Featured Video: “Glimpse Of Life Among The Catawba And Cherokee Indians Of The Carolinas” (1927)

A 1908 photo of a Catawba potter. Speck's film about the tribe looks at its outstanding skill with the craft.

According to the Internet Archive, Dr. Frank Gouldsmith Speck (1881-1950) was the founder of the Anthropology department at the University of Pennsylvania in 1910 and remained chairman of the department for 40 years.

Speck was born in Brooklyn and acquired an interest in Native American culture through a family friend who was of indigenous American descent. Speck rightly realized that the population decline among Native tribes made urgent his work to record their culture. In this 19-minute film, he profiles the Catawba hunting, using medicine, meeting a Mormon missionary and creating pottery. Visit the Internet Archive site to view the film.

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