A.L. Kroeber
Alfred Louis Kroeber was a cultural anthropologist, born in America in 1876 and dying in 1960.
Biography
Kroeber was born on June 11, 1876 in Hoboken, New Jersey (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica 2021). Though born in America, his parents- Florence and Johanna Kroeber- were German immigrants, and thus his first language was German (Hymes 1961:1). Kroeber and his family spoke German at home while he learned English outside of the house, but he also began to study Greek and Latin; this early exposure to various languages sparked an interest in linguistics that would last his entire career (Steward 1961:1040). His private studies growing up also provided a foundation for an interest in geography and natural history (Steward 1961:1040).
A photo of A.L. Kroeber
At the age of 16, Kroeber was admitted into the University of Columbia, graduating in 1896 with a B.A. in English (Steward 1961:1041). It was around this time where he entered graduate work in the field of anthropology, which was a rather new discipline at this time in many places, especially in the United States. Here, he worked under famed anthropologist Franz Boas, who had been appointed to Columbia’s head of faculty in that same year (Steward 1961:1042). After receiving his M.A. in 1897, he took several field trips between 1899 and 1901 that were sponsored by Boas and the American Museum of Natural History, where he worked with the indigenous group known as the Arapho (Hymes 1961:1).
A photo of the University of California Berkeley as it is in the present day.
Starting in 1901, Kroeber began work at the University of California (located in Berkeley) in the newly-established Department of Anthropology (which he helped create), eventually rising to become a professor in 1919 (Hymes 1961:2). He had two wives; he married his first, Henriette Rothschild, in 1906, but she passed away in 1913 from tuberculosis (New World Encyclopedia contributors 2021). He married his second wife, Theodora Krakow Brown, in 1926, and had two children (Karl Kroeber and Ursula K. Le Guin) in addition to Theodora’s two children from a previous marriage (New World Encyclopedia contributors 2021).
He continued to work as a professor before retiring in 1946, though he continued work as an anthropologist well after that (New World Encyclopedia contributors 2021). Throughout his life and career, he would go on to write and publish numerous books and articles related to his anthropological studies, making numerous great contributions to the field. He died on October 5, 1960, due to heart failure while in Paris, France (New World Encyclopedia contributors 2021).
Studies with Ishi
Arguably, one of Kroeber’s most famous studies in regards to anthropology would be work he did related to a man named Ishi. During Kroeber’s anthropological career, he was one of the first researchers to coin the term “salvage ethnography”- that is, research meant to preserve remaining information about the culture of indigenous tribes before they were devastated by colonialism (New World Encyclopedia contributors 2021) (Starn 2011:181). Kroeber’s work with Ishi- a Native American who claimed to be the last surviving member of the Yahi tribe (which was located in California)- was a direct result of Kroeber engaging in the work of salvage ethnography (New World Encyclopedia contributors 2021).
Ishi spent several years surviving in the wilderness of Deer Creek, a canyon area in California, until being found and captured in 1911 (Torres 1984:176). From there, he was taken to the Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, where he would largely spend the remainder of his life; much of his job was to create “artifacts” in the form of bows, arrows, and other small weapons (Torres 1984:177). Living at the museum made Ishi into something of both a celebrity and a living, breathing exhibit- both for better and for worse (Starn 2011:182).
A well-known photo of A.L. Kroeber and Ishi.
Kroeber and some of Ishi’s acquaintances convinced Ishi to take them back to Deer Creek Canyon in 1914, hoping to learn more about the Yahi way of life and preserve its culture in salvage ethnography (Starn 2011:182). However, many of the iconic photos Kroeber took with Ishi provided a skewed image of how the Yahi lived; many of these pictures depicted stereotypical aspects of general indigenous culture- tribe members wearing loincloths, using wooden weapons, etc. (Starn 2011:182). In reality, the Yahi tribe often improvised in various manners using materials littered about the canyon left by settlers- broken glass, metal cans, flour sacks, and other repurposed items; in addition, there is no evidence that the Yahi dressed in the manner Ishi was shown to be dressed in those photographs with Kroeber (Starn 2011:182).
Kroeber’s work with Ishi, the alleged last member of his tribe, was outstanding for its time in terms of cultural anthropology. It was remarkable enough that his second wife, Theodora Kroeber, wrote a biography about Ishi entitled Ishi in Two Worlds (Starn 2011:183). But as time has passed and anthropologists have become stronger advocates for the rights of indigenous people, Ishi’s story becomes one more like tragedy instead of the triumph of preserving the last remnants of a lost tribe. Kroeber’s work in particular, especially with Ishi, contributed to the idea of “ethnographic taxidermy”, coined by Fatimah Tobing Rony in 1996 (Starn 2011:182).
That is, Kroeber (and other anthropologists during his time) fixated on the history and cultures of Native Americans before colonialism and conquest wiped out so many of their populations and took away their lands; their studies did little (if anything) to address the aspects of those tribes’ histories related to how colonialism affected them or how they had to adapt to new environments and territories in the 20th century (Starn 2011:182). As a result, Kroeber’s research in this regard directly contributed to the erroneous belief that Native Americans were simply a group from bygone days in American history, causing the lives and struggles of actual indigenous people in the United States to become irrelevant and/or overlooked for decades (Starn 2011:182).
Other Impacts
Despite his more controversial contributions to cultural anthropological research, Kroeber made a number of more positive impacts in the field as well.
