12 Facts About Alphonse Pinart

Alphonse Louis Pinart was a French scholar, linguist, ethnologist and collector, specialist on the American continent.

Alphonse Pinart studied the civilizations of the New World in the manner of the pioneers of the time, mixing the empirical observation of anthropological, ethnological and linguistic elements.

Alphonse Pinart spent the fortune of his family and his two wives in the exploration of America and the purchase of objects and books related to his interests, which he made enjoy many museums and collections, starting with the Ethnographic Museum of Trocadero which he was the first donor, and the castle museum Boulogne-sur-Mer in his native region.

Alphonse Pinart conceived the project of going to Alaska to study the native languages in order to prove the Siberian origin of the Amerindians; at the time, this idea had few supporters.

Alphonse Pinart may have been interested in archeology by the discovery in 1864 in Equihen, by workers of the family business, human skeletons, and antique objects2.

At 19, Alphonse Pinart realized his project of travel at his expense; he resided from spring 1871 to spring 1872 in Alaska, a region that has just been acquired by the United States after nearly a century of Russian occupation, and made a visit to the Aleutian Islands.

Alphonse Pinart returned to France with sixty masks from the Kodiak archipelago and eight others discovered in a burial cave Akhanh on the island of Unga.

Alphonse Pinart is one of the many assistants Bancroft relied on for writing his History of America.

Alphonse Pinart would build a collection of documents and manuscripts and bequeath to him personal documents.

Alphonse Pinart then negotiated with the Ministry of Education the financing of his expedition jointly with Leon de Cessac, against the donation of his collection to the Museum of Ethnography Trocadero.

In 1874, Alphonse Pinart received for his trip to Alaska and the Strait of Bering the Gold Medal for study tour, missions and reconnaissance works of the Geographical Society, and in 1875, a medal of the International Geographical Union at the Paris Congress.

Alphonse Pinart would receive another in 1877 from the Acclimatization Society.