This article introduces an international team effort to examine and electronically “reunite” various types of collections—ethnological, bioanthropological, linguistic, and visual—assembled by Polish anthropologist Stanisław Poniatowski (1884–1945) in summer 1914 on a field trip to the Amur River Region in south Siberia. Poniatowski's journey to what he called “the land of the Goldi and Orochon (people)”—Do kraju Goldów i Oroczonów; the respective modern names are the Nanai and the Udege—(Poniatowski 1966) lasted only two months. The outbreak of World War I in July 1914 caused a hasty ending of Poniatowski's fieldwork, and the subsequent fragmentation of his original collection, which is now held by several institutions in Poland, the US, and perhaps also in Russia (Krupnik 2024; Skowron-Markowska and Nowakowska 2022).*
The collections acquired by Poniatowski among the Nanai and Udege people contained about five hundred specimens—ethnographic objects, photographs, drawings, anthropometric measurement sheets, ornaments, word lists, and so forth. Many may be of substantial value, especially as heritage records for today's home communities. These dispersed collections of field materials and associated documentation in three languages—English, Polish, and Russian—may be accessed online by their separate elements via institutional websites and databases. Yet they have never been reviewed as a common body, even if some portions were studied earlier (Wokroj 1966; Heidenreich 1975; Watson 2012; Nowakowska 2016b; Skowron-Markowska 2016; Skowron-Markowska and Nowakowska 2022; Krupnik 2023, 2024).
The four coauthors have been researching the history of Siberian anthropology, linguistics, and museum collecting for quite some time, including publishing on individual elements of Poniatowski's collections. In spring 2023, when we began working together as a team, we set an ambitious goal to virtually “reconstitute” his original materials from 1914. Such an inventory would be the first step in a collective effort to digitally “return” Poniatowski's Amur River collections to their home area, so that they may be shared with Indigenous knowledge holders, who would be enriched by their insight and could use the materials as a heritage resource. Here, we review the main elements of the dispersed collections residing at various institutions; consider our options and challenges; and assess prospective steps in the situation of broken professional paths and tenuous connections, due to Russia's ongoing war against Ukraine.
Stanisław Poniatowski before (and after) the Amur River expedition
Stanisław Poniatowski was born on 6 October 1884 in the town of Ceranów, Siedlce Governorate, then a portion of Poland under the Russian Empire (Skowron-Markowska and Nowakowska 2022). He graduated from the Gymnasium in Warsaw, then studied mechanics at the Warsaw Polytechnic from 1902 to 1905. In 1903 he was imprisoned by the Russian authorities for a short time in the Warsaw Citadel for his membership in the student organization “Unification” (Polski Słownik 1982: 485). As a result of a school strike, he interrupted his studies and moved to Zurich, where he enrolled in the University of Zurich and studied anthropology with Prof. Rudolf Martin and archaeology with Prof. Jacob Heierlie, also taking ethnography classes at the Department of Geography (Bulanda 1946: 19; Heidenreich 1966: 8). He defended his doctoral thesis, “Über den Einfluss der Beobachtungsfehler auf die anthropologishen Indices” [On the Influence of Observational Errors on Anthropological Indices] in 1911 and published it in Polish in Warsaw in 1912.
Poniatowski's rising stature as a scholar of physical (biological) anthropology was quickly recognized by Dr. Aleš Hrdlička, curator of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian US National Museum (hereafter: USNM). The two men began to communicate and exchanged publications; this cooperation resulted in Hrdlička's offer to Poniatowski in 1912 to undertake a trip to south Siberia for an anthropometric survey of local Indigenous people, to support Hrdlička's hypothesis about the peopling of America by the “ancient races” from Asia (Hrdlička 1913a; 1913b; Krupnik 2023, 2024). Poniatowski was tasked to study Indigenous groups living along the Amur River and on Sakhalin Island—the Nanai (Goldi), Nivkhi (Gilyak), and the Udege (Orochon). Eventually, Poniatowski's trip was moved from 1913 to 1914; Hrdlička and the USNM provided funds, research equipment, and anthropometric measurement sheets for the survey (Krupnik 2024).
Poniatowski's Amur River expedition in summer 1914 was cut short by the outbreak of World War I, which forced him to abandon his plans and hastily return to Warsaw. Overall, his Amur River journey lasted four months and two days, instead of the planned five to six months, with hardly two months in the field. Even if he anticipated another visit to the area, that second trip never materialized (see below).
Back in Poland, Poniatowski threw himself into scientific work. He organized and managed the Ethnological Laboratory and the ethnographic collections of the Museum of Industry and Agriculture in Warsaw, and taught anthropology and ethnography at the Society of Scientific Courses (Polski Słownik 1982: 485). He also served as director of the University Library in Warsaw. During the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–1921, he fought as a soldier in the Polish Army (Bulanda 1946: 19). In 1923 he received the habilitation degree in ethnology at the University of Poznań, while from 1920 to 1939 he also taught at the Department of General Ethnology and Foreign Ethnography at the Józef Piłsudski University (as the University of Warsaw was called from 1935 to 1939). He was the deputy rector of the Free Polish University in Warsaw in 1933–34 and 1934–35 and the head of the Department of Ethnology of the Institute of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences of the Scientific Society in Warsaw from 1920 to 1939 (Sołtysiak and Jaskulski 2000: 11). In 1937, he was appointed as a titular professor of ethnology at the Faculty of Humanities of the Free Polish University in Warsaw (Poniatowski n.d.).
Besides his many administrative and teaching positions, Poniatowski served as a coeditor of the journal Archives of Anthropological Sciences (Archiwum Nauk Antropologicznych) from 1921. He was a member of the Polish Oriental Society and of the Anthropological, Ethnographic, Geographical, and Prehistoric Commission of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he represented Polish science at various international congresses (Poniatowski n.d.).
The beginning of World War II and the German occupation of Poland in September 1939 marked the end of his productive career and, eventually, of his life. During the German occupation, Poniatowski covertly continued his scientific and teaching activities. He was arrested by the Gestapo (German secret police) in 1942 for teaching ethnology classes to Polish students in his home apartment in Warsaw (which was forbidden by the German occupational laws). He was imprisoned for several months in the Pawiak prison, in the Majdanek concentration camp, then deported to the Gross-Rossen camp in Silesia. Despite his advanced age, Poniatowski was reportedly keeping well, until he passed away on 7 January 1945 (Bulanda 1946: 21).
Travel and Fieldwork in the Amur River region
The plans for Poniatowski's expedition were finalized in several letters exchanged between Poniatowski and Hrdlička during the winter and spring of 1914. Upon Hrdlička's suggestion, the survey was eventually downsized to exclude Sakhalin Island and its Indigenous residents, the Nivkhi (Giliak) and the Uilta (Orok). Hrdlička directed Poniatowski to visit with Czech physical anthropologist Prof. Jindrich Matiegka (1862–1941) in Prague, who offered practical lessons to Poniatowski in making facial plaster casts. On that trip in January 1914, Poniatowski visited in Cracow with Julian Talko-Hryncewicz (1850–1936), a Polish medical doctor and physical anthropologist,1 and also met with a renowned Polish ethnographer, Bronisław Piłsudski (1866–1918), who had spent 15 years on Sakhalin Island as political prisoner and, later, as researcher (Poniatowski to Hrdlička, 7 February 1914, NAA).
