Volume 1

Handbook of American Indian languages / by Franz Boas ; with illustrative sketches by Roland B. Dixon ... [and others].

  • Franz Boas
Date:
1911-
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Handbook of American Indian languages / by Franz Boas ; with illustrative sketches by Roland B. Dixon ... [and others]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    71/1088 page 59
    boas] IV. LINGUISTICS AND ETHNOLOGY It seems desirable to say a few words on the function of linguistic researches in the study of the etlinography of the Indians. Practical Need of Linguistic Studies for Ethnological Purposes First of all, the purely practical aspect of tliis question may be considered. Ordinarily, the investigator who visits an Indian tribe is not able to converse with the natives themselves and to obtain his information first-hand, but he is obliged to rely more or less on data transmitted by interpreters, or at least by the help of interpreters. He may ask his question through an interpreter, and receive again through his mouth the answer given by the Indians. It is obvious that this is an unsatisfactory method, even when the inter- preters are good; but, as a rule, the available men aie eithei not sufficiently familiar with the English language, or they are so entirely out of sympathy with the Indian point of view, and understand the need of accuracy on the part of the investigator so little, that infor- mation furnished by them can be used only with a considerable degree of caution. At the present time it is possible to get along in many parts of America without interpreters, by means of the trade- jargons that have developed everywhere in the intercourse between the whites and the Indians. These, however, are also a very unsatis- factory means of inquiring into the customs of the natives, because, in some cases, the vocabulary of the trade-languages is extremely limited, and it is almost impossible to convey information relating to the religious and pliilosophic ideas or to the higher aspects of native art, all of which play so important a part in Indian life. Another difficulty which often develops whenever the investigator works with a particularly intelligent interpreter is, that the inter- preter imbibes too readily the views of the investigator, and that his information, for this reason, is strongly biased, because he is not so well able to withstand the influence of formative theories as the trained investigator ought to be. Anyone who has carried on work wth intelligent Indians will recall instances of this land, where the interpreter may have fonnulated a theory based on the questions that have been put through him, and has inteipreted Ins answers
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