Daniel Garrison Brinton

Biography

Brinton was born in Thornbury Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. After graduating from Yale University in 1858, he studied at Jefferson Medical College for two years and spent the next year traveling in Europe, continuing his studies at Paris and Heidelberg. During the American Civil War, from 1862 to 1865, he served as a Union army surgeon, acting as surgeon-in-charge of the U.S. Army general hospital at Quincy, Illinois in 1864–1865. At the Battle of Missionary Ridge he suffered a sunstroke, which left him unable to travel in very hot weather and affected his ethnological career.

Following the war, he practiced medicine in West Chester, Pennsylvania, for several years. From 1874 to 1887 he edited the Medical and Surgical Reporter in Philadelphia. In 1884 he became professor of ethnology and archeology at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, and from 1886 until his death he was professor of American linguistics and archeology at the University of Pennsylvania. He held presidencies of several learned societies, including the American Folklore Society.

In his 1895 presidential address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Brinton advocated theories of scientific racism, asserting that races were not equally endowed and that racial characteristics should inform legislation. During his last several years he was an anarchist; in April 1896 he gave a lecture on what anarchists want, and in October 1897 he dined with the anarchist Peter Kropotkin.

Selected works

From 1868 to 1899, Brinton produced many books, pamphlets, brochures, addresses, and magazine articles. His works include American Hero-Myths: A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent, The Myths of the New World (1868), The Religious Sentiment: its Sources and Aim (1876), and Races and Peoples: lectures on the science of ethnography (1890).

He also wrote The American Race (1891), Nagualism, A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History (1894), and A Primer of Mayan Hieroglyphics (1895). He edited and published the Library of Aboriginal American Literature (8 vols., 1882–1890), a significant contribution to American anthropology; six of the eight volumes were edited by Brinton himself. His 1885 work is notable for its role in the Walam Olum controversy.