CHAPTER VII: POST 1897 AFTERLIVES
Reproducing the Life Group
In 1899, George Dorsey, ethnology curator at Chicago’s Field Columbian Museum, hired Victoria physician Charles Newcombe to purchase regalia for a Hamat̕sa life group. Dorsey instructed his collector to use Franz Boas’s book as a guide in selecting appropriate material. Using face casts made in British Columbia, including one of Tom Hemasilakw (a member of the Chicago fair troupe), Dorsey produced a life group (left) clearly derived from the one in Boas’s bookplate. In 1915, Samuel Barrett of the Milwaukee Public Museum stopped at the Field Museum en route to make his own collection in Fort Rupert. A decade later, he miniaturized Boas’s Hamat̕sa group (right), directly copying its dance screen motif. Both displays are still on view today.