Leslie A. White: Evolution and Revolution in Anthropology

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Leslie A.White

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Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology Series Editors Regna Darnell Stephen O. Murray

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Leslie A.White Evolution and Revolution in Anthropology

William J. Peace [-3], (3)

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University of Nebraska Press Lincoln and London

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© 2004 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America All photographs courtesy of Beverly CondittWhite. ⬁ 䡬

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Peace,William J., 1960– Leslie A.White: evolution and revolution in anthropology /William J. Peace. p. cm.—(Critical studies in the history of anthropology) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-8032-3681-6 (cloth: alk. paper) 1.White, Leslie A., 1900–1975. 2. Anthropologists—United States—Biography. 3. Social evolution—United States—Philosophy. 4. Marxist anthropology. 5. Culture—Philosophy. I.Title. II. Series. GN21.W48 P43 2004 301'.092–dc22 2003016612

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For the Chief

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Contents List of Illustrations ix Series Editors’ Introduction Preface xiii Acknowledgments xix

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1. Early Life and Formative Experiences 1 2. Fieldwork in the Southwest 35 3.The Socialist Labor Party and Socialist Evolutionary Theory 4. EvolutionaryTheory for American Anthropologists 99 5. Academic and PoliticalThreats 135 6.White Presses Needlessly On 164 7. PersonalTurmoil and Professional Influence 208

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Notes 233 Bibliography Index 279

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Illustrations Following p. 120 White, circa 1947 Alvin LincolnWhite, circa 1900–1905 HelenWhite, circa 1909 White, Denver, Colorado, winter 1917–18 White in his naval uniform, 1919 White, Santa Domingo, fall 1928 The Open Road Tour Group, Soviet Union, 1929 White and Mary PattisonWhite, 1935 White, 1959

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Series Editors’ Introduction Biography holds a particular place in the critical history of anthropology, as of any other discipline. Anthropology is perhaps unique, however, in its long-standing professional concern with the impact of culture on personality, to use Edward Sapir’s phrase. The history of anthropology is, in this sense, an anthropological problem, with the biographer as archivist presenting an ethnography of his or her subject. Each anthropologist uniquely construes the traditions of a national and transnational anthropology. When the social networks that constitute the profession are approached from the point of view of a single individual, readers are encouraged to construct disciplinary developments as the result of strategic decisions on the part of participants. Some biographical subjects necessarily present greater challenges than others. LeslieA.White confounds the patterned quality of a single professional life because of the diversity of his interests throughout his career. William J. Peace documents the facets and contradictions of Leslie A. White’s life and career, sketching his midwestern farm upbringing and World War I navy service,and limning in meticulous detail the variegated tangents of his contacts with colleagues inside the academy and beyond it. White is widely remembered within the discipline for three areas of specialization: as a southwestern ethnologist in the Boasian tradition of his initial training at the University of Chicago with Boasians Edward Sapir and FayCooper Cole, as North America’s primary proponent of a revitalized evolutionary theory and,in the later years of his career,as a historian of anthropology. His political involvements,particularly in his younger years,constitute a parallel intellectual and activist strand.Very few readers will know all of these sides. White lived in interesting times. Like many of his generation with socialist leanings, his involvement with the Socialist Labor Party was self-defensively clandestine. Peace documents his writing career under the pseudonym of John Steel, the influences of his travels to Russia, and McCarthy-era challenges to academic freedom. White’s unconventional views, particularly on evolution and free will, challenged the integrity of academic freedom at the University of Michigan before the Cold War erupted. The controversy White’s lectures and writings prompted enabled Michigan to fare somewhat better than other universities during this dark era in American history. Although polemic invective characterized much of White’s writing, in

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person he was very polite, and his professionalism ensured that his academic disagreements with his colleagues were not repeated on a personal level. As chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan for 25 years,White attempted to avoid the formation of a Michigan evolutionary school, despite his own theoretical commitments to this theory. Diversity of approach was a strength to the anthropology he envisioned. White turned to the history of anthropology to lambast the Boasian tradition as a straitjacket preventing resurgence of evolutionary theories. His disciplinary history was presentist, almost incidental to his reading of the present and future; it had a persuasive rather than a documentary focus. An uncompleted biography of Lewis Henry Morgan expressedWhite’s continuing commitment to Morgan’s evolutionary logic and presented an alternative [-12], (2) future for American anthropology. In White’s mind there was no inherent contradiction between his early Lines: 26 ethnological work at several pueblos and the universalist basis of his evolutionary theory. Southwesternists remember White’s unusual ability to obtain ——— information from the most secretive of the pueblos. Although this work * 31.153 ——— has raised serious ethical questions by contemporary standards, White was Normal P respected for his results at the time. White never recanted as ethical standards changed in the discipline, continuing to insist that ethnographic data was a * PgEnds: P legitimate part of anthropology. As a theorist, however,White preferred universal generalizations. Peace’s [-12], (2) discussion of his relationships, both professional and personal, with other evolutionary theorists helps to frame the uniqueness of his theory of culture. White deemed Julian Steward’s multilinear evolution,with its strong emphasis on environment, to be tainted by Boasian historical hesitations and thus incoherent as a theory. He was more comfortable with V. Gordon Childe and, indeed, with the archaeological reading of history and time perspective. The legacy of Leslie A. White is as complex as his career. His materialist models have proved very welcome to museum anthropologists and archaeologists. His cultural theory served to provide theoretical alternatives in the interwar and postwar years. And for many, White continues to be a significant contemporary figure as well as an icon in the history of American anthropology. Regna Darnell and Stephen O. Murray

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Preface Writing a biography about any figure in the history of anthropology is a difficult endeavor. As a group, anthropologists deeply care about their scholarship and the people they study. They also tend to have prickly personalities. In conducting research about the life and career of Leslie A.White I often felt as though I were traversing a minefield: I never knew when someone was going to blow up in a fury over a question or even the mention of White’s name. This was made quite clear to me early on in my research when I contacted an individual who I knew had had a serious falling-out with White. I already knew White’s beliefs about why the friendship had ruptured; I wanted to ask this scholar his interpretation. When several letters went unanswered I decided to telephone, assuming the person did not want to reply in writing. When I identified myself there was a long silence, and then the reply came: “I have two words to say: Fuck you!” With that he slammed the phone down. 1 Given the strong feelings White’s name can provoke, he remains a controversial figure to many scholars. White was by nature a feisty, opinionated man whose life was punctuated by heated intellectual engagements with other social scientists. It is no wonder he is not well understood. For over two decades White’s work was on the cutting edge of the discipline,yet his legacy has been colored by the semantic battles in which he was so often embroiled. White’s work was a major source of study, one that profoundly influenced many of his students, such as Robert Carneiro, Marshall Sahlins, and Elman Service, as well as fellow faculty members at the University of Michigan and elsewhere. His work was widely discussed, as is evidenced by the inclusion of his name in a short list of most frequently cited anthropologists based on references to him in the American Anthropologist, Anthropology Today, and in The Teaching of Anthropology (Shimkin 1964:14–15). GivenWhite’s central place within the discipline,it is surprising thatWhite is one of the few influential anthropologists of his generation who has not been the subject of a full-scale biography. 2 This is particularly curious considering that the two scholarsWhite is most often associated with, Julian Steward and Vere Gordon Childe, have been the subjects of intense biographical analysis (Clemmer 1999; Green 1981; McNairn 1980). The reasons White’s work and life have not been subject to

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detailed analysis are complex. White was a difficult man, prone to attacking those whom he perceived were not supportive of his work. 3 In addition, some have argued that he spent too much time “defending” Lewis Henry Morgan after he needed no defense,he attacked“antievolutionists” when such attacks were not necessary, and he alienated potential allies when he failed to find common ground intellectually. As a result his peers remember the personal commitment and rhetoric of White’s arguments rather than the nature and scope of his contribution to method and theory. Meanwhile,many historians of anthropology,ignoring the sociopolitical context of his work, considerWhite a technological determinist, unable to see the merit of his other theoretical contributions. In an appraisal of mid—20th century American anthropology, Carroll L. Riley compared the differences between Vere Gordon Childe and LeslieWhite that underscore the reasons whyWhite’s contribution to the discipline has not been adequately studied: The neo-evolutionism of men like V. G. Childe and L. White has had considerable influence onAmerican historical thinking. Childe,indeed, belongs in the circle of seminal minds;since he was not an American,he perhaps cannot be claimed as an American historical anthropologist— and in any case his background and training were quite different (British and continental archaeological tradition plus a dollop of Marxism). He was exceedingly historically minded, but his main interest was in generalization, and history—or prehistory—simply formed the means and material for these larger problems. His unquenching demand for good work, his essential lack of dogmatism (in spite of a presumed Marxist bias), his willingness to discard a position when it became untenable or improbable, and his reluctance to accept easy unproven generalizations about human nature all go to make him a spiritual brother of Boas and Spier and others in American historical anthropology. Leslie White is a study in contrast. His obvious ability and insight is somewhat blunted by a doctrinaire adulation of Lewis H. Morgan and a tendency to polemics when his hero is attacked,criticized,or overlooked. The main difficulty of White,however,is his unwillingness to accept the fact there is no serious theoretical difference between his own reasonable evolutionism and the Boasian approach. [Riley 1967:20–21] In the foregoing quote there is clearly a nuanced view of Childe’s contribution and a forgiving dismissal of his Marxist views, while White is taken to task for being blinded by the polemical content of his work. Just as Childe’s

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work has been placed in its historic context, in my biography of White I will document the political influences that affected his career, demonstrating that his research, too, was embedded in the broader social and ideological times in which he lived. To this end an underlying theme throughout the text is the conjunction between political beliefs and anthropological theory. My contextualization of White’s work highlights a significant shortcoming in the history of anthropology, specifically the failure of historians such as George Stocking and Richard Handler to consider the political beliefs and actions of scholars likeWhite, Melville Jacobs, Oscar Lewis,Alexander Lesser, Bernhard Stern, and many others who were drawn to radical politics. We anthropologists all too often fail to acknowledge what Laura Nader (1997a, 1997b) has identified as the “phantom factor”: many of our long-standing traditions were profoundly influenced not only by anthropological theory but also by the committed political beliefs of our intellectual forebears. After all,as Clyde Kluckhohn (1959:147) noted, anthropologists “have characteristically been men and women fervently in search of a theory.” In acknowledging that contemporary sociopolitical events affected the ways in which a scholar such as White worked, one must look beyond merely the anthropological social milieu to integrate broader economic,social, political, and intellectual history into the analysis. The lack of attention paid to White and the degree to which he was influenced by forces outside of anthropology emphasize the need for a balanced, nonpolemical analysis of his career. Hence my biography will look at both White’s scientific and anthropological contributions. To this end my emphasis is on his intellectual and political work rather than on his personal life. While I do touch upon aspects of White’s nonprofessional life, particularly as it pertains to his childhood, I am principally concerned with his formal thought. No attempt at a definitive portrait of Leslie A.White could be undertaken without extensive research at the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, where his papers are housed. The collection is voluminous, spanning the period before he was born in 1900 to his death in 1975. The archive contains 27 boxes of materials, not hitherto seriously analyzed by any scholar. 4 Within each box there are approximately 5,000 pages of printed matter. Of particular importance to my research wereWhite’s extensive correspondence files. White corresponded with many notable figures within anthropology; taken collectively these letters are an invaluable resource about White’s views on a myriad of personal and theoretical topics. Throughout the text I make

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liberal use of White’s letters,as they foreshadow and add depth to many of the arguments he engaged in throughout his career. The collection also contains material related toWhite’s unfinished biography of Lewis Henry Morgan. 5 I also make use of White’s personal and academic journals.White faithfully kept a journal from his years as an undergraduate at Columbia University in 1922 until his death—unfortunately, he carefully expunged journal entries he deemed too personal. For instance, he took a razor to his most detailed personal journal and deleted five years of entries, spanning the years 1952 to 1957. Similarly he excised pages from several autobiographical statements regarding the reasons why his family left their farm in Lane, Kansas, in 1917. Another rich source of information I rely on are copies of White’s unpublished articles and books. White left a number of unpublished manuscripts, ranging from poetry to the voluminous sequel to The Evolution of Culture. The manuscripts that survive, particularly those that pertain to his activities in the Socialist Labor Party and his fieldwork in the Southwest, yield invaluable insights into the seemingly unintelligible twists and turns his career took. Of special value in this regard are his field notes and correspondence pertaining to his ethnographic work. Closed to scholars at White’s own direction for some ten years after his death (Dillingham 1985), White’s field notes are a treasure trove of material about the Pueblo peoples. Not only do they highlight the inherent problems with the type of fieldwork he conducted, they also demonstrate how deeply he cared about the people he studied. I have conducted extensive research to fill in the gaps that exist in White’s papers. For example,although at first glanceWhite’s extensive correspondence with Marvin Farber and Elsie Clews Parsons seemed complete,several crucial letters were missing. Accordingly I have closely examined not only White’s papers but also those of approximately 50 other anthropologists who had close connections to White. More generally I have examined archives that were directly relevant toWhite’s career.Thus I delved deeply into the papers at the University of Chicago’s Regenstein Library that concerned the Departments of Anthropology and Sociology and the formation of the “Chicago School of Sociology.”Similarly I have made use of the papers of the Socialist Labor Party housed at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. In addition to archival sources I have contacted and interviewed many people who knewWhite. Several people I spoke to requested anonymity, and I have respected these wishes. It was principally through interviews that I got a sense of White’s personal reasons for making certain career choices— issues that do not necessarily figure in his writings. These interviews also

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enabled me to understand the interpersonal relationships that existed among anthropologists and, in part, helped me account for disparities that would otherwise have remained puzzling. Throughout the text I try to remain as objective and dispassionate as possible, neither an apologist nor a critic of White. Nonetheless, during the course of my research I have grown exceedingly fond of a man I never met: an extremely complicated man who let few know him well and even fewer know him intimately. In the first chapter I explore White’s lonely and unsettled childhood and his early educational experience. Growing up in Lane, Kansas, had a profound impact on his personal development, as did his eventual rupture with rural farm life. White’s experience in the navy during World War I transformed his worldviews. It made him question all that he had been taught and led him to study at Louisiana State University, Columbia University, the New School for Social Research,and finally the University of Chicago.The second chapter discussesWhite’s fieldwork among the Pueblo peoples.This is probably one of the least appreciated aspects of White’s academic career, although his work was highly regarded by ethnologists of his generation. He was a diligent fieldworker, returning to the Southwest frequently between 1926 and the late 1950s. It was his early fieldwork that convinced him anthropology was the proper career path for him. In fact had he not been attracted to socialist politics and evolutionary theory during the 1930s and become embroiled in heated debates with Robert Lowie in the American Anthropologist, he would not have become a controversial figure in the discipline. The third chapter analyzes why he was attracted to the Socialist Labor Party,evolutionary theory, and socialism,all of which were intricately intertwined inWhite’s view. After honing his arguments with regard to the value of evolutionary theory under the pseudonym John Steel in theWeekly People, the official publication of the Socialist Labor Party,White forcefully tried to rekindle an interest in social evolution among American anthropologists. This battle was long and lonely and it exacted a great toll. White’s unpopular views had an adverse affect on his academic career, for he was hounded by the University of Michigan administration, the Catholic Church and, for a brief time, the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The fourth and fifth chapters argue that White was able not only to remain employed but also to take up a courageous intellectual stand because he had already established himself as a scholar of merit. A fundamental part of my analysis concentrates onWhite’s attempt to define the concept of culture as the core of anthropological investigation.This effort

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was intertwined with a forceful argument that culture could be reduced to a number of variables that could be used to predict a course of action for the future. It was this concept of culture within an evolutionary framework that inspired other scholars, although there was a major difference between White’s evolutionary work and that of scholars such as Julian Steward andVere Gordon Childe, both of whom I discuss in some detail. By the time Steward and Childe joined White in arguing for the value of evolutionary theory, it was politically dangerous to acknowledge any form of Marxist or socialist literature or influence. Given the impact the Cold War had on all scholars, in chapter 6 I will detail why three men who had so much in common spent more time differentiating their work from one another than in seeking theoretical linkages. [-18], (8) The final chapter examines the impact that White’s work had on other scholars, particularly his role in the development of the anthropology departLines: 86 ment at the University of Michigan, one of the foremost centers of thought in the discipline. I also detail the last 15 years of White’s life. After Mary ——— White’s death in 1959,his life was sad and lonely. He entered into a short-lived * 173.05 ——— second marriage and struggled with alcohol abuse for a decade. After joining Normal P Alcoholics Anonymous he tried to reorganize his life, but by the end of his life he was embittered and depressed—an outlook that was reflected in his * PgEnds: P work. Finally, although I am sympathetic to White’s theoretical perspective, his views and some of his actions during his life were not without fault. Like all [-18], (8) scholars, he made errors and in some cases displayed poor judgment.Viewed as a whole,however,his career was of seminal importance to the development and shaping of mid-20th-century American anthropological theory.

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Acknowledgments

People who have helped in various aspects of my work are listed below in alphabetical order.Their respective contributions large and small helped form my biography and influenced my thinking. Thanks are due to: Keith Basso, Harmi Befu,Robert Bills,Samuel Bloom,Phillip K. Bock,Robert Braidwood, Robert Carneiro, Beth Dillingham, Robin DuBlanc, Kate Dudley, Christopher Dunsmore, Shonnie Finnegan, Don Fowler, Frank Girard,Walter Goldschmidt, James Griffin, Dell Hymes, Barry Isaac,Virginia Kerns, Igor Kopytoff, Lawrence Krader, Robert Lawless, Robert Leopold, Maria Lepowsky, [-19], (9) Carmine Lodise, Jeannette Mannion, Betty Meggers, Nancy Parezo,Thomas Patterson,Thomas Peace,David Price,Eugene Ruyle,Marshall Sahlins,Hendel Sebestyen, Elman Service, Helen Service, Jeannie Sklar, Dana Spina, Melford Lines: 89 to Spiro, Lawrence Straus, Melburn Thurman, Malcolm Webb, Beverly Conditt ——— White, PeterWhiteley, and EricWolf. * 176.1010 I would also like to thank the following archives: the University of Wyo——— Normal Pag ming American Heritage Center, the American Philosophical Society, suny at Buffalo, the University of Chicago Regenstein Library, the Lane Historical * PgEnds: Pag Society, and the National Anthropological Archives. Special thanks must be made to the staff of the Bentley Historical Library. Of all the archives I have [-19], (9) ever used, few can compare to the Bentley Library. It is impossible to single out any individual,for all those who work there have gone out of their way to help me.

