Frank Gouldsmith Speck

Frank Gouldsmith Speck

Frank Gouldsmith Speck, anthropologist (b at Brooklyn, NY 8 Nov 1881; d at Philadelphia, Pa 6 Feb 1950). He pioneered study of the Algonquian peoples of eastern Canada and New England. After studying under Franz BOAS at Columbia, he taught at University of Pennsylvania from 1909 and began a lifelong project of recording the changing cultures of the Algonquians and their neighbours. He collected Algonquian artifacts for the National Museum of Canada, recorded their myths and customs, and mapped their hunting territories. His maps of individual and band hunting territories documented Algonquian land rights. Research of this kind has become crucial to native LAND CLAIMS, as Speck predicted.