author

Lucien M. (Lucien McShan) Turner

An Army Signal Corps observer turned field naturalist, he spent years in Alaska and Labrador gathering notes, specimens, and firsthand observations that later fed into important early ethnographic and natural history writing. His work preserves a vivid record of northern environments and Indigenous communities as seen through a 19th-century scientific lens.

1 Audiobook

Ethnology of the Ungava District, Hudson Bay Territory Eleventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1889-1890, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1894, pages 159-350

Ethnology of the Ungava District, Hudson Bay Territory Eleventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1889-1890, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1894, pages 159-350

by Lucien M. (Lucien McShan) Turner

About the author

Lucien McShan Turner was an American ethnologist and naturalist active in the late 1800s. Records from the Smithsonian identify him as a member of the Army Signal Corps who collected natural history and ethnological material for the United States National Museum.

From 1874 to 1877 he served as a meteorological observer at St. Michael, Alaska, and from 1878 to 1881 he trained observers in the Aleutians. He later worked in Labrador and Ungava during the International Polar Year era, continuing the kind of close field observation that shaped both his scientific collecting and his writing.

Turner is especially remembered for Contributions to the Natural History of Alaska and for ethnographic work published from his northern field experience. Today, his papers and collections remain useful to historians, anthropologists, and readers interested in the early documentation of Alaska, Labrador, and Arctic life.