Chapter 1

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Early Life and Formative Experiences I am beginning to question very closely the value of my college training. I don’t believe the knowledge I will gain at college will really help me much.–White, journal, circa 1922 Childhood

Leslie A. White, the second of three children, was born in Salida, Colorado, on January 19,1900. He and his siblings (Helen,born 1898,andWillard,born 1902) were the children of Alvin LincolnWhite, a civil engineer, and Mildred Mae Millard. Alvin White, originally from Calhoun, Nebraska, received an A.B. and B.S. from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. For several years the elderWhite worked for various railroads locating routes in Colorado,mostly in the vicinity of booming mining towns. Mildred Mae Millard, born in Boone, Iowa, met White’s father in Nebraska; they were married in 1896 and moved to Salida in the late 1890s. 1 Alvin White was employed by the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, and Salida,a busy mining town,was division point for the railroad.All three children were born in Salida, where they resided in a small brick house. White’s father was apparently a brilliant engineer but had little time for his family (White to Meyer,April 3, 1964, bhl-wp). He was one of six children and his father, Alvin Granville White, was an outstanding Nebraska pioneer whom White described as being “a straight-laced deeply moral, profoundly religious New England Puritan Methodist minister” (White to Webb, May 7, 1968, bhl-wp). 2 Perhaps due to his influence, the younger Alvin White believed, as Calvin did,that work was a virtue unto itself. He was a hard man,emotionally distant from the family. White wrote that his father “tried to break away from the orthodoxy and fervor of his [own] father” but never truly succeeded (White toWebb,May 7,1968,bhl-wp).A childhood friend of White remembered his father as being “the straightest man I ever saw, who walked like he was going into a fire.”3 According to Mrs. Lippard,a neighbor in Salida,White’s father was“brilliant, studious, withdrawn and nongregarious; a man who regarded gaiety and frivolity wasteful, if not a bit sinful” (Meyer to White, April 23, 1965, bhlwp). 4

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White’s mother,12 years younger and much more outgoing,did not receive the necessary emotional support or love she expected from her husband. Apparently,White’s father refused to attend picnics or parties planned by his wife, and in time she began going out while he stayed home. When White was five years old his mother fell in love with another man, and his parents divorced.This caused quite a stir among family and friends, who were evenly divided as to who was to blame for the end of the marriage. White’s mother moved to Denver and, as was the custom at the time in cases of abandonment or adultery,custody of the three children was awarded toWhite’s father.White never spoke nor wrote about the impact his parents’ separation had on his childhood,yet he retained a number of vivid memories of Salida;for example, he remembered seeingTeddy Roosevelt speak from the rear platform of a train during a campaign stop there (White to Meyer, April 3, 1964, bhl-wp). After White’s parents separated in 1905, his father moved the family to Kansas City, Missouri. With his career advancing, White’s father no longer conducted regional surveys but worked in the main office of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. However, he did not like working in an urban setting and became convinced that spending all day indoors was unnatural and was adversely affecting his health. Having spent a portion of his younger life working on a farm, he firmly believed that a return to vigorous outdoor life would improve his health. Accordingly, in 1906 he moved his family to a farm near Greeley,Kansas (approximately 65 miles southwest of Kansas City). Although he knew little about farm management, he purchased a farm in March 1907 near Lane, Kansas. The White family would remain in Lane from 1907 to 1914. LeslieWhite’s formative years and earliest memories were dominated by rural farm life. When in a retrospective mood,White would tell people he learned many valuable lessons living on a farm. However,he told precious few that his childhood was unsettled and unhappy.At first he was excited by the livestock and the huge expanses of land, but this was quickly forgotten. In an autobiographical document,White wrote:“The household became desolate and lonely. I used to cry almost every night before going to bed. My father used to ask me, in helpless sympathy,why I was crying,but I could not tell him. I did not know. I knew only an overwhelming loneliness and need for love. My father loved us children deeply and his devotion to us knew no bounds. But perhaps as a stern Puritan’s son, he could not express his love affectionately” (White, untitled reminiscence, circa 1952, bhl-wp). White’s father was tender at times such as these, but this did not stop his

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son’s tears or alleviate his overwhelming sense of loneliness.White frequently argued with his father and took great delight in being able to catch him in logical fallacies. These arguments frequently ended in White’s father beating him. 5 A number of autobiographical lettersWhite exchanged with various people toward the end of his life confirm that his father had a profound impact on his development. For example,White remained grateful, if not relieved, that his father did not speak for or against religion. Apparently his father “believed that there was a God of some sort, and that he was good. But there was never any suggestion that God had anything whatever to do with the world we lived in or in our personal lives”(White toWebb,May 7,1968,bhl-wp).White was not exactly sure why his father never spoke of religion and did not know if this nonverbalization was a conscious decision on his father’s part. White did specifically recall that his father never set foot in a church after his marriage. 6 In 1952 he returned to the farm near Lane in the hope that it would cause him to remember things of consequence he had forgotten.The visit prompted him to describe the farm:“Our home was a small two-story structure. As was the case of houses in that community at that time, it was without running water, plumbing, or electric lights. We had a windmill and a well nearby, an outdoor privy; we heated the house with wood stoves and lighted it with kerosene lamps. Near the house—not beneath it—was a cellar which served as a refuge from cyclones as well as to store potatoes, apples, and canned fruit. There was an old dilapidated barn, a tool shed, a big old straw stack and a few forlorn trees. The railroad ran through our farm about a half-mile from our house” (White, untitled reminiscence, circa 1952, bhl-wp). The isolation of farm life created a lonely existence.There were no neighbors and no playmates aside from his brother and sister, and White quickly became bored by the tedious work required to maintain a farm. The farm was several miles from Lane, a small town with stores abutting a single dirt road. White’s limited social life revolved around school, where the teacher was 18 years old and had only just finished the eighth grade herself. Eight grades coexisted in a one-room schoolhouse dominated by a wood-burning stove. The stove heated the room in the winter and kept the ink bottles from freezing at night.The highlight of White’s social life was the monthly Saturday afternoon trip to Lane with his father, sister, and brother. In town his father sold butter,cream,and eggs to purchase groceries from the general store.White revisited Lane several times and kept in contact with several people from his childhood. After one such visit he was prompted to write:

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I have seen quite a few people and the old town. It is not an inspiring sight. It is small grubby, untidy, in fact ugly. It has deteriorated considerably since I was here twenty-five years ago. . . . Many, many houses here are just as they were 25 years ago except for the natural weathering and degeneration that a quarter of a century will bring. . . . Not only are little towns like Lane untidy, and their houses unsightly, but the men are dirty. . . . It is hard to understand how so many of the men can be so dirty. The town is full of weeds. There are no lawns. The trees have had no care. Cows, pigs and chickens are kept right in town. They all have outdoor crapping cans. . . . I seem so remote here. The world where I customarily live has been so far left behind it hardly seems to exist. Of course, it is just the other way around—time has marched on and left Lane behind—the“town that God Forgot.”Only I don’t know whether Lane knows it or not. [White,untitled reminiscence,September 2,1938, bhl-wp]

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White’s father employed an elderly housekeeper and a hired man to help with farm chores.White found the hired man,John,a novelty;unlike his father, he was capable of carrying on light-hearted conversations. John joked with the boys and was willing to play practical jokes on White’s younger brother, Willard.The housekeeper was an elderly woman whomWhite and his brother named“Aunt Frank.”She mothered the children,told them endless stories,and cared for them through routine childhood illnesses. AsWhite’s father became more settled, the hired man was fired; when the children became more selfsufficient,the housekeeper was dismissed as well. Hence by the timeWhite was eight, he was responsible for many of the household chores; when his father was too tired to prepare a meal,which was often the case,White cooked for his siblings. He was expected as well to help feed the livestock,milk the cows,and work in the fields. He was exposed to the elements and wrote that he suffered greatly in the heat of the summer and the cold of the winter. White sadly recalled:“First John left, then Aunt Frank. We were alone, my father, Helen, Willard and I.The house seemed so quiet and desolate.There was no woman there. There was no odor of coffee, no aroma of John’s Bull Durham. We had only one kerosene lamp lighted. Papa would cook supper, or sometimes we would have a cold meal. Helen would help him wash and dry the dishes.Then Dad would take Billy [Willard], as he would always call him, and who by this time was asleep, upstairs and put him to bed” (White, untitled reminiscence, circa 1952, bhl-wp).

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This way of life abruptly ended in 1915,when Helen became pregnant at the age of 17. A strict and devout man,White’s father was devastated and reluctant to let anyone he knew see his daughter’s “condition.” Deeply embarrassed, he moved the family from place to place during Helen’s pregnancy because of the stigma attached to her age and marital status, eventually settling down in Zachary, Louisiana (north of Baton Rouge), one year later. The event caused a profound rupture in the household and led to White’s estrangement from his father, and to a lesser degree his brother, for several years, although he was never estranged from his sister. 7 While White’s sister was pregnant, the family lived a nomadic existence. White also spent some time in Denver with his mother for the fist time since he was a young child. White’s mother was with her daughter when she gave birth at the East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana (White to County Clerk, Denver,Colorado,April 5,1967,bhl-wp).After baby Herbert was born,Helen moved to Denver to live with her mother and stepfather, who legally adopted Herbert. 8 Although White and his brother remained with their father, they began to visit their mother on a regular basis. The two boys subsequently became closer to their mother andWhite’s feelings for his father hardened. 9 Growing up in a house that was male-dominated had a profound effect on White. This was exacerbated by the rupture his sister’s pregnancy caused; for instance,he could no longer accept his father’s dichotomy that there were two kinds of women—good and bad. Although no letters survive betweenWhite and his sister regarding her pregnancy, he remained close to her throughout his life. White could not accept that an unplanned pregnancy suddenly made his sister a “bad woman,” which led him to question what he had been taught by his father. Certainly, traveling around the United States while his sister was pregnant exposed him to things and ideas he had only heard about on the farm in Lane. While the following passage does not concern his sister’s pregnancy directly,White recalled how the lack of a female presence affected his development: This all-male family unquestionably had a profound effect on the development of my personality and character. There were girls in the schools I attended, of course, and my teachers—except the principal— were women. But that was different. I had no chance to become well acquainted with womankind.The greatest difficulty that I encountered in my social life after I left home was learning how to behave toward,and with members of the opposite sex.This difficulty was compounded too,

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I believe,by my father’s Puritan conception of women:all women could be divided into two classes: good and bad. A good woman was a good woman,and a bad woman was a bad woman.This classification may have simplified matters for my father,but its artificial nature created enormous difficulties for me in my efforts to find my way in the real world of real people. [White, untitled reminiscence, circa 1952, bhl-wp] Despite the turbulence of White’s home life, he distinguished himself in school. His grades rarely dipped below 90 percent. His teachers remarked that he was intellectually gifted, and more than one report card noted he had “MarkedAbility.”WhenWhite graduated from Zachary High School in 1916, he was class president and valedictorian. By now openly antagonistic to his father, on the day he graduated from high school he moved out of his father’s house. Anxious to explore the world and make a life for himself, he had only been waiting until graduation. He put his meager possessions into a single valise and left home for good—on foot. He immediately got a job as secretary—bookkeeper with his former high school principal, Chapple R. Regan, and moved to Alexandria, Louisiana. Regan published a school journal entitled Louisiana School Work, for which White took dictation, wrote letters, kept books, and wrote some editorials. Unfortunately,no editorials have survived. Regan concluded thatWhite could get a much better job, and he suggested White apply for a position at the Armour and Company as stenographer and bookkeeper. White held this position until summer 1917, when the U.S. government began construction of Camp Beauregard. White worked at Camp Beauregard in the fall of 1917 and spring of 1918. In March 1918 he visited his mother and sister in Boulder, Colorado, where he enlisted in the navy. 10 The Navy

Although White never articulated exactly why he joined the navy, several factors surely figured significantly. First,like many men his age,White perceived the sinking of the passenger liner Lusitania as a threat to democracy and the nation. He vividly recalled when his father told him the war had begun:“I was in a corn field with the temperature about 102 and my father came out and said to me the Germans invaded Belgium.This was profound and it had a disturbing, upsetting affect upon me. Wars to me had always been in history books and they had no other reality. But now this was a real war and the Germans were real men” (White, lecture, 1974, ucsc). White must have concluded that enlisting was the best way to actively “make the world safe for democracy.” Moreover,

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White’s two best friends had also decided to enlist. White was 18, had never had a drink of alcohol or smoked, was a virgin, and had an intense romantic desire to “See The World,” as the recruitment posters exclaimed. After White graduated from basic training, he applied for admission to the Naval School for Specialized Instruction. He worked very hard and, along with two other young recruits, was selected to join a destroyer crew that was waiting for its ship to be completed in the San Francisco shipyards. The destroyer uss Ringgold was commissioned November 14, 1918. The majority of the crew had considerable naval experience when White participated in her maiden voyage. White’s experience in the navy was quite unusual because the Ringgold was commissioned three days after the armistice. Accordingly the professional naval crew and officers were no longer concerned with the war but with the downsizing that would inevitably follow. Men such asWhite had their motivational factor eliminated. In addition, a nucleus crew on a ship under construction lives under very difficult conditions. According to naval historian Paul Halpern,“the ship was most likely partially functional and the general living conditions squalid. It was akin to living in a home while it was under construction” (letter to author, September 23, 1997).White found his new life exciting, exhilarating, and enjoyable despite a few “unpleasant episodes.” Brawls were not uncommon and the veteran seamen picked on the “greenhorns” who seemed the most insecure. In a letter to his friend and his former student Edward Norbeck,White recalled:“I fell in love with San Francisco long ago in 1918 when I entered the Navy and had my rookie training at Goat Island (as it was universally called at that time) and was assigned to the nucleus of a destroyer crew at Mare Island pending the completion of the ship at the Union IronWorks. My six months in San Francisco were probably the most exciting and romantic (in the broader sense of this term) period of my life” (White to Norbeck, October 17, 1968, bhl-wp). There can be no doubt thatWhite had conflicting memories of his days in the navy. Toward the end of his life, he recalled:“I enjoyed being in the Navy. It was a great experience for me, a pleasant one, and very instructive. I loved the sea life and the ships. The only thing I didn’t like about the Navy was its purpose.While in the Navy no one seemed to think much of its purpose, that is, its ultimate purpose. And whenever I did think of it then, I thought it a noble one. Was it not committed to sweeping the scourge of U-Boats from the sea, thereby making the world safe for democracy?” (White 1973d:45). The impact his naval service had on White is impossible to overestimate. Most who have written aboutWhite’s life and career have stressed this point,re-

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ferring to the following passage about war:“[T]he facts and all the propaganda, disillusioned me profoundly and completely. Up to 1916 I implicitly believed all that I had learned about the ‘American way of life,’ its principles, practices, ideals and goals.After the war I had come to realize that just about all that I had learned was sheer folk-lore and bore little relationship to reality. Therefore, when I entered college (Louisiana State) in the fall of 1919, I abandoned my plans to become a physicist. The only way I could define my objective then was that I ‘wanted to learn and understand why peoples—nations—behave as they do’” (White 1987:4). This quote illustrates the profound change in White’s thinking created by World War I. Although it implies that his naval experience alone changed his worldview, this was not the case. Given his social isolation as a child,White never questioned what he had been taught. He recalled that he was not exposed to anything but “the mythology of Capitalism and Democracy.” In looking back on his life,White recalled that he“never realized it was mythology and as a matter of fact I did not think it was true or not. I just accepted it as I accepted the atmosphere. I believed everything that the capitalist and democratic system had to say about itself. It was the best of all possible worlds, everyone had an equal chance and so on” (White, lecture, 1974, ucsc). White believed that growing up in “Kansas from 1907 to 1914 was a spiritually organized state of mind,to be understood only against a background of the Free vs. Slavery struggle,John Brown,Quantrell’s raids,Puritan morality, anti-liquor,anti-tobacco,movements etc.”(White toWebb,May 7,1968,bhlwp).11 Given this context,I would argue that it is impossible to discern whether and to what extent the evolution of White’s thinking came from escaping the conservative environment in which he was raised, the turmoil caused by his sister’s pregnancy, or the experience of the war itself. EvenWhite was unsure, writing,“I cannot explain very well what happened to me during the three years after I finished high-school” (White to Meyer,April 3, 1964, bhl-wp). White realized that his naval experience was significant but was not convinced that it was the lone reason for his changed views. Certainly, the two worlds White had been exposed to were diametrical opposites. There was his father’s world on the farm, isolated and barren, and life in the navy, filled with liquor, exotic ports, and the raw edge of life. Undoubtedly the war was a shock to men and women of his generation,as it destroyed their preconception about the nature of civilization. Before the war many believed civilization had advanced beyond warfare and the wanton destruction of life and property. WorldWar I provided graphic proof this was not the case.The ultimate cost of

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WorldWar I in terms of money circa 1918 is staggering:the estimated direct cost was $180 million.The loss of lives for the victorious and defeated powers alike was overwhelming. Even conservative estimates are mind-boggling:Germany suffered 6.6 million losses, France 2.8 million, and Russia 9 million. Great Britain, excluding Scotland and Ireland, sustained casualties of 3 million. Although White did not participate in any battle when in the navy, he became adamantly opposed to all warfare, writing:“I was awed and appalled by the war; I could not understand it. And I had the sickening feeling that our verbal explanations and professions did not really account for our behavior. I wanted to know why millions of men should murder and mangle each other, and why women and priests should urge them to do it. . . . I was overwhelmed when the full realization that everything is not as it pretends to be, struck me; almost everything seemed to me to be ‘out of joint”’ (White to Capen, grant proposal, December 31, 1928, bhl-wp). Even during World War II, when there was virtually unanimous support for the war, the death and destruction appalledWhite. He found fault with both sides, writing in his journal: We seem to be“winning the war”now.That is,our killing and destroying seems to be exceeding those of the enemy. . . . This war sickens me. The lying, cheating bragging; the nauseating hypocrisy, the parading of vicious hate, envy greed, as holy and noble striving and idealism. Using the war and patriotism to shackle and enslave—to humiliate and discredit—the working class—while at the same time proclaiming that this is a war of the common man—is sickening. If there is anything noble, lofty,genuine,unselfish in this war,it is among the common ignorant folk who have really been taken in by the propaganda. And even then, one wonders how much of this rises above the level of tropism and reflex. [White, journal, circa 1944, bhl-wp] After White was discharged from the navy in August 1919, he entered Louisiana State University. However, he decided not to study physics or astronomy as he had originally planned. As early as 1910 White had decided he was going to become a physicist or astronomer. In a letter to Harry Elmer Barnes,White wrote that one of his most vivid childhood memories was of his father taking him outside to see Halley’s comet flaming across the sky (White to Barnes,August 11, 1959, Barnes Papers, ahc). As the comet streaked across the sky, his father explained this phenomenon, an incident that remained one of his warmest memories. White was fascinated by science, and as a young child he read some of his father’s college textbooks. One of these texts,Natural

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Philosophy, he reread many times. In fact he wrote to Fay-Cooper Cole that, as a child, he “devoured” it and became enchanted by the deeds of Newton, Galileo, Kepler, and Halley (White to Cole, circa 1925, bhl-wp). It was thus a foregone conclusion thatWhite would major in physics or astronomy.Yet after his experience in the navy, such matters as electrons and the transmission of light seemed of secondary importance. He did not know what he was seeking or groping for. Nonetheless, he “realized clearly I had been brainwashed all my life.” All that he had been taught were mythologies or, as he put it, “Mothergoose stories” (White, lecture, 1974, ucsc). He was to spend much of his undergraduate and graduate years searching for a discipline that would provide him with the answers to questions such as why do countries go to war.

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Shortly after White left the navy, he contracted a life-threatening case of influenza. Also known as the “Spanish flu,” it came to affect half the human population and was the most deadly epidemic since the Middle Ages. He contracted the disease while working on a transport ship that carried injured soldiers back to the United States from Europe. At the time there was nothing the doctors could do, and he spent several days in a New York City hospital near death. This experience led him to make amends with his father, who had traveled to New York to see him. 12 After convalescing for six weeks, White entered Louisiana State University in the fall of 1919 with a full scholarship. It quickly became apparent that White, majoring in history and political science, was head and shoulders above his fellow students. Two of White’s professors strongly encouraged him to transfer to Columbia University, writing letters of recommendation that stated he was the best student they had ever encountered. He transferred to Columbia University in 1921 after his sophomore year; there he received a B.A. in 1923 and an M.A. in 1925. He took no courses in anthropology as an undergraduate or as a graduate student at Columbia. His M.A. thesis,“A Study ofVocational Choice ofYoung Men in the Professional Schools, with Reference to the Vocation of Their Male Relatives,” was written under the direction of RobertWoodworth. While at Columbia White seriously considered becoming a psychiatrist. 13 He spent several months visiting psychiatric clinics in New York State hospitals. He worked with Frankwood Williams at theVeterans Bureau NeuroPsychiatric Hospital in the Bronx and took two classes in clinical psychology at Manhattan State Hospitals for the Insane at Ward’s Island. In 1923, while visiting France, he spent some time at La Chartreuse Hospital for the Insane

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in Dijon to investigate the graduate programs available.What intriguedWhite about psychiatry in particular and psychology in general was that they provided concrete examples of how a “social problem” could be approached and dealt with at a practical level.White’s interests thus revolved around what he called “peoples” rather than culture. While White’s overall experience at Columbia was positive, he felt he was not getting enough out of his education. He expressed his frustration in a letter: I am becoming quite impatient with school, or Columbia University at least. I am getting a degree in February after four years of work. Then where am I? I don’t feel that I have really gotten very much from school, I feel that I am very deficient and lacking indeed, in the field in which my interests lie, but I feel that another year or two at Columbia will not yield returns of sufficient value to justify their expenditure. I feel that there is something going on in the world that I am missing, and that school, or Columbia at least, is not even letting me know it exists. . . . I may be foolish, but I have the feeling that I am being cheated and deceived. I don’t feel that I am getting the real thing that I think exists and which I am determined to get. [White to Miss Hayes, December 11, 1922, bhl-wp] It is not clear who the recipient of this letter,“Miss Hayes,” was. White was not on a first name basis with her; it is clear, however, that she helped him in a professional capacity.White refers to their many fine and lengthy discussions. He also credited her with getting his life “redirected toward the right path.” It is possible that White had a nervous breakdown. This is implied in a letter from Martha Strong to White’s father (Strong to Alvin White, September 22, 1922, bhl-wp) and in a passage of White’s journal. He wrote that he was “recuperating nicely and that many events have taken place which may change the whole course of my life” (White, journal, fall 1922, bhl-wp). Regardless,there is no doubt that duringWhite’s junior year at Columbia his thinking underwent a profound change. Attracted to Carlton Hayes,professor of history and an enthralling lecturer, White briefly considered a career in history, but Hayes’s modern European history class convinced him that this was not his field. In a letter to Professor Hayes, he wrote,“On a snowy walk this afternoon I noted a marked change in my attitude. . . . If I continue in history, all I can do is teach. I would rather be one who has a hand in the shaping of history than one who teaches it.That is why I prefer action. I don’t

