Franz Boas' research trip to Baffin Island 1882–1884

Abstract

In the summer of 1883 Franz Boas travelled from Germany to Cumberland Sound, Baffin Island, aboard the sailing vessel Germania whose main objective was to evacuate the personnel of the German station of the First International Polar Year from Kingua Fiord. Boas planned to spend a year as a participatory observer, living and travelling with and studying the Inuit of this part of Baffin Island. This detailed study summarizes and evaluates Boas’ preparations, his fieldwork, and the subsequent period of data analysis and evaluation. The fieldwork may be divided into two phases: Over the winter of 1883–1884 Boas confined himself to Cumberland Sound and during this phase he was considerably dependent on the American and Scottish whalers wintering at Kekerten. During the second phase, in the spring and summer of 1884, Boas crossed the Cumberland Peninsula and visited numerous Inuit communities along the Davis Strait coast; during this period he was much more dependent on his own resources. Relying especially on Boas’ relatively little‐known articles in Berliner Tageblatt the author assesses Boas’ interaction with the Inuit, particularly his changing attitudes, and evaluates the geographical and ethnographical data that he collected. The description of Boas’ subsequent period of analysis and evaluation summarizes all the articles and publications that Boas published on aspects of his work with the Inuit on the basis of this, his only visit to the Arctic; the last of these publications appeared as late as 1927.