George Hunt (ethnologist)

George Hunt
George Hunt in 1898
Born	(1854-02-14)February 14, 1854 Fort Rupert, B.C.
Died	1933 Fort Rupert, B.C.
Occupation	Ethnologist, Linguist, Artist
Parent(s)	Robert Hunt, Mary Ebbetts (Anislaga)

George Hunt (February 14, 1854 – 1933) (Tlingit) was a consultant to the American anthropologist Franz Boas; through his contributions he is considered a linguist and ethnologist in his own right. He was Tlingit-English by birth and learned both those languages. Growing up with his parents at Fort Rupert, British Columbia in Kwakwaka'wakw territory, he learned their language and culture as well. Through marriage and adoption he became an expert on the traditions of the Kwakwaka'wakw (then known as "Kwakiutl") of coastal British Columbia.

Working with Boas, Hunt collected hundreds of items for an exhibit of the Kwakiutl culture for the World Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, and accompanied 17 people of the tribe there. Boas taught Hunt to write in Kwakiutl, and the native ethnologist wrote thousands of pages of description of Kwakiutl culture over the next decades.

George Hunt was born in 1854 at Fort Rupert, British Columbia (B.C.), the second of eleven children of Robert Hunt, a Hudson's Bay Company fur trader from Dorset, England, and Mary Ebbetts (Ansnaq) (1823-1919), a member of the Raven clan of the Taantakwáan (Tongass) tribe of the Tlingit nation of what is now southeastern Alaska. Robert and Mary (who was of mixed race) were married at the original Fort Simpson, on the Nass River in northwestern B.C.

Mary Hunt was influential among the Kwakwaka'wakw at Fort Rupert, and introduced concepts of Tlingit hereditary privileges and artistic motifs (reflected on totem poles) into the local society. Hunt learned his mother's language and culture, as well as English and elements of his father's culture. Learning the Kwakwaka'wakw language and the local area from the Kwakwaka'wakw people, he became an interpreter and guide.