Born in Minden, Germany, on July 8, 1858, the anthropologist Franz Boas was the son of the merchant Meier Boas and his wife, Sophie Meyer. Raised in the radical and tradition of German Judaism, Franz's youth was steeped in politically liberal beliefs and a largely secular outlook that he carried with him from university through his emigration to the United States.

At the universities of Heidelberg and Bonn, Boas studied physics and geography before completing a doctorate in physical geography at Kiel in 1881. Intending on testing then-current theories of environmental determinism, he signed on to an anthropological expedition to Baffin Island in 1883-1884, expecting that he would document the close adaptative fit of Central Eskimo cultures to their extreme climate. His experiences in the arctic, however, led him to the contrary conclusion: that social traditions, not environmental, exerted a dominant influence over human societies, and from this point onward, he was led to pursue the cultural over than physical dimensions of humanity.

Although he returned to Berlin after the expedition, Boas emigrated to the United States in 1885 to assume an editorial position with the journal Science, hoping to use it as a stepping-stone to an academic appointment. In 1886, he embarked upon a second major field excursion into what would become his most famous ethnographic project, working among the Kwakiutl (Kwakwaka'wakw) Indians of the Northwest Coast, after which he secured his first academic position in 1889, at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. After three years at Clark and a failed appointment at the Field Museum in Chicago in 1892 (during which he played a part in organizing the anthropological exhibits for the Columbian World's Fair), Boas moved to New York City.

The restless activity of Boas's early years slowed in New York. Hired by the American Museum of Natural History (1895-1905), which became the recipient of the amazingly rich anthropological collections he accumulated on the Northwest Coast, Boas began to teach classes at Columbia University in 1896, where three years later he was appointed Professor of Anthropology. For the next 37 years, Boas ruled the anthropological roost at Columbia, accruing unprecedented power in his discipline, wielding grants, recommendations, and appointments with remarkable dexterity, and collecting about him a remarkable group of younger scholars as students and colleagues.

Distancing himself from some of the main currents of contemporary anthropological thought in the United States, and particularly from the evolutionist assumptions that riddled the discipline, Boas championed an anthropology that viewed human cultures as shaped more by historical "tradition" than biological propensity. Claiming to resist any overarching, synthetic theories of human relations, and particularly evolutionary theories of sociocultural development, Boas laid the theoretical groundwork for what became modern cultural relativism. In the process, he helped to clarify the demarcation between the concepts of culture and race and its expression in the divergence of the four fields in anthropology -- linguistics, ethnography, physical anthropology, and archaeology.

Boas's relatively few forays into physical anthropology included a pioneering anthropometric study in 1910-1911, demonstrating that the alleged mental and physical inferiority of immigrants disappeared statistically by the second generation. Opposed to immigration quotas and disdainful of the claims to science used to justify them, Boas was a consistent, strident opponent of racial determinism in intellect or behavior. A committed, politically active Socialist, he was frequently an outspoken critic of American policy. During the First World War, he spoke out against the treatment of German Americans and "enemy aliens" -- to the point of putting himself at risk -- and the rise of the Nazi party in Germany proved an even greater crusade. Despite his age, Boas took an active role in the anti-fascist struggle in the United States and was involved with numerous committees to assist refugee scholars. He was equally ardent in his efforts to criticize racial and ethnic bigotry in the United States.

As a mentor, Boas had a reputation of being directive, at times overbearing, and at the same time of doing too little to prepare his students for the rigors of fieldwork. The extraordinary number of students coming out of Columbia under his care, however, has arguably done as much to extend the Boasian approach than Boas's own writing. Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Elsie Clews Parsons, Alfred Kroeber, Frank Speck, Edward Sapir, Zora Neale Hurston, Ella Deloria, Melville Herskovits, Leslie Spier, Paul Radin, and Ashley Montagu are all students of Boas. Many continued in the same intellectual stream, some diverged, yet all bore traces of Boas's influence. He left a mark as well on the institutions of the discipline, as one of the founders of the American Anthropological Association and of the International Journal of American Linguistics.

The Boas Collections at the APS are the key resource for documenting the transformations in American ethnography, linguistics, and physical anthropology in the period between the 1880s and 1940s. The Boas Papers (Mss B B61) consist of the main body of Franz Boas's professional correspondence, including particularly extensive and important correspondence with Edward Sapir, Gladys Reichard, Elsie Parsons, Leo Frachtenburg, John Alden Mason, M. J. McGee, Frederick W. Hodge, Alfred Kroeber, George Hunt, and Alfred M. Tozzer, and material relating to Boas's involvement in professional and other organizations. This collection provides richly detailed coverage of every facet of Boas's career from the time of his emigration to America in the mid-1880s until his death in 1940, shedding light on the development of ethnography, anthropological linguistics, and anthropological approaches to archaeology. His correspondence was highly diverse, including not only his fellow anthropologists, but geneticists, evolutionary biologists, social scientists, and social activists.

The Boas collections are also a rich resource for historians interested in "radical" social causes in the twentieth-century through Boas's participation in socialist political circles and progressive social movements. There is significant material on the Germanistic Society of America and for German National Socialism and the expulsion of European scholars, as well as the efforts to reestablish them in British and American institutions.

This collection also contains photographs of Boas and members of his family from his childhood to the time of his death. Links to the digital versions of the pages are included in the inventory. You may also view a gallery of all images here.

