Matilda Coxe Stevenson

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Matilda Coxe Stevenson
Matilda Coxe Stevenson
Matilda Coxe Stevenson
Born 12 May 1849
San Augustine, Tex.
Died 24 Jun 1915
Nationality American
Fields ethnologist

Matilda Coxe Stevenson (née Evans) (1855-1915) was an American ethnologist, born at San Augustine, Tex.

In 1872 she was married to James Stevenson, an ethnologist (died 1888), with whom she spent 13 years in explorations of the Rocky Mountain region.

After 1889 she was on the staff of the Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution. Mrs. Stevenson explored the cave, cliff, and mesa ruins of New Mexico, studied all the Pueblo tribes of that State, and in 1904-10 made a special study of the Taos and Tewa Native Americans.

She was the author of:

  • Zuñi and the Zuñians (1881)
  • Religious life of the Zuñi Child (1887)
  • The Sia, Zuñi Scalp Ceremonials (1890)
  • Zuñi Ancestral Gods and Masks (1898)
  • The Zuñi Indians: Their Mythology, Esoteric Fraternities, and Ceremonies (1904)

For another perspective on Mrs. Stevenson, focusing on her research methods in relation to the Hopi, see James 1974:109-110.

  • Pages From Hopi History (1974), by Harry C. James

[edit] External links

  • Obituary for Matilda Coxe Stevenson in American Anthropologist
  • [1]

This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.