An important association copy. The author’s signed presentation on the half title: “To my friend Diamond Jenness with warm feelings & gratitude for his help In the revision & my best, Marius Barbeau, Hazelton, Sept. 1923.”
An early work by the prolific and important Canadian ethnographer, Maurice Barbeau (1883-1969). After completing his law degree, Barbeau was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship and spent three years at Oriel College, Oxford, pursuing studies in anthropology, archaeology, and ethnology and completed a thesis titled Totemic System of the North Western Indian Tribes of North America.
On his return to Canada, he joined the National Museum of Canada and continued his research, focusing on the Huron tribe and making numerous field trips and recording folk songs whenever possible. “As a recognized pioneer he developed field techniques which yielded for him thousands of recordings, representing a unique, cross-section of folk traditions spanning the length and breadth of Canada. His musicological investigations, though not scholarly in the academic sense, were highly descriptive and imaginative. He left us vivid records (including field manuals and other works) which could be considered as thorough ethnographs in themselves” (Katz).
This is a largely biographical work on notable Kootenay and Salish men and women, the information drawn predominantly from Native sources. The text is considerably augmented by Kihn’s illustrations, which includes portraits of Mrs Ben Kakuitts (Cree), Mary Isaacs (Kootenay), Hector Crawler (Stony), Louis Arbelle (Kootenay), Jake Swampy (Swampy-Cree), Georgie Hunter (Stony) and others.
While born in New Zealand, Diamond Jenness (1886-1969) trained as an anthropologist and was invited to join Vilhjalmur Stefansson’s 1913 Canadian Arctic expedition on the Karluk. Neither Jenness nor Stefannson were onboard the Karluk when she became locked in the ice and drifted. The two men made their way to Barrow, Alaska and Jenness undertook a two-year study of the Copper Inuit on Victoria Island, who had very little contact with the outside world. He served with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in World War One and then returned to Canada where he took up a position at the National Museum of Canada alongside Maurice Barbeau.
Katz, I.J., “Marius Barbeau, 1883-1969” in Ethnomusicology, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Jan., 1970), p.132.