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think I would be content to sit down and read about what others are doing. I want to do things myself ”(White to Hayes,January 19,1922,bhl-wp).White found the action he sought in socialism and historical materialism. Archival evidence in the form of papers he wrote for his classes and his activities at Columbia support his assertion that he had become a “revolutionist” in 1922. By revolutionist,White meant that he embraced an entirely new philosophy of life, one of his own manufacture rather than one he had been taught. In recalling this period, he wrote to Fay-Cooper Cole:“During my junior and senior years I went through a great period of revolutionism. . . . I wished to remake this old world,tear down the stupid,inefficient,unjust social structures and replace them with new wise, modern devices so that mankind would be freer, happier, and closer to the millennium which was soon to come. I tried to decide how much of my time, my life, I should devote to ‘society’ and how much to myself, and how I could best serve mankind” (White to Cole, circa 1925, bhl-wp). During this “revolutionary period” White attended meetings of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, whose primary purpose was to promote an intelligent interest in socialism among college men and women through the formation of study clubs. Founded by Upton Sinclair and renamed the League for Industrial Democracy (lid) in 1921, it was led by socialists Harry Laidler and NormanThomas (Cohen 1993:31). During the 1920s lid was politically ineffective. Thus it is understandable why White did not become politically engaged in lid or other leftist organizations while a student. Throughout the 1920s socialists had a virtual monopoly on radical organizations, whose motto was “education for a new social order.” So much emphasis was placed on education that socialists seemed unable to take part in active political agitation. While one could learn a great deal from the political pamphlets, lectures, and workshops organized by lid, the organization failed to look beyond the classroom. It has been characterized by Cohen as a “brand of introverted academic radicalism”(Cohen 1993:33).White felt socialists merely debated about the nature of society, thereby attracting radical students, but were not effective in reaching the common man or in creating social change. The inaction infuriated White, who wrote in an unsuccessful grant to the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation: “I was eager to set out to reform the world; all the injustices, cruelties, and stupidities of our whole social system were to be wiped out. And I beat my wings against the bars of my cage until I fell down bruised and exhausted. . . . Then came the awful realization that the mere discovery of an abuse and a publishing of this news to the world,did not at

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once remove the abuse.With this discovery,my militant revolutionism subsided, and I discovered maturity” (White to Capen, grant proposal, December 31, 1928, bhl-wp). White’s newfound maturity consisted of independent reading and correspondence with scholars and political activists he respected as well as participation in various study groups outside of the Columbia milieu. Inspired by Austin Hay,White read John Dewey’s Human Nature and Conduct (White also took one course with Dewey but never commented on its possible influence). Hay encouraged White to read not only Dewey but the “thinkers who are associated with the socialist movement” (Hay to White, October 28, 1922, bhl-wp). White was struggling with what he perceived to be the weaknesses of social psychology. He wrote, “It seems to me that [in Human Nature and Conduct Dewey] has given us a method by which we can study social psychology much more profitably in the future. In Dewey’s interpretation we find hints of a distant but vital relation to that brand of knowledge that is usually termed ‘Historic Materialism’ or ‘The Materialist Conception of History.’ Karl Marx seems to have hit upon about the same idea as Dewey in his Capital where he says that man’s existence is not made by his consciousness but his consciousness is made by his social life” (White, class notes, circa 1922, bhl-wp). ForWhite social psychology grew out of historical materialism,which was divorced from socialist politics; indeed, it could not be monopolized by socialists,Democrats,or Republicans.White believed that historical materialism could not be useful until it took shape in a scientific form able to manufacture generalizations. He therefore argued that historical materialists and socialists were still waiting for their great generalization to be devised or realized. He wrote to Scott Nearing, a well-known socialist, asking him to point out a socialist system better than the capitalist one already in place in America. 14 White wanted to know where a socialist system had worked in the past and where it was currently working.The problem forWhite was that there was no socialist system already in place.White hoped that Dewey’s book would hold the key, enable society and human nature and conduct to be analyzed from a scientific point of view. Dewey showed how the environment in which people act and react determines conduct. Just as we cannot breathe without the atmosphere, in the same way honesty and courage are not properties of individuals alone but belong to the social environment. Thus objects in our material environment and data in our nonmaterial or social environment are necessary for a complete life. The ultimate aim of such an understanding and scientific view was not clear

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toWhite. Although interested in socialism,he could not commit himself until he saw it in action. White wondered why, if socialism was such a good thing, was it so difficult to win converts? As White perceived it, the main problem was: If you intend to replace any order which does not exist by one which you think would be better,you must first convert a number of people to your way of thinking—your first victory must be in the mind of man. This may be difficult at first, but if you can do this, the rest is easy. If you do convert a goodly number of people to your way of thinking, why you can get together and try out this scheme that has existed heretofore only in thought. If your experiment succeeds, do you think that you could keep it a secret and prevent people from adopting it—if it demonstrated that their conditions would be improved and their happiness increased? However, if you can’t win enough people over to your way of thinking to try it out, is your theory antagonistic—or not in sympathy at least, with the human factor, without which no practical change—economic or otherwise—is possible? [White to Nearing, May 25, 1922, bhl-wp] The New School for Social Research

Dissatisfied with Columbia and in search of a scientific and radical methodology to change the world,White turned to Harry Elmer Barnes for advice. In 1922 White took a class with Barnes at the University of California, and the two men struck up what would become a lifelong friendship. Barnes, one of the founding fathers of the New School faculty, strongly encouraged White to take classes there (White to Matthews, November 29, 1964, bhl). Barnes toldWhite that he was both professor of history and general handyman around the New School,often taking care of the boilers to insure his classroom was heated (Barnes to White, May 25, 1963, Barnes Papers, ahc). Foremost among those who made a lasting impression on White at the New School wereAlexander Goldenweiser (anthropology),William I.Thomas (sociology), ThorsteinVeblen (economics), John B. Watson (psychology), and Frankwood E.Williams (psychiatry). The New School for Social Research was founded in spring 1919 by a group of liberals and radical democrats (Rutkoff and Scott 1986). Principally coming from two groups—dissatisfied intellectuals from Columbia University (Charles Beard, Franz Boas, John Dewey,Wesley Mitchell, and James Harvey Robinson) and editors from the New Republic (Herbert Croly and Alvin Johnson)—they were brought together by Caroline Bacon, former professor

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at Smith College. During the time of isolationism and red-baiting following WorldWar I, both groups were deeply dissatisfied with the lack of intellectual freedom on most college campuses.The financial backing came from Frances Hand, Elsie Clews Parsons, Emily Putnam, Charlotte Sorchan, and Dorothy Straight.The New School acquired six townhouses backing onto one another on West Twenty-third and West Twenty-fourth Streets near the offices of the New Republic. Charlotte Sorchan undoubtedly applied her architectural and financial resources to transform the buildings into a school.The New School hired brilliant people who were disqualified from teaching elsewhere because of some act of social or political nonconformity. For example, Alexander Goldenweiser, dismissed from Columbia University, and William Thomas, dismissed from the University of Chicago, found a congenial and tolerant faculty at the New School.15 According toAlvin Johnson,who would become the New School’s first director, the novel quality of the New School excited “every liberal in the city”(Caffrey 1989:95). However, not all were pleased by the founding of the New School. For example, its diverse students and faculty led the president of Columbia University, Nicholas Murray Butler, to characterize the New School as “a bunch of disgruntled liberals setting up a tiny fly-by-night radical counterfeit education.” Between 1919 and 1933 the New School was a small, experimental institution for adult and worker education (Rutkoff and Scott 1986). It was a unique institution in that it had no formal requirements, curricula, or degrees. It attracted a student body largely comprised of people who had been sidetracked or delayed in choosing a career. As such the New School became a trendsetter for other similar institutions, such as the Rand School and the Affiliated Workers School, established in New York during the 1920s (Wald 1987). In order to remain a free and independent institution,the New School did not accept money from other institutions, financing its operation solely with student fees. Contributions from the founders made up for any shortfalls at the end of the year (Krohn 1987:60).Among the early anthropologists drawn to the New School were Alexander Goldenweiser and Elsie Clews Parsons, who each taught various courses. The best-known anthropology students of the early 1920s were Ruth Benedict,Melville Herskovits,and LeslieA.White. Between 1922 and 1924 White took classes at the New School in the late afternoons and evenings (White to Bliven, March 25, 1969, bhl-wp). White also worked at the “old” New School bookshop onWestTwenty-third Street, where he checked admission cards at the library to help pay his living expenses (White to Johnson, August 5, 1955, bhl-wp). Recalling his time

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at the New School, he wrote to Manuel Roman that he could have earned more money elsewhere but felt these jobs afforded him the opportunity to meet both faculty and students (White to Roman, January 16, 1964, bhlwp). What impressed White the most about the New School was the library and its adjacent bookstore, which was filled with revolutionary literature. He concluded that he must take classes there and try to mix in with the social scientists he respected. He also undertook an ambitious reading program, examining the works of Beard, Dewey, Giddings, andWoodworth. White’s first exposure to anthropology occurred at the New School. Of the scholars White was exposed to,William I. Thomas appealed to him the most, becauseThomas was very open-minded.Thomas’s classes were small and there were often wide-ranging discussions. White liked Thomas in spite of the fact he was a terrible teacher. According to Heilbroner (1961:209) whenThomas arrived at the New School his classes were overflowing with students but were quickly reduced to a mere handful because he mumbled in class and was disorganized. White characterized Thomas as stimulating and exciting with a free-ranging mind, fertile and engorged with particular facts. White recalled that he became close toThomas,or as close as a young student could to a much older scholar:“As I look back upon an experience of almost 40 years ago—no; more than 40, if anything—this is what comes to mind. He did not teach anthropology or sociology or psychology or any other ology. He taught what W. I. Thomas had done and thought and wondered about wherever human beings were involved. He exhibited things in a way in which made you see things you had never seen before. He made you think about things in novel ways” (White to Matthews, November 29, 1964, bhl-wp). Thomas also eschewed moralism. His approach to social scientific research was detached; that is, he viewed his subject matter in a dispassionate manner, seeking to understand human behavior relativistically rather than judgmentally. The starting point for this disinterested investigation of the origin and function of social institutions was Thomas’s Source Book of Human Origins (1909).WhileWhite was already familiar withThomas’s better-known works, specifically The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (Thomas and Znaniecki 1918) and Sex and Society ([1907] 1974), his Source Book of Human Origins made a lasting impression. The text was a sociological study of primitive society that viewed history as driven forward by the economic struggle for existence, capitalist accumulation, and the division of labor. Thomas believed America was at a critical stage in its history because rapid change had broken down old habits without creating new ideals. His solution was to break down

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barriers of communication and of class consciousness, sexism, and racial and tribal prejudice to work toward a world of harmonious pluralistic exchange— a social state he believed primitive people had attained. The “secret of life” that the study of primitive peoples would disclose was their failure to progress. It was in the fact that they did not become like modern Western civilization that Thomas hoped to discover the “laws of social physics which raised us above them” (Thomas 1909).Thomas firmly believed that humankind’s long development from savagery to civilization was of fundamental importance in understanding and changing contemporary society.Anthropological evidence drawn from all peoples would shed light on the “social consciousness” of society. White read the works of Franz Boas,Alexander Goldenweiser,Alfred Kroeber, and Clark Wissler, finding both factual and theoretical substance. Of the aforementioned scholars, Goldenweiser impressed White the most. At the New School White took classes with Goldenweiser, whom he characterized as one of the most learned teachers and best lecturers he was ever exposed to (White to Barnes,circa 1959,Barnes Papers,ahc). Goldenweiser was described by Lowie (1922:235) as the most open-minded student of Boas, considered “the philosopher of American anthropology.”White was not alone in this assessment of Goldenweiser. For example,Ruth Benedict,who also took classes with Goldenweiser, wrote that he exuded excitement about anthropology. Goldenweiser had a bold and flashy mind, and she characterized him as brilliant. She also wrote that“in his lectures Goldie displayed his brilliance and his extraordinarily facile imagination” (Modell 1983:111). 16 According toWhite Goldenweiser lived quite well and had salons at which he entertained leading anthropologists from the American Museum of Natural History and visiting professors from Europe.White also received heaping doses of antievolutionism that in retrospect he believed was not taught explicitly—rather it was taken for granted evolutionism had no merit.White read the antievolutionist literature, of which Lowie’s Primitive Society had the most significance on his thinking. Despite his acceptance of Boasian antievolutionism, his theoretical interests remained broad.The best way to examine both the impact Goldenweiser had on White’s thought and his early interest in anthropology derived from the New School is to analyze his rejected Ph.D. thesis proposal at the University of Chicago. However,before turning to this controversial aspect of his career,I must examine his graduate school experience at the University of Chicago and the events leading up to the split of the anthropology and sociology department there. 17

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The University of Chicago

White’s decision to go to graduate school at the University of Chicago was based on the recommendation of Harry Elmer Barnes and his deep respect for William Thomas. Established in 1893, the University of Chicago offered the best graduate program in sociology and anthropology in the United States. More generally, the University of Chicago had the widest course selection in the social sciences, with listings that included anthropology, history, law, philosophy, political science, psychology, sociology, and theology. Thus aside from the department’s outstanding reputation,its appeal fromWhite’s perspective came from its close relations with other departments of the university, in particular psychology. The close collaboration of these departments gave the joint department an interdisciplinary approach firmly grounded in empirical research. In fact virtually all students were assigned specialized topics that necessitated both library research and fieldwork on the streets of Chicago. 18 WhenWhite began his graduate work in Chicago,the university was at the peak of its influence, having placed first in a 1925 national poll of scholars regarding prospective university graduate training.19 Despite this,there were only four other graduate students in the sociology and anthropology department who were specifically studying anthropology: John Blackburn, Paul Martin, Robert Redfield,and Peter Roest. Other students would follow as the department expanded exponentially in the 1930s, and many of them would go on to distinguished careers—for example,Walter Dyk,Fred Eggan,James Griffin, Mary Hass, C. W. M. Hart, Harry Hoijer, Paul Martin, Stanley Newman, Morris Opler, Cornelius Osgood, and Morris Swadesh.The sociology senior faculty consisted of Ernest Burgess,Ellsworth Faris,Robert E. Park,andAlbion Small. Of the sociologists listed, only Faris—who, as I will later demonstrate, had a contentious relationship withWhite—expressed any interest in primitive society. The anthropologists included Fay-Cooper Cole, hired in 1924, and Edward Sapir, hired in 1925. As his personal correspondence indicates,White got along well with both Sapir and Cole,to whom he dedicated his dissertation. White’s first year was spent in courses with Burgess (“Races and Nationalities”), Faris (“Social Psychiatry”), Park (“Study of Society”) and Small (“History of Sociology”). According to White within the department Small was regarded as the“grand old man,”while Park and Burgess were regarded as “top men.” Faris was “prominent” but not of the same caliber.White enjoyed a good relationship with Burgess, Park, and Small, whom he respected.White regarded Park as the most dynamic teacher among the Chicago sociologists. White’s research interests were much different from Park’s, yet he retained

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“great respect for Park as a person—his honesty, his integrity, his simple forthright manner, his interest in and kindness to people with whom he was associated” (White to Matthews, November 29, 1964, bhl-wp). By the end of White’s first year of course work at Chicago, his profound differences with the sociologists were clear. At a personal level,this is reflected in the background of Ernest Burgess, Ellsworth Faris, and Albion Small, all of whom were either ministers or the sons of ministers (see Bulmer 1984; Carey 1975; Dibble 1975; R. Faris 1967; Matthews 1977). Small, as chair of the sociology department, hired men such as William Thomas, Robert Park, and Ernest Burgess, who would help form the “Chicago School of Sociology.”20 PresidentWilliam Rainey Harper, a devout Baptist, asked Small (1854–1926) to come to the University of Chicago in 1892 to form the Department of Sociology. Small was the son of a Baptist clergyman. He graduated from Colby College in Maine and Newton Theological Seminary, both Baptist schools. He received a Ph.D. in history from Johns Hopkins University and returned to Colby College as president. Small was politically engaged and would on occasion support a Republican Party candidate. There was a strong theological influence to the sociology taught at Chicago (Greck 1992). This is reflected not only in the background of Burgess, Faris, and Small but in the titles of early theses produced by the department (R. Faris 1967:10). The sociologists at Chicago sought to professionalize the discipline by joining a scientific commitment to methods with an ethical vision that sought to enhance the lives of all people. For Small, sociology, theology, and social reform were “complementary frames for viewing reality. Christianity, sociology, social work, and social reform would all share the same perspective”(Greck 1992:108). As a result,scientism and moralism were integrally connected.White picked up on this quickly—and was not favorably impressed. He recalled: “Sociology was more than a little tinged with DoGoodism. Many of the founders of American sociology had been ordained ministers or divinity students. Anthropology was secularized,its emphasis was upon cultural facts and their significance,the meaning.They had no reformistic animus” (White to McMillan, May 26, 1973, bhl-wp). Based upon lettersWhite exchanged with Barnes at the time,and many years later with Fred Matthews and Robert McMillan, his relationship with Faris was not positive from the outset.21 Faris,who had been a missionary in the then Belgian Congo between 1894 and 1904, retained a dominant or overbearing manner with students and colleagues alike (R. Faris 1967:31).22 Faris was well organized in class, and his lectures retained the quality of sermons. He did

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not like to be interrupted or have his viewpoint challenged. Never afraid to argue,White voiced his skepticism about the value of sociological theory in his first class with Faris. White and Faris “locked horns” on numerous occasions throughout the quarter and exchanged pointed barbs in class (White to Barnes, March 26,1925, bhl-wp).White confronted Faris a number of times over the concept of type as used by Boas. The disagreements came to a head when White made a student presentation in which he tried to establish that the best idea of type that he knew was that of one of several (two or more) statistical series plotted on a common base, such as Boas used in discussing the Negro’s type and the Norwegian’s type. According toWhite Faris heckled him during his presentation and ridiculed the application of statistical theory to the concept of type. What annoyed White most was Faris’s disingenuous attempt to establish a congenial rapport with him after his presentation. In White’s view, Faris’s attempt to become a sort of intellectual father figure was “obvious and crude.” As he described it to Barnes:“He employed all of the little tricks designed to win over a student—little intimacies, exchange of confidences, gave me an opportunity to unburden my burning ambitions to him—he would understand and sympathize,you know—and even worked in if you have a problem where an older man (the father image) can be of service, why come to me, etc. . . . So the outcome was that as a father confessor, counselor, older man, he was not of any use to me at all, and hence had no control over me. I had the feeling all along that he was simply out to get my vote—to make me a Faris booster” (White to Barnes, March 26, 1925, bhl-wp). AfterWhite did not respond favorably to him, Faris became hostile (White to Matthews, November 15, 1964, bhl-wp). This hostility was not without precedent, for Faris had forced other students he perceived to be disruptive out of the department.According to Pitrim Sorokin,Faris“understood power in an academic setting. He antagonized quite a few people and could be a very disagreeable man” (Sorokin to Matthews, November 22, 1964, rl). A sociology graduate student recalled,“Not everyone got along with [Faris]. He could be very helpful to students but for those that stuck out their necks and disagreed with him there was apprehension he may very well cut it [their head] off ” (interview with James Carey, circa 1974, Carey Papers, rl). 23 White quickly found himself in a precarious position. Within the department he was not in good standing with the sociologists. His unpublished student papers graphically demonstrate that he questioned the theoretical basis of sociology. For example,in one paper,“The Concept Social:A Critical Note”