Poniatowski set out on his journey to the Russian Far East in May 1914.2 His first stop was in Russia's capital city of St. Petersburg, where he collected official letters and permissions for fieldwork, picked up maps and equipment, and met with colleagues experienced in Siberian studies, like Eduard Petri, Victor Vasiliev, Feodor Volkov (Vovk), and others. The most notable was his meeting with Leo (Lev) Shternberg (1865–1928), Russia's leading authority on the Indigenous peoples of the Sakhalin and Amur River regions (Poniatowski 1966). Shternberg provided a recommendation letter for Poniatowski to Vladimir Arseniev, director of the Grodekov Museum in Khabarovsk (Goncharova 2015; Kuchinski 2001: 132).
From St. Petersburg, Poniatowski took the train across Siberia and reached his selected field hub, the city of Khabarovsk on the Amur River. He duly recorded in his diary the days spent in Khabarovsk, the preparations for fieldwork, and his meetings with Vladimir Arseniev and a young Russian ethnologist named Ivan Lopatin3 (Poniatowski 1966: 83–89). Arseniev and Lopatin assisted Poniatowski in developing his plans and recruiting a field team of four local high school students and Lopatin's wife, Olga Lopatin (Goncharova 2015).
On 15 June 1914, Poniatowski and his crew traveled to the Nanai community of Sikachi-Alian on the Amur River, some 70 km from Khabarovsk. They spent three weeks in Sikachi-Alian, which then had 115 residents (now 273, according to the 2020 Russian census), where they photographed and measured over 30 Nanai individuals, and collected drawings, ethnographic objects, and other materials. Poniatowski's crew continued its path down the Amur River, with short stays in scores of local villages and fishing camps.4
In late July 1914, as Poniatowski's crew was traveling on the Amur River, World War I broke out in Europe. Poniatowski learned about the war on 1 August (Poniatowski 1966: 72), but he continued his survey, nonetheless, visiting the Russian villages of Orlovskoe (2 August), Srednetambovskoe (5 August), Nizhnetambovskoe (7 August), and the Nanai camps of Khony/Khomi, Berenda, Kholsan/Khulsan (3–7 August). His last reported site on 7–8 August 1914 was the Nanai village of Ady, about 500 km from Khabarovsk (Poniatowski 1966: 75).
During his final days in Khabarovsk (12–24 August), Poniatowski sorted and divided his materials. He took his field notes, glass plates, negatives, physical measurement forms, and some ethnographic specimens with him to Warsaw, and left the bulk of ethnographic objects, plaster masks, and measurement tools given by Hrdlička in Arseniev's care at the Grodekov Museum. Reportedly, they agreed that Poniatowski would return to Khabarovsk in summer 1915 to conduct joint fieldwork among the Udege people (Goncharova 2015; Skowron-Markowska and Nowakowska 2022: 81). This was not to happen. In August 1915, the German army entered Warsaw, and all hopes for any new work in Russia were abandoned. Poniatowski continued his ethnographic career in Poland, until his arrest in 1942 and subsequent death. His American mentor, Aleš Hrdlička, died in Washington in 1943; Arseniev's life ended in September 1930.
Status of Stanisław Poniatowski's Collections
Poniatowski never produced a full report of his Amur River expedition; but he left several brief overviews of his activities, as well as handwritten lists of his collections. He provided the initial summary in a letter to Hrdlička from Warsaw as follows:
Owing to circumstances over which I had no control, I was obliged to cut short my expedition soon after the war broke out, that is, [on] the 8th of August. I was then in Adi 500 km from Habarovsk [alternative spelling of Khabarovsk]. I returned to Habarovsk by steamer where I was obliged to wait over a week for the train… On the 24th of August I left Habarovsk… On the whole the expedition took up four months and two days, but I made researches [sic] only during two instead of the five or six projected [months], owing to this I only took the measurements of 109 Goldis and of 25 Orochon. Besides this, I took over 130 photos, one cast, and I collected 113 ethnographical specimens. As the shipping agencies would not undertake the transport of goods to America on account of the war, I left the cast and collections with colonel Arsenieff, director of the Grodecoff museum in Habarovsk. (Poniatowski to Hrdlička, 6 November 1914)5
An undated later summary cited slightly higher numbers, as follows:
I researched 150 native people in detail, took over 140 photographic pictures (13x18), collected a large number of ornaments, cutouts and drawings, and acquired a large ethnographic collection for the Ethnographic Collection of the Museum of Industry and Agriculture from funds donated for this purpose by Dr. W(acław) Brun.6
Evidently the higher number represented a new count after Poniatowski was able to process the objects he brought with him to Warsaw, plus those shipped by Arseniev from Khabarovsk. Despite his short time in the field, Poniatowski was quite successful in taking anthropometric measurements and photographs. He made little progress on plaster masks and collected no skeletal remains, which was one of Hrdlička's key assignments. Instead, he acquired a substantial body of other materials, such as more than two hundred ethnographic objects, landscape and group photographs, Nanai drawings, stencils, and cutouts, linguistic and cultural data. These specimens ended up in different institutions in Poland, the US, and presumably also in Russia.
Polish Ethnological Society (Polskie Towarzystwo Ludoznawcze), Wrocław (PES)7
Photographs
In his letter to Hrdlička, Poniatowski reported the overall number of photographs (130) taken during his trip but offered no details about the images. Hrdlička most certainly had asked him to take portrait and profile pictures of individuals during the anthropometric measurement, a standard practice of the time. That would have resulted in over 250 photographs. Yet the field conditions for photography were far from ideal, and Poniatowski's diary was filled with notes about spoiled or lost glass plates. Thus, the number “over 130” could be taken as an estimate of those photos he considered worthy of reporting. More glass plates could have been brought by Poniatowski to Warsaw but were destroyed, lost, or became “unworkable” for processing in the 100-plus years between 1914 and 2016 (Nowakowska, ed. 2016b: 10).
Poniatowski's photographic collection from the Amur River expedition currently with the PES consists of 126 photographs (26 photographs taken on photographic film and 100 on glass plates).8 Most certainly, the images remained in Poniatowski's possession and were later transferred together with his personal papers to the PES. Whatever portion of his prints and negatives ended up in the Museum of Industry and Agriculture in Warsaw was evidently lost when the museum was burned down during the Nazi siege of Warsaw in 1939. Judging from Poniatowski's diary, he could have taken as many as 480 pictures on plates and 36 on film, so that today's collection reflects a fraction of his field photography that survived between his return from the expedition and World War II. The PES collection also includes 79 prints, many with handwritten captions, that were glued to paper sheets, separately or as sets featuring measured individuals. These were produced from glass negatives, evidently between 1914 and 1939. There is no evidence that any photos from the 1914 expedition ever arrived to the USNM in Washington.
Poniatowski's field photography that has survived to the present reveals that he was a skilled photographer and tried to document aspects of people's life beyond staged images to accompany anthropometric measurements. Only about half (less than 60) of the images are “standard” photos of measured individuals taken in portrait and in profile, some also at a three-quarter angle, with a plain white background. The rest were group photos, life scenes (people in boats, building houses, or during collective rituals, etc.), landscapes (often with ritual constructions), camp life, and expedition travel. The collection features two photos of Poniatowski himself (see Figure 1), one of Ivan Lopatin, and one of his crew taking anthropometric measurements in an Udege camp. Poniatowski was obviously comfortable taking group photos, including of women with children and people he identified as “shamans” in their ritual clothing. The settings of group photos speak of the casual relations he had with the local people, which is supported by entries in his diary (Poniatowski 1966).
Photo of Poniatowski with the Nanai residents of Muhu, July 1914. https://www.bibliotekacyfrowa.pl/dlibra/publication/73564/edition/71740/content.
