Bella Bella Tales
New York: The American Folk-Lore Society, 1932. First Edition. Octavo, xiii, 178 pages, publisher's original gilt-lettered red cloth covered boards. Bella Bella Tales, edited by Franz Boas and issued as Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society, Vol. 25, is an important 1932 contribution to Native American folklore, anthropology, and Northwest Coast Indigenous studies. Published by the American Folk-Lore Society in New York, the volume gathers traditional narratives of the Bella Bella, now generally identified with the Heiltsuk people of British Columbia, preserving a body of oral literature that was of lasting significance to Boas’s broader ethnographic work on the peoples of the Northwest Coast. Both a valuable primary source for the study of myth, storytelling, and cultural tradition, and an important document in the history of early twentieth-century anthropology, it remains of interest to collectors of folklore, Indigenous studies, linguistics, and Americana.
Provenance: from the library of Anthony Seeger, distinguished anthropologist and ethnomusicologist, with his bookplate. Spine slightly sunned, minor rubbing, else in very good + condition. Item #246
Price: $80.00