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(White 1925a), White—echoing his former professor at the New School, WilliamThomas—argued that the concept of culture had a place within social scientific theory. In fact White felt that the sociologists were carrying on the work that Thomas started at the University of Chicago. Moreover, he maintained that the greatest advances in theory had been pushed forward by anthropologists such as Goldenweiser, Lowie, Kroeber, andWissler. Conspicuously absent was any mention of sociology or the works of sociologists at Chicago. White believed that anthropologists had preempted sociological studies, which had laid dormant for many years,and that the“pompous pretensions,the ponderous definitions, the glib theories and the unwarranted generalizations one has become accustomed to expect in sociological treatises are absent” in anthropology (White 1925e:471). Reflecting Goldenweiser’s influence,White believed that within anthropology the concept of culture was openly embraced and avowed with “refreshing simplicity.”White accepted Goldenweiser’s categories of history, psychology, and culture, first presented in the Journal of Philosophy. The originality of White’s worked hinged on the collection and coordination of data between disparate fields. Caught between two opposing camps of thought,White wrote to Barnes: Another bomb shell has burst in my camp. I have been invited to leave the department of Sociology. There is no ill will at all, and I don’t have to leave if I wish to remain, but both Small and Park have told me I ought not remain in their department. Small, though very emphatic, I do not take very seriously. But Park is not to be dismissed so lightly. He told me he had thought a great deal about it, and had talked about me to Professor Cole (in Anthropology) and had decided that I ought to leave sociology and go into anthropology. Park, himself, is very strongly inclined toward anthropology. He told me the other morning, quite unexpectedly, that he thought that my interests and training better qualified me for anthropology than sociology, and he thought I ought to make a change. He thinks that I haven’t “the point of view” of the department of sociology here,and that I am not very sympathetic towards it. [White to Barnes,April 23, 1925, bhl-wp] White’s fledgling career did not look promising, for in addition to being told to leave sociology, his fellowship application was rejected (competition for fellowships was stiff andWhite was not ranked first). In order to remain at Chicago,White devoted 20 hours per week to working part-time as a research

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assistant to Burgess (White to Barnes, April 14, 1925, bhl-wp). Given his financial status, he was very concerned about how he would “fit in” with anthropology and when he would graduate. He wrote to Barnes that he could not afford to stay at Chicago an additional year and felt he was in a precarious position (White to Barnes, April 23, 1925, bhl-wp). While the move from sociology to anthropology seemed to be White’s only option, he was hardly a perfect fit for anthropology. Cole, who was his only choice as adviser, did not know where to “pigeon-hole”White. White was attracted to Cole because he was a“down to earth”anthropologist who had done fieldwork and “made anthropology appear to be something in the real world, not just in the realm of theory” (White, journal, circa 1925, bhl-wp). The appeal of anthropology was strong, however, as White had read and been impressed by many Boasians. White believed that, in time, anthropologists would have the factual basis to develop a system or theory to explain culture change. “Here was a new approach to an understanding of contemporary civilization and its problems.The time perspective provided by archaeology,and the comparative viewpoint made possible by ethnology, give a length and breadth to a study of civilizations that can be obtained in no other way. And to this may be added a psychological insight and understanding (as the work of Sapir, Malinowski, Radin et.al. shows). I believe I can further my knowledge and understanding of human behavior more satisfactorily in anthropology than in any other discipline, possessing as I do indispensable aids from philosophy and the other social sciences” (White, journal, circa 1926, bhl-wp). In order to graduate White had to pass a Ph.D. exam and write a doctoral thesis proposal. He encountered significant difficulty on both fronts. He wrote to Barnes that given the way the department was structured, he could not envision how he could get his thesis proposal approved, and he approached his Ph.D. exam with trepidation (White to Barnes,April 23, 1925, bhl-wp). Apparently unbeknownst toWhite,moves were under way to separate the joint department of anthropology and sociology. His thesis proposal and contentious relationship with the sociologists on staff simply provided a vehicle for this larger struggle. White had clearly alienated Faris and, although he got along with Burgess, Park, and Small on a personal basis, he did not agree with them at an intellectual level. In May 1927 White was required to take a written and oral examination in sociology and anthropology. He wrote to William Duncan Strong that “I am having a very strenuous, feverish, half-mad time—trying to finish my thesis [and] prepare for examinations in May. . . . I hardly know where I

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am at” (White to Strong, April 15, 1927, Strong Papers, naa). Overseeing his examination in sociology were Faris, Park, and Burgess, while Sapir and Cole represented anthropology.The examination lasted a very long time.The questions developed by Sapir, who wrote the exam, had a strong sociological bent. Before the oral exam,White had been warned by Robert Redfield,then a fellow student,that the sociologists,Faris in particular,“were out to get him,” and he warned him not to lose his temper. This came as a surprise to White, who had written to Strong:“I believe everyone in the department has his mind pretty well made up now whether I shall get the degree in June or not,but still, I feel that considerable review would be a good thing.”) It was a good thing White was prepared,as he soon found that Faris was“hostile—even venomous” during the examination (White to Matthews, November 15, 1964, bhl-wp). Faris tookWhite to task for publishing“The Concept Social:A Critical Note” in Social Forces. According toWhite Faris felt the publication of White’s views on the difficulties of using the word social as a technical term in sociology and social psychology was an affront to the professors of sociology. Faris believed White wrote the article because he perceived his educational experience at Chicago to be inadequate. Faris resented the fact White associated himself with the University of Chicago at the end of his article (White to McMillan, May 16, 1973, bhl-wp). While Faris openly attacked White, Park grilled him unmercifully but without malicious intent. White reported that he was told Cole was outraged by the way he had been treated.: Cole was furious after the examination, according to what he told me and what others told me. It is said that he went directly to the University administration and said that if anthropology were not separated from sociology,departmentally,he would leave the University.The division was effected shortly afterwards. Cole told me that Park had been hard on me “to see if I could talk on my feet,”could think without becoming rattled, defend myself,etc. I did not feel at any time during the examination that Park was hostile towards me,nor have I ever thought so afterwards. I had felt before the examination that he was friendly toward me, and I felt so during the examination. Incidentally, I did not lose my temper—in spite of Faris’s provocations. [White to Matthews, November 15, 1964, bhl-wp] White’s views on the separation of the department became part of the folklore of Chicago anthropology. On the surface,White’s recollection of the division between anthropology and sociology is at odds with what others

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have written. 24 Darnell maintains that White’s recollection was “undoubtedly oversimplified”(1990:430). McMillan agrees that there was considerable friction between the anthropologists and sociologists but warns that White’s interpretation should be viewed with caution (1986:214). Stocking does not comment directly on White’s statement about the department’s splitting, merely noting that during his Ph.D. orals“one of the sociologists seems to have given him a rather bad time”(1979:17). For whatever reason,the Department of Anthropology and Sociology was formally separated in 1929. Acting President Woodward wrote to Fay-Cooper Cole and Ellsworth Faris (chairmen of the joint department) that a separate Department of Anthropology under Cole’s leadership would be created (Woodward to Cole and Faris, February 18,1929,President’s Papers,1925–45,rl).With regard to the split,Cole wrote toWoodward: Our relations with Sociology have been most cordial and we feel especially indebted to Prof. Faris for his lively interest and help. As a matter of fact,we have delayed several months in bringing this matter to your attention because of the feelings of indebtedness to Prof. Faris and our reluctance to do anything which might reflect on him. In this request for a separate department nothing of a personal nature is involved. We do believe, however, that the time has come when Anthropology at the University of Chicago would be greatly strengthened by being made independent, and we do not think that Sociology would suffer by its separation. [Cole toWoodward,November 26,1928,President’s Papers, 1925–45, rl] Stocking (1979) and Darnell (1990) take Cole’s November 26, 1928, letter toWoodward at face value.Two letters from Cole and three from Faris stress the mutual respect and lack of personal vendetta between the two departments. The need for so many letters written stressing this fact raises the question if the claims of mutual respect and collegiality are truly accurate. Regardless, Cole stressed two points in the letter: first, the distinctive nature of anthropology, which had close ties to all the social sciences, not simply to sociology; second, at a practical level, the job search for graduates was awkward because of the link between sociology and anthropology. 25 Cole maintained that he was often forced to explain that, despite the linkage with sociology, graduate students in anthropology seeking employment had received complete training in their own discipline. While Darnell emphasized her agreement with Cole in regard to the difficulty of placing graduates, Stocking emphasized that the

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increased number of students, faculty members, and available funds led to the departments’separation.While both Darnell and Stocking are correct in their assessments,I would suggest archival evidence lends credence toWhite’s views as well. Departmental Fissures at the University of Chicago

According to Fagette (1996) Fay-Cooper Cole began his tenure at the University of Chicago with the avowed purpose of creating a research-oriented department with broad graduate training. Similarly, Fred Eggan recalled that when Cole took over the department from the retiring Frederick Starr in 1923, he intended to separate anthropology from sociology and establish an independent, research-oriented anthropology department devoted to graduate education (Eggan 1963:642, 1989:143). 26 Even before Cole arrived the joint department was more fiction than fact. For example,in 1923Albion Small (departmental chair) wrote to President Burton that, in reality, anthropology had always gone its own way “as independent of sociology as it was of chemistry. There is no more necessity in the nature of things for inclusion of Anthropology in the department of Sociology than in History” (Small to Burton, March 23, 1923, President’s Papers, 1889–1925, rl). Small also noted that the “arrangement entered into at the founding of the University of Chicago linked up the department of anthropology and sociology as a single department on paper alone.”The operating budgets of anthropology and sociology were always separate,and it was noted in applications for research funds that the two fields operated independently. According to Cole: We are, in fact, maintaining a fiction rather than a fact when we call it a joint department, for aside from our chairman and a luncheon once a week,we have little more in common than we would have if we separate. That we cannot have the same requirements from candidates for higher degrees is shown by the fact that in announcement of courses there is one set of requirements for sociology and another for anthropology,and these two lists have little in common.The majority of students who now take degrees in the department have practically all their work in one branch or another. . . . We have separate library accounts, and in plans for the new Social Science Research building there is no closer relationship with Sociology than with any other of the social sciences. In the Social Science Research Council we are separate. We have our independent national organizations, and our own publications. Anthropology is represented in the National Research Council, and the American Association for

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the Advancement of Science, while Sociology is in neither. [Cole to Woodward, November 26, 1928, Fay-Cooper Cole Papers, rl] Although the separation of the Departments of Anthropology and Sociology did not officially occur until 1929, Cole was aggressively seeking funds to support a unique program in anthropology as early as 1926. Part of this effort was geared toward hiring other anthropologists. When Cole joined the faculty, he quickly took advantage of the resources available to the social sciences not only to solidify his own position but also to lobby for another anthropologist. In a letter to Albion Small, chair of the joint department, Cole wrote that his teaching duties were onerous; in his first year he taught seven major courses in addition to advanced seminars, research work, and graduate student advisement (Cole to Small, November 12, 1924, President’s Papers, 1889–1925, rl). Cole argued it was necessary to offer courses in physical anthropology and “Primitive Linguistics” so that graduate students would secure the prerequisite background in anthropology’s four subfields. Given Cole’s already heavy teaching responsibilities, offering such courses was impossible unless an additional faculty member was hired. Just a month after writing to Small, Cole wrote to James Tufts, vice president and dean of faculties at the University of Chicago, strongly recommending Edward Sapir. Cole wrote of Sapir:“It is my judgment that in the field of primitive linguistics and psychological problems in anthropology he is one of the best men in America. . . . I am certain that the Department and the University will be strengthened by the addition of Doctor Sapir to the Staff ” (Cole to Tufts, December 23, 1924, President’s Papers, 1889–1925, rl). With the help of the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, Cole was able to convince the university to hire Sapir. In so doing, the memorial broke its precedent against providing funds for academic salaries, a fact that alienated Sapir from the rest of the faculty (the additional fact that his salary was higher than most other faculty members did not help either). It becomes abundantly clear that in hiring Sapir Cole wanted to build an independent Department of Anthropology. To do so Cole had to hire an “academic star” whose presence could instantly establish the university as a leading center of anthropological studies (Darnell 1990; Shils 1991). Sapir fit neatly into this category, as he was “easily the most influential figure in American anthropology” (Hooton 1940:158). The position at Chicago, Benedict wrote, was one Sapir was “uniquely qualified to adorn” (1939:465). According to McMillan (1986) the quest to establish an independent Department of Anthropology may

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have been due to Cole’s desire for power. It has been well documented that Cole’s predecessor, Frederick Starr, was unable or uninterested in building up a department of anthropology. Given his predecessor’s failure, which disappointed both the University of Chicago and powerful figures such as Boas at Columbia University, Cole’s aggressive attempts to find funds and hire an established scholar such as Edward Sapir evidence his desire to create an independent department of anthropology. In addition, there is abundant anecdotal and secondary evidence that Cole and Sapir chafed under the subordination of the sociologists. Although he provides no proof, McMillan maintains that by the end of the 1920s the lack of sympathy between the sociologists and anthropologists was “barely hidden beneath a veneer of pleasantries” (1986:99). Eggan recalls that it was a“period when rivalries and controversies were rampant”and that Cole worked unceasingly to advance anthropology (1963:644). Murray writes that Cole and Sapir were “ambitious, and therefore inclined to want a fiefdom of their own”(1986:267). Graduate students also recalled tension between faculty members. For example, Herbert Blumer, who knew Sapir well, recalled that he“was very scornful about the sociology department”(interview with James Carey,circa 1974,Carey Papers,rl).Apparently,Sapir disliked competition and believed he could not outshine the sociologists on staff. However, he could attract a larger following within anthropology and was more gifted personally and intellectually than Cole. With the hiring of Sapir, Cole’s onerous teaching and administrative duties were eased, thereby allowing him time to aggressively seek funding for an independent department. The Rockefeller Foundation played a crucial role in establishing the University of Chicago in general and more specifically the social sciences via the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial. The university was the foremost beneficiary of John Rockefeller between 1917 and 1929. Rockefeller money was not targeted directly at anthropology but toward the support of basic social scientific research. The Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, founded in 1918, had an endowment of $74 million (Bulmer 1984:136). By the time the memorial wound to a close,it had distributed $40 million, half of which went to support academic social science. The aim of the memorial was“the development of the social sciences and the production of a body of substantiated and widely accepted generalizations as to human capacities and motives and as to the behavior of human beings as individuals and in groups. Under the term ‘social sciences’ we may include sociology, ethnology, anthropology, and psychology, and certain aspects of economics,

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history,political economy,and biology. All who work towards the general end of social welfare are embarrassed by the lack of that knowledge which the social sciences must provide”(Ruml’s policy statement,circa 1923,President’s Papers, 1889–1925, rl). The preeminence of Chicago owed much to the generous support of the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial. Thus when Cole and Sapir sought funds for anthropological work, they sent their proposals to the Rockefeller Foundation. For example, in 1926 Cole and Sapir sent a proposal to the Rockefeller Memorial via James Tufts, vice president of the university, for a $10,000 one-year grant. In “Opportunities for Research in Anthropology for the University of Chicago,” they argued there was a gaping need for a training center in anthropology that would encompass classroom, laboratory and actual fieldwork.Work needed to be done in all four fields of anthropology and, ideally, the focus would be on intensive local studies—for instance, archaeological excavations in Illinois and Ohio as well as fieldwork among “natives of other countries who are resident in Chicago.”According to Cole and Sapir: “The University needs an endowment or a fixed income for anthropological work of the type outlined. If we could be assured of funds we could undertake several such studies each year and would then require fieldwork from all candidates for higher degrees. This would mean much greater efficiency in our graduates and would place the University in a most favorable position as a research center in anthropology” (Cole and Sapir, circa 1926, President’s Papers, 1925–45, rl). The Cole and Sapir grant was quickly approved by Beardsley Ruml,director of the memorial. That they were setting their sights on more than just a oneyear grant was a point not lost on Ruml, who was favorably impressed by what he deemed “a very valuable program” (Ruml to Tufts, April 9, 1926, President’s Papers, 1925–45, rl). In fact when Ruml approved the funds he wrote to Tufts that he “was wondering what your thoughts are as to the developments after this year.” Frederick Woodward,Tufts’s successor, quickly informed Cole of Ruml’s interest and told him he“had better have a conference as to the proper framing of a reply to this letter” (Woodward to Cole, April 21, 1926, President’s Papers, 1925–45, rl). Cole, who was both shrewd and tireless, spoke to several colleagues (most likely Charles Merriam, Edward Sapir, and James Tufts) before responding to Woodward. Cole believed there were two ways to respond to Ruml. The first was to write a proposal similar to the one already approved,outlining the length and breadth of anthropology and arguing that, to be truly effective, funds for a series of years would be

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required to conduct comprehensive field studies. The second was to include anthropological studies in Local Community Research. Cole identified two such projects that were local in origin—an archaeological survey of Illinois and an ethnological manuscript focusing on local informants in Chicago (Cole to Woodward, June 4, 1926, President’s Papers, 1925–45, rl). Cole faced two inherent obstacles: he could secure adequate financing for the department at the local level through the executive committee of the Local Community Research Council, but this would severely limit the scope of anthropological research. Despite their drawbacks, local studies appealed to Cole for a variety of reasons. For instance, locally based archaeological excavations were a simple, effective, and inexpensive way to fund unique programs, and Cole’s fund-raising was blatant. Such excavations also established the distinctiveness of anthropology from sociology. In addition, they enabled Cole to impress wealthy patrons as he took them on tours of archaeological sites (Griffin 1985). For example, Cole took E. E. Brown (president of the First National Bank), Rufus Dawes (a Republican businessman), Lennox Lohr (a prominent Chicagoan), Frank Logan (a wealthy manufacturer), and others to archaeological digs. After such visits a donation of $500 to $1,500 was expected. Cole, however, remained troubled at limiting the range of anthropological studies. Although he did not mention White by name, Cole identified one student he wanted to send to study Southwest Indians, even though he could not classify it as being “local research” (Cole to Woodward, June 4, 1926, President’s Papers, 1925–45, rl). Cole realized he had secured funds for a limited duration and broadened his fund-raising activities. Between 1926 and 1929, when the department officially split from sociology, he had successfully secured support from the following institutions: the Local Community Research Committee, the University of Sydney, the American Museum of Natural History, the Carnegie Institution of Washington, the Logan Museum of Beloit College, the Oriental Institute, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Southwest Society (Cole, memorandum to Mr. Raney,circa 1929,Department ofAnthropology Papers, series 1, rl). Cole’s fund-raising activities were not irrelevant to White. While it is not possible to ascertain whether Cole went to the administration and demanded the separation of anthropology and sociology, as White maintained, put in the context of Cole’s fund-raising efforts, in particular the formation of the Citizens Committee on Anthropology, it is possible that White’s statements are not so implausible. Formed at the same time as White’s Ph.D. orals, the

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Citizens Committee was Cole’s most ambitious attempt to secure funds from wealthy benefactors. It is possible Cole was angered by Faris’s attacks on White during his defense and approached the administration about separating anthropology from sociology. It is also possible the administration was willing to separate anthropology and sociology but unwilling or unable to provide the necessary funds. This may explain why Cole’s activities in securing funds increased exponentially in 1927. That is, he may have had unofficial approval to form an independent department if he could obtain the prerequisite funds. I contend the Citizens Committee on Anthropology was the vehicle used to garner those funds. The Citizens Committee on Anthropology consisted of about 35 members. 27 During the academic year of 1927–28, the committee formally met four times and held monthly luncheons. Comparable to Columbia’s “Brown Bag Lunches,” these featured a speaker, usually a graduate student but on occasion Cole or Sapir would speak as well. There were no official rules or obligations and the aim of the committee in the most general sense was “to bring the University more intimately in touch with the life of the city”(Cole to Mrs. Lichstern,October 27,1927,Fay-Cooper Cole Papers,rl).The members represented an eclectic list; some simply had a strong interest in anthropology and archaeology, others were students, and quite a few possessed considerable wealth. Two particularly wealthy members of the Citizens Committee were Adolph Lichstern and Frank Logan. According to Cole, in 1929 Logan was contemplating making a “very generous gift” to the University of Chicago in the form of a building that would cost $4–500,000 with an equal amount for the maintenance. Although Cole’s efforts to secure significant funds from Logan failed, Adolph Lichstern would in subsequent years establish a $300,000 endowment for ethnological research entitled the Adolph and Marian Lichstern Fund for Anthropology. Cole wrote to Robert Redfield that he believed the Lichsterns had every intention of adding materially to the fund in subsequent years (Cole to Woodward, March 6, 1929; Cole to Redfield,April 21, 1929, Fay-Cooper Cole Papers, rl). The first substantial block of funds Cole was able to secure was received on May 22, 1929, when the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Foundation awarded the department a $75,000 grant. The money was to be used for the research program of the Department of Anthropology over a period five years, with the understanding that no more than $15,000 would be available under the appropriation during any one year (Cole to the Committee on Expenditures, June 24, 1929, Department of Anthropology Papers, series 1, rl).While these

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funds were not received until six months after the independent department was established,the first budget submitted by Cole,“A Program ofAnthropological Research Submitted by the University of Chicago,” was a five-year plan. He also proposed a budget for the fiscal year 1929–30. Both Cole and the university were confident the funds would be approved by the Rockefeller Foundation. Given Cole’s connections with members of the Citizens Committee on Anthropology, the history of the Rockefeller Foundation’s generosity to the University of Chicago, and the strong interest Beardsely Ruml showed in the anthropology department, Cole had every reason to expect the funds to be granted. Yet it must be noted that these connections and efforts did not appear out of thin air,since the groundwork had been laid by Cole at least two years before.This makesWhite’s version of the split of the department,though difficult to substantiate with firm archival evidence, certainly plausible. Career Decision

