At the end of the nineteenth century, a rising interestin Native American customs and an i

At the end of the nineteenth century, a rising interest

in Native American customs and an increasing desire to

understand Native American culture prompted ethnolo-

gists to begin recording the life stories of Native Amer-

(5) ican. Ethnologists had a distinct reason for wanting to

hear the stories: they were after linguistic or anthropo-

logical data that would supplement their own field

observations, and they believed that the personal

stories, even of a single individual, could increase their

(10) understanding of the cultures that they had been

observing from without. In addition many ethnologists

at the turn of the century believed that Native Amer-

ican manners and customs were rapidly disappearing,

and that it was important to preserve for posterity as

(15) much information as could be adequately recorded

before the cultures disappeared forever.

There were, however, arguments against this method

as a way of acquiring accurate and complete informa-

tion. Franz Boas, for example, described autobiogra-

(20) phies as being “of limited value, and useful chiefly for

the study of the perversion of truth by memory,” while

Paul Radin contended that investigators rarely spent

enough time with the tribes they were observing, and

inevitably derived results too tinged by the investi-

(25) gator’s own emotional tone to be reliable.

Even more importantly, as these life stories moved

from the traditional oral mode to recorded written

form, much was inevitably lost. Editors often decided

what elements were significant to the field research on a

(30) given tribe. Native Americans recognized that the

essence of their lives could not be communicated in

English and that events that they thought significant

were often deemed unimportant by their interviewers.

Indeed, the very act of telling their stories could force

(35) Native American narrators to distort their cultures, as

taboos had to be broken to speak the names of dead

relatives crucial to their family stories.

Despite all of this, autobiography remains a useful

tool for ethnological research: such personal reminis-

(40) cences and impressions, incomplete as they may be, are

likely to throw more light on the working of the mind

and emotions than any amount of speculation from an

ethnologist or ethnological theorist from another

culture.

Which of the following best describes the organization of the passage？

A．The historical backgrounds of two currently used research methods are chronicled.

B．The validity of the data collected by using two different research methods is compared.

C．The usefulness of a research method is questioned and then a new method is proposed.

D．The use of a research method is described and the limitations of the results obtained are discussed.

E．A research method is evaluated and the changes necessary for its adaptation to other subject areas are discussed.