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Frank Gouldsmith Speck (November 8, 1881February 6, 1950) was an American anthropologist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in the Algonquian and Iroquoian peoples among the Eastern Woodland Native Americans of the United States and First Nations peoples of eastern boreal Canada.
As a young man, Frank developed an affinity for forests and swamps and wild landscapes, and for the Native people who lived in these locales. These interests inspired him to pursue anthropological studies. He was accepted into Columbia University in 1899. After working closely with professor and linguist John Dyneley Prince, who encouraged his interests in Native American Indian language and culture, he was introduced to anthropologist Franz Boas.
Around 1900, during a summer camping trip to Fort Shantok, Connecticut, while on break from Columbia. Speck was surprised to encounter a group of Mohegan Indian young men about his own age. Burrill Fielding, Jerome Roscoe Skeesucks, and Edwin Fowler introduced him to about 80 other members of their tribe living in Uncasville, near Fort Shantok, in Mohegan, Connecticut.Gladys Tantaquidgeon, "Frank Speck," unpublished reminiscence in the Gladys Tantaquidgeon Papers, Tantaquidgeon Indian Museum. Edited and reprinted as "An Affectionate Portrait of Frank Speck," in Dawnland Voices: An Anthology of Indigenous Writing from New England. Siobhan Senier, ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press Speck took a particular interest in Fidelia Fielding, an elderly widow who (unlike most of her neighbors) still fluently spoke the Mohegan Pequot language. Modern sources suggest that Speck was raised by Fidelia,Loren Eiseley (c 1975), All The Strange Hours, "Though Frank's mother was still living when I knew him, there had been a time in childhood when, in ill health, he had been entrusted to the care of an old Mohegan woman. Why this was i never completely understood, save that this foster mother was a family friend". ch 9. pg. 92. Charles Scribner & Sons/ New York, but there is no evidence in Mohegan tribal records to support this notion.Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel (2018) "Forward." In Savage Kin: Indigenous Informants and American Anthropologists, by Margaret M. Bruchac, pp. ix-xiii. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. There is, however, no question that Speck's "interests in literature, natural history and Native American linguistics" were inspired by his early encounters with Mohegan people.Margaret M. Bruchac (2018) "Indian Stories: Gladys Tantaquidgeon and Frank Speck." In Savage Kin: Indigenous Informants and American Anthropologists, pp. 140-175. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
At Columbia University, Speck found his direction for life study as an anthropological ethnographer. He received his BA from Columbia in 1904, and proceeded to initiate fieldwork among the Yuchi Indians, receiving his M.A. in 1905. "Frank Gouldsmith Speck Papers: Biographical Note", University of Pennsylvania Archives, accessed 17 Feb 2009 From 1905 to 1908, he continued his work on Yuchi data, receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania (1908), with his dissertation supervised by Boas. This ethnography focused on the Yuchi of Oklahoma, among whom he worked in 1904, 1905, and 1908.Jason Baird Jackson. 2004. Introduction. In Ethnology of the Yuchi Indians, v-xvi. Bison Books Edition. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Frank G. Speck 1909. Ethnology of the Yuchi Indians. Philadelphia: The University Museum, University of Pennsylvania.
Speck received a series of re-appointments in his dual position of Assistant in Ethnology/Instructor of Anthropology until 1912, when he was appointed as a full-time faculty member in the new Department of Anthropology. By 1913, after a contentious split with Penn Museum Director Gordon, Speck was appointed as chair of the department.University of Pennsylvania to Frank G. Speck 1911-1932, Speck Papers, Subcollection I, Series II, Biographical Material, box 20, American Philosophical Society. Notices of Speck's appointments can also be found in the University of Pennsylvania Museum Board of Managers Minutes, June 1905-June 1910, and in the Director's Letterbooks for 1907-1913, Penn Museum Archives. He headed the department for four decades, stepping down only after his health failed in 1949.
