Gardens: The Universal Language

By Taylor Elyea

In January 1937, one hundred forty-seven members of The Garden Club of America ventured on a nineteen-day trip to numerous sites in Mexico. Extensive documentation of that journey, now part of The Garden Club of America Collection at the Archives of American Gardens, makes it clear that the members covered a vast array of Mexican landscapes, gardens, and sites. The group trekked to landscapes in Guaymas, Mazatlán, the Barrancas, Guadalajara, Uruapan, Pátzcuaro, Morelia, Mexico City, Taxco, Cuernavaca, and many other cities. One of the sites visited by the group was the former home of Zelia Nuttall (1857-1933), an aficionado of Mexican gardens and botany and notable American archaeologist.

Zelia Nuttall (1857-1933)

Born in San Francisco to a Mexican-American mother and Irish father, Zelia Nuttall’s love for the Mexican landscape ultimately culminated in her purchase of Casa Alvarado, a 16th-century mansion in Mexico City. Here she explored her newfound interest in Mexican gardens and botany by studying garden and landscape art as well as medicinal herbs. She authored the monograph, The Gardens of Ancient Mexico, which was reprinted in the Smithsonian’s Annual Report for 1923, and shared her love for Mexican landscapes by hosting many visitors in the gardens at her home.

GCA members at lunch in the gardens at Casa Alvarado, former home of scholar Zelia Nuttall. 

It was in these gardens that members of The Garden Club of America enjoyed a luncheon as guests of William Richardson, manager of the National City Bank’s Mexican branch. A copy of Nuttall’s article was provided to each GCA member, courtesy of the Garden Club of Mexico. 

Walled garden, the Churubusco Monastery. Both sites in Mexico City were just two of many visited by the GCA in January, 1937.

During their 1937 trip, GCA members met with their counterparts from a number of different garden clubs throughout Mexico.  A few lines from a detailed travelogue of the trip published in the March, 1937 Bulletin of The Garden Club of America sums up the universal tie that a shared love of gardens brings: “…we have left them with our hearts and our gratitude, eternally…we said goodbye to them with real affection and regret.”

Taylor Elyea
2021 Virtual Summer Intern 
Archives of American Gardens 

New Virtual Finding Aids for Three Smithsonian Institution Anthropology Collections

By Katherine Christensen

In addition to collections which were maintained and donated by individual scientists, the National Anthropological Archives (NAA) holds collections created and maintained by anthropology departments and divisions within the Smithsonian Institution and for projects conducted by those departments. This post covers three of those collections, whose finding aids have recently been made available through the Smithsonian Online Virtual Archives (SOVA).

The Department of Anthropology records

Staff of the Department of Anthropology, United States National Museum, 1904, standing in front of the Arts and Industries Building. Standing from left to right: Edwin H. Hawley, G. C. Maynard, Alěs Hrdlička, Thomas W. Sweeney, Walter Hough, H. W. Hendley, Richard A. Allen, E. P. Upham, Paul Beckwith, Immanuel M. Casanowicz, and J. Palmer. Seated from left to right: Miss Malone and Miss Louisa A. Rosenbusch. SIA-NAA-42012-000002 Smithsonian Institution Archives.

There have been a number of incarnations of the Department of Anthropology through the years as the Smithsonian Institution and its component museums restructured. These include the Section of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution, the Division of Anthropology of the United States National Museum, the Office of Anthropology of the National Museum of Natural History, and the Department of Anthropology of the National Museum of Natural History. This collection holds papers and photographs generated by the department and its members in each of these forms.

Staff of the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), 1931. Seated (L. to R.): T. Dale Stewart, Frank M. Setzler, Neil M. Judd, Walter Hough, Aleš Hrdlička, Herbert W. Krieger, Henry B. Collins. Standing (L. to R.): Charles Terry, William H. Short, Richard A. Allen, George D. McCoy, William H. Egberts, Richard G. Paine, W. H. Bray, Leta B. Loos, and Helen E. Heckler. SIA-MNH-18107A, Smithsonian Institution Archives.

