P
surrender marks the end of the Apache’s armed re-
sistance to reservation life.
1887The Peabody Museum purchases the Great
Serpent Mound.
Harvard University’s Peabody Museum buys the
farm of John Lovett in Adams County, Ohio. On
the tract is the Great Serpent Mound—the largest
effigy mound in North America (see entry for 1000
B.C. TO A.D. 700). The mound, which measures al-
most a mile long, was constructed by Indians of the
Adena or Hopewell culture beginning about 3,000
years ago. The Peabody’s purchase is made possible
by a fund-raising campaign by museum employee
F. W. Putnam, who wanted to ensure the mound
would be preserved. The following year, the Pea-
body will open the area to the public as Serpent
Mound Park.
Anthropologist Franz Boas begins his study
of the Kwakiutl.
At 29, German-American anthropologist Franz
Boas makes the first of many trips to British
Columbia to observe and record the culture of
the Kwakiutl people. Boas’s research is aided by
George Hunt, a man of mixed Tlingit and white
ancestry who grew up among the Kwakiutl. Act-
ing as a liaison between the Indians and the white
anthropologist, Hunt helps Boas gain access to the
winter ceremonials and other rituals that dominate
Kwakiutl society.
Living among the Kwakiutl, Boas discovers
the extreme complexity of their society. Able in
the summer to catch and preserve enough fish to
feed themselves year-round, the Kwakiutl are free
throughout the winter to stage elaborate ceremo-
nies, in which they dramatize their huge body of
legends. Boas also learns of the complicated soci-
etal hierarchy by participating in potlatches, grand
feasts during which wealthy Kwakiutl hosts con-
firm their rank in society by giving lavish gifts to
their guests.
Largely through the publication of his research
into Kwakiutl life, Boas will redefine anthropolo-
gists’ approach toward the study of North American
Indians. Rather than viewing Indians as “primi-
tives” inferior to more “developed” peoples, Boas
insists that the cultures of Indians he has observed
are as sophisticated as so-called civilized societies.
Boas’s work will also emphasize the importance of
collecting data about all aspects of a culture, from
language to religion to art.“Anyone who has lived with
primitive tribes, who has shared
their joys and sorrows, their pri-
vations and their luxuries, who
sees in them not solely subjects
of study to be examined like a
cell under the microscope, but
feeling and thinking human be-
ings, will agree that there is
no such thing as a ‘primitive
mind,’... but that each individual
in ‘primitive’ society is a man,
woman, a child of the same kind,
of the same way of thinking, feel-
ing and acting as man, woman or
child in our own society.”
—anthropologist Franz Boas on
studying Indian culturesLakota George Bushotter is hired by the
Bureau of American Ethnology.
A graduate of the Hampton Institute (see entry for
APRIL 1878), George Bushotter, a Lakota Sioux, is
recruited by anthropologist James Owen Dorsey to
aid his research at the Bureau of American Ethnol-
ogy (see entry for MARCH 3, 1879). During his 10
months there, Bushotter writes more than 1,000
pages about Lakota culture in the Lakota language
and helps compile material on his language that will