The Jesup North Pacific Expedition and the Interior Plateau

"The Jesup North Pacific Expedition (1897-1902) was a major anthropological expedition to Siberia, Alaska, and the northwest coast of Canada," with Franz Boas as scientific director. Its purpose was to investigate the relationships among the peoples on both sides of the North Pacific.

In British Columbia the expedition's fieldwork examined the Tsilhqot'in, Haida, Heiltsuk, Kwakwaka'wakw, St'at'imc (Lillooet), Nlaka'pamux (Thompson) and Syilx (Okanagan). The Interior Salish research fell above all to James Teit of Spences Bridge, whose monographs on the Thompson (1900), the Lillooet (1906) and the Shuswap (1909) appeared in the expedition's publication series as Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History.

The expedition produced "valuable collections of artifacts and photographs" and "numerous important ethnographies" published from 1905 into the 1930s. Some 1,200 photographs were taken, the majority by Dina Brodsky, whose contributions went unpaid; images of rock art and archaeological materials were among them.

For the Secwepemc, the expedition's lasting product is Teit's The Shuswap, a 346-page treatise in 15 chapters covering "nearly all aspects of their lives," closing with 107 recorded oral narratives. Its descriptions and plates of basketry, clothing and designs remain the baseline documentation against which Secwepemc material art history is written.

The collections gathered in this era now sit in institutions such as the American Museum of Natural History, far from the communities that made them. Their documentation is invaluable; their future, including questions of access, interpretation and return, is a live conversation between museums and the nations concerned.