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Indian Affairs
- University of Arizona Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
192 Indian Affairs i officially graduated from Columbia University.* I had spent two years altogether with the Tohono O’odham, and I would have spent my life with them if I could have gotten the money. But in those days students didn’t get huge grants before they’d done any work, which apparently they do now. So when my grant gave out, there was nothing for me to do but to leave and tell the O’odham, “I’ll be back to visit, but I really can’t stay any longer.” I happened to meet some government official with the Mojave of California and Arizona who told me the tribe hadn’t been well studied, and he thought it would be nice if I would come and do it. They would pay me, but they didn’t offer a very large salary. It was a very modest kind of a job, not meant to be a complete study. That was all I had for the moment, so I took it. They were very different people from the O’odham—so different that although it wasn’t far geographically, it was far psychologically. Down with the Mojave I had what they called a wall tent, a great big thing with straight up-and-down sides and gabled roof, maybe ten feet long, that I lived in. I would go to the village and get friendly with them and say, “I wondered if you would mind if I brought my tent here. I don’t want to interfere with you, but would that be all right?” After they agreed I’d give them a lot of soft soap: “I’m so interested in the way you live, and so many Indians don’t do it anymore . I would like to see this real Indian way of living. I’ll be very careful not to say anything against you when I write it up.” “Oh well, then,” they would say, “yes.” * Different sources give different dates for Underhill’s graduation, varying between 1934 and 1937. But, as Underhill stated earlier, it seems that she did not have her degree officially conferred until Social Organization of the Papago Indians first appeared in print in 1937. Indian Affairs 193 Of course, I always made friends with the women first, because it seemed so much easier. Then I would get to know the men. The women did not always approve. One time a woman came to me. “Now look here, Ruta”—they called me Ruta instead of Ruth— “you want to be careful about that man called Raw But Burned. I don’t think he’s a very good medicine man, but he is a medicine man. He would be able to make himself into a badger, go underground, and come up in your tent and rape you. You want to be careful about that.” “I’ll look out for that!” I said. He never did anything of the sort, of course. I mean he didn’t even show that he would like to rape. I was really not an attractive mortal for that purpose. Anyway, there’s no one person that’s the focus for the story of my time with the Mojave. You would have to move from one little incident to another. The Mojave work is not quite as absorbing as my work with the Tohono O’odham, although I think it could have been if I’d stayed long enough. Of course, the government never used my Mojave stuff. When a new administration comes in, everything done by the old administration is no good. It’s just as if it had been done in the dark ages. They simply throw it away. So that’s what happened. I began to see that this was no real job. This was only just a fill-in. • There was a little period of broken rhythm that I don’t need to go into. I went to look for jobs and talk to people, and it was discouraging . Finally everybody said to me, “You better go into the Indian service. Why don’t you try?”* So I tried, and they told me to take an exam, which I did and was all right. I found myself appointed as a kind of cultural expert. I was in the same rank as the teachers and so was in a group of very nice women teachers; they were really awfully good women. I wish to lay myself out...