Citation: Sibirica 23, 3; 10.3167/sib.2024.230303
From the diary, we can infer that Poniatowski concentrated primarily on taking pictures on glass plates. Some photographs bear signs of transportation; many were out of focus; and often multiple shots were taken of the same subject. We do not know what type of camera Poniatowski was using. He took two: one for glass plates and the other for cut photographic film, of which two films turned out to be too moldy and unsuitable for photographic restoration.9
According to the canons of the time, the anthropometric photograph was viewed as a “correct” representation of an ethnic group via a sample of standardly measured individuals (portrait, profile, and three-quarter angle), preferably men, far less often women, and very rarely children.10 Poniatowski needed to follow the requirements of the era, but he easily departed by taking pictures of Nanai families or of large mixed groups in their costumes, often in front of their houses so that he could illustrate elements of the house construction. In one photo (see Figure 2, “Golds in Muhu”), Poniatowski captured people of several generations, including women and children.
A group of Nanai people in the village of Muhu (“Golds in Muhu”), July 1914. Source: https://www.bibliotekacyfrowa.pl/dlibra/publication/79485/edition/131281/content (no. 127). Also erroneously captioned in https://www.bibliotekacyfrowa.pl/dlibra/publication/73524/edition/71700/content.
Citation: Sibirica 23, 3; 10.3167/sib.2024.230303
Poniatowski was very interested in Nanai shamanism and shamans. One photo (see Figure 3) depicted a young Nanai shaman, Kaya Beldy from Muhu, dressed in a characteristic embroidered tunic with a belt, high boots, and holding a shaman's drum. The man was photographed partly from behind to show the elaborate braiding of his hair. Like many of Poniatowski's photographs, it was taken with extraordinary precision and quality, which allowed him to document faces, details, and landscapes of people's lives from more than one hundred years ago.
Young Nanai shaman in Sikachi-Alian. June 1914. Poniatowski's handwritten caption (in Polish): “Gold Beldy Kaya, shaman from Muhu in Sakachialyan.” Source: https://www.bibliotekacyfrowa.pl/dlibra/publication/79485/edition/131281/content (no. 51).
Citation: Sibirica 23, 3; 10.3167/sib.2024.230303
Anthropometric Measurement Sheets
For individual measurements, Poniatowski used standard anthropometric data sheets of the US National Museum provided by Hrdlička. According to his letter to Hrdlička, Poniatowski was able to take measurements of 109 Nanai (Goldi) and 25 Udege (Orochen) individuals; he took the sheets with him to Warsaw upon leaving Khabarovsk. Miraculously, all sheets survived World War II and were retrieved after his death; they were later donated to the PES (Wokroj 1966: 126). Anthropometric data collected by Poniatowski in 1914 were analyzed in the 1960s (Glinka 1966; Wokroj 1966) and published with scores of photographs of the individuals he measured. Fifty years later, the sheets have been digitized and are now accessible as a part of Poniatowski's digital collection maintained by the Wrocław University Library (WUL). The WUL online database displays 96 sheets in ink and the full set of 134 original sheets filled out in pencil.
Besides being a source of biological data on two groups that he surveyed, Poniatowski's anthropometric sheets have additional value today as a heritage source. Each sheet was assigned a number, and personal names (first and last), age, and sex of the individual, as well as the place where the measurement was taken, were recorded, often with a date. Thanks to these data, these anthropometric sheets now serve as a source to cross-reference Poniatowski's diaries and to provide personal names of many people in group photographs that were often identified only by their measurement sheet number.11 The sheets offer the most complete list of the Indigenous people with whom Poniatowski interacted, with personal names (even maiden clan names for women), age, family status, and residence. The original pencil sheets filled out in Polish (or in mixed Polish and English) often contained more information than the final sheet in ink.12 Names on sheets may be cross-referenced for people's contributions to Poniatowski's collections, such as making drawings, paper cutouts, stencils, or ornamentations, or by selling ethnographic objects.
Paper cutouts, ornaments, stencils
The WUL Piatkowski collection site features a folder titled “Wycinanki” (cutouts) that includes 39 sheets with pasted (glued) flat images of ornaments, small-size models of decorated clothing, paper and birchbark cutouts, imprints, and so forth.13 All images are pasted on standard sheets of brown paper, with added captions by Poniatowski, evidently made after the 1914 expedition. Some just list his name and the expedition year, but a few have in addition the names of people who produced the specimens, as cited in Poniatowski's diary (1966: 24, 40). Making paper and birch bark cutouts for visitors and commercial sale was clearly a common practice in the Amur River communities, as attested by the specimens he secured on his trip, even in the first days, as well as by rich collections of Nanai ornaments, cutouts, and stencils preserved at many museums. Except for one set of Udege birchbark cutouts featured as illustration to Poniatowski's diary (Poniatowski 1966: 59; see Figure 4), his modest sample of Nanai and Udege visual arts and ornaments was neither published nor compared to the much larger collections at AMNH in New York assembled by Berthold Laufer (1902) or at the Grodekov Museum in Khabarovsk (Titoreva 2019: 333–376).
Birchbark cutouts collected among the Udege on the Khungari (Gur) River, with a caption by Poniatowski (in Polish): “Cut by Orochon-udihe shaman on the Hungari River, 1914” (also partially reproduced with the added explanation in Poniatowski's diary, 1966: 59). https://www.bibliotekacyfrowa.pl/dlibra/publication/73377/edition/131284
Citation: Sibirica 23, 3; 10.3167/sib.2024.230303
Nanai and Udege drawings
Poniatowski's diary contains numerous references to him offering pencils and paper to local people and inviting them to draw pictures (usually in exchange for tobacco, sweets, or money). He started doing it on the second day of his journey in the Nanai community of Sikachi-Alian, where his first local “artist” was 12-year-old Aleksandr (Shurka) Onenko (Poniatowski 1966: 24). Consistently using this practice, Poniatowski assembled a collection of 30 pencil drawings that is now accessible in two folders on the WUL website. The first folder, labeled in Poniatowski's handwriting in Polish as “Goldi Drawings” (Rysunki Goldów), contains 23 sheets covered in multiple images drawn in simple and color pencils. All drawings have the name of the artist, often with their age, and also the location and the date, added by Poniatowski. A few drawings feature captions in Russian and/or Nanai using Russian orthography, explaining the meaning of the images (see Figure 5). Most of the drawings were depictions of hunting and fishing scenes, animals, and fishes; a few have ritual images. The second folder labeled “Orochen drawings” (Oroczoni: rysunki), with the added heading “Orochen culture” (Oroczoni: kultura), contains seven pencil drawings produced for Poniatowski by the Udege people in the camps on the Khungari (Gur) River. All drawings are attributed to named individuals, often with specific details (e.g., “drawn by left hand by shaman, Kanchoga Kuila, Orochen-Udege, N.2”) that makes it possible to match the drawings to specific dates and individuals. The Udege drawings are made in simple pencil and mostly feature contour sketches on individual sheets of paper.
Drawing of a hunter, dog, deer, and tiger. Color pencils. Caption in Poniatowski's handwriting (in Polish) “Drawn by Mikhail, age 18 (Jwano?). 16.06.1914, S-kachialan, signed by Filemon,” with a Russian caption “Tigr [tiger]. Aban” added in simple pen. https://www.bibliotekacyfrowa.pl/dlibra/publication/79222/edition/131706
Citation: Sibirica 23, 3; 10.3167/sib.2024.230303
Drawings collected by Poniatowski were never explored; a small sample was used to illustrate his published field diary (Poniatowski 1966). They may be assessed against a rich selection of Nanai imagery published by Sergei V. Ivanov (1954), with his interpretation, as well as some early drawings in the Grodekov Museum collection (Titoreva et al. 2019).
Field diary from the 1914 trip
Poniatowski kept a detailed diary during his expedition to the Amur River area, from his departure from Warsaw up to his return. Two versions of the diary exist: a short one filled during his travels, and a longer version that he expanded and edited after the expedition, in preparation for its publication (Heidenreich 1966: 7, 10). Both were donated to the PES in 1946 and were later published in full in Polish (Poniatowski 1966) and in Russian (Poniatowski 2007–2009), with an accompanying “Introduction” (Heidenreich 1966) and drawings made by Poniatowski. Entries in the diary are the key to tracking the items he collected on the 1914 trip, as well as to understanding his collecting strategies.
Drawings of Nanai ethnographic objects
The most intriguing portion of Poniatowski's files at PES is a set of 51 pencil drawings of individual ethnographic objects made on yellow paper sheets or carton. Many drawings have the collector's name, “Poniatówski 1914,” in his own handwriting, or a red stamp on the back side, “Ze zbiorów śp. prof. St. Poniatowskiego” (From the collection of prof. St. Poniatówski). A few drawings feature an added caption in the same script, “Goldowie Nadamurscy. Muz. etnogr. w Warsz” (Amur Goldi. Museum of Ethnography in Warsaw), as well as notes by another person, evidently by an artist or museum curator. All drawings were made by a professional artist, Alicja Dotsgewska (?), whose full name is recorded on one sheet (no. 48) and elsewhere by the initials “AD”. Because they share the same style, the drawings were likely made from one set of objects or a single collection; no date was attached.
We believe that all drawings represent Nanai and Udege ethnographic objects that Poniatowski brought to Warsaw from his Amur River expedition. We know from his diary that, prior to the expedition, he received funds (275 Russian rubles) from Wacław Brun in Warsaw for purchasing objects for the Museum of Industry and Agriculture (or for the Ethnographic Museum).14 Objects purchased with these funds and brought (or mailed) from Khabarovsk were eventually accessioned as “Brun collection” and were displayed at the museum until its destruction in September 1939. Hence, the drawings at the PES may be the only evidence of a portion of Poniatowski's collection that ended up in Poland and was later lost.
The problem is that the objects in the drawings at PES do not fully match the 51 items that Poniatowski meticulously reported in his diary on 19 July 1914, for shipping to Warsaw (Poniatowski 1966: 55–56). Many pieces do overlap; but the bulk of the items listed in the diary were spiritual wooden sculptures, like those in the Smithsonian collection (see below). The objects shown in the drawings are more diverse and include a few clothing items (like a cap and mittens), tools (knives, spoons), a drum frame, children's toys, arrows, skin scrapers, a mask, and more. Therefore, the relation between the two sets of objects requires further research.
Poniatowski's personal files
The corpus of Poniatowski's personal files at the PES contains 10 letters exchanged between Poniatowski and Aleš Hrdlička, from 1912 to 1915 (all in English), as well as other items associated with Poniatowski's 1914 trip, like four letters he exchanged with Vladimir Arseniev in 1914–15 (in Russian), photocards he mailed from Khabarovsk and Vladivostok to his wife Jasia (in Polish), and more. Of these, only the Poniatowski–Hrdlička and Poniatowski–Arseniev correspondences were previously explored and partly published or cited (Goncharova 2001; Krupnik 2024; Kuczyński 2001; Skowron-Markowska and Nowakowska 2022; Watson 2012). The two men exchanged at least 15 letters prior to and after the expedition. Of these, scores are missing at either end, so that the full correspondence could be recreated only by matching the PES file and a similar set of letters held at the National Anthropological Archives (NAA) at the Smithsonian (see below).
Other personal files at the PES (still unexplored) may include letters that Poniatowski exchanged with people whom he met or corresponded with in preparation for his 1914 trip, such as Kazimierz Stołyhwo, Julian Talko-Hryncewicz, Jindrich Matiegka in Prague, Bronisław Piłsudski, and others (Skowron-Markowska and Nowakowska 2022; Krupnik 2024). There are other documents related to the Amur River trip, including handwritten lists of objects, photos, and anthropometric sheets, all undated (Poniatowski n.d., folder “Goldowie i Oroczoni—Burchany” [Goldi and Orochens—Burkhans]). These files remain poorly researched, and many valuable records related to the 1914 trip are certain to be found.
Ethnographic map of the Ussuri Region
The PES collection contains a folder inscribed in Poniatowski's handwriting, “Mapy do wyprawy 1914 r.” (Maps for the 1914 expedition). It includes six maps, of which three are versions of the ethnographic map of the “Ussuri Region” produced by Vladimir Arseniev between 1906 and 1911 and published in 1911 (Arseniev 1911, 1998). Two maps were compiled in Russian using the same base map; one has Arseniev's signature; the third map was redrawn with captions in Polish, evidently prepared for a Polish publication. Most certainly, Poniatowski received the map(s) directly from Arseniev during his stay in Khabarovsk in 1914. He then added extensive handwritten notes and captions to the map in Polish and in Russian. There is another copy of the map in the collection, with notes in Polish. The handwritten title explains its origin (“...with explanations for Stanislaw Poniatowski [given] in the year 1914”).15 Notes added by Poniatowski (perhaps from Arseniev's explanations) constituted a major expansion of Arseniev's original map that had only Russian names for ethnic groups (Gilyaki, Tungusy, Ussuri Goldi, Amur Goldi, etc.). In the all-Polish version, Poniatowski changed the order of Indigenous groups and inserted short ethnographic synopses of 30–100 words for several groups. A black-and-white version of this map was published with captions in Polish and in Russian (Poniatowski 1966: 14–15; 2007–2009: 189, 194–195).
Museum of Industry and Agriculture (Muzeum Przemysłu i Rolnictwa), Warsaw
Poniatowski's ethnographic collections from the 1914 expedition were originally housed at the Museum of Industry and Agriculture (Muzeum Przemysłu i Rolnictwa) in Warsaw, alongside other anthropological artifacts. An overview of the museum's anthropological department (Stołyhwo 1916) reported that the ethnographic collections were administratively under the supervision of the Warsaw Scientific Society (Towarzystwo Naukowe Warszawskie). In 1915, a year after Poniatowski's return to Warsaw, the ethnographic displays were exhibited in three spacious halls and one small room. We have no information whether the objects that Poniatowski brought from his Amur expedition were among those displayed. In 1918, the Warsaw Scientific Society moved to the Pałac Staszica in downtown Warsaw. As mentioned earlier, that building was burned down during the German siege of Warsaw in 1939, resulting in the destruction of all ethnographic collections. Tragically, these objects have been lost, as today's records of the museum do not report any ethnographic objects from the Amur River area.
National Ethnographic Museum (Pan´ stwowe Muzeum Etnograficzne), Warsaw (PME)
According to today's curatorial staff, the National Ethnographic Museum currently has no collections associated with Poniatowski's 1914 expedition. Nevertheless, it preserved some of his manuscripts that shed light on his effort to secure the funding for this trip (Arch. PME H.Muz. 8_6.1-8_6.3). They also offer a glimpse into Poniatowski's general description of his research findings after his return from the expedition (Photos: Arch. PME H.Muz. 8_8.1-8_8.3). Furthermore, they provide information about Poniatowski's effort to catalog his research data, which is also supported by the files in PES, and of his intention to publish the materials from his 1914 work in the journal Ziemia (Earth) after World War I (Arch. PME H.Muz. 8_7.1-8_7.2). In addition, the PME library has several publications by Poniatowski and on his life and work.
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA
The Smithsonian Institution houses the second largest set of records associated with the Amur River expedition, because Poniatowski's trip was initiated and funded by what was then the US National Museum (USNM), a part of the Smithsonian. Poniatowski was charged to collect physical evidence, such as anthropological measurements and photographs of living individuals, plaster masks, and skeletal remains. Some were supposed to be used by Hrdlička for the Smithsonian display at the Panama–California Exposition in the city of San Diego in 1915 (Hrdlička 1912; 1913a; 1913b). Since no physical (biological) materials from the Amur ever arrived in the Smithsonian, Hrdlička discontinued their partnership after 1915 (Krupnik 2024).
The present collections include over 160 ethnographic objects, now at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) Department of Anthropology collections, as well as the accession records and associated correspondence at the Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA), and the originals and copies of letters exchanged between Hrdlička and Poniatowski from 1912 to 1915 at the National Anthropological Archives (NAA). These collections were recently reviewed in full (Krupnik 2024), so that only the most pertinent information is provided here.
Ethnographic objects
Poniatowski's collections at NMNH are kept under two separate accessions with their respective numbers, No. 63969 (SIA 63969 1920) and No. 63972 (SIA 63972 1920) (Krupnik 2023; 2024). They arrived at the USNM in 1918 in two shipments; one was registered and accessioned under Poniatowski's name (No. 63969), whereas the other was registered under the name of Vladimir Arseniev (“Arseneff” in old transliteration), as the presumed donor. Altogether, No. 63969 (“Poniatowski”) consists of 97 individual items and No. 63972 (“Arseniev”) consists of 64 individual items, not counting multiple specimens tied together by leather or cord bands. All objects are accessible on the NMNH Anthropology public website, with posted images and the original handwritten accession cards and/or scans from the USNM accession ledger books.16
The complicated history of the two accessions has been described elsewhere (Krupnik 2023; 2024; Watson 2012) and the origin of two clearly related sets of objects remains unknown. Previously, we argued that both accessions contained objects collected by Poniatowski in summer 1914 that were left in Arseniev's care in Khabarovsk in August 1914. They were later shipped to the USNM via the American Consulate in Vladivostok and arrived in two separate shipments (Krupnik 2024). Objects in Accession No. 63969 (“Poniatowski”) have detailed provenience information, including the locality where each object was collected, ethnic group (“Golds” and/or “Orochon-Udihe”), often a Native name for the object in rough transliteration, and additional comments, even drawings. Such information was obviously added by Poniatowski himself. Objects in Accession No. 63972 (“Arseniev”) have few provenience data and are listed as coming from “Habarovsk (Khabarovsk – ed.), Russia” and from “Tribes of Eastern Siberia, Russia.” It cannot be excluded that Arseniev added or changed some objects in the latter shipment, but the bulk of the objects most certainly represented portions of one and the same collection (Krupnik 2023; 2024).
Most of the items in both accessions are of medium or small size (Figure 6). The most common specimens are carved wooden figurines of various ritual meanings that were identified in the accession cards as “charms,” or “charm figurines,” often with their Nanai names attached in Poniatowski's transliteration. The NMNH collections include at least 30 figurines of different kinds that could be identified as human-like and over 50 animal-like figures representing several species, such as bears and tigers (the most common), horses, ducks, turtles, frogs, even hedgehogs and mice (see Krupnik 2024). Several are tied together as pairs or bundles. Human-like figurines are generally not painted and differ in size: from large and rather heavy pieces around 20 inches in length to small and even miniature objects of two to five inches. Most are crudely carved.
Poniatowski's objects in the NMNH collection space. Photo by Igor Krupnik, February 2023.
Citation: Sibirica 23, 3; 10.3167/sib.2024.230303
Accession No. 63969 (“Poniatowski”) includes a small number of items associated with shamanic rituals and healing: a shaman's headgear and seven healing “yokes” (bent branches or saplings tied at the end to form a hoop or an oval band). The portion listed under Arseniev contains notable additions, like a set of tools for processing fish skin into clothing that includes a wooden beater (hammer) and a beating board/block; a decorated paper scroll; a paper “hood” (triangular piece) lavishly ornamented in ink or paint; and two chain-like wooden carvings representing a human arm and head, like the one featured in a drawing on the WUL website. The lack of paper and birch bark ornamentations and stencils is also notable, but these flat objects were evidently taken by Poniatowski to Warsaw and survived in the PES collection, as seen on the WUL portal.
The Poniatowski collection at NMNH, which may be partly listed under Arseniev's name, offers a window into Poniatowski's collecting interests. His diary contains references to how and where many individual objects were acquired. The bulk of the objects come from the Nanai community of Sikachi Alian (“Sakachialan” in Poniatowski's spelling), where he recorded most of the Nanai terms for the objects (cf. Poniatowski 1966: 38; 1923; Krupnik 2024).
Accession records (Smithsonian Institution Archives)
The Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA) in Washington houses the originals and copies of the USNM records associated with the shipping and accession of the Poniatowski–Arseniev collection of 1918–19. The slim files arranged separately for Accession No. 63969 and No. 63972 include the correspondence between J. K. Caldwell, the US Consul in Vladivostok, and the USNM officials related to collection shipments; lists of objects accessioned by the USNM in 1919; and short letters of acknowledgement, signed by the Assistant to the Smithsonian Secretary, W. de C. Ravenel, that were mailed separately to Arseniev and Poniatowski. No responses were received from either man, though a typed copy of the list of objects in the USNM “Poniatowski Collection” is preserved in Poniatowski's papers at PES (Poniatowski n.d., folder “Korespondencja prywatna”)
The two files contain important information on how Poniatowski's objects traveled from Khabarovsk to Washington between 1917 and 1919 (see Krupnik 2024). Of special importance is the list of 54 objects in Accession No. 63969 titled “Collection of Stanislaw Poniatowski. Warsaw, Poland. From the Gold Tribes, E. Siberia” (SIA 63969 1920), with the Nanai names for many objects in what is presumably Poniatowski's rough transliteration. It was obviously based on some original writing by Poniatowski that was not preserved. In addition, the US National Archives in Washington, DC, have copies of letters between the US Consul in Vladivostok and Vladimir Arseniev related to the shipping of Poniatowski's collections from Khabarovsk in 1917 (Khisamutdinov 2022).
Poniatowski–Hrdlička Correspondence (National Anthropological Archives)
The National Anthropological Archives (NAA) houses the originals and copies of 21 letters exchanged between Hrdlička and Poniatowski from 26 November 1911 to 10 June 1915 (11 letters by Hrdlička and 10 by Poniatowski—NAA, Hrdlička Correspondence, Box 53). The NAA set is incomplete, as some letters were written in response to earlier mail that is missing. As mentioned, several letters from Poniatowski have copies in his personal papers, notably those of 5 November 1914 and 22 June 1915 with Poniatowski's report on the results of the expedition. The correspondence provides the most detailed insight into the planning of the 1914 expedition; the instructions given by Hrdlička; and the eventual breakdown of their partnership. Several letters have been cited elsewhere (cf. Krupnik 2024; Skowron-Markowska and Novakowska 2022; Watson 2012). The full extent of communication between the two men could be assessed if letters at the NAA were to be matched to those preserved at the PES in Wrocław.
