Ethnographer Stewart Culin and "Games of the North American Indians"

Summary

This talk appraises the contribution of Stewart Culin, a self-taught ethnographer, to the study of games of indigenous North Americans. His exhaustive survey, published in 1907 by the Bureau of American Ethnology, remains the single comprehensive resource for archaeologists seeking to examine games in the prehistoric record and as such is well exemplified by the presentations in this symposium. Culin’s study, initiated in collaboration with Frank Hamilton Cushing, began in 1891 in connection with the 1983 World’s Fair in Chicago and eventually led to the encyclopedic publication Games of the North American Indians. This invaluable publication can easily be viewed as a paragon of the meticulous research methodology typical of the peak period of ethnological collecting and museum exhibition.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Games People Play: Prehistoric Games of Indigenous North Americans

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