Hunt, George

George Hunt (February 14, 1854 – 1933) (Tlingit) was a Canadian and 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.