Resources in Russia
Poniatowski's 1914 expedition is well known in Russia, thanks to his interactions with Vladimir Arseniev, including their correspondence, now at the PES, and also to Arseniev's role in shipping Poniatowski's collections (Goncharova 2001, 2004, 2007, 2015; Khisamutdinov 2005, 2022; Krivshenko n.d.; Kuchinski 2001). A Russian translation of Poniatowski's 1914 field diary, from the 1966 Polish reprint, was published in full, including the original editor's preface, introduction, and ethnographic map (Poniatowski 2007, 2009).
Because of the continuing war in Ukraine, we were unable to collect any new data on the documents related to the 1914 trip held at the Grodekov Museum in Khabarovsk and other area institutions. Such work must wait until academic connections to Russian colleagues and research centers resume. Published Russian catalogs of Nanai museum collections (e.g., Kubanova 1992; Maltseva 2012; Titoreva 2012; Titoreva et al. 2019) and online data17 offer comparative materials to identify Poniatowski's objects in Wrocław and in Washington. Early Russian publications on Nanai beliefs and cultural terminology (Lopatin 1922; Shimkevich 1896, 1897; Shternberg 1933) are important sources related to Poniatowski's linguistic records.
Assessment of Poniatowski's collections
In the late 1800s and the early 1900s, anthropological studies in the areas where Indigenous people reside evolved into multitask traveling ventures called “expeditions.” Such surveys commonly produced diverse scholarly records and material evidence—ethnographic objects, anthropometric measurement sheets, photographs, genealogical charts, linguistic and folklore records, art documentation, fieldnotes, and, eventually, volumes of publications.18 By the time of Poniatowski's trip in 1914, the “expedition” template of fieldwork and collecting was a standard practice of the era, including some newly added types of data, like the phonographic recordings, documentary (movie) footage, and archaeological specimens.
The type of fieldwork championed by Hrdlička (for which he commissioned Poniatowski in 1914), diverged from this earlier universalistic paradigm of “salvage anthropology.” It downplayed or ignored certain types of data, like ethnographic objects, folklore texts, and linguistic materials, in favor of a limited group of specialized records, namely, anthropometric measurements, staged facial photography, plaster casts, and skeletal remains. Hrdlička put very stringent instructions for Poniatowski in his letters and in Poniatowski's contract concerning the types of data to be collected (Hrdlička to Poniatowski, 25 February 1914, NAA).
Judging from the diverse body of materials from the Amur River expedition, Poniatowski veered off from Hrdlička's instructions. He disregarded certain assignments, like collecting plaster casts and skeletal remains, and, instead, advanced into the study of Nanai spiritual beliefs, shamanistic paraphernalia, folklore, rock art, and cultural terminology. This drive to more holistic cultural research is documented by several statements in his field diary and his plans to return to the area in 1915 for joint ethnographic (!) work with Arseniev (cf. Goncharova 2015; Poniatowski 1966: 45). The Amur River expedition, thus, triggered a significant shift in Poniatowski's professional interests, from a physical (biological) survey advocated by Hrdlička to ethnography and general ethnology; the latter dominated his research and teaching post-1914.
The nature of Poniatowski's records from the Amur River area makes it easier today to reintegrate his materials collected during the 1914 expedition. We believe that the key to such “reintegration” was Poniatowski's explicit interest in individual local people, with whom he interacted. It is evidenced in his faithful recording of people's personal names in the diary (he listed more than 50 Nanai people by name); personal information added to 130-plus anthropometric measurement sheets; and his captions for the photographs, Indigenous drawings, and ethnographic objects. Citing such information was hardly a common practice in the field anthropology of his era and was by no means required by his USNM mentor Hrdlička. It did not become an established practice until a full decade later, with the new types of ethnographic fieldwork advanced by a Dane, Knud Rasmussen, among the Inuit, and by a fellow Pole, Bronislaw Malinowski, in the South Pacific. To his credit, Poniatowski learned such skills all by himself, as he did not have training in field ethnography and little prior field experience.
Poniatowski reportedly collected only one extended Nanai genealogy of the Aktanka clan from Gendzu (Semen) Aktanka (Poniatowski 1966: 43), but he consistently tried to record people's family relations on the USNM anthropometric measurement sheets, which was also not in Hrdlička's instructions. He was obviously comfortable using people's Native names in personal encounters and in his writing, in an era when most anthropologists and explorers referred to Native partners by nicknames or by corrupted Europeanized first names. By all accounts, he was not a “colonial anthropologist” and was sympathetic to, and engaged with, the people whom he measured and photographed. Therefore, Poniatowski's collections from the Amur River expedition may serve as important heritage assets to Indigenous groups that he visited. His data are “locally based” in that we know where they came from. Many records—photos, drawings, objects, ornamentations, paper cutouts, and so forth—were tagged to the specific individuals who produced them. In addition, references in his diary allow us to identify specific individuals from whom he recorded folklore and linguistic data, including the location and date(s) of recording.19
Poniatowski's materials are also rich in visual documentation. People's faces on personal and group photographs and in village scenes may be linked to the names in the diary or on individual anthropometric sheets. Of prime value may be our ability to reconnect the images of the past with today's descendants in the Nanai and Udege communities and to offer people a chance to see the faces of their ancestors from a century ago. Therefore, Poniatowski's Amur River collections have a new message today that has little relevance to his original assignment.
Another important aspect of Poniatowski's fieldwork was his interest in Indigenous languages and, specifically, in the Nanai and Udege cultural terminology for spiritual objects and symbols. His 13-page publication, Materials to the Vocabulary of the Amur Gold (Poniatowski 1923), contained a short word list, preceded by a brief introduction and accompanied by tables representing conjugational forms in the Nanai language. From Poniatowski's diary we know that one of his key informants was Semen Aktanka (“Gendzu”—see Figure 7) from Sikachi-Alian, and that Poniatowski collected information on vocabulary and grammar from him on 7 July and 24 July 1914. Gendzu also shared Nanai cultural and religious knowledge in course of their trip in July and August 1914 (Poniatowski 1966: 41–42, 61).
Semen Aktanka (“Gendzu”), Poniatowski's principal language and folklore expert from the community of Sikachi-Alian. Source: https://www.bibliotekacyfrowa.pl/dlibra/publication/73491/edition/71681; full photo at https://www.bibliotekacyfrowa.pl/dlibra/publication/73438/edition/71632/content.
Citation: Sibirica 23, 3; 10.3167/sib.2024.230303
Compiling a vocabulary or a topically organized list of words in a local language was a common practice of the era; it might explain Poniatowski's effort to compile a Nanai “vocabulary,” with some added Udege words. The value of Poniatowski's Nanai vocabulary of about 360 terms lies primarily in the sociolinguistic dimension of the listed words, which can be loosely arranged into the following categories: [1] time, [2] animals, [3] religious beliefs, [4] human beings according to their age, [5] human body, [6] weather, [7] hunting, [8] verbs, [9] numerals, [10] prepositions, and [11] housing. The very choice of the categories confirmed Poniatowski's strong ethnographic leanings and probably reflected on his conversations with Nanai partners.
The group of words related to “religious beliefs” deserves special attention, as it offered a glimpse into Poniatowski's venture into the spiritual world of the Nanai people. Notably, he himself presented his small vocabulary as a mere “addition” to Grube's much larger dictionary of 2000-plus words (Grube 1900). Yet his aim was seemingly not to “complement” Grube's dictionary with the missing words, but rather to frame it as a quasi-commentary on Grube's work.
In his brief description of Nanai grammar, Poniatowski perceived it through the lens of a speaker of an Indo-European language. What makes his work notable, by today's standard, was his attention not only to the names that local communities used for themselves, but also to how their neighbors called them, as well as to the neighbor's ethnonyms.20 From a linguist's perspective, it is unfortunate that Poniatowski's list of Nanai and Udege words, with short explanations, was not followed by a more thorough analysis or by a sample text in the Nanai language to offer insight on how the terminology was used.
With such material lacking, Poniatowski's Nanai vocabulary is best used when read alongside his field diary filled with drawings of the objects, charms, and spiritual figures he mentioned. In the diary, he also recorded stories concerning the origin of humankind and certain taboo topics. In these accounts we find words for the objects he collected. Lastly, his “vocabulary” documented the likely Nanai pronunciation common in the Sikachi-Alian community around 1914. Therefore, his short publication opened a window to the world of beliefs, rituals, and prayers of the Nanai people from the sociolinguistic perspective and makes it a valuable source for studies in historical linguistics of Nanai and other Tungusic languages.
Future Steps
We plan to complete the cataloguing and assessment of Poniatowski's collections in 2024, both in Washington and at the PES in Wrocław. The next planned step is to seek insight on his materials from Indigenous cultural experts from the Amur River region. Yet the prospects for such partnership remain distant as long as Russia's war against Ukraine continues. The official lines of collaboration with Indigenous knowledge experts and museum specialists in Russia are currently put on hold, and most Western granting agencies would not support joint projects with Russian partners. While international channels remain closed, we will try to engage Siberian Indigenous experts who reside in the West and may help shed light on Poniatowski's collections.
Another option would be to bring Poniatowski's materials back to the “home area” in digital format, that is, to digitally reunite them with the descendants of people he worked with in 1914. For today's communities in the Russian Far East, who are reportedly short on authentic heritage materials (cf. Bulgakova 2023), Poniatowski's diverse visual, ethnographic, and linguistic records may provide a valuable resource. It may perhaps best be accomplished via an interactive open site, which is a popular path for partnering with Indigenous communities and institutions (Thorpe et al. 2021; Glass and Hennessy 2022). Such an open portal could be hosted at the Wrocław University Library and organized along the main components of Poniatowski's collections: ethnographic objects, photographs, ornaments, drawings, anthropometric sheets, associated documents, his 1914 diary, and other personal records. Unlike the existing Poniatowski site at the WUL built in 2016 with a Polish-only interface, the new portal should eventually include options in four languages (Polish, English, Nanai, and Russian). Another option could be an illustrated book, a multilingual catalog of Poniatowski's collections. These products should be compatible and include a narrative on his 1914 expedition and list of major resources for further exploration. We are also exploring how to use Poniatowski's materials to train students in museum research and collection care, at the University of Wrocław and elsewhere, thus adding outreach and mentoring of the next generation of museum professionals to broaden today's impact of the “Poniatowski collections.”
Conclusion
By all accounts, Poniatowski's Amur River expedition of 1914 was an unfinished journey. It was cut short by the world war that forced him to leave the main portion of his collections in Russia. That war triggered a dispersal of his materials among various institutions in Poland and in the US (and perhaps also in Russia). A portion of the objects brought to Poland did not survive another world war, and some of Poniatowski's collections were registered under other people's names, like Wacław Brun in Warsaw and Vladimir K. Arseniev at USNM. What was once a unified body of work, certainly in Poniatowski's head, was splintered into pieces of various records and material evidence, with no connection among its elements for more than a century.
The linguistic materials collected by Poniatowski in 1914 and partly printed nine years later (Poniatowski 1923), constituted a rare exception, being his only known publication from the expedition. Another feature of his linguistic data was that it reflected many names for objects and other cultural terms featured in Poniatowski's photographs, drawings, and field diary.
Poniatowski's field research suffered from various shortcomings, including the instructions imposed by Hrdlička, shortage of time and funds, lack of training, and more. A novice on his first field trip, he could not draw strength from prior experience, as did many fellow Poles and other political exiles who had spent years among Siberian Indigenous people, first as convicts and, later, as anthropologists (like Piłsudski, Wacław Sieroszewski, Waldemar Bogoras, or Leo (Lev) Shternberg). Furthermore, as seen from Poniatowski's linguistic records, he was not trained as a documentation linguist and his linguistic data lacked unified transliteration, order, and structure.
To his credit, Poniatowski was aware of his limitations, and he contemplated a return to the Amur River region barely a month after the start of his 1914 field trip (Poniatowski 1966: 45; Krupnik 2024). He tried to secure funds and arrange for joint fieldwork with Arseniev, to no avail. The combination of a world war, two Russian revolutions, and the Russian Civil War were too big an obstacle to overcome. He never returned and hardly published any data he collected in 1914. Nonetheless, according to his colleague Kazimierz Stołyhwo (1916: 19), Poniatowski used the library and equipment of the Warsaw Scientific Society to evaluate his materials from the Amur River expedition, which is supported by documents in Poniatowski's personal files at PSE. After his short trip of 1914, Poniatowski established his authority primarily in the field of general ethnology and was viewed as a prominent figure by his colleagues in the interwar era (Bulanda 1946).
In the following decades, many people tried to “complete” Poniatowski's unfinished journey of 1914 by assessing and publishing his records posthumously. The first such effort was undertaken between 1942 and 1946, following his arrest and detention, when a group of his associates physically rescued his personal archive and donated it to the Polish Ethnological Society (Bulanda 1946: 21; Heidenreich 1966: 9–10; Skowron-Markowska and Nowakowska 2022). The second effort to preserve his materials in print took place two decades later, with the publication of his 1914 field diary and of several articles analyzing his ethnographic and biological data (Poniatowski 1966; Glinka 1966; Heidenreich 1975; Wokroj 1966). The third effort happened fifty years later, between 2014 and 2016, when a team at the PES and the University of Wrocław created online access to photographs, anthropometric sheets, and other items at the PES, and produced the first assessment of his photography and fieldwork (Anonymous 2015; Skowron-Markowska 2016; Nowakowska, ed. 2016b). Unbeknownst to Polish colleagues, the NMNH also provided online access to Poniatowski's objects at the Smithsonian via its “Arctic Digitization” project (Cain and Rosenthal 2016).
Our current effort since 2023 constitutes the fourth attempt to electronically reunite Poniatowski's dispersed legacy and reestablish the original body of his 1914 collections. These collections are literally “waiting to be reunited.” Another goal is to make the collections accessible, via an interconnected online platform (network) or a printed catalog, to Indigenous home communities, museum specialists, anthropologists, linguists, and other users. This new path of “digital return” or “digital reconnection” is increasingly popular in today's heritage management and museum practices (Bell 2017; Thorpe et al. 2021; Glass and Hennessy 2022; Griebel and Keith 2021; Rowley 2013).