The department was originally focused primarily on collections care and fieldwork as a means of growing the collections, while research was conducted by the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE). In the 1950s the department shifted to a greater emphasis on research, leading to a merge with the BAE in 1965 in order to eliminate redundancy.¹ The Department of Anthropology collection holds some archival materials related to the BAE, such as documents from the River Basin Surveys, but the majority of the BAE’s materials are housed within the Bureau of American Ethnology records.

Staff of the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), October 29, 1959. Top row (left to right): Saul Reisenberg, Cliff Evans, Robert A. Elder, George Metcalf(?), Joseph Andrews, and unidentified man; second row (left to right): Neil Judd, Eugene Knez, Robert G. Jenkins, G. Robert Lewis, George Phebus (?), and Gus Van Beek (?) ; third row (left to right): Gordon Gibson, T. Dale Stewart, unidentified man, unidentified man, and Waldo Wedel; and bottom row (left to right): Willie Mae Pelham, Jeraldine M. Whitmore, unidentified woman, unidentified woman, Mildred Wedel (?), and Betty Meggers. Smithsonian Institution Archives.

The collection primarily contains institutional records, rather than records of the research conducted by the department’s members. The papers of many members of the department through its long history have been transferred to the NAA, so there are numerous other collections² which contain materials relating to the activities of the department. There are additional departmental materials in the Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Staff of the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), 2007. Top row (left to right): Chris Dudar, Bill Billeck, Doug Ubelaker, Mike Frank, Randal Scott, Eric Hollinger, Christopher Parker, Bruno Froilich, Sarah Zabriskie, and Dave Hunt; second row (left to right):  Kim Neutzling, Gail Solomon, Carrie Beauchamp, Bob Laughlin, Mary Jo Arnoldi, Lynn Snyder, Paulina Ledergerber-Crespo, Ron Bishop, Jim Krakker, Rob Leopold, and Dave Rosenthal; third row (left to right): Bruce Bernstein, Cheri Botic, Bill Crocker, Nancy Shorey, Pam Wintle, Stephanie Christensen, Jai Alterman, Jim Blackman, and Don Ortner; fourth row (left to right): Georgia O’Reilly, Bill Fitzhugh, Cindy Wilczak, Noel Broadbent, Paul Michael Taylor, Vyrtis Thomas, unidentified woman, Lorain Wang, Daisy Njoku, Christie Leece, Roy (Chip) Clark, and Mark White; fifth row (left to right): Don Tenoso, Ruth Selig, unidentified woman, Cesare Marino, P. Ann Kaupp, Carmen Eyzaguirre, unidentified man, and Jim Haug; sixth row (left to right):  Kari Bruwelhide, Paula Cardwell, Betty Meggers, Bill Merrill, and Stephen Loring; seventh row (left to right): Jane Walsh, Barbara Watanabe, Laurie Burgess, Ruth Saunders, Candace Greene, and Risa Arbolino; eighth row (left to right): Doug Owsley, Jake Homiak, Dennis Stanford, Letitia Rorie, Rick Potts, Jennifer Clark, and Carole Lee Kin; and ninth row (left to right): Erica Jones, Dan Rogers, Deloris Walker, Peggy Jodry, Zee Payne, JoAllyn Archambault, Joanna Scherer, and Felicia Pickering.

The Center for the Study of Man records

The Center for the Study of Man (CSM) was created in 1968 to apply anthropological knowledge to problems facing all mankind. In pursuit of this goal, the CSM organized meetings of established anthropologists with specific programs and brought researchers together into special task forces. The center additionally headed a number of programs, including an Urgent Anthropology Program (which granted funds to facilitate field work in and accumulate data on cultures that were rapidly changing under the pressure of modernization), an American Indian Program (which sought both to create the Handbook of North American Indians and to undertake action anthropology projects in conjunction with various Native American groups), the Research Institute on Immigration and Ethnic Studies (RIIES), and the National Anthropological Film Center (now the Human Studies Film Archive). The center also sought to create a Museum of Man, which would host exhibits devoted to anthropology and ecology. However, due to internal disagreements over the aims of this museum, the project was never approved. Beginning in 1976, the CSM was slowly phased out due to difficulties with funding and with melding the research goals of individual staff members with those of the center as a whole.

