The Kwakiutl Tribe

Franz Boas’s conducted fieldwork among the Kwakiutl during the19th century, observing the Winter Ceremonial in 1895 and subsequently publishing on it and other topics in 1897. Boas’ work gives us a glimpse into Kwakiutl culture in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Boas believed “the whole problem of cultural history appears to us as an historical problem. In order to understand history, it is necessary to know not only how things are, but how they have come to be”. However, by the time of Boas’s first visit to the Kwakiutl, they had experienced almost a century of contact with Europeans. Therefore his descriptions were not in line with the evolutionary social changes that occured since his last visit.

[Read More about the Kwakiutl Tribe @ Factoidz]