Native American Images note : Nearly 3,000 sketches, albumen prints, black and white silver gelatin photographs, photomechanical prints, postcards, and maps of Baffinland Inuit and Northwest Coast Kwakiutl (Kwakwaka’wakw). Taken and drawn by Boas during his Northern Canadian expeditions of 1883-84 and 1886, images include native clothing, dwellings, totem figures, tools and kayaks. Of note, hand-drawn maps of Inuit tribal territories. Includes images sent to Boas from anthropologist John Alden Mason (Mayan), Amelia Susman and William Beynon (Tsimshian) of sculptures, carvings, and totems. Sketches are in the correspondence and field notebook series of B B61; B B61p; B B61.ru; B B61.5. The finding aid contains an inventory of all photographs housed in the Photograph Collection and on Film 1427. See also the American Council of Learned Society papers (497.3 B63c) for more Native American images by Boas.

Provenance

Gift of Helene Boas Yampolsky, 1961-1962; and Dr. Cecil Yampolsky, 1964, with many later additions from Norman F. Boas.

Preferred citation

Cite as: Franz Boas Papers, American Philosophical Society.

Alternate formats available

This collection has been microfilmed (film 1308) in chronological order.

Other finding aids

This collection is thoroughly inventoried in Franziska Boas, Guide to the Microfilm Collection of the Professional Papers of Franz Boas (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1972), 2 vols. This guide forms the basis of the inventory below.

Materials relating to Boas' research on American Indians is indexed in great detail in the online Daythal Kendall Guide to Native American Collections at the American Philosophical Society.

General physical description

59 lin. feet

Separated material

Photographs have been separated for storage with the library's photographic collection.

Related material

The American Council of Learned Societies Committee on Native American Languages, Franz Boas Collection of Materials for American Linguistics ( Mss 497.3.B63c) is a large collection of primary materials on Native American languages assembled, in part, under Boas's supervision, and including a large quantity of material written by Boas himself.

Boas appears as a correspondent in numerous APS collections, and in addition to its rich collections for the history of anthropology, the library houses the papers of several of Boas's former students and proteges, including Frank Speck ( Mss. Ms. Coll. 126), Elsie Clews Parsons ( Mss. Ms. Coll. 29), John Alden Mason ( Mss. B M384), Paul Radin ( Mss. 497.3 R114), and Ashley Montagu ( Mss. Ms. Coll. 109).

The APS also houses a microfilm (372.3, reel 1) of original materials in the Office of Anthropology Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., relating to Boas's trips to Baffin Island (N.W.T.) and British Columbia, during which he studied and collected cultural materials, 1885-1909.

The papers of Boas's son Ernst Boas ( Mss. Ms. Coll. 10) are housed at the APS. A physician, Ernst Boas shared his father's liberal political outlook and activist social views.

Bibliography

African American History Note

This collection has the potential to be rich for students of attitudes toward race in the United States. Among the many topics covered are the study and teaching of anthropology, ethnography, linguistics, progressive social causes, and the expulsion of European scholars under German national socialism.

Physiology, Biochemistry, and Biophysics Note

Scholars of physiology, biochemistry, or biophysics may find the following items of interest:

Corporate Name(s)

• Germanistic Society of America

Genre(s)

• Albumen prints
• Cabinet cards
• Gelatin silver prints
• Maps
• Negatives
• Photomechanical prints
• Postcards
• Sketches.

Occupation(s)

• Anthropologists -- United States.

Personal Name(s)

• Andrews, H.A.
• Beckwith, Martha Warren, 1871-1959
• Boas, Franz, 1858-1942
• Boas, Ernst P., (Ernst Philip), 1891-1955
• Bogoras, Waldemar, 1865-1936
• Bowditch, Charles P., (Charles Pickering), 1842-1921
• Britton, Nathaniel Lord, 1859-1934
• Bumpus, Hermon Carey, 1862-1943
• Butler, Nicholas Murray, 1862-1947
• Cattell, James McKeen, 1860-1944
• Chávez, Ezequiel Adeodato, 1868-1946
• Crane, M. E.
• Dixon , Roland Burrage, 1875-1934
• Engerrand, George C., 1877-1961
• Fackenthal, Frank Diehl, 1883-1968
• Franchtenberg, Leo Joachim, 1883-1930
• Gordon, George Byron, 1911-
• Heye, George G., (George Gustav), 1874-1957
• Hodge, Frederick Webb, 1864-1956
• Holmes, William Henry, 1846-1933
• Hrdlicka, Ales, 1869-1943
• Jochelson, Waldemar, 1855-1937
• Keppel, Frederick P., (Frederick Paul), 1875-1943
• Kroeber, A. L., (Alfred Louis), 1876-1960
• Laufer , Berthold, 1874-1934
• McGee, W. J., 1853-1912
• Michelson, Truman, 1879-1938
• Parsons, Elsie Worthington Clews, 1875-1941
• Radin, Paul, 1883-1959
• Sapir, Edward, 1884-1939
• Sargent, H. E.
• Seler, Eduard
• Steinen, Karl von den, 1855-1929
• Swanton, John Reed, 1873-1958
• Teit, James Alexander, 1864-1922
• Tozzer, Alfred M. -- (Alfred Marston), -- 1877-1954.
• Wissler, Clark, 1870-1947
• Woodbridge, Frederick James Eugene, 1867-1940

Subject(s)

• Anthropology, ethnography, fieldwork
• Anthropology--Research--United States
• Anthropology--United States--History.
• Anthropology--United States.
• Arctic Indians
• Ethnology--North America
• Indians of North America--British Columbia
• Indians of North America--Ethnology
• Indians of North America--Languages
• Indians of North America--Northwest Coast
• Indians of North America--Nunavut
• Inuit
• Jewish scientists
• Kwakiutl Indians
• Northwest Coast Indians
• Race, race relations, racism
• Refugees, Political
• Scientists, Refugee
• Social conditions, social advocacy, social reform
• Socialists--United States
• Tlingit Indians