Center for the Study of Man meeting, May 19, 1970. From left to right: William C. Sturtevant, Robert M. Laughlin, Sol Tax, Sam Stanley, Mysore N. Srinivas, Douglas W. Schwartz, T. Dale Stewart, Fredrik Barth, Wilcomb E. Washburn, Laila Shukry El Hamamsy, George W. Stocking Jr., Surajit C. Sinha, Gordon D. Gibson, and Henry B. Collins. Center for the Study of Man records, Sam Stanley papers, Box 141.

The records of the CSM document several international CSM-sponsored conferences, including a planning meeting in Cairo in 1972, several pre-session conferences (on cannabis, alcohol, population, and the transmission of culture) at the Ninth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences in 1973, and a 1974 meeting at Bucharest on the cultural implications of population change. They also include records concerning an attempt to issue a series of monographs and the organization of special task forces concerned with questions of human fertility and the environment. Additionally, there is material pertaining to the action anthropology projects with Native Americans, focusing on economic development and including material relating to the coordination of studies of specific tribes carried out with funds from the Economic Development Administration and economic development consulting for the American Indian Policy Review Commission.

The Tulamniu CWA Project records

Beginning first cross trench north village midden mound. Tulamniu C.W.A. Project records, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

As part of his recovery plan for the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt created a variety of agencies whose goal was to provide work to the unemployed. Under the auspices of one of these, the Civil Works Administration (CWA), the Smithsonian Institution sponsored a number of archaeological excavations around the United States. One of these, during the winter of 1933-1934, excavated four sites searching for the historic Tulamni Yokuts village of Tulamniu in Kern County, California.

Beginning survey baseline first trench. Tulamniu C.W.A. Project records, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

The project was headed by William Duncan Strong (whose papers were previously profiled on this blog) and recovered thousands of artifacts and, in keeping with the practices of the time period, many Native American burials. These artifacts and remains were shipped to the United States National Museum for study after the excavations were complete. The Smithsonian Institution began repatriations to U.S. tribes in 1982 and, in 2013, collections from the project were repatriated jointly to the Tule River Indian Tribe and the Santa Rosa Rancheria of Tachi Yokuts Indians; they were reburied at the Tule River Indian Reservation.³

Closeup of first trench in north village midden mound. Tulamniu C.W.A. Project records, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

The collection primarily contains correspondence, the field notes of the archaeologists, catalogs, maps, and charts.

 

Katherine Christensen
Contract Archivist
National Anthropological Archives
____________________________

¹ For more information, see https://naturalhistory.si.edu/sites/default/files/media/file/history-anthropology-si_0.pdf

² Some notable collections include the Betty J. Meggers and Clifford Evans papers, the Aleš Hrdlička papers, the Priscilla Reining papers, the Ralph S. and Rose L. Solecki papers, the Thomas Dale Stewart papers, the Matthew Williams Stirling and Marion Stirling Pugh papers, and the William C. Sturtevant papers.

³ See Repatriation Office Case Report Summaries California Region for more information. Accessed November 2, 2020. https://naturalhistory.si.edu/sites/default/files/media/file/case-reports-california-region-rev2-2020.pdf

New Virtual Finding Aids for Two Linguistic Anthropology Collections

Linguistic Anthropology is the study of the effects of communication—in all its diversity and forms—on society and whether differences in language and its usage relate to differences in the way the world is perceived and understood.¹ The two anthropologists discussed in this blogpost whose materials are at the National Anthropological Archive studied different aspects of communication. Garrick Mallery focused on sign language and pictorial representations, while William A. Smalley focused on the written language.

Garrick Mallery (1831-1894)

Pen & ink drawings of Native American sign language prepared for use in the BAE 1st Annual Report (1879-1880), MS 2372 Garrick Mallery Collection on Sign Language and Pictography, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Garrick Mallery pioneered the study of sign language and pictographs. He developed an interest in Native American sign language and pictography while serving in the Union Army during the Civil War and was one of the first ethnologists to join the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1879. Under the BAE’s auspices, he collected and examined sign language vocabulary from Native American groups throughout the U.S. and Canada. He additionally related the Native American sign language he documented to examples from the wider world, both of hearing individuals and the deaf.

