Edward Sapir was an American anthropologist-linguist, and one of the most important figures in the development of the discipline of linguistics in the United States. Born in German Pomerania, in what
Edward Sapir, c. 1910
Tony Tillohash with family. Tillohash was Sapir's collaborator on the famous description of the Southern Paiute language.
Franz Uri Boas was a German-American anthropologist and ethnomusicologist. He was a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology". His work is associated wit
Edward Sapir
…family emigrated to the United States of America when he was a child. He studied Germanic linguistics at Columbia, where he came under the influence of Franz Boas, who inspired him to work on Native American languages. While finishing his Ph.D. he went to California to work with Alfred Kroeber documenting the…
Boas's dissertation: Beiträge zur Erkenntniss der Farbe des Wassers
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)
Drawing of a Kwakiutl mask from Boas's The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians (1897). Wooden skulls hang from below the mask, which represents one of the cannibal bird helpers of Bakbakwalinooksiwey.