Abstract
Quesalid - the Kwakiutl shaman immortalized in Lévi-Strauss' “The sorcerer and his magic” - was, in reality, a very different individual to the one portrayed in that now classic medical (and wider) anthropological text. This article reveals how it is that we may identify the true Quesalid, telling something of his life, and shows him to have been a key figure in early American anthropology and the 'Culture and Personality' school, as well as an augur of many of the central debates within medical anthropology. The 'biography' of Quesalid's shamanic biography itself illustrates how individuals evolve into iconographic spectres, haunting anthropological literature with an existence of their own, an existence which comes to relate little or not at all to their actual lives. Ultimately, 'tracking' Quesalid elaborates certain issues surrounding informancy, theory production, and the nature of cultural authenticity itself.
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