Southeastern Alaskan Indian Research— Garfield 29 



Coast tribes and is essential to an understanding of the Alaska 

 Tsimshian (14). Two books, written to publicize the missionary 

 work of William Duncan, contain much of ethnographic inter- 

 est and describe the circumstances that motivated the Alaska mi- 

 gration (3, 65). The Annette Island community was the subject 

 of a congressional investigation in 1935 but the report is so 

 burdened with charges, counter-charges and subjective evalua- 

 tions as to be almost useless for any social science study (68). 



Other sources of information on southeast Alaska include 

 four histories of Alaska and one of Sitka. Two of the histories 

 treat the Indians in a very summary manner, dismissing them 

 as obstacles to be overcome in the development of the territory. 

 They do not contribute to our knowledge of the Indians or the 

 part they played in Alaska's history, but do reflect the attitudes 

 of the writers and many of their readers. Other historians 

 describe outstanding Indian leaders and the influence they and 

 their tribesmen had in the shaping of events (1, 2). No account, 

 either historical or novelistic, has been written on the theme 

 of Indian personalities and participation, though there is rich 

 material for such a treatise. 



Few anthropologists have undertaken studies of broad scope 

 since Dr. Swanton's pioneer survey. Dr. Ronald Olson has yet 

 to publish his data on Tlingit history as preserved in folktales 

 and clan legends. The first field work to combine the knowl- 

 edge and techniques of personnel trained in several fields of 

 anthropology was directed by Dr. Frederica de Laguna in 

 northern Tlingit territory in the summer of 1949 and in the 

 vicinity of Angoon during the summer of 1950. Ethnographic, 

 archaeological and linguistic approaches were applied to the 

 complex problems of Tlingit cultural history and prehistory. 

 Such surveys, if carried out systematically to cover a large area, 

 will go a long way toward providing answers to perplexing 

 questions concerning the origins of Northwest Coast cultural 

 elements and their indigenous development. 



A large number of studies have been made, limited as to 

 subject and area or both. The techniques of blanket weaving, 

 basketry (20, 52) and woodworking have been described and 



