The Lost Field Notes of Franklin R. Johnston's Life and Work Among the American Indians [VINTAGE 1997]

Johnston, Franklin R.

Published by First Glance Books, Cobb, California, 1997

About this Item

Fine condition glossy oversized (folio, just over 12 inches tall) black-and-white photographic boards contained in a fine condition photographic dust jacket. Includes Introduction; Preface; Foreword and Index. Profusely illustrated with black-and-white photographs, drawings, portrait photographic frontispiece, and color illustrated front and rear endpapers. A small rectangular former owner name sticker affixed to the upper edge of the first front endpaper. "Who was Franklin Robert Johnston and why is he important? He was an intensely curious man, and he was an adventurer with a passion for archeology and a deep interest in understanding the lives and cultures of the indigenous people of America. Most important, he documented the details of a vanishing culture before the primary source material was lost forever. Perhaps the best way to introduce Franklin Johnston and his work is through a story of an incident that took place in the late 1930s. An archeology professor of great academic eminence had just reviewed the very field notes that are published in this book. He was obviously very intrigued, but something bothered him. Looking across his big university office desk and thoughtfully removing his half-frame reading glasses, he asked Johnston: "Where are your sources? You haven't cited your sources." Johnston looked back at him and said quietly: "I was there. I saw it all with my own eyes." Johnston kenw Geronimo and was perhaps the last serious scholar to interview the legendary Apache chief before his death in 1909. Johnston spoke with Native Americans in their own languages, and he could read the Native American petroglyphs of the Southwest as easily as he could read The New York Times. Johnston went on to spend much of the decades of the 1920s and 1930s amassing an important body of data about Native Americans. He also created the largest private collection of Native American artifacts in the western United States, and was the only man to film the mysterious Hopi Snake Dance. He was president of the Archaeology Society of Southern California and edited its bulletin, which contained many articles adapted from the field notes contained herein. Franklin Robert Johnston was a member of the Adventurers' Club - along with Richard Byrd and Robert Peary - and was featured on the "I Search For Adventure" television series in the 1950s. Johston led expeditions to the Cocos Islands off Sumatra, and located the lost treasure of the pirate Captain Henry Morgan in Costa Rica. Recently rediscovered after more than half a century, his field notes were compiled during the early decades of the twentieth century and edited into manuscript form between 1934 and 1937, when he was editing the bulletin of the Archeology Society of Southern California. Johnston lived and worked among the Native Americans from 1905 through 1939, carefully and meticulously documenting the experience and his discoveries. In addition to Johnston's text, based on his notes, we have used over 200 of the pen and ink drawings that he executed in the field during the decades before 1939. This work is truly one of the most important finds in ethnography to come to light in recent years. Some of Johnston's ideas and conclusions may be controversial, but we must remember that they are based on his own firsthand observations and from his conversations and interviews with Native Americans themselves. He was there. He saw it with his own eyes and heard it with his own ears." - from the inner front and rear jacket flaps.

Seller Inventory # 010101

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Lost Field Notes of Franklin R. Johnston's Life and Work Among the American Indians [VINTAGE 1997]
• Publisher: First Glance Books, Cobb, California
• Publication Date: 1997
• Language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine