The Jesup North Pacific Expedition

KJ 108, our most recent issue, explored the concept of “cultural fluidity”—the ways in which cultures flow and blend across borders. This theme led to the haunting images of a little known photographic and anthropological project from the late 19th century. The Jesup North Pacific Expedition (1897-1902) investigated the connections between the peoples and the cultures along the eastern coast of Siberia and the northwest coast of North America. Sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, the original goal of the expedition was to substantiate the then unproven Bering Strait Migration theory by documenting flows of people, both culturally and genetically, before the discovery of DNA. At the same time, the expedition became a de facto record of disappearing cultures, producing some of the earliest,  and in some cases, only–  photographic documentation of the peoples of those remote regions. 

Looking into the faces of people from such distant times and places leaves a powerful impression. Photography was a relatively new technology in the late 19th century, and the subjects of these images likely had little idea what a photograph was, much less that their pictures would be viewed and shared more than a century later.  Today these images take on new meaning by demonstrating cultural connections that extend beyond political borders and national identities. Pan-Asian and Pan-Indian movements emphasize cultural ties and solidarity between the peoples of the Greater North Pacific Region. Through this lens Japan and Japanese culture can be reconceived, not as isolated and sui generis, but as important part of a broader Pacific Rim community of nations, a vast arc encompassing China, Russia, Polynesian, and Canada.