Harriman-Alaska-Expedition

The Harriman Alaska Expedition was organized by industrialist Edward Henry Harriman expedition to the coastal waters of Alaska in 1899.

Harriman chartered for the trip, the ship George W. Elder and invited well-known scientists such as John Muir, Clinton Hart Merriam, Grove Karl Gilbert, George Bird Grinnell, William Trelease, Theodore Pergande, Edward Curtis, Robert Ridgway and William Emerson Ritter to before place to explore flora and fauna. In the period from 31 May to 30 July 1899, over 5000 photographs that documented the findings and progress of the expedition. Among other things, the College Fjord was discovered in the north of Prince William Sound. From 1910, the expedition reports, upon which publications in editorship Grinnell published.

With a gramophone Harriman played loud music when the ship started off villages and settlements along the coast. He also used this time advanced equipment to make one of the few existing today records the dying Eyak language. The receiving cylinder was lost after the end of the expedition long. Anthony Seeger from the Archives of Traditional Music at Indiana University found him and discovered him in 1985 at a conference in Sapporo, Japan before. The linguist Michael Krauss, a specialist in Na - Dene languages ​​, recognized the language.

The expedition was accused of looting of artifacts of the Tlingit. So to have been stolen seven or eight totem poles in Cape Fox in Ketchikan and sold to various universities and museums.