Plate of Neapolitan gestures prepared for use in the BAE 1st Annual Report (1879-1880), MS 2372 Garrick Mallery Collection on Sign Language and Pictography, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Mallery completed several publications on the topic of Native American sign language throughout the 1880s, notably Introduction to the Study of Sign language Among the North American Indians (1880), A Collection of Gesture- Signs and Signals of the North American Indians (1880), and "Sign-language among North American Indians Compared with that Among other People and Deaf-mutes," which appeared in the BAE 1st Annual Report (1881). Many of these publications (some annotated by collaborators) are included in MS 2372 Garrick Mallery Collection on Sign Language and Pictography.

Although he is most widely known for his work with sign language, he also performed extensive research into Native American pictography, with a particular interest in Dakota and Lakota winter counts and petroglyphs (examples of winter counts and copies of petroglyphs are included within the collection).

Battiste Good’s Winter Count (page 19), MS 2372 Garrick Mallery Collection on Sign Language and Pictography, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

William Smalley (1923-1997)

Like Chris Gjording, whom I discussed in my last blog entry, Smalley coupled anthropology with Christian ministry. The child of missionaries, he was born in Jerusalem in 1923. He developed an interest in anthropology while an undergraduate at Houghton College because he felt that was relevant to missionary work. He attended the Missionary Training Institute (1945-1946), the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) at the University of Oklahoma (1946-1947) for training in linguistics for Bible translation, and Columbia University’s graduate program in anthropology with a concentration in linguistics. Smalley worked on language analysis problems in the southern region of Vietnam when he was sent there by the Christian and Missionary Alliance in 1950. After Vietnam, he was sent to Luang Prabang, Laos, in 1951. While in Laos, Smalley developed the Hmong Romanized Popular Alphabet (RPA) with Reverend G. Linwood Barney and Father Yves Bertrais. He and his wife returned to the United States when civil war broke out in Laos in 1954. His dissertation focused on his work on the Khmu’ language and he received his doctorate from Columbia in 1956. His dissertation was later published, in abbreviated form, in 1961 as Outline of Khmu' Structure.

Sayaboury Script. The William A. Smalley papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

His work with the Hmong language continued after he became a professor of linguistics at Bethel University in 1978 and found the large Hmong community in the Twin Cities. He studied the adaptation of the Hmong to life in America with the University of Minnesota Southeast Asia Refugee Studies Program, publishing "Adaptive Language Strategies of the Hmong: From Asian Mountains to American Ghettos" (1985) and "Stages of Hmong Cultural Adaptation" (1986). Smalley also continued his study of the Hmong written language, as new scripts had been developed since his participation in the creation of RPA (such as Sayaboury Script, pictured above). He was particularly interested in the Pahwah script, which had been created by Shong Lue Yang in Laos. In addition to studying the script, he studied its creator, and published two books on the subject: Mother of Writing: The Origin and Development of a Hmong Messianic Script (1990) and The Life of Shong Lue Yang: Hmong "Mother of Writing" (1990), both of which he co-authored with Chia Koua Vang and Gnia Yee Yang.

Smalley also studied the languages and dialects of Thailand. He lived in Thailand from 1962 to 1967 and from 1969 to 1972 while working as a translation consultant for the American Bible Society and as a translations coordinator and consultant for the United Bible Societies. He later returned to Thailand as a Fulbright research fellow in 1985 and 1986. He published Linguistic Diversity and National Unity: Language Ecology in Thailand (1994); "Thailand's Hierarchy of Multilingualism" (1988); and "Language and Power: Evolution of Thailand's Multilingualism" (1996) as a result of his work there.

________________________

¹ “Linguistic anthropology,” Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed September 2, 2020, https://www.britannica.com/science/anthropology/Linguistic-anthropology.

