12/28/2023 0 Comments Frank speekSpeck found that his work constituted, in effect, a "salvage operation" to try to capture ethnological material during a time of great stress for Indigenous people. The pressures of relocation, boarding schools, cultural assimilation, and economic marginalization had, however, caused many Native American people to lose traditional lands, material, and culture. Speck was unique among many anthropologists of his generation in choosing to study American Indians close to home, rather than people of more distant lands. He headed the Department for four decades, stepping down only after his health failed in 1949. By 1913, after a contentious split with Penn Museum Director Gordon, Speck was appointed as Chair of the Department. Speck received a series of re-appointments in his dual position of Assistant in Ethnology/Instructor of Anthropology until 1912, when he was appointed as a full-time faculty member in the new Department of Anthropology. The Harrison Fellowship was next held in 1908 by another of Boas's students, Edward Sapir, a specialist in linguistic anthropology. Speck was assigned to teach the introductory course in Anthropology. Assistant Curator of Archaeology and Ethnology George Byron Gordon arranged for Speck to receive a dual appointment, as both Assistant in Ethnology at the University Museum, and Instructor of Anthropology for the University. Speck a one-year George Lieb Harrison Fellowship as a research fellow at the University Museum (now the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology). In 1907, the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) awarded Frank G. This ethnography focused on the Yuchi people of Oklahoma, among whom he worked in 1904, 1905, and 1908. from the University of Pennsylvania (1908), with his dissertation supervised by Boas. From 1905 to 1908, he continued his work on Yuchi data, receiving his Ph.D. He received his BA from Columbia in 1904, and proceeded to initiate fieldwork among the Yuchi Indians, receiving his M.A. Īt Columbia University, Speck found his direction for life study as an anthropological ethnographer. There is, however, no question that Speck's "interests in literature, natural history and Native American linguistics" were inspired by his early encounters with Mohegan people. Modern sources suggest that Speck was raised by Fidelia, but there is no evidence in Mohegan tribal records to support this notion. Speck took a particular interest in Fidelia Fielding, an elderly widow who (unlike most of her neighbors) still fluently spoke the Mohegan Pequot language. Burrill Fielding, Jerome Roscoe Skeesucks, and Edwin Fowler introduced him to about 80 other members of their tribe living in Uncasville, near Fort Shantok, in Mohegan, Connecticut. Speck was surprised to encounter a group of Mohegan Indian young men about his own age. After working closely with professor and linguist John Dyneley Prince, who encouraged his interests in Native American Indian language and culture, he was introduced to anthropologist Franz Boas.Īround 1900, during a summer camping trip to Fort Shantok, Connecticut, while on break from Columbia. He was accepted into Columbia University in 1899. These interests inspired him to pursue anthropological studies. Īs a young man, Frank developed an affinity for forests and swamps and wild landscapes, and for the Native people who lived in these locales. The family lived in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, also keeping a summer home near Gloucester, Massachusetts. Around 1910, Frank married Florence Insley, from Rockland, New York, and they raised three children: Frank S., Alberta R., and Virgina C. The Speck family was well-to-do, with live-in servants that included a German woman, Anna Muller, and a mixed Native American/African American woman, Gussie Giles from South Carolina. (8 years younger), and brother Reinhard S. and Hattie Speck, was raised in urban settings (in Brooklyn, New York and Hackensack, New Jersey), with occasional summer family sojourns to rural Connecticut.
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