |publisher=Government Pr. Office |location=Washington |language=English |oclc=254418370}}</ref>

Boas's rejection of Morgan's theories led him, in an 1887 article, to challenge Mason's principles of museum display.<ref name="Dall 1887 587–589">{{Cite journal |last1=Dall |first1=Wm. H. |last2=Boas |first2=Franz |date=1887 |title=Museums of Ethnology and Their Classification |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1762958 |journal=Science |volume=9 |issue=228 |pages=587–589 |doi=10.1126/science.ns-9.228.587 |jstor=1762958 |pmid=17779724 |bibcode=1887Sci.....9..587D |s2cid=46250503 |issn=0036-8075}}</ref> At stake, however, were more basic issues of causality and classification. The evolutionary approach to material culture led museum curators to organize objects on display according to function or level of technological development. Curators assumed that changes in the forms of artifacts reflect some natural process of progressive evolution. Boas, however, felt that the form an artifact took reflected the circumstances under which it was produced and used. Arguing that "[t]hough like causes have like effects like effects have not like causes", Boas realized that even artifacts that were similar in form might have developed in very different contexts, for different reasons.<ref name="Dall 1887 587–589"/> Mason's museum displays, organized along evolutionary lines, mistakenly juxtapose like effects; those organized along contextual lines would reveal like causes.

===Minik Wallace===
In his capacity as Assistant Curator at the [[American Museum of Natural History]], Franz Boas requested that Arctic explorer [[Robert E. Peary]] bring one Inuk from Greenland to New York. Peary obliged and brought six Inuit to New York in 1897 who lived in the basement of the American Museum of Natural History.<ref name=":2">{{cite journal |last=Pöhl |first=Friedrich |date=1 January 2008 |title=Assessing Franz Boas' ethics in his Arctic and later anthropological fieldwork |journal=Études/Inuit/Studies |volume=32 |issue=2 |pages=35–52 |doi=10.7202/038214ar |doi-access=free}}</ref> Four of them died from tuberculosis within a year of arriving in New York, one returned to Greenland, and a young boy, [[Minik Wallace]], remained living in the museum.<ref name=":2" /> Boas staged a funeral for the father of the boy and had the remains dissected and placed in the museum. Boas has been widely critiqued for his role in bringing the Inuit to New York and his disinterest in them once they had served their purpose at the museum.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/15/books/eskimo-boy-injustice-old-new-york-campaigning-writer-indicts-explorer-museum.html|title=An Eskimo Boy And Injustice In Old New York; A Campaigning Writer Indicts An Explorer and a Museum|first=Dinitia|last=Smith|newspaper=The New York Times|date=15 March 2000}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/minik/program/pt.html|title=American Experience . Minik, The Lost Eskimo - PBS|website=[[PBS]]|access-date=2017-08-28|archive-date=2017-01-10|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170110211824/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/minik/program/pt.html|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>Harper, Kenn. (1986/2000) Give Me My Father's Body: The Life of Minik, the New York Eskimo. South Royalton, VT: Steerforth Press.</ref>