Katherine Christensen

Contract Archivist, National Anthropological Archives

New Virtual Finding Aids for Three 20th Century Cultural Anthropology Collections

 

In my last post, I told you about two biological anthropologists whose papers are in the National Anthropological Archives whose finding aids have recently become available on SOVA. This time around, I will tell you about three cultural anthropologists. All funding for the legacy finding aids project was provided by the Smithsonian Collections Information (CIS) pool.

Chris Gjording (1943-1993)

Chris Gjording. The Chris Gjording papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Chris Gjording was an anthropologist and Jesuit priest who worked in Central America in the last two decades of the 20^th century. Prior to gaining his M.A. (1978) and Ph.D. (1985) in social and cultural anthropology from the New School for Social Research, he taught philosophy and liberation theory at Gonzaga University (1973-1975). Gjording was strongly influenced by liberation theology, which was a movement that arose in the Roman Catholic church in Latin America and stressed aiding the poor by improving the socioeconomic structures that oppressed them.¹ As a result, his work was focused on the poor in Central America and the social and political climate which surrounded them. For his dissertation, he studied the Guaymí people and the transnational Cerro Colorado mining project on their lands in Chiriquí, Panama. A revised version of his dissertation was published under the title Conditions Not of Their Choosing: The Guaymí Indians and Mining Multinationals in Panama by the Smithsonian Institution Press in 1991. He also visited and documented the conditions in Guatemalan Indian refugee camps in Los Lirios and Maya Balam in Quintana Roo, Mexico, and wrote articles for a Spanish language bimonthly newsletter focused on the social, economic, and political situation in Honduras called Informaciones. His papers document his research and activities in Central America.

Marvin Harris (1927-2001)

Marvin Harris lecturing. The Marvin Harris papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Marvin Harris was one of the major anthropologists of the 20^th century who is best known for developing the concept of cultural materialism. Harris described this paradigm as a scientific research strategy “based on the simple premise that human social life is a response to the practical problems of earthly existence”² in his 1979 book Cultural Materialism. He applied this research method to taboos, food preferences, and family and social structures, arguing that the Aztecs practiced cannibalism due to a protein deficiency and that Yanomami warfare was caused by the pursuit of animal protein. Some of his arguments were controversial, such as his belief that the Hindu religion’s prohibition against the consumption of beef was based on the economic usefulness of cows as draft animals. He also focused on the difference between emic and etic refers to analysis of a culture by perspectives. In social sciences, emic someone participating in that culture³, while etic refers to analysis by someone outside the culture⁴. He used video as a method of etic analysis, studying families in their home environment during the late 1960s and early 1970s. 

 
Harris authored several important books in the field of anthropology (The Rise of Anthropological Theory and Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture), as well as several books which reached a wider, non-academic audience (Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches and Cannibals and Kings). While he was on the faculty of Columbia University (where he had studied, earning his B.A. in 1948 and his Ph.D. in 1953, and taught from 1953 to 1980), he was active in the anti-war movement, serving as vice-chairman of Vietnam Facts, helping to organize the Ad Hoc Teaching Committee on Vietnam, organizing a symposium with Morton Fried and Robert Murphy at the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting in 1967 which led to the publication of War: The Anthropology of Armed Conflict and Aggression (1968), and openly siding with the students during the 1968 Columbia student uprising. After his time at Columbia, he served as a Graduate Research Professor at the University of Florida (1980-2000).

Anthony Leeds (1925-1989)

Page from Anthony Leeds’ scrapbook with photographs from Salvador. Anthony Leeds papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Anthony Leeds studied at Columbia at the same time as Marvin Harris, receiving his B.A. in 1949 and his Ph.D. in 1957. His main focus as an anthropologist was urban development, although his papers at the NAA include research in rural areas as well. Like Gjording, Leeds was interested in the social, economic, and political situation in Latin America and he analyzed these factors in cacao production in the Bahia region of Brazil for his dissertation: “Economic Cycles in Brazil: The Persistence of a Total-Cultural Pattern: Cacao and Other Cases.” He studied the social and political cultures of squatter settlements in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Bogotá, Lima, and Santiago de Chile. With funding from the Social Science Research Council and the Ford Foundation, he studied twelve favelas (Brazilian slums⁵) in Rio de Janeiro from 1965 to 1966, organizing Peace Corps volunteers, academics, and favela residents to collect data. 