Viewed in this broader setting, the catalog for the anthropology department’s inaugural year was quite impressive. It also reflected Cole’s efforts: listed were the Archaeological Survey of Illinois, the Committee on Research in Indian Languages,the Southwest Laboratory,a project inAfrican language and culture, and formal links to cultural groups and other institutions in Chicago such as the Field Museum.The majority of theses being produced by the department had a firm grounding in empirical research. Most had a local focus, with the notable exceptions of Robert Redfield’s work in Tepoztlan, Mexico, and Charlotte Gower’s study of Sicilian peasantry. In sharp contrast,White’s dissertation proposal was highly theoretical. It is a fascinating document in that it prefigures many of the interests that would occupy the rest of his career—evolutionary theory, the concept of culture, materialism,and the philosophy of knowledge,to name but a few.The denial by the sociologists was sound,as the proposal set forth an impossible task. Rather than proposing an intensive study,White’s scope was sweeping, entailing the entire social sciences, even the epistemological basis upon which they rested. White argued that he was not trying to have the final say on the disposition of the problems of social science but to offer an inventory of his thinking and training.White believed he had spent the last seven years gathering information from all the social sciences and wanted the opportunity to put what he learned into some concrete form. He concluded his dissertation proposal: Is a microscopic view inherently superior to a macroscopic survey? Is not the skill of the sculptor a requisite for the modeling of a torso as a

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hand? May not a study of bold outline, a view of the field in toto with a sense of orientation and symmetry, be as valuable as a restricted, though intensive inspection of minutiae? May I not exercise as much skill and industry in a study of this kind as I could in a study of Mr. X’s contribution to the theory of Progress in the last decade of the 19th century? And will not an attempt of summation and coordination, such as this thesis proposes, be as valuable a contribution? I am of the belief that work of this kind is necessary, and it seems to fit comfortably my type of mind and interest. I should like very much to pursue this study as a doctor’s thesis. [White, 1925, comment on proposed thesis, bhl-wp] White desperately wanted to prove to himself and to others that he had not spent the last seven years aimlessly studying the social sciences. Broken down into nine chapters, the thesis aimed to formulate and express exactly what he had learned, for in “science” the world cannot be perceived as it appears. According toWhite the social sciences must cut up their subject matter,translating concrete reality—that is, experiences—into abstract concepts that can be dissected,analyzed,and manipulated. Only in this light can one understand human existence. Building on Goldenweiser’s work,White maintained that within the social sciences there were three major areas of study: psychology, culture,and history.They were the only scientific rubrics by which one could bind together loose strands of thought into a coherent view of humankind’s social life. What concerned White at this juncture was the seeming inconsistency of his education. As an undergraduate he had majored in history and political science. In graduate school he studied psychology and sociology.The proposed move to yet another discipline, though attractive, caused him to wonder if he lacked a purpose in his work. While one could observe a fickleness to his multidisciplinary approach, his interests had in fact not wavered at all. He had been, and remained, interested in why peoples behave as they do, so that he could learn something about humankind. Recalling his education with the hindsight of old age,White commented: I wanted to know why people behave as they do,why these great nations should lock themselves together in combat for four bloody years. I did not have anyone to give me good advice when I was a student. They suggested we will put you in history and political science and they did. I

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learned nothing about why peoples behaved as they do, of course. I was a little dissatisfied with that so they said naturally what you want is in psychology which deals with people and their motives and their goals. I went into psychology and after I got over a few of the rat hurdles we got down to something that did not have too much to do with human behavior.What they did was appropriate to the primate that man is but not really about human beings, his motives and goals. I took a master’s degree in psychology but I was still looking for answers. So they said you should study sociology because they deal with groups not individuals. I got into sociology and that was a rather arid wasteland to me and it got to the point where I could not stand it so I jumped from the frying pan of sociology into the fire of anthropology. [White, lecture, 1974, ucsc] Although entering the field of anthropology held much appeal, White was very discouraged—and for good reason. He had been asked to leave the Department of Sociology, his Ph.D. oral examination had been a trial by fire,his thesis proposal had been rejected and his fellowship denied. Adding to these disappointments,White had had his “heart broken utterly” by a woman he was seeing. He wrote to Barnes: I can reason myself out of my difficulties very nicely, but the difficulty is that cerebral logic seems to leave the viscera untouched. I have been lonesome, homeless and homesick all my life. Then to find one who answers my longing in the wilderness,only to be revealed as unattainable is almost more than my tender soul can endure.And then my professional future is not very promising. I don’t know what I shall do. . . . And then what would professional success be worth if my life were empty? I have never belonged to anyone nor has anyone belonged to me. I have always been alone,lonesome,drifting and seeking. I have worked hard and long and have deprived myself of much in the hope that someday I would have a full, satisfying life. But at the present time that seems rather illusory. [White to Barnes, October 6, 1925, bhl-wp] What would eventually cureWhite’s melancholy mood were the few weeks he spent in fall 1925 at the Menominee Indian reservation inWisconsin.This trip was undertaken at the suggestion of Cole and Sapir, who would later “prescribe”a fieldtrip to the Southwest. InWisconsinWhite saw his first“real” Indians—Winnebagoes as well as Menominee. “Here I experienced for the first time aboriginalAmerican culture,and it made a firm and lasting impression on me” (White to McCoy, November 16, 1972, bhl-wp). It was not until this

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trip that“all the literature which I had previously read took on a new meaning for me;it,too,became alive”(White to Barnes,circa 1926,bhl-wp).White was tremendously impressed by the culture and family structure of what he called aboriginal American culture. What also struck and appalled White was the prejudice of middle-American people. There was no doubt as to who White thought was barbaric:“Talk about primitive people! I was appalled by some of the specimens of Wisconsin peasantry I met this afternoon. They seem to be human, that is to say good hearted, simple and mean well, but crude—Oh Lord! They are perfect peasants. . . . And some of the country squires—the presidents of the little banks and the small town merchants and judges—they were pathetic too.The Methodist desert—Amen. Civilization is yet far in the future for these regions” (White, field notes, circa 1925, bhl-wp). Had it not been for this trip, which energized White’s spirit, there is no telling which direction his career might have taken.White believed that, in all likelihood, the rest of his student days would have been spent in the library stacks (White, journal, circa 1926, bhl-wp). As a consequence of this trip, White met with Cole and Sapir in spring 1926 to discuss the “qualities of an anthropologist”(White 1927d:iii). Shortly afterward he left for the Southwest to study the Acoma, a step he regarded as one of the most significant episodes in his academic career. For White this trip forged a definite commitment to anthropology as a career. He spent the next 31 years, from 1926 to 1957, conducting ethnographic studies among the Keresan Pueblos, resulting in five books and dozens of articles. White’s fieldwork is largely unappreciated today because his theoretical battles over the value of evolutionary theory overshadowed this aspect of his career. But had it not been for his fieldwork and the good relations it fostered among many of Boas’s students in positions of power, he would not have been able to publish his treatise on evolutionary theory in the 1940s.

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Fieldwork in the Southwest My primary purpose in all my studies of the Keresan pueblos has been to learn as much as possible about their aboriginal culture. It is this that has been unique, and it is this that is disappearing from the face of the earth.–White,The Pueblo of Sia

Entering the Field

White’s first “real field trip” was to Acoma in May 1926. Unhappy at the [First Page] University of Chicago after six consecutive quarters of course work,White was [35], (1) eager to begin serious ethnographic studies after his brief experience with the Winnebagoes and Menominee inWisconsin. In the preface to his dissertation, “Medicine Societies of the Southwest,” White wrote that without Edward Lines: 0 to 2 Sapir and Fay-Cooper Cole he might never have gone to the Southwest:“I ——— left the University Campus and soon found myself amidst a wealth of vital * 17.4055p ——— realities of another people and of a different civilization—the raw material of Normal Pag the science of man. I regard this step as the most significant episode of my PgEnds: TEX academic experience, and whatever scientific work may follow in the future will owe its initiation to this definite commitment to anthropology as a career. For this decision, for the training which prepared me for it, and for constant [35], (1) guidance and inspiration throughout, I am deeply grateful to Professor Cole and Professor Sapir, my teachers and friends”(White 1927d:ii–iii). Cole and Sapir provided the prerequisite academic background forWhite’s initial fieldwork. His graduate training was steeped in the Boasian tradition, and his first publications, particularly “Personality and Culture,” reflected this influence (White 1925c).1Yet his lifelong interest in southwestern societies and ethnography in general owed far more to Elsie Clews Parsons,undoubtedly his mentor when it came to fieldwork. White was indebted to her intellectually and financially. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s Parsons helped finance, guide, and organize White’s fieldwork. White faithfully followed Parsons’s advise, completing work she had begun. White’s comprehensive studies of five of the seven Keres-speaking Pueblos—Acoma, San Felipe, Santa Ana, Santa Domingo, and Sia—are a testament to her influence. Clearly, Parsons was not simply a wealthy patron of anthropology. As several biographies have demonstrated, she was intellectually gifted and involved in every aspect of the research she funded. 2 Between 1915, when she conducted her first fieldwork

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among the Zuni,and her death in 1941,she published approximately 75 papers, edited four volumes,and wrote many books about southwestern ethnography. Besides Parsons’s central role as a contributor to a growing body of anthropological literature, her most important contribution to the establishment of professional anthropology was the creation in 1918 of the Southwest Society. Organized at a meeting of the Lunch Club, an informal group of professional anthropologists who met on a regular basis,the Southwest Society was composed of people from the American Museum of Natural History, the Museum of theAmerican Indian,and Columbia University. Dorothy Goddard was the temporary chairwoman, and Parsons was the secretary–treasurer.The Southwest Society had a formal constitution and membership, but it was primarily a front for Parsons’s generosity. In his entry about Parsons in the Dictionary of American Biography,White wrote:“She was in a position to render financial assistance to science and scholarship.The American Folklore Society owed its solvency to her generosity for a number of years. And behind the pseudonymous facade of the Southwest Society she financed fieldtrips and publications for younger anthropologists” (White 1973c:582). The Southwest Society was a way for Parsons to distribute money to academic endeavors she considered worthwhile.According to its constitution, written by Parsons, Boas, and Hodge, its purpose was “to promote inquiries into the culture of the peoples of the southwest through fieldwork undertaken independently or, whenever possible, in cooperation with other institutions; and to arrange for publication of material collected” (Parsons et al. 1928:3). Parsons had great expectations at the founding of the Southwest Society. The stated goal was to document southwestern cultures so they could be understood and compared with other Native American societies in order to determine their historical precedence. She hoped the Southwest Society would create mutual cooperation in Southwest research and was particularly pleased it would be “something of a syndicalist experiment in the research workers running their own machinery and controlling their own funds” (Zumwalt 1992:271).3 As Hare (1985:148) pointed out,Parsons“poured many thousands of dollars into the society’s treasury to support the fieldwork and publications of numerous younger anthropologists working on the Indians of the Southwest.” Membership dues were $1 a year, which raised a very modest amount of money:$44 was collected in 1918 and $33 in 1919.A partial list of those scholars the Southwest Society helped finance includes:John Adair,Ralph Beals,Ruth Benedict, Franz Boas, Ruth Bunzel, C. Daryll Forde, Pliny Earle Goddard,

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Esther Goldfrank, Father Berard Haile, George Herzog, E. Adamson Hoebel, Dorothy Keur, Morris Opler, Paul Radin, Gladys Reichard, Helen Roberts, Ann Gayton Spier, Julian Steward, Ruth Underhill, CharlesWagley, and Leslie A. White. 4 The Southwest Society was instrumental not only in establishing the careers of numerous young anthropologists but also in providing secondary support to Boas and Kroeber,financing the publication of fieldwork results,and underwriting the Journal of American Folklore. She also financed and oversaw the publication of the Memoirs of theAmericanAnthropologicalAssociation. The Southwest Society played a crucial role in funding anthropological fieldwork. Between 1917 and the mid-1920s, the funding that was available via the National Research Council (nrc) was geared toward“scientific anthropology.” Founded in 1916, the nrc was intended to mobilize social science for military purposes.The nrc was hostile to cultural anthropology, and Boas outraged many of his colleagues by criticizing four anthropologists who used their professional affiliations as covers for intelligence work. Characterized by Stocking (1968) as “the scientific reaction against cultural anthropology” the censure directed against Boas for his views set a dangerous precedent in anthropological scholarship—the ramifications of which are still present today (Price 2000, 2001). For young scholars such asWhite,few sources of financial aid were available (Deacon 1997; Stocking 1968). Accordingly Parsons was in a very powerful position. She was also able to influence research strategies—for instance, her approach to anthropology differed from that prevailing in the Columbia milieu (particularly Ruth Benedict’s) in that her interests were about culture history rather than about the relationship between culture and the individual from a humanistic perspective. Much of her influence was wielded behind the scenes, and even to those familiar with the history of the discipline she remains a shadowy figure,the true extent of her influence and power unknown. Parsons was not afraid to use her power throughout the 1920s and 1930s as she sought to chart the course of anthropological research via the Southwest Society and the scholars she supported. Parsons was also the first woman elected president of the American Anthropological Association. While this was an honorific post when she was elected, it symbolized her status as a major figure in the discipline. From 1918 until her death,Parsons worked closely with Franz Boas,Alfred Kroeber, Robert Lowie and, to a lesser extent, Edward Sapir. She relied on their recommendations for locating promising young graduate students who were interested in doing fieldwork.White came to Parsons’s attention through

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Sapir, who suggested that he was worthy of financial support. In response to Sapir’s recommendation,Parsons wrote,“Mr.White sounds promising and the Southwest Society will be glad to finance a fieldtrip for him. We have found that $700–$800 about covers expenses”(Parsons to Sapir,December 26,1925, bhl-wp). Parsons went on to“suggest”thatWhite not conduct fieldwork until June 1926, a suggestion more akin to an order, because Parsons believed that White, as a novice, needed to be personally briefed about the problems he was likely to encounter. She also had a specific “suggestion” as to whatWhite should do: conduct a survey of the social organization at Laguna. White was explicitly instructed by Boas and Parsons not to go into the field until Parsons returned to the United States from Egypt sometime in June. However,White was too restless to wait for Parsons’s indoctrination and left for the field in early May 1926, heading directly to Acoma. When Parsons learned of White’s impetuousness, she chastised him for choosing an area she believed was too difficult to work in. Parsons and Boas wrote to Sapir, expressing their displeasure at White’s selection of fieldwork site. Given that Parsons was paying White’s expenses and that he was undertaking fieldwork for the first time, Boas wrote to Sapir: it seems to us that the proposition to work in Acoma is very risky.We do not believe that he could get informants either in Acoma or in Acomita and the only way to accomplish anything, would be to get one of the people secretly to a place like Grants where he might be willing to talk. It would seem very undesirable that a young man on his first expedition should fail to get any material,and Mrs. Parsons suggested,for this reason, that in case work with the people from Acoma be impossible,Mr.White should go to the Pima. . . . It is likely that in this whole region it would be difficult to get informants in May because all the people are busy with agricultural work and communication with the old people or the women who do not work is difficult. [Boas to Sapir, May 7, 1926, bhlwp] Boas and Parsons had every reason to be concerned about White’s ability to find an informant in Acoma. UponWhite’s arrival, he had a long talk with Father Shuster, a man who had been residing among various Pueblo groups for 16 years. White reported:“He laughed when I told him and said he did not envy my task. A Mr. E. E. Springer, the government stock man, told me the same thing as Schuster adding, that the Acomas were too hostile” (White to Cole and Sapir, May 17, 1926, bhl-wp). Despite the obstaclesWhite faced,

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he wanted to at least try to study Acoma, noting that other anthropologists had not had success.White perceived Acoma to be a challenge,one that could yield significant results. Just a few days after his arrival, White wrote: “The great trouble with these people is that they are afraid of being taxed. It is a perfect phobia with them. Anyone who comes around is preparing to tax them.They are extremely suspicious and suffer delusions of persecution.With the paranoia’s method of reasoning, every act is interpreted as harmful and of evil intent. If you are friendly, you are all the more dangerous because you are in disguise and are merely trying to gain their confidence for some insidious betrayal. How they got this phobia I don’t know” (White to Sapir and Cole, May 17, 1926, bhl-wp). The reviewer of White’s monograph The Acoma Indians (1932a) noted how difficult it was to penetrate this group (Redfield 1934). In contrast to other Pueblo Indians, notably the Hopi and Zuni, few anthropologists were successful in penetrating theAcoma’s refusal to divulge information about their cultural practices and history. I do not mean to imply theAcoma were ignored, for a number of anthropologists such as Franz Boas (1921), Esther Goldfrank (1923, 1927), John Gunn (1917), Elsie Clews Parsons (1918, 1920), and Mrs. William Sedgwick (1926) had written about them. All these ethnographers emphasized that the Acoma seemed impervious to anthropological research. For example, Parsons wrote to her husband, Herbert, that she “was in a nest of suspicion & fear so that the greatest patience was necessary & the results were exasperatingly meager” (March 9, 1917, Parsons Papers, apl). Sedgwick maintained that “of all the Indians the Acomas seem the most resentful of intrusive questioning and most unwilling to impart, even for purposes of record, any real knowledge of themselves” (Sedgwick 1926:viii). Given this, Sedgwick claimed that it was not that the Acoma were neglected,“but that everyone attempting to go beyond the most superficial glance arrives at a wall as blank of entrance as the ancient lower story of its own fortress dwellings. The ladders of admission to its hatchways hardly give the stranger more than uncertain glimpses here and there within the obscure interior, and these are so fragmentary and elusive, often contradictory, that he can affirm little about ritual life.” Parsons sent White a series of letters in May and June, offering advice; she also repeatedly reminded him that he had left for the field prematurely. 5 For example, she wrote,“May I recall to you that I wrote Dr. Sapir from Egypt and Dr. Boas wrote also advising against going to New Mexico until June, also that we concluded that Acoma would be too difficult. Perhaps you are

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learning that now” (Parsons to White, May 27, 1926, bhl-wp). She went on to tellWhite that when she went to Acoma and Laguna she had a Zuni family introduce her to people but was still unable to overcome the distrust of Whites. “[M]uch of my time was squandered in merely trying to differentiate myself from the picture-taking tourist or from the Washington representative from whom every ceremonial or intimate detail of life to be hidden.”What bothered Parsons, aside from the fact that White did not wait for her indoctrination to ethnographic methodology, was that in her estimation he did not know the literature, a prerequisite for successful fieldwork. “[M]aking contacts is not a help but a hindrance among the Pueblos. This is the sort of thing I wanted to tell you about at the appointment in Chicago.”White was quite upset by Parsons’s tone. Fortunately for White, Sapir took a keen interest in his fieldwork and sent a series of strong and supportive letters advising White not to worry about Parsons. Here it should be noted that Sapir was never able to establish a congenial rapport with Parsons—and that he was not alone in this. Parsons had considerable trouble with people at Harvard, such as Alfred Tozzer and Alfred Kidder. White’s formal relationship with Parsons was therefore not unusual.According to Goldfrank Parsons’s relationships often lacked intimacy (Goldfrank 1978:24). Although one could speculate that Parsons’s wealth was an impediment, her gender was also a factor in Sapir’s inability to establish a personal relationship. In this regard Sapir wrote several offensive comments about Parsons to White, for example: “I have not heard from Mrs. Parsons since the last letter you saw. I am awfully sorry she kicked up such an awful fuss about nothing. It should be good exercise for you though—learning to be philosophical, . . . Really she needs psychoanalysis. You might solve her difficulties by having intercourse with her. Her interest in science is some kind of erotic mechanism” (Sapir to White, June 30 1926, bhl-wp). Later in the summer Sapir wrote to White,“I have always thought there was something pathological about that woman. She is probably punishing you with a severe and diabolical touch of negativism. Lord knows what it means psychoanalytically,a resentment of the domination of woman by man!”(Sapir toWhite, July 21, 1926, bhl-wp). Despite Sapir’s disparaging remarks about Parsons, White relied on her detailed knowledge of the Keresan Pueblos and her financial support. When White located an informant at Acoma and began getting some interesting information, the tone of Parsons’s correspondence changed significantly. However,she would not letWhite forget about his impetuous actions,writing

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that she was “sorry I stirred you into feeling badly, and yet not altogether sorry, for I still think you went off rather half cocked” (Parsons toWhite, June 18, 1926, bhl-wp). It is interesting to juxtapose Parsons’s letters with Sapir’s: “I was delighted to get your letter from Acomita and later one of many from Albuquerque. Can it really be that you found a bona fideAcoma informant? God be praised! Or heaven help us! For you have broken a taboo as I gather from Elsie’s enclosed letter.You must not succeed against the rules. It is not done in polite anthropological society. . . .You may remember I was morally certain you would love a trip and would find an energy to do bona fide anthropology. There is not only the original research to fascinate you but also the local scene I knew you would like” (Sapir toWhite, June 1, 1926, bhl-wp). The strong bond between White and Sapir is unmistakable, with mutual affection and a shared perspective on anthropology. Sapir wrote to White a few weeks later about how impressed he was with White’s fieldwork, acknowledging that in retrospect White’s decision to go to Acoma in May had been correct. He also wrote that it “helped prove the usefulness of the dogma that the best way to do something is to make up your mind to do it just your way and then see it through with the calmness of a God fearing fanatic, despite all means of excellent advice, which should be listened to with great respect in as much as you do not intend to follow it” (Sapir to White, June 30,1926,bhl-wp).While Parsons shared the excitement of the first fieldwork experience with White, their relationship was clearly one of respected elder and dependent younger scholar.This is best indicated not only by the tone of their extensive correspondence but also by the acknowledgement of Parsons’s mentorship.White dedicatedThe Pueblo of Sia to her memory (White 1962c) and wrote in the foreword toThe Pueblo of San Felipe:“My greatest debt . . . is to Dr. Elsie Clews Parsons. Not only has she made several field trips possible, but she has advised and encouraged me at every step, from the gathering of data to the reading of manuscripts. I have had the benefit of her wide and detailed knowledge of the Pueblo area for comparative purposes, and her understanding of general features of Pueblo cultures as well. But most of all, I think, I value the inspiration which the example of her indefatigable labors and devotion to science has given me. I can only express my deep gratitude to her; my obligation will always remain” (White 1932d:5). An impedimentWhite encountered from the inception of his fieldwork was financial.ThroughoutWhite’s life he was perpetually short of funds to support his research, not only for fieldwork in the Southwest but also his research about Lewis Henry Morgan and his championship of evolutionary theory.

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The results of his fieldwork were repeatedly hampered and the publication of his ethnographies delayed because he lacked funds. For example, in 1939 White was told his monograph about Santa Ana would be published in August if he could have the entire manuscript typed by the end of the summer.White requested funds from the University of Michigan to hire a typist but was denied (the Department ofAnthropology had no secretarial support).AsWhite was teaching summer school he could not type the manuscript himself. The manuscript was eventually published as a aaa memoir but did not appear in print until 1942. I do not mean to imply he did not receive any support. Over his career he received a limited amount of support from the Social Science Research Council, the Laboratory of Anthropology, Santa Fe, the University of Michigan Horace Rackham School of Graduate Studies Grant, theViking Fund, and theWenner-Gren Foundation. In White’s initial fieldwork in 1926, he quickly realized that the research would cost far more than he had anticipated. Although it cost White one dollar to go to the mesa, the actual cost was more. White wrote that, if he did not buy them something, people would get very nasty and he would be decidedly unwelcome (White,field notes,circa 1926,bhl-wp). In addition,the nature of White’s fieldwork—the “secretive method” (see below)—involved considerable expenses for travel, meals, and lodging for himself and possibly an informant, as well as payment for an informant. White had received $700 from the Southwest Society,half of which was wired to him in on May 19 and the remaining amount sent July 17 (Parsons toWhite, July 31, 1926, bhl-wp). White used the second payment to pay those he owed,and by the end ofAugust he was virtually out of money.White’s correspondence with Parsons and Sapir confirms that his fieldwork was truncated for financial reasons. Parson wrote to White that “if your trip is coming to an end merely for lack of money I would be glad to send you some if you let me know how much you need. It is trying to leave the field before you feel that you have exhausted it” (Parsons toWhite,August 8,1926,bhl-wp).White did not take Parsons up on her offer and returned to Chicago in early September. Fieldwork Methods

White made numerous field trips to the Southwest between 1926 and 1957.It is important to note at the outset that White’s fieldwork differed significantly from the “classic” ethnographies formulated during the 1920s. Here I refer to Bronislaw Malinowski’s Argonauts of theWestern Pacific (1922) and Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa (1928). Mead, Malinowski, and other an-

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thropologists of this era established the “proper” conditions for ethnographic work—that is,they validated not only their own fieldwork but set the stage for modern anthropology. Malinowski’s work was held up as the ideal method of ethnography,and thus those who conducted fieldwork tried to write about the beliefs, practices, and behavior of whole cultures. However, no ethnographer working in the Southwest could pitch a tent among the natives as Malinowski had nor write with the same scholarly authority. Instead, scholars such as Parsons and White developed a much different and—in retrospect—highly objectionable avenue of research. Rather than live among the natives, they made periodic trips to the field, interviewed people away from their homes, corresponded with informants, and employed a myriad of secretive strategies to learn about Pueblo culture. In notes titled “Getting Information from Pueblo Indians”circa 1926,Parsons listed three“principles of conduct:1.Avoid whites. Know nothing,less than nothing. . . . 2.Avoid moralistic interest. . . . 3. Patience”(Parsons Papers,apl). Using such an approach,over time Parsons, White, and others were able to pry information out about different Pueblo Indians. While one can take exception to their methodology, the results were informative. Despite significant resistance, in time White found a few Indians who wanted to have a written record of their culture. Within weeks of his arrival in May 1926, he filled four notebooks with finely detailed field notes. 6 Based on these notes, from which he transcribed and edited long passages into his subsequent monographs,White emerges as a dedicated ethnographer. Although it does not pertain directly to his first fieldwork experience,an entry from one of his field notes circa 1938 illustrates his dedication. After receiving funds from the University of Michigan Horace Rackham School of Graduate Studies,White departed for the Southwest on Christmas Day.After driving for 48 hours with his wife, Mary, he arrived at Sia Pueblo at dawn. At 9:30 p.m., after working all day observing an important ceremony, he left the pueblo for Albuquerque, where he was going to stay. In his daily diary, he wrote that he “walked to the highway carrying my roll of blankets expecting to catch the stage to Albuquerque but it never arrived. Instead, I was picked up by a coal truck and rode in the back all the way. Arrived quite cold and dirty.” Because the events of that day were fresh in his mind, he went on to write a detailed (24-page) description of what he had witnessed despite great fatigue. Ethnography was more than just a science to White. He described the visceral effect fieldwork had on him in a letter to his wife:

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It was a great day. It was the sort of thing I enjoy a great deal—swimming in a seething mass of humanity who are carried here and there by quite a variety of currents. But beneath it all, it seems to me that I can see the rather firm hand of old Mother Nature, the appetites and tropisms are not very well hidden from view. The ugly finger of an inhuman social system paralyzes and perverts many of their activities. But all in all,I do not think we are very far from a least-common-denominator of humanity in a situation like that. . . . I think it is highly probable that [I am] animated by a sort of desire to know humanity—with a capital H—and to lose yourself in identification, or contemplation, of it. I am sure at least three months of ennui,fatigue,and malnutrition of the spirit suffered inAnnArbor,escaped from my system yesterday. Not a professor! Not a dummy in a regiment of intellectuals. No brand,no herd. No coat, no tie. Anonymous. I felt free. Then I forgot about feeling free. [White to MaryWhite,August 11, 1934, bhl-wp]

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The most detailed account of how White conducted his ethnological research is published in The Pueblo of Santa Ana (1942e). From the inception of his fieldwork he excelled at finding willing informants. By “informant” I mean an Indian who,knowingWhite’s purpose and objective,would give him ethnologic information in private and in the strictest secrecy. White went to great lengths to keep his informant’s identity confidential, and as a result he often encountered difficult ethical dilemmas. For instance, in 1952 while in Santa Fe,White was approached by a professional psychiatrist defending two Acoma men convicted of murder and sentenced to death.The defense attorney askedWhite to testify as an expert witness on the behalf of the two men.White was drawn into the case because he and those in Acoma believed the death sentence was too harsh a penalty. White interviewed the convicted Indians, corresponded with the defense council and the court-appointed psychiatrist, and approached the American Anthropological Association on their behalf. Despite White’s sincere concern, he refused to testify in court because he felt he could not do so without his informants’ explicit permission, which they would not give, fearing exposure. 7 The ethnographer’s task, as White envisioned it, was to “scent out” individuals who would be willing to impart forbidden or hidden information about Pueblo culture. White wrote in his personal journal that ethnographic fieldwork excited him like no other intellectual endeavor—“the hunt for informants,the scheming and planning. . . . I felt like settling down and trying

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once again to penetrate the secrecy with which they protect themselves” (White, journal, January 15, 1939, bhl-wp).White’s strategy was to first make acquaintances with Indians, then become friends with them. In conversation White would make some allusions to Indian culture, whereupon he would evaluate the reaction to this inquiry. The Indians with whom White had established rapport would, of course, eventually realize what his true interests were. White believed his informants were individuals who were aware that the culture of their people was rapidly disappearing and felt that a written record of it should be preserved. Thus before White even asked his first overt ethnographic question, he already knew the informant was going to divulge information considered secret. White maintained getting information from such an individual was a matter of judgment and timing.A mistake would have serious consequences, for research could become impossible if he misjudged the Indian. White became very close to some of his informants over time. Within White’s papers are dozens of letters from Indians in which it is clear he was personally involved in their lives. For example, after learning that one of his informants had died in a car accident, White wrote: “I loved him as a brother—as he did me. He came to address me as ‘Brother’ and his children called me uncle—all of which is extremely rare with the Keres” (White, note attached to a letter written by the daughter of the man killed, circa 1970, bhl-wp). White also wrote that several informants were visibly moved by his efforts to preserve some record of their culture. “Thus the ethnographer, working incognito, appearing as an ordinary citizen, may make extensive and repeated observations of many phases of pueblo life, and may make friends among the people. When a friendship, begun this way, is cultivated until it matures in absolute mutual confidence, the ethnographer may reveal himself and his purpose. If the Indian is willing to help— and, of course the ethnographer must never disclose his purpose until he is certain that the Indian will consent—then, together, they can lay plans to make an ethnographic record. This work must, of course, be done in the strictest secrecy and at considerable distance from the pueblo” (White 1942e:10). Parsons andWhite termed this approach the“secretive method,”a technique they employed with great success. In fact Parsons felt White was particularly gifted at both finding informants and keeping their identity a secret. In the small world of Keresan Pueblos, this was not a simple task. White described the way in which he worked with an informant thus:“Slowly we toiled up

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the steep mesa, old Juan and I.We had left the Pueblo early that morning.We were going because we wished to visit some ancient ruins found in a canyon that lay to the south. This is the reason we gave for our journey, but Juan was going because I had given him a silver dollar and two El Toro cigars; I was going because I wanted an opportunity to talk with this old Indian away from the watchful and distrustful village. It was always necessary to maintain the appearance of innocence” (White, field notes, 1927, bhl-wp). During the course of White’s fieldwork he developed an intuitive feel for discovering information. It was not so much what people said as what they did not say. For instance,White learned that whenever an informant seemingly lost his or her memory, he was approaching something truly important: he was about to discover something secret or sacred.There was“a certain look in the eye, a certain facial expression—or utter lack of it—a quality in the voice of the informant will tell the experienced investigator that he has hit upon something of considerable importance and that he must follow up on it by all means” (White 1942e:14). White also noted that putting pressure on an informant was useless, if not counterproductive. White did not reveal the true purpose of his work to those who were suspicious of his interests, and if questioned he provided obtuse answers. And while he never admitted to it, it is possible he lied to those who directly asked if he was an ethnographer. Among the Keresan Pueblos White studied, the people were staunchly opposed to telling outsiders anything about their customs and beliefs. Children were taught from infancy not to tell outsiders, especially white people,about their cultural beliefs (White 1935a:7–8,21–23). Strict watch was kept over all those who might betray the Pueblo’s secrets. One wayWhite avoided those who wanted to thwart ethnological studies was to conduct covert interviews:“[I] took Juanito to his home in Sia yesterday afternoon to get him some bread. I did not go into the pueblo but let him out on the highway opposite the village at 6:30. At 9:30 I met him there again and brought him back to Albuquerque. Going and returning he talked quite freely, giving me names of pueblos, mountains etc., telling me what springs and shrines were near Sia and where I might find prayer sticks. He gave me a bit of the origin myth in almost the same outline as Stevenson does” (White, field notes, 1937, bhl-wp). White believed his research would have been impossible if he had identified himself as an ethnologist. Complicating matters further, some Indians would present themselves as sympathetic to anthropological inquiry in order to thwart it. In this regard Parsons was an invaluable resource for White. Throughout

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the summer of 1926 he relied not only on Parsons’s detailed knowledge of ethnographic data but also on her intimate knowledge of individuals who might try to hinder his research. For example,one informant Parsons strongly encouragedWhite to avoid was George Hunt. “The less he knows about you and your information the better”(Parsons toWhite,August 8,1926, bhl-wp). According to Parsons Hunt was part of the“sophisticated group”that appeared helpful to ethnographers but was actually trying to expose them in order to hinder their research. White faced formidable problems when he entered the field:“Acomas early reputation for vigorous unfriendliness to whites has been maintained to the present day. . . . The Acoma people are suspicious, distrustful, and unfriendly. In addition to their constant fears that they may have their land taken from them,or that they may be taxed by the government, they are ever on their guard to prevent any information concerning their ceremonies from becoming known lest they be suppressed (or ridiculed) by whites” (White 1932a:28–29). So strong were the strictures against talking to outsiders that several of White’s informants expressed fear of being exposed. According to White any individual convicted of aiding an ethnologist would be severely punished or even executed (White 1935a:23–24). 8 An earlier ethnographer, Matilda Cox Stevenson, was not as careful as White was in protecting the identity of her informants, two of whom were executed on charges of witchcraft after she left the field when it was discovered they had cooperated with her. Although White respected Stevenson’s detailed observations about Pueblo culture, she caused severe problems among the people she studied. In an unpublished manuscript from 1937,“The Disintegration of Pueblo Culture,”White wrote: “Matilda Cox Stevenson,an ethnologist of the Bureau ofAmerican Ethnology for many years,created a great deal of dissention among the pueblos wherever she went. . . . She provoked bitter dissention at Sia; I have been told by Sia informants that she divided the pueblo into two factions: pro-Stevenson and anti-Stevenson. After she left, a bitter feud burned between them for years, and it is said that a number of the pro-Stevensonites were executed on charges of Witchcraft” (White, bhl-wp). During the course of White’s fieldwork he talked to two men who, as youths, knew Stevenson. In an early draft of The Pueblo of Sia,White wrote that she “appears definitely to be in ill repute in the Pueblo today” (White, draft:22, bhl-wp). White’s views regarding the problems caused by Stevenson were shared by Elsie Clews Parsons inTaos Pueblo (1936:14–15). Nonetheless White had the utmost respect for her work. He was especially influenced by her monograph

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The Sia (1894). In fact amongWhite’s papers are certain texts he saved, works that fundamentally affected his thinking. Stevenson’s monograph was among them,with his inscription:“I obtained this monograph in paper binding. I had it bound in hard cover. I ‘lived with’ this monograph for a long time—just as I lived with the Sia Indians. I absorbed both into my life, and I now look back upon those years and days and recognize them as still part of me”(White, inscription, March 21, 1974, bhl-wp). White was cognizant of prior anthropologists’ failures as well as the seriousness with which the Pueblo peoples guarded their culture. While the Keresan Pueblo people perceived U.S. government employees and missionaries as pernicious influences, ethnologists represented an even greater threat. According to White the presence of ethnologists actually intensified secrecy among Pueblo people, in part because the measure of success they achieved in the face of overwhelming obstacles. As outside influences encroached on the core values of their culture, orthodox or conservative elements of Pueblo society redoubled their efforts to maintain stricter vigilance and discipline among those who might tell whites about their beliefs. White called this prohibition against speaking to outsiders “cultural quarantine,” an especially effective means of preserving culture in the face of powerful outside influences (White 1942e:75). Through cultural quarantine, divulging information to whites became a double crime,one that could be characterized as both treason and sacrilege. “Every child is taught from infancy that it is the most heinous crime to divulge any information concerning their customs to whites or to the Mexicans.Thus they endeavor to shut themselves up in their own villages,and to isolate them from the rest of the world.With this‘quarantine’they endeavor to carry on their old life intact. This extreme secrecy has had the effect, no doubt,of enhancing the sacred character of their ceremonial life,and hence has increased the reluctance on the part of the people either to part with it or to divulge information pertaining to its character” (White,“The Disintegration of Pueblo Culture,” 1937, bhl-wp). There is no doubt that White’s fieldwork at Acoma changed the way he thought about the world. Shortly after his arrival in Acoma in 1926 he wrote in his field notes: There is something pathetically humorous about human endeavor and pretension.What do geologists know about these mesas and this valley? Tis well,perhaps,that universities and libraries are sequestered in cities,for truly they would appear comically ridiculous here. What a perversion

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is civilization. So long have I been habituated to city life that nature to me is unnatural, it is not quite real. . . . Nature is not congenial to civilization. Every advance made by man has been a step away from nature. But nature has not been kind to man. His birth was to him an insult which he has striven for ages to avenge. A naked helpless creature in a world of brutes and unknown powers. His vanity is but recognition of his impotence. He has built himself a world in which he is more at home where he enjoys self bestowed dignity and power and where his acts have the appearance of consequence. All civilization is a defiance of nature, man’s feeble gesture in the cosmos. [White, field notes, May 16, 1926, bhl-wp] [49], (15) Fieldwork Results

When Parsons and White met for the first time in October 1926 at the University of Chicago, she was favorably impressed. She immediately told White the Southwest Society (that is, Parsons herself) would support White’s second field trip in 1927. After this meeting Parsons wrote to White that he should “get his notes into shape.” She wanted him to write a summary of Acoma or a comparative Keresan paper for the aaa meeting (Parsons toWhite, October 5,1927,Parsons Papers,apl). She also suggested that after he finished his study of the medicine society at Acoma he should prepare a monograph about the Pueblo for publication as a memoir of the aaa (Parsons to White, October 28, 1927, Parsons Papers, apl). She wrote that it was important “to me for the sake of one’s own work and that of others to get out monographs on the separate towns in advance of comparative work. This has no bearing on your proposed paper on Keresan medicine societies. I think that would be a good thing to do. For the same issue I might do a review of the other pueblos—Zuni, Isleta, Hopi,Tewa” (Parsons to White, November 13, 1927, Parsons Papers, apl). Between 1928 and 1939White’s monographs and papers about the Keresan Pueblos without exception received uniformly high praise from southwestern experts.9 His first two monographs,TheAcoma Indians (1932a) andThe Pueblo of San Felipe (1932d), were published at the same time as work by other leading scholars such as Ruth Benedict, Ruth Bunzel, Esther Goldfrank, and Elsie Clews Parsons. These, as well as White’s later monographs—The Pueblo of Santo Domingo (1935a),The Pueblo of Santa Ana (1942e), and The Pueblo of Sia (1962c)—are largely descriptive.They were published as Memoirs of the aaa or by the Bureau of American Ethnology, and indeed White’s conventional

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ethnographic descriptions and writing style were perfectly suited to the Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association, fitting well within the historical particularist tradition. (In total the aaa Memoirs consisted of 96 volumes. Always operated on a shoestring budget,the series was discontinued in 1963 due to lack of funding. Although they are now largely out of print, many influential works were contributed, and their authors constitute a veritableWho’sWho of anthropology.) While White’s monographs fit well within traditional parameters of ethnological study, his Ph.D. dissertation,“Medicine Societies of the Southwest” (1927d) was out of the norm. White’s approach, a comparative analysis of medicine societies, was unusual. The chief function of these secret organizations of Pueblo doctors was the curing of disease. Their activities, however, were not limited to health care. They were important rainmakers and as such indispensable at solstices, births, and deaths. In short, they had supreme sociopolitical control of the Pueblo.White wanted to study medicine societies because of their cultural role. He was particularly intrigued by the psychological ramifications of medicine societies: how ceremonies affected people directly. After learning all he could about the medicine society at Acoma in the summer of 1926,White became curious about the medicine societies of other pueblos. Among Acoma’s many neighbors,White conducted field and library surveys with the Zuni,Laguna,Sia,Cochiti,Jemes,Tewa,Hopi,Navajo, Apache, and Pima. The problem, as White perceived it was double-edged: to determine the common denominator that all medicine societies shared and, conversely, where they diverged. In the search for the common denominator, White hoped to reveal the unique nature and organization of each medicine society. The purpose of White’s dissertation was to describe a pattern that could be taken as the norm and to note the divergence of each medicine society from this ideal type. Building on Clark Wissler’s work,White believed that “macroscopically North American Indian culture presented a homogeneous picture, one of Neolithic times,” yet viewed microscopically it revealed many striking differences with the apparent homogeneity breaking up into several types or peculiar combinations of cultural traits (White 1927d).The“hypothesis is suggested that, though in minute analysis, culture is based upon much the same units, considered separately, as actually found, these units are seen to exist in combinations and permutations.” Using an analogy from chemistry, White noted that “there are families or groups of chemical, say bases, which contain the same elements, but are so arranged in different combinations and

