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Rare Book & Manuscript Library

Elsie Worthington Clews Parsons collection, 1883-1894

1.5 linear feet

Field notebooks detailing the customs and ceremonies of the Native American Hopi tribe, collected by Elsie Worthington Clews Parsons, PhD (1874-1941). Thirty of these volumes were the notebooks of Alexander M. Stephen (d. 1894), a U.S. Army officer who, in about 1882, started observing Hopi life. Although chiefly concerned with the Hopis, there are some notes on Hopi-Navajo relations and a few references to the Native American Tewa and Hokya tribes. Stephen's penciled notes and drawings were edited and published by Dr. Parsons as the Hopi journal of Alexander M. Stephen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936). Also included are three unpublished notebooks of observations made by a young American physician with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), Jeremiah Sullivan (1850-1916), who lived among the Hopis (1881-1888) in the village of Sichomovi. A letter from anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber, PhD (1876-1960) to Dr. Parsons explains the provenance of one of Sullivan's notebooks. These last three notebooks [Vols. 31-33] have also been attributed to Alexander M. Stephen by Alex Patterson (February 1994). [See, Alex Patterson's full note at subseries I.2. Jeremiah Sullivan (Vols. 31-33).]

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Rare Book & Manuscript Library

Research in Contemporary Cultures records, 1939-1962, bulk 1947-1952

19.5 linear feet
This collection contains the records of the Research in Contemporary Cultures project (1947-1953) begun by Ruth Benedict at Columbia University, and carried out by Margaret Mead at Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History after Benedict's death in 1948. The records of three successor projects, Studies in Soviet Culture (1948-1952), Studies in Contemporary Culture (1951-1952), and and Study Program of Human Health and the Ecology of Man (1954-1956) are also included. The purpose of these projects was anthropological study at a distance of global cultures inaccessible for direct observation, in an attempt to establish the "national character" of countries of geopolitical interest to the United States government. These records are duplicates of materials also available at the Library of Congress in the Margaret Mead papers and South Pacific Ethnographic Archives, 1838-1996.
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