Haida Songs Author:John R. Swanton The Haida are a Canadian Native American group which lives on the Queen Charlotte Islands, just off the coast of British Columbia. This is the triangular archipelago which looks like it is a piece broken off of Alaska. This collection of Haida songs, collected early in the 20th century, gives many insights into Haida culture, including class div... more »isions, belief in reincarnation, and the status of women. This etext is presented with the full Haida interlinear text. (Quote from sacred-texts.com)
About the Author
John Reed Swanton (1873 - 1958)
John Reed Swanton (19 February 1873 - 2 May 1958) was an American anthropologist who worked with Native American peoples throughout the United States.
Born in Gardiner, Maine, Swanton's work in the fields of ethnology and ethnohistory is well recognized. He is particularly noted for his work with indigenous peoples of the Southeast and Pacific Northwest. He attended Harvard University from which he earned a Masters in 1897 and a doctorate in 1900. His mentor was the famous Franz Boas, whose influence on Swanton is clear. Following his education, he did fieldwork in the Northwest, and then began working for the Bureau of American Ethnology, where he remained employed for almost 40 years.
In his early career in the Northwest, he mostly worked with the Tlingit and Haida. He produced two extensive compilations of Haida stories and myths, and transcribed many of them in Haida. These transcriptions have served as the basis for Robert Bringhurst's recent (1999) translation of the poetry of Haida mythtellers Skaay and Gandl. Swanton spent roughly a year with the Haida.
After that, Swanton studied Muskogean speaking peoples in Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. He published extensively on the Creek people« less