In 1943 French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss arrived in New York City, along with countless refugees from the war in Europe. He became a frequent visitor to the North Pacific Hall at the American Museum of Natural History where he could lose himself in what he affectionately called “a magic place where the dreams of childhood hold a rendezvous, where century-old tree trunks sing and speak, where indefinable objects watch out for the visitor, with the anxious stare of human faces, where animals of superhuman gentleness join their little paws like hands in prayer.” Two and a half million people now visit the Museum each year to share in these enchantments. The American Museum houses the most extensive collection of Northwest Coast Indian art in existence. It includes material from virtually every Indian group that once lived along the west coast of British Columbia and Alaska. In From the Land of the Totem Poles, Dr. Aldona Jonaitis traces the history of this magnificent collection, beginning in the late nineteenth century before these coastal peoples had much contact with Europeans, and their customs, languages, and art were still intact. Shortly after the collection was formed, between 1880 and 1910, Indian culture in this region went into a severe decline, to be revived a half century later as another generation of North Americans discovered their heritage. The story alternately captivates and distresses. Populations were decimated by disease in the last years of the nineteenth century, art objects left their makers’ hands bound for museums all over the world, traditional rituals were outlawed, and governments exerted strong pressures on the Indians to become assimilated. On the other side of the story are the individuals—like Franz Boas, under whose direction much of the Museum collection was assembled, Lt. George Thornton Emnions, who immersed himself in the native cultures, George Hunt, prized Kwakiutl informant for Boas and other researchers, and Charles Edenshaw, master Haida carver and painter—whose colorful lives intersect the Age of Museum Collecting.