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proportions that different types result.”Based on his fieldwork,White believed Pueblo culture exhibited significant similarities but there were local variations as well. Although a given trait or specialization could be found in two or more pueblos, it might be set in different contexts. White believed that by noting these similarities and differences, by tabulating the traits comprising the medicine society for each group, one could divide the Southwest into subareas, or districts, each characterized by a peculiar concentration of traits. White believed this approach would yield interesting historical and cultural relationships,which need not be limited to the Southwest:“To be sure,it would be well to push our investigation beyond the limits of the Southwest, and extend our inquires into the Plains area, into California and toward Mexico. There can be no question that the culture of the Southwest is very closely related to the adjoining regions,and that a full and complete understanding of our area demands a knowledge of its neighbors. But to do this in our present study would carry us far beyond our limits both of time and space” (4). Why White never published his dissertation is unknown. White rarely referred to his own dissertation in any of his publications.The only references to it I have found by another scholar were made by Fred Eggan, who called it a “gem of a study which has not yet been surpassed” (Eggan 1974:7) and later characterized the dissertation as “an amazing performance. He got most everything right”(Eggan 1989:145).10 Based onWhite’s correspondence with Parsons,it is clear she did not appreciate the comparative approach he had taken in his dissertation. Although she wrote that this had no bearing on White’s forthcoming paper,“A Comparative Study of Keresan Medicine Societies,” it was clear she did not consider this approach appropriate for publication. Here it is worth noting Parsons’s letter of November 13, 1927, already quoted, in which she emphasized that it was important to publish monographs on the separate pueblos in advance of comparative work. Certainly,without Parsons’s approval and financial support, publishing his dissertation would have been problematic, though not impossible. Nonetheless,White’s dissertation was a significant contribution to ethnological theory. Largely based on work done in conjunction with his dissertation,White made a comparative study of the formal distribution of functions of Keresan medicine societies (Cochiti, San Felipe, Zia, Santo Domingo, and Santa Ana, Laguna, and Acoma). He presented these ideas in 1928 at the 23rd International Congress of Americanists, where the leading authorities on southwestern ethnography were in attendance. This congress was of particular importance to southwestern ethnography becauseWhite, Parsons, and

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Benedict all presented new theoretical formulations. While White did not follow up on the ideas he presented, the Benedict and Parsons papers led to significant theoretical developments. Parsons’s paper,“Spanish Elements in the Kachina Cult of the Pueblos,”directly led to the development of acculturation studies and specifically culminated in her groundbreaking two-volume work, Pueblo Indian Religion (1939). While not a theory builder by any stretch of the imagination, this monograph was filled with fascinating hypotheses and suggestions for further work. Benedict presented “PsychologicalTypes in the Cultures of the Southwest.”In brief,it introduced the essential ideas that were later enlarged in “Configurations of Culture in North America” (1932) and came to fruition in Patterns of Culture (1934). The Apollonian and Dionysian characterizations are already present in her 1928 paper, and certain specific traits of Pueblo character and behavior are contrasted to those of the Northwest Coast and Plains. White’s paper, “A Comparative Study of Keresan Medicine Societies,” showed that the major functions of medicine societies were curing, retreats to produce rain, and the selection of Pueblo officers. Of these functions, the first was the most fundamental. In his concluding remarks,White attempted to make a hypothetical reconstruction of the historical development of Keresan medicine societies. He stressed that “such a sketch is a hypothetical one, made up largely of inference and conjecture, and, consequently, must be held as tentative”(White 1930a:618).White explicitly declared that medicine societies do have a history and that one can hypothesize about it as well as the puzzles of contemporary culture. It was through such analyses that historical reconstruction could illuminate and render more intelligible the nature of causation in present-day phenomena. White went on to speculate that the “original” function of medicine societies was curing diseases. The paraphernalia utilized were very basic, but because medicine men were trained in the nature of supernatural powers their aid was enlisted in war and scalp ceremonies. For the same reasons they were asked to assist at births and deaths. With the growing importance of agriculture, curing societies undertook ceremonies for rain. This, too, was because medicine societies could cause supernatural forces to influence human destinies.The fact that the paraphernalia of the rain ceremonies were designed for curing indicated to White that the “machinery for treating disease was adapted to rain-making”(White 1930a:618). Initially, the main functions of the medicine society were secret,though some public dances were held.White speculated:

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The private retreats of the curing societies were made public by the masked dancers.The masked dance also serves to complete the psychological cycle implied by the retreat; the retreat is the prayer, the dance the answer (symbolically). The dance is the motor counterpart of the spiritual retreat. In this way the medicine societies became involved in the kachina cult which has a different origin. . . . This hypothesis, it seems to me, observes due restraint and caution and it seems to render more intelligible all of the elements which go to make up the medicine cult today. A final word regarding the relative positions of the several pueblos with reference to the Keresan norm. . . . I think it very significant that the medicine societies should show the greatest degree of uniformity where disease and cures are concerned;the greatest differences are found where other functions are performed. This to me, is of historical significance,again indicating that curing is the primary archaic function, and that other elements are later accretions and elaborations. [619]

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7.1pt PgV There is no resemblance between the portrait drawn by White of Pueblo culture and that of Benedict in her best-selling Patterns of Culture. This is not surprising. Between 1926 and 1957,whenWhite spent the vast majority of his time in the field,extensive work was conducted in the Southwest.11 There was a wide range of new hypotheses presented on divergent subjects: for example, historical reconstruction of kinship systems (Kroeber 1917; Opler 1936), the relationship of categories to social behavior (Eggan 1950;Opler 1937;Parsons 1939), evolutionary changes in the form of religious institutions (Underhill 1948;White 1930b), the concept of patterning in culture and the influence of pattern on personality development (Benedict 1930; 1934; Eggan 1943; Goldfrank 1945; Kluckhohn 1941a), cultural themes (Opler 1945), the social and psychological function of myth, ritual, and witchcraft (Kluckhohn 1942, 1944),and issues in the analysis of value orientations (Kluckhohn 1951). Given the wide range of topics, there was no single underlying theme to studies of the Southwest, and there was widespread disagreement about the best way to interpret the information being garnered. White was also strongly influenced by the work of Adolph Bandelier, who conducted detailed investigations on Keresan Pueblos.White’s familiarity with Banderlier’s writings,published in the 1880s,sharpened his insights and alerted him to important differences with Benedict’s so-called Apollonian aspects of Pueblo society. White published several articles about Bandelier during his

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career; his most detailed study was the edited volume, Pioneers in American Anthropology:The Bandelier–Morgan Letters, 1873–1883 (White 1940e). With regard to fieldwork,White was far more impressed with Bandelier’s observational skills and “super human efforts” to record as scientifically as possible the archaeological record and living history of the Indians. White’s Acoma and San Felipe studies contain numerous references to Bandelier. The point I want to stress is that White’s Southwest work, specifically his fieldwork and subsequent monographs, reflect the influence of Bandelier and not of Lewis Henry Morgan. Morgan’s unilinear scheme of preconquest Mexico had less relevance than Bandelier’s detailed studies of Pueblo culture. In factWhite does not even mention or cite Morgan in the majority of his publications about the Southwest. I would speculate that among the reasons why he never cited his own fieldwork in his evolutionary writings is that he did not find them convincing examples and believed his fieldwork and theoretical constructs were mutually exclusive. White never discussed the dichotomy between his fieldwork and championship of evolutionary theory. When asked directly about this by a graduate student, he wrote:“When I went into the field in New Mexico and Arizona I carried with me no theoretical presuppositions, I did not do my fieldwork in ‘accordance with any school of ethnological theory.’ I had only one question and one purpose:‘What is the Pueblo of Santa Domingo’(or any other group) like?What is their culture like?What reliable information can I obtain bearing upon their past? In other words, virtually nothing was known about those pueblos and my job was to gather information and present it in a meaningful way.This is what I tried to do—not to serve some gods of ethnological theory (White toWilliam Junger, November 17, 1971, bhl-wp). Pueblo culture, particularly as shown in White’s characterization of Acoma, was that of a decidedly undemocratic community (White 1932a:53). In his discussion of Acoma’s structure of authority, White stressed priestly control, particularly the presence of a ditch boss, who regulated when and who could use water for irrigation. In his field notes White was emphatic regarding the role the war chiefs (caciques) played. In the context of several pages of observations about irrigation,White wrote in very large block letters, “THE DITCH BOSS IS BOSS!” (field notes, circa May 1926, bhl-wp). Although White does not mention whipping for disobeying the ditch boss, he discussed the use of whipping in Kachina initiations and for disciplinary reasons. For example, in his unpublished “Autobiographic Sketch of a Pueblo Indian,”White recorded the story of a young man who, along with others,

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was severely whipped with a “big Mexican horse whip on their bare backs” (White, untitled manuscript, circa 1932, bhl-wp). 12 According to White the men were periodically whipped throughout the day until their backs were raw and bleeding, leaving long-lasting scars. The men had been accused of being “pro-American” and of failing to follow traditional ways. White noted that after they were whipped,“the war chief made a long talk, then the cacique, then the heads of the medicine societies, then each medicine man. They all said we’ve got to be one people, believe in the medicineman, katchina, etc. They all cried (wept) for pity.” Acoma and San Felipe, like other pueblos, were highly organized social units. Power was concentrated within a small group of officers and societies who ruled the Pueblo. Their power was both political and religious; disobedience was sacrilege. In summary,White believed that the war chiefs were “the backbone of the spiritual and institutional life of the pueblo” (White 1932a:50). They were also vigorous conservatives, fiercely protecting traditional customs, and men of considerable or dominating character. The cacique war chief group wielded absolute political control of the pueblo. Despite their powerful social position, the caciques were not distinguishable in dress or style of living from any other member of the pueblo. The cacique, however, was the symbol of a tradition that was sacred and followed faithfully. The vast majority of The Acoma Indians and White’s other monographs are devoted to detailed observations of Pueblo social and material culture. For example,inTheAcoma Indians almost 50 pages are devoted to the description of myths and tales, with no commentary (White 1932a:142–190). Nonetheless, passages can be found in all his monographs that indicate the larger theoretical significance of his fieldwork. For example, in his discussion of government and social life in The Pueblo of Santa Ana, the subject of class emerges. He observed that it was tempting to label the government at SantaAna democratic, theocratic, aristocratic, or oligarchic. Yet such labels did not fit easily. In his analysis of the selection of pueblo officers, he noted that free discussion and debate were permitted.The form and function of the council were democratic but the importance of the council could not be overlooked; one could argue the pueblo was governed by a “ruling class” on the council. Therefore, one might think that much of the political power of the pueblo was in the hands of the priest-chief and the medicine men, leadingWhite to maintain they did not constitute a“ruling class”in the customary sense.“Although a ruling class and economic exploitation of the common people are not found at Santa Ana, the germs of class division are nevertheless visible. As social evolution

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progresses, division of labor and differentiation of social structure appear. Societies become stratified into ruling class and a ruled class at a certain stage of development. We can discern at Santa Ana, and the other pueblos, the beginning of this sort of division of society” (White 1942e:186). White characterized the political organization of SantaAna in the following manner. It was not aristocratic, that is, there were no castes or social divisions (though their beginnings could be witnessed). To the extent that a relatively few old men“run things”in the pueblo,one could speak of an oligarchy,but no further. There were pronounced religious tones to the political organization, and the government was also a religious body. Politics was dominated by men; women were excluded from pueblo offices and the pueblo council and government. Essentially, however, the government was democratic. White believed the pueblo was a microcosm, complete unto itself: no one variable could be isolated. Accordingly, in a detailed discussion it was easy to lose sight of a fundamental feature of Pueblo culture: integration. Pueblo culture was remarkably close and it was possible to envisage it as an organic unity. (White 1932a:140).This fact shaped the conditions of existence and the personalities of the people, and it determined the expression of their lives. A pueblo was no place for an individualist or an aggressive“go-getter,”for such a person would make life unbearable for others. Close contact within a pueblo tended to wear off the sharp corners and edges of a personality. Children were taught that kindness and respect were the greatest virtues. Every effort was made to lubricate social life,to reduce friction to a minimum,so that the pueblo would function smoothly. Quarrelling was intolerable, physical violence rare, murder unheard of. InThe Pueblo of San FelipeWhite commented:“San Felipe, like other pueblos, is a highly organized social unit. . . . The pueblo has many interests and functions as a community. Power is concentrated within a small group of officers and societies, who rule the pueblo. Their power is both political and religious; disobedience is sacrilege and heresy as well as treason” (White 1932d:11). Combining this observation with the fact the number of the people in a given Pueblo is quite small,White noted:“When one considers the economic, political, religious, courtship, family life etc. all takes place within a group of 250 men, women, and children; that one may have to work with others as officers or priests or medicinemen who are relatives or former rivals in love etc. one can see the tremendous amount of variety of inner contacts and friction that can and do exist” (field notes, Santa Ana, circa 1933:33, bhl-wp).

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The Disintegration of Pueblo Culture

In White’s estimation, the main “enemy” the Pueblo people faced was the U.S. government. On this subject his views were emphatic. In The Acoma Indians he wrote: “The most important fact in the process of acculturation is, I believe, the program of the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs. The results of other acculturation factors have been largely external, the changes occurring chiefly in the material culture. . . . But the program of the United States Government is aimed at their inner life,their ideas and ideals. Moreover, its program is definite, concerted and unrelenting. There can be little doubt that the forces brought to bear upon the pueblo by this bureau will ultimately bring about the disintegration of its politico-religious life” (1932a:56). Despite whatWhite believed were“heroic efforts to preserve their culture,” sooner or later Pueblo culture was bound to be engulfed and obliterated. The U.S. government in general and the Bureau of Indian Affairs in particular were not purposely trying to destroy Pueblo culture: “I do not mean to imply that the bureau is activated by malevolent motives, as some have charged. It is blind and stupid at times, but its intentions are good” (White 1932a:56).The end,when it came,would be gradual,completed“by a process of cultural osmosis, the ways and beliefs of the White man seep in and the old customs of the Indians leak out. The end is, of course, a uniform solution” (White 1942e:75–76). The process of “cultural osmosis” was being carried out most notably among young people, particularly children sent to government schools. White observed that government schools exposed children to a different way of life, which weakened their loyalty to the pueblo. The end of Pueblo culture was a theme in White’s writings, though this did not overtly figure in his writing for other anthropologists in publications such as the American Anthropologist, Journal of American Folklore, and Papers of the MichiganAcademy of ScienceArts and Letters. However,his concern for the fate of Pueblo culture found an outlet in publications such as the Bee (the newspaper of the University of Buffalo), the Buffalo Evening News, Weekly People, and Hobbies. In Hobbies, for instance,White wrote: Although the Pueblos of the present day have been exposed to the encroachments of Whites for over three centuries,they have maintained their old culture to an amazing degree. In the little sun baked villages today, even within sight of the twentieth-century trains of Santa Fe, life flows in much the same channels as in the days before Coronado. . . .

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Such are the Pueblos. Cherishing customs and beliefs which have their roots in antiquity. . . . The Indian is willing to admit that a mowing machine is better than a sickle, that a Winchester is better than a bow, and that a plow is more efficient than a digging stick. But the White Man’s “medicine” has not made him happier; quite the contrary. . . . And so they are struggling for their existence.Tiny sparks of Aboriginal Life flickering feebly in the uncongenial air of Modern Civilization. Little islands of an ancient culture destined to be engulfed by the rising tide of Americanization. [White 1927a:26] In the Bee White wrote descriptive essays about how the Pueblo Indians lived and thrived in “pristine conditions.” He wrote of the Pueblo origin myth,published extracts from his journals,and drew parallels between Pueblo religion,Western religion, and psychopathology—observations that did not endear him to his conservative colleagues. In articles not intended for his fellow anthropologists—in particular the unpublished“The Disintegration of Pueblo Culture”—White referred to theAmerican presence in the Southwest as“an occupation force”(1937,bhl-wp). He noted: “Since the pueblo country became part of the United States territory in 1848 shock, rapid change and the inexorable deterioration of pueblo culture has continued unabated. The pueblos have resisted the encroachment of American culture by trying to prevent by means of threats, intimidation and whipping, the younger generation from accepting foreign ways and customs.The priests and medicine men in particular and the old people in general keep a close watch over the children and the young men and women and do their best to keep them from adopting the foreign culture.” White suggested there were certain “laws of acculturation.”The first step was easily accomplished and occurred at the material level, with the incorporation of objects such as new food, metal tools, material for clothing, and the like. Second, changes occurred in social customs and beliefs. Third, there came a point when two “political” parties were formed within the pueblo. The differences between the underlying principles of Pueblo culture and American culture were fundamental; one could not subscribe to both. White maintained there was a limit to the credulity of human beings. These limits were culturally determined;“they are reached,one by one,as culture evolves to higher and higher stages.At one point it becomes impossible to believe that the earth is flat and motionless; at another, that witches cause trachoma” (White 1962a:326). For example, is disease caused by witches or germs? The clash of

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antithetical cultural principles expressed itself in terms of two factions within the Pueblo,one progressive,the other conservative or reactionary.As a rule,the conservative party was composed of older, well-established members of the community, such as medicine men, while the progressive group was younger. Because the Pueblo was such a small,compact group living intimately together, the factions could not easily coexist. Spatial and cultural disintegration was the result. A Pueblo for White was a social, religious, and political unit that must work together or split apart. Once split, the process that followed was inevitable—traditional aspects of society became extinct and were replaced by American concepts. Ironically,the tragic disintegration of Pueblo society would greatly facilitate ethnographic research. In general,as Pueblo culture acquired more traits from American society at large,the Pueblo people would find it increasingly difficult to accommodate the traditional beliefs of their ancestors.White believed that “few episodes in the history of man’s struggle for survival are as impressive [as] that of the Sias;their strength,courage,tenacity,and devotion are unsurpassed” (White 1962a:327). Based on his observations of nearly 30 years, White concluded that what hunger, poverty, and sickness could not accomplish in the past, security, success, and a modicum of prosperity would achieve in the future—”the extinction of an aboriginal sociocultural system as it dissolves in the circumambient sea of the White man’s culture.”Thus after the Pueblo organization with its control over individuals has broken down,it is imperative for “future ethnologists to work without hindrance and haste. The old men and women and their knowledge of the old customs will be dying off and a new generation of students will need to be in place to gather as much as they can from the wreckage and preserve it otherwise it will disappear forever” (White,“The Disintegration of Pueblo Culture,” 1937, bhl-wp). The Laboratory of Anthropology

Theoretical growth and diversification of research methodology in southwestern ethnography increased exponentially during the 1930s and 1940s. The sheer volume of literature might even surpass that of any other ethnographic area in the world. Central to the creation of this literature was the Laboratory of Anthropology at Sante Fe. Incorporated in 1927, it was sponsored by a group of prominent anthropologists to study the development and history of southwestern Indian life and art. 13 As an independent institution, the Laboratory of Anthropology was designed to serve four functions: (1) build study collections for southwestern arts; (2) disseminate knowledge of southwestern

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native peoples;(3) train qualified students in field methods;and (4) undertake a variety of anthropological research projects.The Laboratory of Anthropology was designed to occupy a unique position in the social sciences and as such had several advantages universities and other institutions could not offer. Within the Southwest it provided a relatively “controlled” geographic area in which social scientific research could be conducted by students and professionals alike. Since it had no departmental structure, such as exists in most academic institutions,it offered an environment where free inquiry was possible without interference. Finally, given its location, researchers could study the Southwest over a long period of time. The goals of the Laboratory of Anthropology were supposed to be supported by membership dues and contributions. However, without significant additional financial resources, its objectives could not be met.Those financial resources were secured when John D. Rockefeller Jr. and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Foundation donated $270,000 and provided maintenance income for a period of five years.With secure funding,the Laboratory of Anthropology quickly became one of the leading centers of research and graduate student training in all four fields of anthropology. By 1938 the Laboratory ofAnthropology was a large and powerful institution;there were 168 members and 14,000 people visited its center in Santa Fe. Like the Southwest Society, the Laboratory of Anthropology was an independent institution controlled by an advisory board of trustees. 14 Appointments and scholarships were awarded by a committee headed by Fay-Cooper Cole,Roland Dixon,A.V. Kidder,and Alfred Kroeber. In 1929 the Laboratory of Anthropology initiated a series of annual field trips. Three were sent out each summer, specializing in ethnology, physical anthropology, and archaeology (linguistics was added in 1930). The field season lasted nine weeks (June to August). Each field party consisted of an established anthropologist specializing in southwestern ethnography and four or five graduate students. The idea behind the program was to offer graduate students in anthropology an opportunity to conduct fieldwork independently with the advantages of association with other students and an experienced ethnographer. It was believed the students would stimulate one another and, should a problem arise, the experienced ethnographer could offer guidance. Students would devote the majority of their field time to working with an Indian informant and translator, if necessary. In an assessment of ethnological field training,Fenton (1952) andVoegelin (1950) cite the establishment of the Laboratory of Anthropology as a significant step forward.

