Elsie Worthington Clews Parsons collection, 1883-1894

This numerically arranged subseries encompasses (30) volumes containing the notebooks of Alexander MacGregor Stephen (1850?-1894), who was a Scottish mining prospector trained in metallurgy at the University of Edinburgh. He came to the United States in 1861. After service in the American Civil War, he travelled to Keams Canyon, Arizona, where he made acquaintance with Tom Keam, the trader, and built relationships with many members of the Navajo tribe. Stephen learned to speak Navajo. Diné bizaad was also his first language among the Hopi. Stephen's language skills made him an invaluable guide for investigators of the Bureau of American Ethnology (Bureau) (1882-1894). The bulk of his notebooks comprise the period (1891-1894), when he systematically recorded the ceremonial and daily life of the Hopi on the First Mesa Reservation. Some of Stephen's accounts were published by the Bureau. Dr. Parsons asserted that one of the most important contributions of Stephen's journal is the picture it presents of the relations at this time and earlier between the Navajo and Hopi tribes. There are also a few references to the Native American Tewa and Hokya tribes.

After Stephen's death, his notebooks were bought from his estate by Stewart Culin (1858-1929), the curator of Ethnology at the Institute of Arts and Sciences of the Brooklyn Museum. In 1922, Dr. Parsons purchased the notebooks for $500.00 from Culin. Beginning in 1927, Parsons worked on editing the notebooks each summer. Dr. Parsons conceived of the edited Hopi Journal as "primarily a biography of ceremonial, doing for the ceremonial round of the year what a day book would do for personal biography." Parsons claimed that Stephen's notebooks were invaluable for such a task, because he was a true insider. He lived in both Hopi and Tewa households. He could communicate with most of his neighbors in Navajo, and he was learning Hopi. The elders also talked freely to Stephen, initiated him into three societies and gave him access to Kiva life. By the end of summer 1931, Dr. Parsons had finished editing the Hopi Journal and had arranged with Franz Boas (1858-1942) the Columbia University affiliated anthropologist to publish it in the Columbia anthropology series. In summer 1934, she completed a series of appendices, a glossary, and a bibliography. Parsons also illustrated the journal with some of Stephen's hundreds of black and white and colored drawings and a dozen of his maps. In February 1935, Dr. Parsons finished the proofs and the detailed index. In this regard, the correspondence of Dr. Parsons relating to the publication of the Hopi Journal is located in the Columbia University Press records, 1893-2000s, bulk 1923-2000s, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Library [MS#0268]. (See, folders titled: "Parsons, Elsie Worthington Clews" in Series I: Catalogued Correspondence, 1893-1954 (Box CC8) and Subseries II.1 Editorial Files, 1920s-1959 (Box 178)).

Bibliography: Deacon, Desley, Elsie Clews Parsons: Inventing Modern Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997): XI, 353-356.

Stephen, Alexander MacGregor, Hopi Journal of Alexander M. Stephen, edited by Elsie Clews Parsons (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936): XX, L.

White, Leslie E., Review of Hopi Journal of Alexander M. Stephen, edited by Elsie Clews Parsons, American Anthropologist, Vol. 40, No. 2 (April-June, 1938): 306-307.

This numerically organized subseries includes three unpublished notebooks (Vols. 31-33) 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], in turn, have also been attributed to Alexander M. Stephen by Alex Patterson (February 1994).

Note by Alex Patterson: The Sullivan Journals-Notebooks 31, 32, and 33 are highly similar to the drawing and handwriting styles of the Alexander M. Stephen's Notebooks. On the fly page of Notebook Number 32 you will find that a pencil drawing of a Si-pa-pu [Hopi word for a small hole or indentation in the floor of a kiva or pithouse] has been inked and designated Fig. 6 (this is how Elsie Clews Parsons prepared Alexander M. Stephen's pencil drawings for publication). It [the drawing] matches Fig. 6 on page 10 of the Hopi Journal of Alexander M. Stephen. Notebook 31, with "J. Sullivan, Compiler" on its front, has a date of 1883 near the beginning, crude ethnographic comments, and many drawings in color with children's (?) crayons. I believe these are Alexander M. Stephen's earliest writing and drawing efforts. Only two drawings marked "Sullivan Collection" with "J S 12 / 83" on the drawings are Sullivan's, in my opinion. Your Notebook Number 7 contains a "Memo from Catalogue" (pp. 40 thru 36a) which outlines the highlights of a manuscript by Stephen, dated December 29, 1890 entitled Pottery of Tusayan-Catalogue of the Keam Collection (unpublished manuscript, no. 3282, Archaeology-Bureau of American Ethnology-Smithsonian Institution). [The "Memo from Catalogue"] details seven questions which appear to require further research. Your Notebook Number 27 appears to be the beginnings of an Index to an early version of Pottery of Tusayan. My version [Alex Patterson] of Pottery of Tusayan will appear this spring under the title Hopi Pottery Symbols (Boulder, CO: Johnson Books, 1994.)

Bibliography: Hieb, Louis A., "Social Memory and Cultural Narrative: The Hopi Construction of a Moral Community", Journal of the Southwest, 44, no. 1 (2002): 80.