28 Alaskan Science Conference 



Greek Orthodox church continues to function in Sitka and has 

 many Tlingit among its members. Haines mission was begun in 

 1880 and in 1885 mission schools were started at Hoonah and 

 Howkan, the latter a Haida town (34, 56). 



Federal funds were appropriated for schools in Alaska in 

 1869 but were not used until 1885. Sheldon Jackson, a Presby- 

 terian missionary, was appointed General Agent of Education. 

 He made a report for the year 1885-6. Since then reports of 

 administrators and teachers have been issued annually. They 

 are excellent sources of information on economic and health 

 conditions in native villages. Teachers have not been en- 

 couraged to acquaint themselves with the social and religious 

 backgrounds of the people whose economic activities they often 

 supervise and whose children they teach, hence include very 

 little of these aspects of culture. 



On the other hand, missionaries and mission teachers are 

 frequently more aware of social, religious and ceremonial prac- 

 tices of the natives though they misinterpret them. Customs, 

 ideas and attitudes that contrast sharply with those of the mis- 

 sionaries' own culture are emphasized and held up for un- 

 favorable comparison. 



The first anthropologist to record stories, linguistic texts and 

 notes on the social organization of the Haida and Tlingit was 

 Dr. Franz Boas. The first trained field worker to make a de- 

 tailed study of the two groups was J. R. Swanton, who spent 

 the winter of 1900-01 in the Queen Charlotte Islands and four 

 months in 1904 in Sitka and Wrangell. His analysis of Haida 

 family legendary histories and kinship organization includes 

 the Alaska Haida (Kaigani). He also obtained accounts of the 

 migrations of Haida families to Prince of Wales Island and 

 collected myths, folktales and songs. His reports on Tlingit 

 social organization and mythology are the most comprehensive 

 that have been done to date. Almost twenty-five years passed 

 before anthropologists again visited the Tlingit and Kaigani 

 Haida. 



The monumental analysis of Tsimshian culture by Dr. Boas 

 includes comparative data on the mythology of all Northwest 