Working and learning under Boas, Kroeber learned about and embraced the holistic view of anthropology as well as the principle of cultural relativism, leading to him spending much of his career focusing on characterizing cultures and analyzing their particular features and differences between one another (Steward 1961:1049). As a result, much of Kroeber’s research and data could be used to discern recurring patterns or traits between different cultures, which could then assist with analyzing the causes and cultural processes that lead to such similarities (Steward 1961:1049).
More specifically, Kroeber argued for a theory that stated every human culture consisted of elements from previous cultures throughout its history; this was true no matter what level of complexity a specific culture or society had (Sinha 1968:796). He also argued that, as a result, all cultures had some element of continuity and could be derived by its “total pattern” (Sinha 1968:796).
A photo of A.L. Kroeber's mentor, Franz Boas.
Kroeber was also the first to use the term “culture area”- that is, a geographical area with a number of societies that share similar cultural traits- though the concept would come to be popularized and associated with Clark Wissler (Sinha 1968:798). His work Cultural and Natural Areas of Native North American, published in 1939, serves as his most significant contribution to the culture area theory; in this work, he studied both environmental and historical relations of various cultures and culture areas- though it should be noted he did not specify his methods for how he came to the conclusions that he did (Sinha 1968:799).
Kroeber’s fascination with languages from an early age also, inevitably, played a major role in the course of his anthropology career. Specifically, he studied the languages of the indigenous groups he worked with and argued against misconceptions regarding the “primitive” nature of these languages that were common for the time period (Sinha 1968:801). At the time, the idea of languages and dialects going extinct was not viewed as an issue at all; therefore, Kroeber was somewhat unique in his desire to preserve lesser-known languages and fill in “gaps” of linguistic knowledge before any of that knowledge was lost or destroyed (Hymes 1961:5). In total, he researched about 33 languages, including Arapho, Mohave, and Ute. (Hymes 1961:5).
Kroeber also served as an expert witness in the case of Indians of California v. the United States, which was a land claim case lasting from 1946 to 1978 handled by the United States Indian Claims Commission (Kuykendall 1978:2). Serving as a witness for the plaintiff in this case, Kroeber claimed:
“It was we Caucasians who again and again rolled a number of related obscure bands or minute villages into the larger package of a 'tribe,' which we then putatively endowed with sovereign power and territorial ownership which the native nationality had mostly never even claimed." (Kuykendall 1978:15)
Kroeber’s contributions to this case, as well as the work of other anthropologists who served as witnesses on both the plaintiff and defendants’ sides, marked a new age in the field of applied anthropology (Stewart 1961:181). This was the first time anthropologists of Kroeber’s caliber (and that of his associates) had testified in front of the Indian Claims Commission, let alone for a case such as this (Stewart 1961:185). Additionally, prior to this point, applied anthropology was a much more niche subject- anthropologists at this time wanted to steer away from “politics” and therefore did not involve themselves in the affairs of Native Americans, so to have a researcher such as Kroeber act as an expert witness for one such case was rather novel (Stewart 1961:184).
Learn More
The Nature of Culture by A.L. Kroeber: https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Nature_of_Culture.html?id=mdjtAAAAMAAJ
An article from University of California San Francisco chronicling the life of Ishi and his legacy: https://history.library.ucsf.edu/ishi.html
A news article discussing the unnaming of the University of California’s Department of Anthropology building, formerly known as Kroeber Hall, due to Kroeber’s controversial treatment of the Native Americans he studied (particularly Ishi): https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/01/26/kroeber-hall-unnamed/
Works Cited
Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2021). A.L. Kroeber. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved November 3, 2021 (https://www.britannica.com/biography/A-L-Kroeber).
Hymes, D. (1961). Alfred Louis Kroeber. Language, 37(1), 1–28. Retrieved from JSTOR on November 3, 2021 (http://www.jstor.org/stable/411247).
Kuykendall, J.K., Vance, J.T., Yarborough, R.W., Pierce, M.H., & Blue B. (1978). United States Indian Claims Commission Final Report. Retrieved on November 4, 2021 (https://narf.org/nill/documents/icc_final_report.pdf).
New World Encyclopedia contributors (2021). Alfred L. Kroeber. New World Encyclopedia. Retrieved November 3, 2021 (https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/p/index.php?title=Alfred_L._Kroeber&oldid=1052711).
Sinha, P., & Sinha, D. P. (1968). Alfred Louis Kroeber: His Contributions to Anthropological Theories. Anthropos, 63/64(5/6), 793–807. Retrieved from JSTOR on November 4, 2021 (http://www.jstor.org/stable/40457223).
Starn, O. (2011). HERE COME THE ANTHROS (AGAIN): The Strange Marriage of Anthropology and Native America. Cultural Anthropology, 26(2), 179–204. Retrieved from JSTOR on November 4, 2021 (http://www.jstor.org/stable/41238319).
Steward, J. H., Gibson, A. J., & Rowe, J. H. (1961). Alfred Louis Kroeber, 1876-1960. American Anthropologist, 63(5), 1038–1087. Retrieved from JSTOR on November 3, 2021 (http://www.jstor.org/stable/667051).
Stewart, O.C. (1961). Kroeber and the Indian Claims Commission Cases. Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers, 25, 181–190. Retrieved on November 4, 2021 (https://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/anthpubs/ucb/text/kas025-013.pdf).
Torres, D. (1984). ISHI. Central States Archaeological Journal, 31(4), 175–179. Retrieved from JSTOR on November 4, 2021 (http://www.jstor.org/stable/43137417).