Significant Others: Interpersonal and Professional Commitments in Anthropology

Jaime de Angulo and Alfred Kroeber: Bohemians and Bourgeois in Berkeley Anthropology

JAIME DE ANGULO AND ALFRED KROEBER: Bohemians and Bourgeois in Berkeley Anthropology ROBERT BRIGHTMAN After recounting an incident of “stench and scandal” involving anthropology faculty and graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley in 1926, Alfred Kroeber concluded that “every month passed makes me more unrelenting to Jaime” (KP:AK/B. Rudovic Pinner 5/9/26). Some twenty-five years later, Jaime de Angulo expressed succinctly to Ezra Pound his mature reflections on Kroeber: “He is a Bastard” (GA 429). Alfred Kroeber (1876–1960) established the Department of Anthropology at the University of California and was, after Franz Boas, the central figure in the theoretical agendas and institutional structures of American anthropology in his time. Jaime de Angulo (1887–1950) was a rancher, medical researcher, author, and scholar without formal portfolio who, peripheral position notwithstanding , made substantial contributions to the linguistics and ethnology of Native California and Mexico. Angulo’s involvement with anthropology appears in retrospect to have been dominated by patterns of paradox and irony. Possessing neither formal academic credentials nor any inclination to acquire them, and exhibiting, moreover , personal dispositions at some variance with then-prevailing notions of respectability , Angulo aspired both to professional recognition, which he readily achieved, and to a permanent position within academic anthropology, which forever eluded him. Though they were disinclined either to procure credentials for Angulo or to Robert Brightman is Greenberg Professor of Native American Studies in the Department of Anthropology at Reed College. He is currently conducting research on huntergatherer castes in South Asia, and on a variety of topics in the urban anthropology of North America. 158 appoint him to academic positions, Kroeber, Boas, and Edward Sapir nevertheless made extensive use of his professional abilities. Angulo’s de jure exclusion from anthropology was thus complemented by a considerable measure of de facto inclusion. Working intermittently by means of small grants irregularly disbursed, he composed grammatical sketches of at least seventeen indigenous languages of California and Mexico (eleven published), published thirteen ethnological and eighteen linguistic articles, and left an unpublished legacy of thirty-four additional linguistic manuscripts (LH 521–29; GA 453–58). Kroeber and Boas also exploited his pedagogical skills and his contacts in the California Indian rancherías, periodically referring graduate students to him for informal instruction and placement. Angulo published in leading journals and corresponded with major figures in the discipline. With all of this, the only teaching position he held was a summer lectureship at Berkeley in 1920. The article is composed of five parts. Following (1) a summary of Angulo’s life and scholarly career, subsequent sections revisit certain career contexts in greater detail in order to evaluate two explanations for his marginalization: that (2) he lacked professional credentials and expertise, and that (3) his bohemianism adversely affected his career in the context of his personal relations with Kroeber. The following sections examine (4) Angulo’s tactics in accommodating himself to academia and pursuing a scholarly vocation outside of it, and (5) certain paradoxical characteristics of anthropology and anthropologists exemplified in the Angulo-Kroeber relationship. Angulo on the Margins of Academia Born in Paris to aristocratic Spanish parents in 1887, Angulo received there (unappreciatively) a Jesuit education, and immigrated to America in 1905, intent on a career in ranching. In 1906, he began medical studies at Cooper Union in San Francisco, later transferring to Johns Hopkins University where he met and married his fellow student, Cary Fink. Angulo received his medical degree in 1911 and relocated with Fink to California in 1913, where they settled in Carmel. After a period of medical research, Angulo again looked into stock raising. His interests in the Indian people of California began when he met some Achumawis during a brief involvement in a ranch in Modoc County in 1914: “The sight of sagebrush forever is conducive to meditation but of a rather passive inchoate kind. Humanity is not pleasing. It sounds an abysmal depth of vulgarity, from which I find relief sometimes in the company of Indians. Only their bodies are dirty” (GA 88). Divested in Modoc County, Angulo next acquired a homestead in what was then the coastal wilderness south of Big Sur. Thereafter he moved between Big Sur, Carmel, San Francisco, and Berkeley. In 1915, increasingly estranged from Jaime de Angulo and Alfred Kroeber 159 Jaime de Angulo and his Achumawi friend and consultant Old Blind Hall, near Alturas, California , early 1920s. (Courtesy Gui...