Penobscot Man by Frank G. Speck - hardcvr

Hardcover format. 

The original 1940 edition of Frank Speck’s classic ethnographic study, with thirty additional photo­graphs collected by the author and a new preface by anthropologist David Sanger

"Penobscot Man is an ethnographic classic written by an anthropologist trained to reconstruct traditional Native American, or Indian, lifeways. When Frank Speck began his fieldwork early in the twentieth century, practitioners of the new field of anthropology witnessed the low point of native populations. Once populous groups had vanished; others were so decimated that only remnants of their traditional behavior remained. The reconstruction of lifestyles, or cultures, prior to the radical changes caused by European contact constituted a major research goal. This book is a representative example of that agenda." - from the preface by David Sanger

Initial Responses to Penobscot Man

"Professor Speck has shared to the utmost of his ability, and his spontaneous sympathy with aboriginal attitudes makes the total picture a singularly attractive and convincing one." - Robert H. Lowie, American Historical Review, Jan. 1941

[Penobscot Man] deserves credit for information not found elsewhere. It gives insight into aboriginal life and an unusually good account of making a canoe, with other valuable information. . . . [Penobscot Man] gives more authentic information about the Penobscot tribe than can be found in any other book." - Fannie Hardy Eckstorm, New England Quarterly, Dec. 1940

404 pages, 6 x 9, illustrated with photographs and line drawings

Frank G. Speck (1881-1950) was a student of anthropologist Franz Boas at Columbia Univer­sity. After Speck received a Ph.D. in 1908, he began a distinguished academic career at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was Chair of the Department of Anthropology for most of his tenure. Although he carried out fieldwork among many tribes and linguistic groups, his major emphasis was the Algonquian peoples of the Northeast, focusing on relatively acculturated groups that were of minor interest to many other anthropologists of Speck’s generation. In his desire to document these groups fully, Speck was far ahead of his time. Speck’s extensive publications include Beothuk and Micmac (1922); A Study of the Delaware Indian Big House Ceremony (1931); and Midwinter Rites of the Cayuga Long House (1949).