Salvage ethnography

[3] The term "salvage ethnography" was coined by Jacob W. Gruber, who identified its emergence with 19th-century ethnographers documenting the languages of peoples being conquered and colonized by European countries or the United States.

As a scholarly response, Gruber quotes James Cowles Prichard's address before the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1839, referring to the Old Testament tale of Cain and Abel: Wherever Europeans have settled, their arrival has been the harbinger of extermination to the native tribes.

In the meantime, if Christian nations think it not their duty to interpose and save the numerous tribes of their own species from utter extermination, it is of the greatest importance, in a philosophical point of view, to obtain much more extensive information than we now possess of their physical and moral characters.

Curtis notes in the introduction to his series on the North American Indian: "The information that is to be gathered ... respecting the mode of life of one of the great races of mankind, must be collected at once or the opportunity will be lost."

Salvage ethnography started to be applied methodically in visual anthropology as ethnographic film since the 1950s by filmmakers such as Jean Rouch in France, Michel Brault and Pierre Perrault in Canada, or António Campos in Portugal (early 1960s), followed by others (1970s).

A Hupa fisherman. In the early 20th century, Edward Curtis traveled across America recording photographs of the disappearing lifestyle of American Indian tribes.