Morgan, Lewis Henry

Stocking, George W, Jr.

English

Kosmopolis

Morgan, Fison, and an Abortive Field Expedition Through Polynesia

ScholarlyCommons@Penn

History of Anthropology NewsletterVolume 3Issue 1 Winter 1976 Article 41-1-1976Morgan, Fison, and an Abortive Field ExpeditionThrough PolynesiaGeorge W. Stocking Jr.Lewis Henry MorganThis paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. http://repository.upenn.edu/han/vol3/iss1/4For more information, please contact repository@pobox.upenn.edu.4 Other additions to existing collections include approximat£ly fifty cubic feet of records of the River Basin Surveys, rrostl y photographic materials. The archives now has over 250 cubic feet documents covering the period 1946-69 that reflect the history and findings of this large-scale program in salvage archeology. To the papers of the physical anthropologist Ales Hrdlicka have been U.'-"-A'"'"' approximately forty linear feet of photographic material and a large bibliographic card that arranged by subject. A number of small increments to the records the s Department include several early private ethnological , correspondence and photographic materials of several early Smithsonian curators, and a small bundle of materials of the Department's Animal Products Section. Researchers interested in the holdings of the Archives may useful the recently published Catalog to Manuscripts in the National AnthroE,Ological Archives, G. K. Hall and Company, 1975. The cataloged manuscripts represent one-fourth of the holdings. For specific information the collections described above, researchers should write to the Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. c. 20560. Since use of some of collections is restricted, inquiries concern:ing their status should be made advance FOOTNOTES FOR 'I'HE HIS'I't1RY OF ANTHROPOLOGY IDRGAN, FISON, AND AN ABORTIVE FIELD EXPEDITION THROUGH POLYNESIA JJ3wis Henry Morgan's epistolary relationship with the Australian anthropologist Lorimer Pison is well-known :in the history of anthropology, and a of their correspondence has been easily available since vmen Bernhard Stern published "Selections from the Letters of Lorimer Fison and A. W. Howitt to Lewis Henry Morgan" in the .AJ:nerican Mthropologist (32:257-277, 419-453)a At that time, Morgan's letters to his Australian disciples were not available in this com1try, but by the later 1930's copies of these materials were obtained by the University of Rochester Library, whose permission to reproduce the following selections is gratefully acknowledged: Rochester. 15, 1877 My Dear Sir: Our correspondence has reached the flagging stage, and I your 'iAlhich used to come with regularity. I are now at the Fiji Islands, and tha·t you """"''"''"""''""' e-thnolog·ical work there than you did you are in a great field because the organi ation and plan of life so insufficiently done tha.t. one to upon in any 6 by the facts. At ·the end of it is an answer to }-1cLennan8 author of "Primitive Marriage", who has attac];;:ed this explanation with heat and thus provoked a cri ticis"'Ill of his book which otherwise I would not have made, Rochester. ,July 14, 1877 Dear Sir: .. A few days ago (Mr. Woodruff) called to see me on his way to New York, when the matter was again referred t.o" He said at once he would take (you) on a11.d that it wm:lld cos·t you nothing, and he would see -wha·t better he Three of the Professors, Philology 1 Architecture, , cover, after a fashion, but him would require a specialist to the work on consa_nguinity & affinity and ·the plan of domestic life of the Tribes with some knowledge of the Polynesian languages. . If his company fills up and he s·tarts right he be I ·think to make an arrangement that will be to you. I him you were on a Missionary 1 s a family to provide for, and t.bat I did not you vvould be free to join t.he expedition except at a ThtlS the matter stands. I hope you will get a leave absence and be ready to improve this opportunity, should be offered to your sa-tisfaction. Why not continue with the expedi·tion to England you join it, and make your on the way? And then return by way of New York and San Francisco, which would take you through Rochester . •• (The) great desiderata are the the family and ·the pla11. of damestic life of these tribes. The Poly11esian system of consanguinity shows ·that the family was consanguine when the system was formed; but the family must have advanced into the punaluan form. You can thoroughly test th.is hypothesis by runni.ng out the group united ·to subsistence, and finding the limits of the theoretical groups which should be even larger. In sections \'There the Polynesian system verges upon the Turanian ... you may E:.<'{'pect to find tlle pairing family. Here the group united for subsistence vvould be still smaller. The work on the domestic life of savages and barbarians has been so imperfectly done in this respect that we know little about i·t. The evidence of cornmunisTn in living appears at many points. It that we want tllorough work. There no one so well to as yourself. The route expedition places and regions vvhere the evidence still anywhere Groups larger than the man and wife with must be found in any village who live from to s·tudy the size and D.) the Yours L. H. CLIO THE HISTORicAL IMAGINA.TION FIRS'r AMERIC:.AI\f Al\ITfiR.OPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION its not. b"'l.e first i:o bear that name. American independence the following the iVIidwest announcing the a new Ashtabula, Ohio, U.S.A .• , October 1876 

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Morgan, Fison, and an Abortive Field Expedition Through Polynesia

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