author
Frank G. (Frank Gouldsmith) Speck
1881–1950
A pioneering American anthropologist, he spent decades documenting the lives, traditions, and land use of Indigenous peoples in the eastern United States and Canada. His work helped shape early anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and remains part of the historical record of Native communities he studied.
3 Audiobooks
Myths and Folk-lore of the Timiskaming Algonquin and Timagami Ojibwa
by Frank G. (Frank Gouldsmith) Speck
Decorative Art of Indian Tribes of Connecticut
by Frank G. (Frank Gouldsmith) Speck
About the author
Born in Brooklyn in 1881 and raised partly in Mohegan, Connecticut, Frank G. Speck developed an early interest in Indigenous cultures that stayed with him throughout his life. He studied with Franz Boas at Columbia University and went on to build his career at the University of Pennsylvania, where he became a central figure in the growth of its anthropology program.
Speck is best known for his ethnographic work with Algonquian and Iroquoian peoples, including communities in the eastern woodlands of the United States and First Nations in eastern Canada. He carried out extensive fieldwork and wrote on social life, art, religion, technology, and hunting territories, aiming to record knowledge that he believed was in danger of being overlooked or lost.
He died in Philadelphia in 1950. Today he is remembered as an influential early anthropologist whose research preserved a large body of material on Native life, even as modern readers also place his work within the limits and assumptions of its time.