Leeds also taught at a number of colleges and universities: Hofstra University and City College in New York City from 1956 to 1961, the University of Texas-Austin from 1963 to 1972, and Boston University from 1973 to 1989. While at Boston University, he served as an active mentor to many of his students.

____________________________________

¹“Liberation Theology,” Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed May 1, 2020, https://www.britannica.com/topic/liberation-theology.

² Harris, Marvin. Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture. (New York: Random House, 1979), xv.

³“Emic,” Merriam Webster Dictionary, accessed May 1, 2020, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/emic.

⁴“Etic,” Merriam Webster Dictionary, accessed May 1, 2020, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/etic.

⁵“Favela,” Merriam Webster Dictionary, accessed September 28, 2020, https://www.britannica.com/topic/favela.

Katherine Christensen

Contract Archivist, National Anthropological Archives

New Virtual Finding Aids for Two 20th Century Biological Anthropology Collections

Over the course of the last 8 months, I have been working on a Legacy Finding Aids project at the National Anthropological Archives (NAA). The primary purpose of this project was to take finding aids which were not available online, update them to current standards, and make them available through the Smithsonian Online Virtual Archives (SOVA). Five of these have already been profiled on this blog (Sydel Silverman, William Duncan Strong, Aleš Hrdlička, Ethel Cutler Freeman, and Virginia Drew Watson). I will be profiling the rest in groups over the next few months. All funding for this project was provided by the FY2019 Collections Information (CIS) pool. According to the four-field approach as advocated by Franz Boas, anthropology can be divided into biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and archaeology. Where possible, I have divided the collections I will be profiling into these fields. This post concerns two biological anthropologists.

Grover Sanders Krantz (1931-2001)

Grover Krantz at age 40. The Grover Sanders Krantz papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Grover Sanders Krantz was a biological anthropologist who was an expert in primate bone structure and was considered a leading authority in hominoid evolution. He was also known for his interest in cryptozoology. These research areas are included in his papers at the NAA. His other research interests included early human immigration to America, sex identification of skeletons, and the origin of language and speech. He authored numerous journal articles and books on these subjects, including Climactic Races and Descent Groups (1980), The Process of Human Evolution (1981), and Geographical Development of European Languages (1988). He earned his B.A. and M.A. at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1955 and 1958, and his Ph.D. from the University Minnesota in 1970. He taught for thirty years at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington (1968-1998).

Krantz’s devotion to the study of biological anthropology was so intense that he told an NAA staff member that he wanted to keep teaching after he died. He arranged to have his skeletal remains donated to the National Museum of Natural History’s collections for educational purposes (as well as those of his beloved Irish Wolfhound Clyde). Both his and Clyde’s skeletons were displayed in the 2010 exhibition Written in Bone: Forensic Files of the 17^th-Century Chesapeake and are currently on display in Q?rius, the museum’s science education center.

Frank Spencer (1941-1999)

Frank Spencer with his cat. The Frank Spencer papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Frank Spencer was a biological anthropologist who is best known for his work on the history of biological anthropology. His early training was in medical microbiology and he worked as a medical laboratory technician. After emigrating from England to Canada, he earned his B.A. from the University of Windsor, Ontario in 1973. He then moved south to the United States and earned his Ph.D. in biological anthropology in 1979 at the University of Michigan with his dissertation "Biological Anthropology, Aleš Hrdlička, MD (1869-1943): A Chronicle of the Life and Work of an American Physical Anthropologist." He then moved east, taking up a post at Queens College, where he remained for the rest of his career. Spencer was the co-founder and editor of Physical Anthropology News and the author and editor of a number of books on the history of physical anthropology including A History of Physical Anthropology, 1930-1980 (1992), The Origins of Modern Humans: A World Survey of the Fossil Evidence (1984), Ecce Homo: An Annotated Biographic History of Physical Anthropology (1986), and History of Physical Anthropology: An Encyclopedia (1997). He is best known for his book Piltdown: A Scientific Forgery (1990), in which he proposed that the respected doctor Sir Arthur Keith had perpetrated the Piltdown hoax. Ian Langham, an Australian anthropologist, had the same theory, but died before he could publish his work. With the help of Langham’s widow, Spencer incorporated both of their research in Piltdown and its accompanying volume, The Piltdown Papers 1908-1955: The Correspondence and Other Documents Relating to the Forgery (1990). Both Spencer’s and Langham’s research are included in Spencer’s papers at the NAA.

