Ruth Underhill

Ruth Underhill

Ruth Murray Underhill (born August 22, 1883 in Ossining , † August 15, 1984 in Denver ) was an American anthropologist .

Life

Ruth Underhill was born in 1883 as the eldest of four children of the lawyer Abram Sutton Underhill and his wife Anna Taber Murray Underhill. Her sister Elizabeth was a suffragette, lawyer and one of the first bank directors, her brother Robert Underhill (1889–1983) was a professor at Harvard University and a well-known mountaineer. Like her brother, Ruth Underhill was also a passionate mountaineer.

Ruth went to the girls' school in her birthplace. She then attended Bryn Mawr College preparatory courses and enrolled at Vassar College in 1901 . She studied English and languages, received a bachelor's degree, and became a member of Phi Beta Kappa in 1905 . After graduating, she traveled through Europe and studied languages ​​and sociology at the London School of Economics and the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . She was fluent in German, French, Italian and Spanish.

From 1905 Underhill worked as a social worker for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (German: Society for the avoidance of child abuse ) and took care of Italian families. Towards the end of the First World War, she worked for the Red Cross on the committee for the disabled and then in the summer of 1919 for an aid organization that took care of giving homes to orphans in Italy. She then studied child labor in Italy for the Rockefeller Foundation and then returned to New York.

After graduating from Vasser College, Underhill had started writing for newspapers. In 1920 her first novel The White Moth was published . Three more novels followed.

In 1919 Ruth Underhill married Charles Cecil Crawford. The couple separated amicably in 1929. After their divorce, Underhill decided to study again at the age of 46. She enrolled at Columbia University and took courses in economics, sociology, and philosophy. Ultimately, she decided to study anthropology with Ruth Benedict . Franz Boas , head of the anthropology department, provided the means for Underhill to study the Tohono O'Odham (also Papago Indians) in Arizona. Her dissertation, entitled Social Organization of the Papago Indians , was published in 1937. Because of their age, they had taken in the Indians and let them live with them for a few summers. Underhill was particularly interested in the women of the tribe. She later wrote the book Autobiography of a Papago Woman , which traced the life of the Indian Maria Chona.

In 1953 her best-known book Red Man's America appeared , which was filmed by KRMA-TV in 1956 in a series of 30 documentaries based on the book and with the same title. Each film focused on a region in North America and showed the Indians there and their culture.

After graduating from Columbia University, Underhill worked first for the Natural Resources Conservation Service of the United States Department of Agriculture and then for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). From 1934 to 1942, Underhill was assistant director of education for Indian programs in Santa Fe, New Mexico, then from 1942 to 1948 director of the Denver department. In this role she traveled extensively and worked with teachers on the reservations on a curriculum for Indian boarding schools. She also assisted in negotiations between the BIA and the Indians.

After World War II, the BIA was restructured and Underhill's job was in danger. She therefore began to accept guest lectures from October 1948. In 1949 she was offered a chair in anthropology at the University of Denver and stayed there for four years. After her retirement, she traveled extensively, wrote books and taught at New York State Teachers College in New Paltz and Colorado Women's College .

honors and awards

In 1979, Underhill was recognized by the Tohono O'Odham for her documentary work. In 1980 the Gila River Reservation also honored O'Odhams Underhill. On October 28, 1981, she received an award from the Colorado River Indian Tribes for her efforts to record the culture of the tribes. She received a Friendship Award from the White Buffalo Council of American Indians.

The University of Denver awarded her an honorary doctorate in 1962, as did the University of Colorado in 1965. In June 1984, the American Anthropological Association awarded Underhill special recognition for teaching and research for its efforts to promote anthropology. In 1985 the Denver Women's Press Club created a scholarship in Underhill's honor; the scholarship is awarded to a University of Colorado student for outstanding achievements in creative writing.

Fonts

Novels

• The White Moth . 1920
• Hawk Over hot tubs . 1940
• Beaverbird . 1959
• Antelope Singer . 1961

Nonfiction and specialist books

• Here Come the Navajo! . Approx. 1934-1947
• Autobiography of a Papago Woman . 1936
• Social Organization of the Papago Indians . 1937
• Singing for Power . 1938
• First Penthouse Dwellers of America . 1938
• A Papago Calendar Record . University of New Mexico, 1938
• Social Organization of the Papago Indians . Columbia University Press, 1939
• The Papago Indians of Arizona and their Relatives the Pima . 1941
• Pueblo Crafts . United States Indian Service, 1946
• Papago Indian religion . Columbia University Press, 1946
• Workaday Life in the Pueblos . 1946
• Indians of the Pacific Northwest , 1946
• Ceremonial Patterns in the Greater Southwest . 1948
• Red Man's America . 1953
• The Navajos . 1956
• Religion Among American Indians . 1957
• Withdrawal as a Means of Dealing with the Supernatural . 1961
• Red Man's religion . 1965
• First came the family . 1967
• So Many Kinds of Navajo . 1971
• The Papago and Pima Indians of Arizona . 1979, ISBN 0-910584-52-4
• Religious Practices of the Papago Indians .

Essays

• Papago Child Training . In: Marriage and Family Living , Nov. 1942
• with Edward Castetter : Ethnobiology of the Papago Indians . In: University of New Mexico Bulletin # 275, 1935
• The Papago Family . In: Comparative Family Systems , 1965

Web links

• Ruth M. Underhill estate , Bailey Library and Archives, Denver Museum of Nature and Science
• Ruth Murray Underhill Estate , Special Collections & University Archives, University of Oregon Libraries

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Ruth M. Underhill: An Anthropologist's Arrival: A Memoir . University of Arizona Press, 2014
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Ann T. Keene: Underhill, Ruth Murray , American National Biography Online, 2000
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie, Joy Dorothy Harvey: Ruth Underhill , The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: LZ, Taylor & Francis, 2000
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Finding Aid of the Papers of Ruth M. Underhill, 1854–2007 , Rocky Mountain Online Archive, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, 2012
5. ^ Social organization of the Papago Indians , CLIO, Columbia University
6. ^ Ruth Underhill Oral Histories , Bailey Library and Archives, Denver Museum of Nature and Science
7. ↑ ^{a b} Ute Gacs: Women Anthropologists: Selected Biographies , University of Illinois Press, 1988
8. ↑ Papago Tribe Honors Ruth Murray Underhill . In: Anthropology News , March 1980 Vol. 21, No. 3; S. 3 doi : 10.1111 / an.1980.21.3.3.1
9. ↑ Shirley A. Leckie, Nancy J. Parezo Their Own Frontier: Women Intellectuals Re-visioning the American West , University of Nebraska Press, 2008
10. ↑ ^{a b} A guide to the Ruth Underhill Papers, 1888–1987 ( Memento of the original from October 19, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , University Libraries Finding Aids, University of Denver 
11. ^ Scholarships , Denver Woman's Press Club