Explores the founding father of American anthropology's historic trip to Puerto Rico in 1915. As a component of the Scientific Survey of Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands, Boas intended to perform field research in the areas of anthropology and ethnography there while other scientists explored the island's natural resources.

This book highlights Franz Boas’s historic trip to Puerto Rico in 1915, which included the documentation of oral folklore. On that trip, a rising anthropologist involved in the project, John Alden Mason, collected one of the largest oral folklore collections from any Spanish-speaking country or territory. The stories, many of them written by rural cultural informants, the Jibaros, offer an outstanding view of an early twentieth century Puerto Rican identity.