Katherine Christensen
Contract Archivist
National Anthropological Archives

A New Virtual Finding Aid for the Virginia Drew Watson Papers

Virginia Drew Watson (1918-2007) was an archaeologist and cultural anthropologist who was best known for her work in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, where she worked both with her husband, James B. Watson, and with J. David Cole. She made two trips to Papua New Guinea with her husband, the first (1954-1955) to study the socio-cultural aspects of the Tairora and Agarabi groups, and the second (1963-1964) to complete the archaeological work of their student, J. David Cole¹, who was unable to complete it due to illness. The result of this second trip was the completion of her dissertation, "Agarabi Female Roles and Family Structure, a study of socio-cultural change" (1965); the publication of Prehistory of the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea (1977), in which Watson analyzed tools excavated by Cole at 76 different archaeological sites; and the publication of Anyan’s Story: A New Guinea Woman in Two Worlds (1997), in which Watson showed the changes in Tairora culture resulting from contact with the West through the life experience of Anyan. 

Watson, Virginia Drew, and J. David Cole. Prehistory of the Highlands of New Guinea. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977. And Watson, Virginia Drew. Anyan’s Story: A New Guinea Woman in Two Worlds. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997. The Virginia Drew Watson papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Watson also did field work in Brazil, with the Cayua Indians of Mato Grosso (1943), and in Colorado, with  the Anglo-Spanish community in Del Norte (1949-1950). She worked in the Cultural Relations Department of the American Consulate General in Sao Paulo, Brazil, (1944-1945) and lectured at a variety of universities and museums (the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago; the University of Oklahoma, Norman; Washington University in St. Louis; Seattle University; and the University of Washington, Seattle). While she was teaching at Washington State University, she made a study of the Wulfing plates, which had been donated to the university by John Max Wulfing.

Three images from Watson, Virginia Drew. The Wulfing Plates: Products of Prehistoric Americans. St. Louis: Washington University Press, 1950. The Virginia Drew Watson papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Insitution.

These 8 copper plates were created by the Mississippian culture and discovered in Missouri in 1906. Watson’s study of these plates resulted in the publication of The Wulfing Plates: Products of Prehistoric Americans (1950). The plates had previously not been studied extensively, though they had been on exhibit in the St. Louis Art Museum, and her work brought them to the attention of other anthropologists.²

 

The finding aid for Watson’s papers has recently been published on SOVA through the funding of the Smithsonian Collections Information (CIS) pool for fiscal year 2019. The finding aid for James B. Watson’s papers is also available on SOVA. 

 

Katherine Christensen
Contract Archivist
National Anthropological Archives

___________________

¹For more on the work of J. David Cole in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, see this mini-exhibit at the Burke Museum: https://www.burkemuseum.org/news/archaeology-mini-exhibit-uncovering-pacific-pasts. Objects from this expedition are included in the Uncovering Pacific Pasts website created by the University of Sydney: https://heuristplus.sydney.edu.au/h5-alpha/?db=CBAP_Uncovering_Pacific_Pasts&website&id=1137.

²Robb, Matthew H. “Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum Spotlight Series March 2010.” St. Louis Art Museum. Accessed June 8, 2020, https://kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu/files/spotlightMar10_2.pdf. The Smithsonian Institution has similar plates in its collections, which you can see here: https://www.si.edu/object/nmnhanthropology_8319024.