Speck was unique among many anthropologists of his generation in choosing to study American Indians close to home, rather than people of more distant lands. The pressures of relocation, boarding schools, cultural assimilation, and economic marginalization had, however, caused many Native American people to lose traditional lands, material, and culture. Speck found that his work constituted, in effect, a "salvage operation" to try to capture ethnological material during a time of great stress for Indigenous people. He began his efforts among Native Americans in New England, and soon expanded to regions as far afield as Labrador and Ontario in Canada. "Frank G. Speck Papers, 1903-1950" , American Philosophical Society Website, accessed 16 Feb 2009
Among his students at Penn, Speck nurtured a generation of prominent anthropologists, including: A. Irving Hallowell, Anthony F. C. Wallace, Arthur Huff Fauset, and Loren Eiseley, among many others. Speck also sponsored a few Native American students at Penn: his research assistant Gladys Tantaquidgeon and, for a brief time, Molly Spotted Elk.Bunny McBride. Molly Spotted Elk: Penobscot in Paris (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995) p. 57-63 In 1924, Speck arranged to enroll Tantaquidgeon in Penn's College Courses for Teachers. Over time, their positions evolved from teacher/student to intellectual colleagues, and he encouraged her to take charge of independent research projects among Delaware, Wampanoag, and Mohegan peoples.Melissa Jayne Fawcett. Medicine Trail: The Life and Lessons of Gladys Tantaquidgeon. University of Arizona Press (2000). Margaret Bruchac has examined the academic relationship between Frank Speck and Gladys Tantaquidgeon in her book called Savage Kin.
Speck especially loved fieldwork and typically camped and traveled with the people he studied. During an era of extreme social stratification and white elitism, Speck did not hesitate to invite his Native informants to join him in his field research, to offer lectures in his classroom, and to stay in his home.Kenneth Heuer. Loren C. Eiseley. The Lost Notebooks of Loren Eiseley. Edited and with a reminiscence by Kenneth Heuer. Boston, MA: Little, Brown (1987). Colleagues and students like Ernest Dodge, Carl Weslager, Loren Eisely, and Edmund Carpenter later recalled that Speck was extraordinarily accepting of, and seemed most comfortable among, Indians and other people of color.Carl A. Weslager. "The Unforgettable Frank Speck," pp. 52-76 in The Life and Times of Frank G. Speck, 1881-1950, Roy Blankenship, ed. Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Department of Anthropology (1991). William Fenton recalled that Speck would often absent himself from academic functions when Native American informants came to visit him in Philadelphia.William N. Fenton, "Frank G. Speck's Anthropology," pp. 9-37 in The Life and Times of Frank G. Speck, 1881-1950, Roy Blankenship, ed. Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Department of Anthropology (1991).
During his fieldwork with the Iroquois, Speck became close to members of the Seneca Nation, who marked their relationship by giving him the name Gahehdagowa ('Great Porcupine') when he was adopted into the Turtle clan of the Seneca people. Such adoptions were a means of assigning a kinship position to outsiders who were welcome guests; they did not, however, constitute tribal membership. Speck was particularly interested in how family and kinship systems underlay tribal organizations and relations to homelands and natural resources. In Canada, he developed maps of individual family bands' hunting territories to document Algonquian land rights. These later became crucial to Native American land claims.Frank Speck, "The Family Hunting Band as the Basis of Algonquian Social Organization", Cultural Ecology, ed. by Bruce Cox (1973); Naskapi (1935, reprint 1977)
From the 1920s through the 1940s, Speck also studied the Cherokee in the Southeast United States and Oklahoma. Through the years, he worked extensively with tribal elder Will West Long of Big Cove, western North Carolina. Speck credited Long as co-author of his 1951 book Cherokee Dance and Drama, along with his colleague Leonard Broom.Cherokee References in Frank G. Speck Papers 1903-1950, Mss. Ms. Collection 126, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, PA.
Speck was elected to numerous professional associations, where he took an active role on committees, such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Anthropological Association, American Ethnological Society, Geographical Society of Philadelphia, and Archaeological Society of North Carolina (honorary). He conducted work for the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.Frank G. Speck Papers 1903-1950, Mss. Ms. Collection 126, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, PA.
Speck's papers were collected and archived by the American Philosophical Society, of which he was a member. Frank G. Speck Papers 1903-1950, Mss. Ms. Collection 126, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, PA. There are also collections of his papers at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec and at the Phillips Library of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts."Frank G. Speck's Contributions to the Understanding of Mi'kmaq Land Use, Leadership, and Land Management," 'Ethnohistory' 46:3 (summer 1999): 485.
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