"CHIEF AND GREED is a fascinating book.. By mustering your recollections, you have made an invaluable contribution to the history of American anthropology." Claude Levi-Strauss, Laboratoire D'Anthropologie Sociale.

TWO ESSAYS: CHIEF & GREED
By: Edmund Carpenter, PhD

An insightful biography of financier and collector, George Heye (1874-1957), and history of his Museum of the American Indian, New York, NY, as told by a noted anthropologist who was for 11 years a Member of its board. The work is carefully structured, emphasizing both high and low points of the behavior of persons associated with the MAI until its recent transformation into the National Museum of the American Indian. The narrative is punctuated by discussions of specific artifacts – some of them masterworks – that were curated by Heye and the MAI.

"Writing with the spare elegance of the Eskimo art he studied earlier in his career, Edmund Carpenter has now produced a work set much closer to home – a work that must be read and deeply pondered. TWO ESSAYS is both an uncanny perspective on the social history of wealth, privilege and corruption, and an incisive ethnographic account about a museum and American anthropology in the twentieth century." R. Judkins, Dept. of Anthropology, State University of New York College at Geneseo.

"It is a shocking tale, worsening as the narration proceeds... [I] have been overwhelmed again by the extraordinary investigative diligence that lies behind each statement of fact: the labour it must have cost you is surely inestimable." Rodney Needham, All Souls College, Oxford.

"Belated thanks to your welcome gift of Chief and Greed... Incidentally I write this from my hideout in the North Georgia Mountains, about halfway between Peachtree site, outside of Murphy(where Turbyfill originated) and Nacoochee Mound – another of Heye's hunting grounds. Your portrayal accumulated valuable material that might otherwise be lost, and on the other hand, lost material that should have been better preserved and contextualized." Raymond D. Fogelson, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago.

Some Topics Covered (illustrations):
Junius Bird's recollections of George Heye; shrunken heads (bodies); sacred mat of the Ojibwa; Eskimo map of Baffinland; Adena burials at Lake Champlain, Vermont; a Native American warclub from 17th century Massachusetts; a Native American warclub owned by Sir William Johnson; Tsimshian wooden mask – a tribal art masterpiece; Iroquois “September morn” figurines; Iroquois drinking and smoking; shaman's mask of the Tsimshian; wampun belts of the Iroquois; Hudson River petroglyph.

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