Captured heritage

The heyday of anthropological collecting on the Northwest Coast took place between 1875 and the Great Depression, when public and private funds largely collapsed. The scramble for skulls and skeletons, poles, canoes, baskets, feast bowls, and masks, pursued sometimes with respect, but often with rapacity, went on until it seemed that almost everything not nailed down or hidden was gone. This period of intense collecting coincided with the growth of anthropological museums, such as the Smithsonian Institution, the American Museum of Natural History, and Chicago's Field Museum of Natural…