There are ten chapters in this book. In the first two, Judy Thompson talks about the life of James Teit. The author traces how in 1884 James Teit, at the age of nineteen, started to contact non-Native people in the area of British Columbia. Thompson states the importance in Teit’s life of Spences Bridge, a place where the non-Native population consisted of fewer than fifty people, most of whom were male. Thompson depicts how living in that region made of Teit an ethnologist, collector of artifacts, and a linguist who spoke several Indian languages fluently. In addition, the author points out that Teit became an ardent advocate for Native rights and land claims; a hunter of big animals such as the grizzly bear, the mountain goat, the caribou, and the moose; a keen field naturalist; a rancher and apple grower; and a husband and father of five children.
The third chapter is about Teit’s experience with Franz Boas, a dominant figure during the time anthropology began being a full-time profession supported by university training. The chapter focuses on their friendship that started in 1894 and lasted almost twenty years until Teit’s death. The chapter outlines how Teit became the premier ethnographer of the Nlaka’pamux and other Interior Salish tribes. It also mentions his experiences in political organizing for the Salish tribes as well as in translating and interpreting for Native leaders during their meetings with federal and provincial authorities.
The next chapter of the book is about Teit’s first contacts with the Tahltan in the north of British Columbia. The author describes Teit’s travel to Tahltan territory and his contacts with them. The chapter deals with Teit’s fieldwork experiences under difficult conditions, and also with the Tahltan, whose basic economy was hunting, fishing, and trapping for furs. Thompson shows us how Teit did his fieldwork under difficult conditions and did invaluable work by collecting artifacts, taking photographs, recording songs, transcribing myths, and gathering information about social organization, ceremonial life, customs, and beliefs.
In her fifth chapter, the author talks about Edward Sapir, who invited Teit to join the staff of the new Anthropology Division of the Geological Survey of Canada. Thompson outlines Teit’s connection to the Canadian Museum of Civilization. The author mentions that, like Boas, Sapir believed that the aboriginal languages and customs were rapidly disappearing and on the verge of extinction because the populations were being decimated by disease and were being assimilated into the dominant white society. Sapir considered Teit’s work to be “a model of ethnological research” and wanted to recruit him at the new Anthropology Division. The author cites Edward Sapir’s 1916 conclusion about Teit’s contribution to the field as follows: “We have been at various times indebted to Mr. Teit for much valuable material.... Ethnological and archaeological specimens, photographs, phonograph records, physical measurements, and other data. Indeed, I know of no man who has been working for us on the outside service that could be less wisely dispensed with than Mr. Teit.”
The next chapter of the book is titled “A Real Start: The 1912 Fieldwork Season.” The author points out that Sapir expected Teit to “investigate as far as possible the general ethnology of the Tahltan & Kaska, record music, traditions, mythology, and obtain some idea of the structure etc. of the language” (53).
The remaining chapters of the book focus on Teit’s subsequent fieldwork among the Tahltan in 1913-1915. In particular, these three chapters prove how Teit made a remarkable collection consisting of 191 artifacts, 196 song recordings, 167 photographs, and 130 mythological tales, using his exceptional abilities as an ethnographer, his zeal for Native people, and the willingness of the Tahltan people to work with him so as to have their culture documented.
In the final chapter, the author talks about Teit’s death in 1922 at the age of fifty-eight, and about his wife Leonie Teit and his five children, who were financially well-off and supported by Boas, Sargent, Sapir, and his other friends. Judy Thompson summarizes how the various threads of James Teit’s life and work came together to result in his final major ethnographic study, by drawing on extensive correspondence as well as Teit’s own fieldwork notebooks, diaries, and manuscripts.
This is a fine book, one that offers an impressive biography of James Teit as well as a catalog of the long-lasting display of Teit’s Tahltan ethnographic collection, especially welcome because of the neglect of the Tahltan heritage.
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[Review length: 768 words • Review posted on September 24, 2008]