BACKWASH OF THE FRONTIER—HALLOWELL 469 
Their bibliography lists 37 novels or collections of stories published 
between 1902 and 1947. “Where once we had melodrama about the 
Indian with his bloody tomahawk,” they say, “now we have clear-cut 
realism.” Whatever the art form may be, what is striking is the more 
intimate acquaintance with contemporary Indians that informs the 
work of the painter, musician, poet, dramatist, or novelist who has 
drawn upon aboriginal cultural forms or used the problems of the 
Indian for his thematic material. 
Finally, it seems to me that among these more recent influences, the 
impact of the Indian on modern anthropology should not be omitted. 
The social sciences as they have developed in the United States during 
the past half-century have attained an unusual prominence in Amer- 
ican culture. Among these, anthropology in its modern form was just 
getting under way about the time the frontier closed. It was in the 
1890’s that Franz Boas began to teach at Columbia University and to 
train students in fieldwork. Boas was a specialist in studies of the 
American Indian and a majority of his early students followed in his 
footsteps. Indeed, practically all the chief authorities on North 
American Indian ethnology, archeology, and linguistics have been 
American. <A historical accident? Of course. But that is the point. 
It is only recently among the younger generation that more attention 
is being devoted to peoples in the South Seas, Africa, and Asia. But 
it was the study of the Indians, and the problems that emerged from 
the investigation of the Indian as a subject, that gave American an- 
thropology a distinctive coloring as compared with British, French, 
and German anthropology. Recently an American psychologist has 
remarked that “if the word ‘anthropology’ were presented to a sample 
of psychologists in a word-association test I would venture ‘culture’ 
would probably be the most popular response, with ‘Indians’ a runner- 
up.” The presumption, no doubt, is that these hypothetical responses 
would be those of American psychologists. 
The more detailed and reliable accounts of native Indian cultures 
that have emerged from the fieldwork of American anthropologists 
have made possible a more objective appraisal of the values inherent 
in the aboriginal modes of life. To those who look at the record, the 
Indian no longer appears as either a noble or ignoble savage. He has 
moved into a clearer focus as a human being. Like our own, his tra- 
ditional cultural background and historical situation have determined 
the nature of his experience and made him what he is. 
Viewing the panorama of our colonial and national history as a 
whole, I have referred to many diverse aspects of our culture—speech, 
economic life, food habits, clothing, transportation, medicine, religion, 
2M. Brewster Smith, Anthropology and psychology, in John Gillin (ed.), ‘‘For a Science 
of Social Man. Convergences in Anthropology, Psychology and Sociology,” p. 39. New 
York. 1954. 
