Their Own Frontier: Women Intellectuals Re-Visioning the American West

10. Ruth Murray Underhill: Ethnohistorian and Ethnographer for the Native Peoples

10 ruth murray underh i l l Ethnohistorian and Ethnographer for the Native Peoples Catherine J. Lavender and Nancy J. Parezo in 1979, at the age ninety-five, anthropologist Ruth Murray Underhill rode through Sells, Arizona, the capital of the Tohono O’odham Nation, in a parade in her honor.1 The Tohono O’odham (formerly called Papago) Nation celebrated her work recording their history . Throughout her long career Underhill published at least a dozen studies of the Tohono O’odhams as well as more than one hundred articles and twenty monographs on other American Indian communities . While she was not the only, or indeed the first, anthropologist to work with the Tohono O’odhams, by the 1980s her works carried the weight of sincerity, respect, and authority. The tribal council’s testimonial for her read: “We, the People of the Crimson Evening, the O’odham, recognize your efforts and your talents in preserving and capturing the spirit of our people, for this generation and for future generations to come. For this service, we are deeply indebted. We, the People of the Crimson Evening, the O’odham, today wish to express our heartfelt appreciation.” Chairman Max H. Norris, in a tribal resolution of August 21, 1979, stated: “it was through your works on the Papago People that many of our young Papagos, in search of themselves , their past, their spirit, have recaptured part of their identities. Your works will continue to reinforce the true identity of many more young people, as well as the old. It is with this in mind that we wish to express our deep sense of appreciation.” Testimonials by 150 Tohono O’odhams echoed these views.2 Other Native groups felt the same way. In 1980 the Gila River Reservation O’odhams passed a tribal resolution thanking Underhill for her 17. (Opposite Top) Ruth Murray Underhill, photographed by Margaret G. Marbeck, no. f-27211. Courtesy of the Denver Public Library, Western History Collection, Denver co. 18. (Opposite Bottom) Ruth Murray Underhill being honored by the Mojave tribal government for her work with the nation, in 1981. Seated: Chairman Anthony Drennan Sr., Underhill . Standing (left to right): Secretary Elliott Booth, Elder Edward Swick, Vice-Chairman Harry Laffonn Sr., and unidentified Mohave women. Photographer unknown. Photo in possession of Nancy J. Parezo. 338 Lavender and Parezo efforts and giving her an inscribed tray. In 1981, more than fifty years after her first visit to Parker, Arizona, the chairman of the Colorado River Indian Tribes (crit) presented the “renowned” Underhill with a recognition plaque for her role in keeping alive “very treasured memories of the People of the River-Ahamakov.” The tireless Underhill had also come to celebrate and inspire a new writing project on the history of Mohave culture by tribal members, under the direction of elder Edward Swick, her translator from the 1930s research sessions. She presented crit with her volumes of unpublished field notes and stories collected between 1930 and 1937 and gave the tribal government complete control over their publication, a groundbreaking precedent for historical and ethnographic work. “You write it this time,” she told them. “White people have been doing this long enough. . . . This is an entirely new way of telling about Indian ways.”3 A prolific writer and diligent researcher, Underhill was committed to literary excellence as well as scientific and historic precision. While today she is mostly remembered for her work with the Tohono O’odhams and the Navajos, she worked with men and women from many indigenous communities in the American West (Akimel O’odhams, Arapahos , Hopis, Mohaves, Northern Paiutes, Pomos, Tohono O’odhams, Rio Grande Pueblos, Zunis), writing individual ethnographies in a manner in which the people would recognize themselves, as well as summary ethnological works on several culture areas: California, the Southwest, the Plateau, and the Northwest Coast. Her résumé was immense and replete with textbooks; comparisons of religions, ceremonies, and lifeways ; and ethnographic analyses of social organization, acculturation, perseverance, traditionalism, history, culture change, and art. She also wrote biographies, intensive personality studies, and novels, books that contributed to “the development of dialectical narratives of literary anthropology and the canon of American literature.”4 When she died in 1984, just days shy of her one hundredth birthday, Underhill had appeared on television and radio to educate the public about Native American history, served as a professor of anthropology at several colleges and universities...