Métraux, Alfred
Métraux, Alfred
Alfred Métraux (1902-1963) was a pioneer in South American ethnohistory, a student of African culture in the New World, and a specialist in the field of race relations. He was also instrumental in promoting the role of the social sciences in the United Nations and its specialized agencies.
Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, Métraux spent most of his childhood in Argentina, where his Swiss father was a well-known surgeon practicing in the city of Mendoza. He received his secondary and university education in Europe, studying at the Gymnasium in Lausanne, and in Paris at the École Nation ale des Chartes, the École Nation ale des Langues Orientales, the École Pratique des Hautes Études, and finally the Sorbonne, from which he received a doctoral degree in 1928. He also studied briefly in Göteborg, Sweden. Among his teachers were Marcel Mauss, Paul Rivet, and Erland Nordenskiùld. Métraux also acknowledged the influence of Father John M. Cooper of the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., with whom he corresponded for many years. It was Cooper who introduced him to the American school of cultural anthropology, and Métraux was to combine the best of both the European and the American traditions of historical anthropology in his work.
His professional career was equally cosmopolitan. He was the first director, from 1928 to 1934, of the Institute of Ethnology at the University of Tucumán in Argentina. In 1934/1935, he led a French expedition to Easter Island. From 1936 to 1938 he was a fellow of the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, and the following year he became the Bishop Museum visiting professor at Yale University. In 1939 he returned for a year to Argentina and Bolivia for field research as a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation. Then he went back to Yale, where he worked with South American data on the Cross Cultural Survey (now Human Relations Area Files). In 1941 he joined the staff of the Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution, and there he played an important role from 1941 to 1945 by editing and writing for the monumental Handbook of South American Indians (Steward 1946-1959). In addition, Métraux taught at the University of California at Berkeley, the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia of Mexico, the Colegio Nacional de México, the Facultad Latino-Americana de Ciencias Sociales in Santiago, Chile, and the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris.
From 1946 until his retirement in 1962, Métraux served in various capacities for the United Nations and for UNESCO. As a representative of UNESCO he took part in the Hylean Amazon Project in 1947/1948 and in the Marbial Valley (Haiti) anthropological survey in 1949/1950. In cooperation with personnel from the International Labour Office, he studied the internal migrations of the Aymara- and Quechua-speaking Indians of Bolivia in 1954. He was primarily responsible for the publication by UNESCO, between 1950 and 1958, of a series of pamphlets, monographs, and books on the concept of race and on race and minority relations. As a staff member of the department of social science of UNESCO he was constantly in touch with social science research throughout the world.
Métraux contributed most to the social sciences in the field of ethnohistory. Perhaps no other writer contributed more pages to the Handbook of South American Indians. Most of these contributions are derived from documentary sources and are models of judicious historical reconstruction. His two books on the Tupinambá (1928a; 1928b) are classics in the ethnohistory of the South American Indian. In these two books, he drew upon a wide range of sixteenth- to eighteenth-century sources, written in French, Portuguese, and Spanish, to present a coherent picture of the material and socioreligious life of the extinct coastal tribes of Brazil known generically as the Tupinambá. His books are a contribution not only to South American ethnography but also to Brazilian history. The Tupinamba were the first Brazilian Indians encountered by the Portuguese upon their arrival in the New World. Their language, Tupí-Guaraní, became the lingua franca for missionaries, and their names for the flora, fauna, and topographical features became part of the Portuguese language as spoken in Brazil. From these coastal Indians, the Europeans learned to adapt to the New World environment, and much of the Indians’ religious belief and mythology be-came a part of Brazilian folklore.
Métraux was also a sensitive and indefatigable field researcher among primitive and peasant societies of Latin America. He published numerous monographs and articles reporting upon his field research over a period of 25 years (see Wagley 1964 for his complete bibliography). His major field research was carried out in the Argentine Chaco and in Haiti. One piece of work in the Chaco stands out, his study of the mythology of the Toba and Pilagá Indians (1946), in which he made use of his vast knowledge of South American ethnology to draw parallels in theme and plot between Chaco mythology and that of the Andean region. Making a Living in the Marbial Valley, Haiti (1951) is a careful and detailed ecological study stressing the effects of minifundia (overparcelization), soil erosion, and overpopulation on the peasant society of one Haitian valley. In this report, such aspects of social life as cooperative work groups, marriage and household groups, and religion and religious organizations are shown in relation to the ecological adjustment.
He also wrote often for the public at large, both books and articles in a variety of journals. Most of his popular writing was originally in French, later translated into English. It was always solidly based upon his own bibliographical and field research; this is also true of his books on Easter Island (1940; 1941). In these books he disagreed with the theories both of American Indian and of Asian origin of the Easter Island stone sculpture. He took the view that the Easter Islanders are both physically and culturally Polynesian and that their art forms are likewise of local origin. Similarly, his book on Haitian voodoo (1958) is based upon many field trips to Haiti as well as on written sources. It is a study of the persistence of African fetish cults and African belief in Haiti and the relationship of this African religion, derived mainly from the Dahomeans of west Africa, to Catholicism. He gave an objective picture of voodoo as an orderly and complex religious system rather than a wild set of heathen orgies, as it had often been described [seeCaribbean Society].
Charles Wagley
[See alsoHistory, article on Ethnohistory; and the biographies ofCooper; Mauss; Nordenskiöld; Rivet.]
WORKS BY MÉTRAUX
1928a La civilisation matérielle des tribus Tupi-Guarani. Paris: Geuthner.
1928b La religion des Tupinamba et ses rapports avec cells des autres tribus Tupi-Guarani. Paris: Leroux.
1940 Ethnology of Easter Island. Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Bulletin No. 160. Honolulu (Hawaii): The Museum.
(1941) 1957 Easter Island: A Stone-age Civilization of the Pacific. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. → First published as L’ile de Pâques.
1946 Myths of the Toba and Pilaga Indians of the Gran Chaco. American Folklore Society, Memoirs, Volume 40. Philadelphia: The Society.
1951 Making a Living in the Marbial Valley, Haiti. Paris: UNESCO
(1958) 1959 Voodoo in Haiti. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. → First published as Le voudou haitien.
SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
Steward, Julian H. (editor) (1946-1959)1963 Handbook of South American Indians. 7 vols. U.S. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. 143. New York: Cooper Square.
Wagley, Charles 1964 Alfred Métraux, 1902-1963. American Anthropologist New Series 66:603-613.