author
George Thornton Emmons
1852–1945
A U.S. Navy lieutenant whose service in Alaska led to a lifelong study of Tlingit and other Indigenous cultures of the North Pacific Coast. His photographs, field notes, and vast artifact collections helped preserve an important record of Native life and art.
1 Audiobook
The Whale House of the Chilkat
by George Thornton Emmons
About the author
George Thornton Emmons (1852–1945) was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1874. He served in the Navy for nearly twenty-five years, including extended assignments in Alaska during the 1880s and 1890s. While stationed in Sitka, he developed a deep interest in the Tlingit and Tahltan peoples and began documenting their communities, traditions, and material culture.
Emmons collected more than 11,000 objects, many of which entered the collections of the American Museum of Natural History and the Museum of the American Indian. He also worked with the Alaska exhibit at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and produced photographs and studies of Indigenous communities in Alaska and British Columbia. His major work, The Tlingit Indians, was left unfinished at his death and was later completed and edited by anthropologist Frederica de Laguna, with publication in 1991.