Edward Sapir et la recherche anthropologique au Musée National du Canada 1910–1925
HélèneBernier
Université Laval, Québec
Summary
In 1910, a Division of Anthropology was created within the Geological Survey of Canada; it was the beginning of the Canadian National Museum. Its first chief was Edward Sapir, who had been strongly recommended by his former teacher Franz Boas. Sapir soon established two major objectives of his new post, namely, to introduce a professionalism into the hitherto amateurish manner anthropology had previously been practiced in Canada, and to engage in an extensive collection of linguistic and ethnographic data among the different indigenous peoples of Canada whose cultural heritage was threatened by Western civilization.
In order to attain the first goal Sapir sought the employment of university trained researchers, mainly coming from Britain and the United States. He engaged himself in fostering contacts with the scientific community, both nationally and internationally, encouraging at the same time the establishment of departments of anthropology at Canadian universities.
His second objective was probably his greatest success. In order to realize the broad and systematic collection of cultural material among the American Indians and the Inuits of Canada, he hired a number of researchers, several of which became subsequently leading figures in North-American anthropology, Marius Barbeau, Harlan I. Smith, James A. Teit, and later Thomas F. McIlwraith collected data on West-Coast Indians. The Athabaskans of the North-West were visited by Diamond Jenness and J. Alden Mason, the Sioux and the Cris of the Prairies by Wilson D. Wallis and Leonard Bloomfield. Paul Radin and Albert B. Reagan were doing research on the Ojibwa of Ontario whereas Barbeau, Alexander Goldenweiser and Frederic Waugh concentrated their attention on the Hurons of Ontario and Quebec. Groups of the Eastern Provinces were studied by William H. Mechling and Cyrus MacMillan. Jenness, Christian Leden, and E. W. Hawkes took a particular interest in the customs of the Inuit.
In 1925 Sapir relinquishes his post as chief of the Anthropological Division, but not before having firmly established the basis of what was to become the National Museum of Man in Ottawa, Canada.
*[Notez qu’il ne s’agit ici que d’une liste sélective. – Pour une liste de sources secondaires, voir l’article de Regna Darnell, “The Sapir Years at the Canadian National Museum in Ottawa” (1976), dont une version corrigée et augmentée est en cours de publication dans Edward Sapir: Appraisals of his life and work éd. par Konrad Koerner (Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1984). -Ed.]
Bloomfield, Leonard
1930Sacred Stories of the Sweet Grass Cree. (= Canada, Department of Mines; National Museum, Bulletin 10; Anthropological Series, 10.) Ottawa: F. A. Acland, 346 pp..
Bloomfield, Leonard
1934Plains Cree Texts. (= Publications of the American Ethnological Association, 16.) New York: G. E. Stechert & Co., viii, 309 pp.
Hawkes, Ernest W.
1916The Labrador Eskimo. (= Canada, Department of Mines; Geological Survey, Memoir 91 ; Anthropological Series, 14.) Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau, x, 235 pp..
Leden, Christian
1927Ueber Kiwatins Eisfelder: Drei Jahre unter kanadischen Eskimos. Mit 70 Abbildungen u. 1 Karte. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 285 pp.
Leechman, J. Douglas
1945Eskimo Summer. Toronto: Ryerson Press, ix, 247 pp.
Leechman, J. Douglas
1949Indian Summer. Ibid., x, 182 pp.
Lowie, Robert H.
ed.1965Letters from Edward Sapir to Robert H. Lowie. With an Introduction and Notes by R. H. L. [Berkeley, Calif.: Luella Cole Lowie.]
McIlwraith, Thomas F.
1948The Bella Coola Indians. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press. [Monographie rédigée à partir de données recueillies lors de son séjour à Bella Coola, Colombie Britannique, en 1924, 730 pp. en manuscrit.]
1914Some Myths and Tales of the Ojibwa of Southwestern Ontario. (= Canada, Geological Survey, Memoir, 48; Anthropological Series, 2.) Ibid., v. 83 pp..
Radin, Paul
1915The Social Organization of the Winnebago Indians: An interpretation. (= Canada, Geological Survey; Museum Bulletin, 10; Anthropological Series, 5.) Ibid., 40 pp.
Reagan, Albert B.
1922 “Medicine Songs of George Farmer”. American Anthropologist 24.332–69.
Sapir, Edward
1920 Compte rendu de The Language of the Salinan Indians par J. Alden Mason. IJAL 1.305–309.
Sapir, Edward
1931 “The Concept of Phonetic Law as Tested in Primitive Languages by Leonard Sapir”. Methods in Social Science: A case book ed. by Stuart A. Rice, 297–306. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
Teit, James A.
1898The Traditions of the Thompson Indians of British Columbia. Introduction by Franz Boas. (= Memoirs of the American Folklore Society, 6.) New York.
Wallis, Wilson D.
1919 “The Sun Dance of the Canadian Dakota”. American Museum of Natural History ; Anthropological Papers 16.317–80.
Wallis, Wilson D.
1923 “Beliefs and Tales of the Canadian Dakota”. Journal of American Folklore 36.36–101.