Author Description

Franz Boas (1858-1942), geographer, linguist, physical anthropologist and ethnologist, is considered the father of modern North American anthropology.<br/><br/>The 1895 German publication of Indianische Sagen von der Nord-Pacifischen Küste Amerikas gathered together in a single volume his earliest research in British Columbia, consisting of 250 B.C. First Nations myths and legends which had been previously serialized in German periodicals between 1891 and 1895.<br/><br/>In 1973, the B.C. Indian Language Project first commissioned this peer-reviewed translation from Dietrich Bertz of Victoria, who completed his revised draft in 1977, incorporating the introduction by Professor Claude Lévi-Strauss. Then began the Project’s immense task of researching, footnoting and annotating the text, which was to continue intermittently for over twenty years.<br/><br/>This volume of First Nations myths and legends is an extraordinarily important document in the history of North American anthropology.