This, we believe, may pave the way to the next phase by bringing Poniatowski's collections, even if digitally, back to their “home area,” to the descendants of people he surveyed in 1914. We know from Poniatowski's diary that he planned to mail the photographs he had taken to Nanai individuals in Sikachi-Alian (Poniatowski 1966: 33). His promise may be honored more than a century later when these photographs are shared online or in print in the communities along the Amur River, even enriched by local insight. Unfortunately, the prospects for such an effort remain distant for the moment, as Russia's war against Ukraine continues. We hope that this crucial local vision is added (“given back”) to the objects, photographs, and other materials collected by a young anthropologist from Warsaw, so that the journey started in 1914 may be completed.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the Polish Ethnological Society (Polskie Towarzystwo Ludoznawcze) in Wrocław and the Wrocław University Library for generously allowing us to promote the value of Stanisław Poniatowski's collections and to use its digital images as illustrations. Furthermore, we are thankful to Joanna Bartuszek, Custodian of the National Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw, for her support in our search for Stanisław Poniatowski's publications, manuscripts, and photography. IK thanks David Rosenthal, William Fitzhugh, and Carrie Beauchamp at the Smithsonian Institution, who helped in the study of the Smithsonian portion of Poniatowski's collection at the NMNH Department of Anthropology. SSM thanks Paulina Suchecka (PES) for her contribution. JD acknowledges the support of the project “Minority Languages, Major Opportunities. Collaborative Research, Community Engagement and Innovative Educational Tools” funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 778384 COLING project coordinated by the University of Warsaw that enabled her research at the Smithsonian Institution in spring 2023, under the guidance of Gwyneira Isaac and Igor Krupnik.
Notes
This paper generally follows on the format of the Siberian ethnic group names accepted by common online resources, like Wikipedia, Terralingua, and others. For the Nanai, both the forms Nanai and Nanay are acceptable. For the Udege, the forms Udeghe/Udehe (Russian удэге, удэхе) are also common, whereas the language name (ISO 639-3 ude in the classification of the International Organization for Standardization) is usually spelled Udihe in the linguistic publications (see Perekhvalskaya and Janhunen 2023; Robbeets & Savelyev 2020). We preserved some established versions for old ethnic names that have been used in anthropological and linguistic literature since the late 1800s (like Gold(i), Gilyak, Orochon, etc.), particularly when citing early publications.
Talko-Hryncewicz, a medical doctor and physical anthropologist, lived for ten years in Siberia in the 1890s and carried out research with the local Evenki, Mongolian, and Buryat communities.
We know about his daily schedule thanks to the handwritten field diary that he kept from 10 May to 31 August 1914 (Poniatowski 1966; Poniatowski n.d.). For detailed overviews of Poniatowski's trip, see Goncharova 2004, 2007; Krupnik 2024; Skowron-Markowska and Nowakowska 2022.
Ivan A. Lopatin (1888–1970) was a Russian, later American, anthropologist, who started his career in the 1910s in Khabarovsk by carrying out research with the Nanai (Goldi) and the Orochen people along the Amur River and the Tatar Strait (Lopatin 1922). After the Russian Civil War, he emigrated to China and later moved to Canada, then to California.
These included: Nizhnie (Lower) Mari (45 people, 4–9 July); Mukhu (68 people, 9–11 July); Dada (64 people, 12–14 July); Daerga (111 people, 14–15 July); Naikhin (158 people, 15–17 July); Torgon (263 people, 17–20 July); Troitskoe (20–21 July); Barkas (44 people, 21 July); Mengen (65 people, 22–26 July); and Udege (Orochen) camps along the lower Khungari (Gur) River (26–31 July; see Poniatowski 1966; Skowron-Markowska and Nowakowska 2022: 79; all population data as of 1915, from Lopatin 1922: 351–352).
This letter is missing in the Hrdlička–Poniatowski correspondence at NAA. The text is reproduced here from a copy on the Wrocław University Library website; see https://www.bibliotekacyfrowa.pl/dlibra/publication/73345/edition/131291/content (accessed 13 February 2023).
Note from “Photos: Arch. PME H.Muz. 8_8.1-8_8.3,” which includes an English summary of Poniatowski's manuscripts in the collection of the National Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw.
Various types of objects and other materials can be accessed on the Poniatowski collection website created in 2016 and hosted by the Wrocław University Library; see https://www.bibliotekacyfrowa.pl/dlibra/publication/79485/edition/131281/content (Skowron-Jaślanek and Michałowska 2016).
In addition, the collection has 90 other travel photographs from this period, primarily from the Middle East, to the so-called “Silk Road.” We are uncertain about the author of these photographs, almost certainly not Stanisław Poniatowski.
In his diary, he recorded: “In addition to the American 5”x7” camera z.... 1:6 and 7 = 18 from the Ethnological Laboratory 13x18cm. From Doppel..... 1:6.3 and 7 = 21.5. Agfa film 40 dozen of 12x16.5 cm and 13x18 and 3 dozen of Bruno film (two cameras, 480 glass negatives Agfa 12x16.5 and 13x18, and 36 Bruno film rolls)” (Poniatowski 1966: 17–18).
The most famous proponent of this use of staged photography was British biologist Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895), who, from the 1860s onwards, developed a technique of photographing the inhabitants of the British colonies so that the population of the entire British Empire could be compared anatomically. People—one man, one woman, and one child from each group—were photographed naked, from the front and in profile, standing at the measuring scale (Nowakowska 2016a).
For example, by matching individual photos from the village of Muhu and a group photo of four individuals captioned “Golds in Muhu. Nos. 64, 67, 65, and 57,” we can identify (left to right) Beldy Fada (40, no. 64), Gajkar Senu (16, no. 65), Permenka Kaha from Mari (20, no. 67), and Beldy Pawel/Sujka (23, no. 57) plus two small children.
A good example is the pencil-filled measurement sheet for no. 43 “N. Mari, Goldka, Sago (Natalja) Onenko from Susu, wife of Aleksandr Posar, age 23.” It was reduced to “Onenko Sago, Gold, Nijni Mari, age 23,” in the final version in ink.
These cutouts can be viewed online at https://www.bibliotekacyfrowa.pl/dlibra/publication/73377/edition/131284/content.
It is confirmed by inscriptions on several drawings, like “Goldowie Sakaczialan Kalgama Brun No. 12,” which means “The Goldi, (village of) Sikachi-Alian, kalgama (Nanai name for a particular type of ritual sculpture), No. 12 (from the) Brun (collection).”
“Mapa etnograficzna Kraju Ussuryjskiego W. K. Arsenjewa w r. 1906–1912 z objasnieniami dla Stanislawa Poniatowskiego w.r. 1914” (Ethnographic Map of the Ussuri Region [compiled] by V. K. Arseniev in the years 1906–1912, with explanations for Stanislaw Poniatowski in 1914); see https://www.bibliotekacyfrowa.pl/dlibra/publication/117745/edition/131283/content, no. 25.
https://collections.nmnh.si.edu/search/anth/ (search words “Poniatowski” and “Arseniev” / “Arseneff”). The search under “Arseniev” (also “Arseneff”) generates 49 objects; the search for “Poniatowski” generates 62 objects. All objects are currently in place as a part of the NMNH ethnology collections, except for two catalog numbers currently on loan for display at the Anchorage Museum in Anchorage, AK.
A good example is the Nanai collection of 366 objects on the website of the Russian Ethnographic Museum in St. Petersburg, with extensive object annotations: https://collection.ethnomuseum.ru/cross-search?query=нанайцы.
Two anthropological ventures most closely associated with this type of multitasked exploration and their records were the Cambridge Torres Strait Expedition of 1898 (Herle and Rouse 1998) and the Jesup North Pacific Expedition of 1897–1902 (Krupnik and Fitzhugh 2001; Kendall and Krupnik 2003).
For example, on 7 July 1914, according to his field diary, he started a list of words for the Nanai vocabulary, based on information collected from his companions Semen Aktanka (“Gendzu”) and Dmitrij (Poniatowski 1966: 46).
For example, khozanyi “name by which the Gold call themselves,” loča “a Russian” or mangunyi “name given to the Gold by the Orochen-Udige” (Poniatowski 1923).
References
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