A New Virtual Finding Aid for Ethel Cutler Freeman Collection

Portrait of Ethel Cutler Freeman. The Ethel Cutler Freeman papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Ethel Cutler Freeman (1886-1972) was a remarkable woman who defied expectations to become a celebrated anthropologist. She was born in 1886 in Morristown, New Jersey. After studying abroad in England at Mademoiselle Marie Souvestre’s Academy for Girls, Freeman returned to the United States and married New York stockbroker Leon S. Freeman in 1909. Over the course of the next 25 years, she gave birth to three children (two daughters and a son) and lived the life of a socialite and well-to-do wife and mother. However, she was determined to move beyond the expected activities for a woman of her social class, and in 1934, decided to look to education to clear a “brain full of cobwebs.”¹ Freeman’s papers reveal that dedication for growth; for example, there are several notes that she wrote to herself on themes like “How to Give a Good Lecture” evidenced by a folder labeled “Analysis of my writing by myself.”

“What is wrong with my writing,” a list of critiques by Freeman about her writing. The Ethel

Cutler Freeman papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Freeman decided to venture out and grow her interests beyond ordinary daily social activities and, on the advice of her friend Marcellus Hartley Dodge, attended Columbia University, taking courses in psychology and sociology. She became interested in Native American cultures, specifically that of the Seminole Tribe of Florida, due to the proximity of her family’s home in Naples, Florida, to the Big Cypress Reservation. She met Dr. Clark Wissler, then curator of the Indian Division of the American Museum of Natural History, who was supportive of Freeman’s pursuit of anthropology but discouraged her from attempting a study of Seminole communities, as they were not typically open to outsiders. 

Ethel Cutler Freeman with councilman and medicine man Josie Billie and Frank Cypress outside of Freeman’s chiki on her arrival at the Big Cypress Reservation in 1941. The Ethel Cutler Freeman papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. 

Despite Dr. Wissler’s comments (and his own experience of not being able to work with Seminole communities), Freeman was able to make around thirty stays with the Seminole Tribe of Florida at the Big Cypress Reservation starting in February of 1940. She brought one of her daughters, Condict, and son, Leon Jr., with her on many of her trips. Although Freeman acted with the permission of the Seminole of Florida and developed close relationships with many members of the tribe, it is important to note that she was not acting in collaboration with or at the invitation of the community, as she would today.

Ethel Cutler Freeman demonstrating the use of her 16mm Ciné Kodak camera for children on the Big Cypress Reservation. The Ethel Cutler Freeman papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Over the course of the 1940s, Freeman added to her fieldwork in Florida with trips to Mexico and New Mexico, working with the Mascogo, Tohono Oʼodham, Kickapoo, Navajo, and Hopi peoples. The Mascogo community was of particular interest to Freeman as they are a Seminole group descended from escaped African slaves who joined with the Seminole peoples.² During this period, she also established herself as an expert in Seminole culture and, in 1947, was appointed as the American Civil Liberties Union’s representative on the National Coordinating Committee for Indian Affairs. She additionally took on a role as a consultant for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and, in 1948, was appointed to the Hoover Commission for Reorganization of Government as their representative. These accomplishments were remarkable for the time, as there were very few female anthropologists.

Scene from  Seminole Indians, ca. 1950  (HSFA# 1986.11.9) Ethel Cutler Freeman papers, Human Studies Film Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Freeman published articles and gave talks and lectures on the Seminole at events ranging from international conferences to garden club meetings. In doing so, she used her privilege and education to advocate for awareness, recognition, and acknowledgement of the Seminole people. The finding aid for Freeman’s papers has recently been published on SOVA through the funding of the FY2019 Collections Information (CIS) pool.

Katherine Christensen (Contract Archivist) and Kaitlin Srader (Intern)

_________________________________

¹Freeman to Marcellus Hartley Dodge. The Ethel Cutler Freeman papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

²For more information on the Mascogo, see Katarina Wittich, “The Mascogo,” Lest We Forget, Hampton University, accessed June 23, 2020, http://lestweforget.hamptonu.edu/page.cfm?uuid=9FEC2EE5-0FC3-78EB-8DB3B143545DDC94.