This volume explores the development of the ethnography of Salishan-speaking societies on the North American Plateau through the correspondence between Franz Boas and James Teit.

"The introductory volume to the Franz Boas Papers: Documentary Edition, which examines Boas' stature as public intellectual in three crucial dimensions: theory, ethnography and activism"--

"The introductory volume to the Franz Boas Papers: Documentary Edition, which examines Boas' stature as public intellectual in three crucial dimensions: theory, ethnography and activism"--

"The Shaping of American Anthropology is a book which is outstanding in many respects. Stocking is probably the leading authority on Franz Boas; he understands Boas's contributions to American anthropology, as well as anthropology in general, very well. . . . He is, in a word, the foremost historian of anthropology in the world today. . . . The reader is both a collection of Boas's papers and a solid 23-page introduction to giving the background and basic assumptions of Boasian anthropology."—David Schneider, University of Chicago "While Stocking has not attempted to present a person biography, nevertheless Boas's personal characteristics emerge not only in his scholarly essays, but perhaps more vividly in his personal correspondence. . . . Stocking is to be commended for collecting this material together in a most interesting and enjoyable reader."—Gustav Thaiss, American Anthropologist

"The Franz Boas Papers, Volume 2 explores the development of the ethnography of Salishan-speaking societies on the North American Plateau through the correspondence between Franz Boas and the Scottish-born James Teit, who married into an Interior Salish family and community and became fluent in the Nlaka'pamux language. The letters between Teit (1864-1922) and Boas (1858-1942) chronicle Teit's varied career as an ethnographer, from shortly after his initial meeting with Boas in 1894 until Teit's death at the age of fifty-eight. A postscript documents Boas' contribution to Teit's legacy through the posthumous publication of the manuscripts Teit left unfinished at his death...[this publication] meticulously tracks the impact of the different career trajectories of Teit and Boas on the primary product of their collaboration -- the initial development of the ethnography of societies speaking Interior Salish languages." -- Dust jacket