Marius Barbeau

Did You Know?

• The anthropologist Wilson Duff called Barbeau's first three months of fieldwork with the Tsimshian 'one of the most productive field seasons in the history of [North] American anthropology.'
• In 1929, Barbeau removed the Ni'isjoohl totem pole, hand-carved in the 1860s, from a Nisga'a village without the nation's consent; in August 2021, Nisga'a leaders travelled to Edinburgh to request its return.
• Barbeau's controversial theory that Tsimshianic-speaking peoples, Haida, and Tlingit were recent refugees from Genghis Khan's conquests has been discredited by linguistic and DNA evidence.
• Barbeau was an early proponent of recognizing totem poles as world-class high art, though his opinion that they were a post-contact artistic development has been decisively disproved.

Life and career

Barbeau began studies for the priesthood in 1897, completing classical studies at Collège de Ste-Anne-de-la-Pocatière. In 1903 he shifted to law at Université Laval, earning his degree in 1907. As a Rhodes Scholar at Oriel College, Oxford, from 1907 to 1910, he studied anthropology, archaeology, and ethnography under R. R. Marett, also attending the École des hautes études de la Sorbonne and École d'anthropologie in Paris, where Marcel Mauss encouraged him.

In 1911, Barbeau joined the National Museum of Canada as an anthropologist under Edward Sapir, remaining there until his 1949 retirement. He and Sapir were Canada's only two full-time anthropologists at the time. His first fieldwork, in 1911–1912, involved collecting stories and songs from the Huron-Wyandot in Quebec, southern Ontario, and Oklahoma. In 1913, Franz Boas persuaded Barbeau to specialize in French-Canadian folklore, which he began collecting in 1914. That same year he married Marie Ernestine Larocque.

Recognition and legacy

Marius Barbeau wrote extensively, producing academic studies and popular books that brought Quebecois and First Nations oral stories to a wide readership. His works include The Downfall of Temlaham, which blends ancient Gitksan tales with early contact history, and The Golden Phoenix, a collection of French-Canadian fairy tales for children. His research and writings on French-Canadian culture are seen as a key influence on the rise of Quebecois nationalism later in the 1900s.

From 1916 to 1950, he was associate editor of the Journal of American Folklore, editing ten issues dedicated to Canadian folklore. In 1922, he helped found the Canadian Historical Association as its first secretary, and in 1929, he was a founding board member of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. He received the Lorne Pierce Medal in 1950 and was made a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1967. Barbeau Peak, Nunavut’s highest mountain, was named for him in 1969.

In 2005, his broadcasts and ethnological recordings were named a MasterWork by the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada. His personal papers are held at the Canadian Museum of History. The Marius Barbeau Medal was created in 1985 by the Folklore Studies Association of Canada.

Selected works

Barbeau's publications include Huron and Wyandot Mythology (1915), Indian Days in the Canadian Rockies (1923), Folksongs of French Canada (1925, with Edward Sapir), The Downfall of Temlaham (1928), Totem Poles of the Gitksan, Upper Skeena River, British Columbia (1929), How Asia Used to Drip at the Spout into America (1933), Au Coeur de Québec (1934), Cornelius Krieghoff: Pioneer Painter of North America (1934), La merveilleuse aventure de Jacques Cartier (1934), Folk-songs of Old Quebec (1935), Grand'mère raconte (1935), Il était une fois (1935), The Kingdom Saguenay (1936), Québec, ou survit l'ancienne France (1936), Romanceros du Canada (1937, with Marguerite and Raoul d'Harcourt), Maîtres artisans de chez-nous (1942), Les Rêves des chasseurs (1942), The Indian Speaks (1943, with Grace Melvin), Madones canadiennes (1944, with Rina Lasnier), Mountain Cloud (1944), Saintes artisanes (1944–1946), The Aleutian Route of Migration into America (1945), Bear Mother (1945), Ceinture flechée (1945), Alouette! (1946), Alaska Beckons (1947), L'Arbre des rèves (1947), and Totem Poles (1950, reissued 1990).