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In 1932 White was chosen to lead the ethnological field party.Fowler (1999) has noted that the years between 1928 and 1934 were the “halcyon days” of the Laboratory of Anthropology. Given the lack of funding during the Depression, those who guided field schools were “the then-leaders of the discipline in several archaeological, cultural, and linguistic field schools” (Fowler 1999:197). White’s selection amounted to tacit recognition that he was one of the leading figures in southwestern ethnography. The students who accompanied White were Fred Eggan (University of Chicago), Mischa Titiev (Harvard University),Edward Kennard (Columbia University),and Jess Spirer (Yale University).While he was in the field,the Rockefeller Foundation assignedWhite an additional student—George Dobo,who would later change his name to George Devereux. 15 White chose the nearby Hopi Pueblo of Oraiyvi, with the colonies and descendant villages of Moenkopi, Kiqotsmovi (or new Oraiyvi), Hotvela, and Paaqavi. The participants in the field school made their headquarters in a small, newly built house at Kiqotsmovi, a village established at the foot of the Third Mesa around 1900. Not yet completed, the house belonged to Rebecca Williams, whose family was among the first converts to Christianity made by H. R. Voth, a controversial Mennonite missionary. According to Titiev White divided his students into two study groups: White investigated clans,lineages,and related phenomena assisted by Kennard and Spirer. Eggan and Titiev devoted themselves to the study of the kinship system and the behavior of people toward one another (Titiev 1944:vii).The objectives of the field party were to acquire information pertaining to Old Oraiyvi kin and clan systems and to obtain information pertaining to the consequences of the Split of 1906. For instance,White took a census of Oraiyvi in which he listed who was a“Friendly”and who a“Hostile,”noting their clan and ceremonial affiliations as well. All members of the research party shared their material, and the results of the fieldwork were incorporated into all their respective works. All the men except Spirer, who did not continue in anthropology, went on to make significant contributions to the discipline. In looking back on the establishment of the field school by the Laboratory of Anthropology at Santa Fe, Eggan recalled it represented a “great improvement over the older sink or swim procedures. Archaeological students were accustomed to summer excavations,but even they profited by the presence of students from other institutions and the field school discussions. Linguists and physical anthropologists profited mainly from the presence of an experienced leader, but the program was perhaps best adapted to graduate students in

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ethnology. One result was to break down the departmental isolation and rivalry that had developed, but more important was the beginning of cooperative research and the opening of the field to all competent investigators” (Eggan 1974:9). Despite Eggan’s general positive view, he thought White “had a secretive approach to fieldwork” (Eggan 1989:145). Eggan speculated that White may have been protecting his sources and commented that while“White had been helpful in getting us established among the Hopi,I was disappointed he didn’t share more of his knowledge about Acoma with us.”To that extent, Eggan’s assessment differed from White’s. In his final report to the director of the Laboratory of Anthropology, White concluded: “The students in our party were able, industrious, and congenial. They adjusted themselves quickly and soon showed themselves capable of conducting investigation independently. I believe that this field trip has been a real laboratory to them, and that they have profited much by the experience”(White to Nusbaum,August 24,1932, bhl-wp). Titiev, Eggan, and Kennard became White’s lifelong friends. White was instrumental in ensuring that Eggan’s and Titiev’s first fieldwork experience was positive and productive. Both men acknowledged White’s assistance in their first books, and Eggan in particular was thankful to him. In addition, White continued to be supportive of Eggan’s and Titiev’s research when they subsequently took a structural-functionalist approach.White’s animus toward Radcliffe-Brown’s work and theoretical perspective did not stop him from hiring Titiev in 1936, nor did it prevent him from maintaining a cordial relationship with Eggan. Not included inWhite’s final report were his problems with George Dobo (Devereux). Devereux was added to the field session at the request of Stacy May, director of the Social Science Research Council and the Rockefeller Foundation (May to White, August 9, 1932). White could not realistically refuse the request to add Devereux to the field school nor could he,for political reasons,afford to report the resulting problems he created. In explanation, the Laboratory of Anthropology was a fledgling organization and the success or failure of its early expeditions was a serious matter. In part this was because the field expenses for White and the five graduate students selected were significant, almost one quarter of the laboratory’s budget. Failure in the early stages of its existence could threaten the organization’s future. Memoranda sent to White throughout the field season stressed the degree to which such sessions needed to demonstrate immediate results.

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When Devereux arrived it became apparent he was woefully unprepared to conduct fieldwork. Both his fellow graduate students and the locals realized Devereux was hopelessly naive, and he quickly became the brunt of many practical jokes. Placed in an impossible situation,White had to help Devereux, which caused him to neglect his own work, and Devereux, to make matters worse, resisted White’s offers of assistance. White sent blistering reports concerning Devereux’s behavior and disruptive influence to Jesse Nusbaum, director of the laboratory (White to Nusbaum, July 18 and 20, 1932, bhlwp). 16 In White’s estimation, Devereux was a lazy and incompetent fieldworker. Nusbaum responded that it was a“situation that requires handling with kid gloves.” Nusbaum stressed that “we cannot afford to have trouble develop in the field party,and more particularly when we have accepted a student from abroad under a fellowship from the Rockefeller foundation at the request of the Social Science Research Council”(Nusbaum toWhite,July 22,1932,bhl-wp). Should White fail to successfully incorporate Devereux into the field school, the implications for the laboratory were significant. According to Nusbaum, from a “dollar-and-cents basis,” White “could not let Devereux’s influence interfere with the ultimate success of the ethnological group.” Fortunately for White, toward the end of Devereux’s stay he began to conduct interesting research. This was largely due to the fact White arranged to have informants speak to Devereux. Several years after this experience, Devereux published a number of books, foremost among them Reality and Dream: Psychotherapy of Plains Indians (1950).White’s experience with Devereux is important because it illustrates that White was capable of handling an awkward situation at a personal and academic level. Fieldwork Reputation

In the folklore of anthropology, especially among southwestern ethnologists, rumors abound with regard to White’s conduct in the field. These rumors run the gamut from whispers about White’s treatment of his informants to the degree to which drinking affected his work. By contemporary standards, White’s fieldwork methods were unethical or, at best, questionable. White’s fieldwork was also seriously weakened because, with the exception of public performances, he could not participate in or even observe many Pueblo ceremonies. Despite these shortcomings, White was able to penetrate the inner working of Pueblo culture—far more than one might expect given his limitations. However, no contemporary ethnographer would consider clandestine research of the sortWhite employed. He was not the only scholar

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who used what Parsons, a fellow practitioner, identified as “the secretive technique” (Parsons to White, May 30, 1930, Parsons Papers, apl). As Louise Lamphere wrote: “Like others of the period, Parsons relied primarily on information from one family (the host) and from a small circle of paid informants. In more secretive pueblos like Isleta, notes were made during interviews in a hotel room or at a nearby Spanish village. This relatively clandestine research (although Parsons took care never to reveal the names of her informants) gives us (in the 1980s) the sense that anthropologists were almost prying information, often secret, out of the natives” (1989:523). This type of research was common at the time.According to Fowler scholars of White’s era assumed the role of “ethnologist as high grade detective” (2000:341). Each ethnographer responded to Pueblo secrecy differently, and much depended upon the personality of the individual and his or her area of interest. For example, Parsons complained bitterly about wasting her time because of the Pueblo Indians’lack of cooperation,whileWhite wrote that he enjoyed identifying possible informants. Ruth Benedict, on the other hand, found fieldwork arduous,did not form close relationships with informants,and was more interested in cultural patterns than in secrets of Pueblo society (Mead 1974:30–38). Despite their differences,all the aforementioned ethnographers put their own scientific interests ahead of the people they were studying. Fowler has noted:“All saw themselves as‘scientists,’committed to the idea that all knowledge should be a part of the human commons. They were aware, at a romantic level that ‘esoteric’ knowledge and paraphernalia are protected for many reasons. But, at a scientific level, the people, the knowledge, and the paraphernalia were seen as objects, like all else to be investigated and made public for the ‘greater good.’ If such investigations could not be made openly, then ‘detective work’ was warranted” (Fowler 2000:341). The ethical conduct of anthropologists in general, and ethnographers in particular, was of central concern to many younger scholars throughout the 1970s. Largely prompted by the controversy that erupted over professional ethics and counterinsurgency in Thailand (an event that almost tore the AmericanAnthropologicalAssociation apart),ethnographers were confronted with multiple charges of professional misconduct (Wakin 1992). Given the charged sociopolitical climate, the ethical conduct of ethnographers such as White and Parsons became the subject of contentious debate.Among the many rumors that circulated within the discipline at that time was that ethnographers of White’s era misrepresented themselves to their informants: they either lied outright or purposely misled Pueblo Indians about their work. Letters

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and articles published in the Anthropology Newsletter carried accusations of questionable conduct. One such letter, written by Sally Binford, prompted White to respond. She maintained:“All of us have profited directly or indirectly from the state of theAmerican Indians.We study the artifacts looted from their kivas; we teach students their kinship systems and dig up their burials. Native Americans have, without compensation, provided the data for countless M.A. and Ph.D. theses. Perhaps it is time we pay our dues” (S. Binford 1973). Binford’s letter,a plea for financial assistance for more than 100 Indians then in jail for the events surrounding theAmerican Indian Movement atWounded Knee,botheredWhite. He found the tone of the letter aggravating and believed she was but one of a “very noisy chorus” (White to Sweet, July 21, 1973, bhlwp). He also believed that his views as an elder scholar were being distorted. That is, veteran ethnographers were tired of being accused of “exploiting the Indians for profit or advantage” (White toWoodbury, May 21 1973, bhl-wp). White wrote toWoodbury,editor of theAnthropology Newsletter,that he wished to invoke “equal time” to reply to detractors, although “equal time” was not adequate for “it would take pages and pages to take note of and reply to all the indictments, allegations, and tirades. I would like to have an opportunity to speak my piece.”White’s response to Binford, and to what he termed the “mea culpa attitude with regard to the American Indian,” was succinct and critical. Because it concerns not only his fieldwork methods but also his views on why he felt fieldwork was important, I will quote his response at some length. White explicitly rejected the notion that he exploited the people he studied: I resent this accusation. I occupied myself with ethnological fieldwork among the Pueblos intermittently from 1926 to 1957. I do not believe that my researches ever injured Indians, deprived them of anything of value or harmed them in any way. I have known many anthropologists during the past 50 years and I do not know of any who have exploited Indians for personal gain. I certainly did not profit financially. I was removed from the university payroll when I went into the field. I counted myself lucky to receive modest funds for field expense. . . . I never sold a “story” about Indians—or a set of kinship terms. None of my monographs was copyrighted. I never received a cent in royalties. I was out of pocket on every fieldtrip I ever made. . . . The members of the mea culpa chorus miss one big point and that a vital one: many Indians want to have a record made of their

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rapidly disappearing culture, a description and interpretation of their cultural identity—as communicated by the Indians themselves to the ethnographer. Many have told me, with deep feeling, of this desire and their earnest hope that they will not disappear without trace. I have produced a few comprehensive studies of some of the Pueblos; they stand (with all their faults and shortcomings) as enduring memorials of what was once their world. Devoted Indians helped me to make these studies and others treasure them as reminiscences of the lives of their mothers and fathers. I do not see how I could have rendered these Indians a greater service. [White 1973b] While both Binford’s andWhite’s letter are caught up in the rhetoric of the student revolt, they illustrate a significant problem. The information White and other anthropologists garnered was invaluable but the way in which they gathered it was unethical. In retrospect, it is not surprising that such a controversy arose. Many American ethnographers who were students of Boas or worked within a Boasian framework wrote very little about their fieldwork methodology. For instance,Robert Lowie’s account of his fieldwork demonstrates the degree to which this early generation faced serious practical problems in the field. Lowie wrote that ethnographers were often forced to choose between an informant who was alienated from his own people for being educated at government schools or work with interpreters who may or may not be available (Lowie 1959:14). Firsthand and highly personal accounts of fieldwork from this era can also be found in Mead’s An Anthropologist at Work—a collection of Ruth Benedict’s published work and correspondence. In “Selections from Correspondence to and from the Field: 1924–1934,” one letter from Jaime de Angulo to Benedict is particularly interesting. In May 1925 Benedict,then Boas’s assistant,wrote to deAngulo about doing fieldwork inTaos (they had met several years earlier in NewYork). Apparently Benedict asked deAngulo how to get aTaos Indian“to a safelyAmerican place”where she could use him as an informant in order to obtain sacred and secret information about ceremonialism. In reply,deAngulo wrote that he was hurt by Benedict’s request because he cared deeply about her. If such a request had come from “Mrs. Parsons I wouldn’t give a damn,”for he knew“Mrs. Parsons is doing her best to kill Santo Domingo”and that he would“denounce any anthropologist for ferreting out secrets inTaos or any other pueblo.” In de Angulo’s opinion, this sort of practice“kills the Indians. I mean it seriously. It kills them spiritually first and as in their life the spiritual and the physical element are much more

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interdependent than in our own stage of culture,they soon die of it physically. They just lie down and die.That’s what you anthropologists with your infernal curiosity and your thirst for scientific data bring about” (Mead 1959:296– 297). The myriad of logistical problems American anthropologists such asWhite encountered in the Southwest discouraged—and in some cases prevented— others from conducting fieldwork in the area. For instance, Mead wrote a long letter to Benedict that detailed why ethnological work was often discouraging among NativeAmericans. She recounted her problems obtaining information at the Omaha Indian reservation in 1930 and confessed that “if I were going to be an Americanist I would stay in the library most of the time and only emerge to try to verify the most key points after a long search of the literature. . . . I see no way of checking up on material obtained from indifferent, unwilling and frightened informants for money, on what their fathers or grandfathers told them. It isn’t the kind of material which ever carries the mark of authenticity on the face of it as verbatim ritual can”(Mead 1959:314–315). While one can question the degree to which Mead’s and Malinowski’s efforts to live among the natives was successful, their fieldwork techniques struck a responsive chord with anthropologists. Lowie was among a number of Boasian-trained anthropologists who highly praised Malinowski’s fieldwork methodology (Lowie 1937:231). However,this did not inspire him or other American anthropologists to question their ethical conduct in the field. Another variable worth noting here is the limited amount of timeAmerican ethnographers spent in the field,in part due to a perpetual lack of funds and the inability to suspend teaching obligations. White never spent more than three to four weeks in the field at any time. The same holds true for Ruth Bunzel, Esther Goldfrank,Morris Opler,and Elsie Clews Parsons,who also worked in the Southwest. Even Franz Boas,whose work in the Northwest Coast is often lauded, never spent more than two months in the field (with the exception of his 1883–84 trip to Baffin Island) (Stocking 1967). Given this, what many ethnographers who worked in North America did was locate a competent informant who could speak English and the native language,knew the customs and history of his or her people, and was willing to impart this information. Margaret Mead termed this process excavating culture, and she did not find it satisfactory (Mead 1959:314–315). The collection of ethnographic data by Boas and those that worked within a Boasian framework was thus akin to the work of archaeologists. Ethnographers worked hard to collect cultural data,

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native texts and stories,that would constitute an unbiased and objective history of cultures that were rapidly disappearing. In retrospect,White’s fieldwork and educational background was archetypical. It was conducted,within the United States,where the vast majority of anthropological work was undertaken in the 1920s. (Two notable exceptions, both from the University of Chicago,are Charlotte Gower’s work in Italy and Robert Redfield’s work inTepoztlan). Nearly every American anthropologist was working in the United States because cultures were becoming extinct and “salvage ethnography” was deemed to be of critical importance. Ethnographers of this era were also largely influenced by Franz Boas or his students,who were establishing anthropology departments across the country. The general aim of these scholars was to show not only how Indians lived but how they thought and viewed life. In this senseWhite’s fieldwork could be characterized as being well within the Boasian realm of historical particularism. For White the attraction of fieldwork was twofold. First, he wanted to arouse in his readers a deep appreciation of and interest in American Indian culture and to illustrate why the Indians believed and acted as they did. White’s work thus went beyond the mere collection of facts, for he showed that Indian culture was rich in symbolic content and deserved careful analysis in its own right. In so doing he wanted to prove that Indian culture in the broadest sense of the term was not inferior, as racists maintained, but part of the history of humankind and its societal evolution. Second,White wanted to demonstrate the power of cultural systems in a particular setting, to prove that Indians and their manner of living were every bit as important and “normal” as American culture. InWhite’s estimation all cultures trap their members in a complex web that extracts a heavy toll. Accordingly White wanted to understand culture’s inner workings so that rather than being constrained by culture, one could be liberated.

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The Socialist Labor Party and Socialist EvolutionaryTheory The duty is to science, to social science, the science of culture, that more light may be thrown upon the processes of culture, so that mankind may plan and control consciously and effectively instead of blindly and with great pain.This is my duty and I must do it.–White, journal,April 13, 1939 [First Page] Influence of the Soviet Union

Without an appreciation of White’s political commitments it is not possible to appreciate the reasons he embraced evolutionary theory and forcefully argued it had a place in the discipline. It was White’s political commitment to the Socialist Labor Party (slp) that shaped the corpus of the evolutionary work for which he is so well known. The development of White’s thought during the Depression era is most clearly seen in his largely unknown contributions under the pseudonym John Steel to the Weekly People, the official organ of the slp. 1 Within the pages of this socialist paper,White, as John Steel, honed his arguments on cultural evolution that appeared in various anthropological journals in the 1940s. During the 1930s White developed the concept of cultural evolution because he believed that it could function as both a science and a principle of action.Anthropology’s significance and importance for him, therefore, was that it provided a self-conscious, rational, and humane way of understanding the transition from one type of society to another. White was undoubtedly introduced to the slp by Marvin Farber and his father, both of whom belonged to the party. 2 Beyond a small circle of friends and party members,White’s association with the slp is not well known.There are five primary reasons for this. First,White purged his papers before his death, destroying the bulk of those related to the slp. Second,he wrote and said many contradictory things about his association with the slp. Depending upon who asked,White’s responses ranged from an outright denial of association with the party to an open acknowledgement that he wrote articles for them under a pseudonym. Third, there are no surviving members of the slp who knew White and could discuss the extent to which he was or was not active in the party. 3 Fourth,White’s eventual split with the party was turbulent and ill tempered. After a glowing review ofThe Science of Culture was published in the

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Weekly People, Eric Hass, the longtime editor, retracted it.Three highly placed members of the slp Executive Committee subsequently wrote a devastating critique of White’s book. Thereafter, the slp went out of its way to criticize White and his work, labeling him an “anti-Morganist” and an “enemy of the slp.” Fifth, White’s association with the slp is not mentioned in any of his obituaries nor are any of his articles in theWeekly People listed in the published bibliography of his work (Dillingham 1976). 4 The first published material by White indicating the importance of evolutionary theory appeared shortly after his return from Russia in 1929. Sponsored by the Open Road, a front organization for the Communist Party, White spent 42 days in the Soviet Union. White was among the first groups of American scholars to visit the Soviet Union in the late 1920s. The tour White went on was led by Sergei Sergeivich Anisimov, a Russian scientist, and by White himself. White visited major cities such as Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, and Kiev. What happened to those he went to Russia with is unknown, as is what prompted the trip (Feuer 1962). 5 Like many other early visitors to the Soviet Union,White was in part looking for a new political hope or “conscience model.” For a Depression-weary America, the Soviet Union held a magnetic appeal. Sydney Hook, who visited the Soviet Union within weeks of White, noted that 1929 was a time of relative prosperity in the country, and the year represented “the last of the good years after the civil war [and] in light of the grim decades that followed” (1987:116). The first tours permitted in the Soviet Union were given wide latitude to explore on their own.White and Hook each recalled they were given more freedom than they had expected and that newspaper accounts of the conditions in the Soviet Union were grossly inaccurate. White was also struck by how little he knew about the country as well as how little the Soviets knew about the United States. American visitors such as White did not have more or less human naïveté and saw certain realities strongly. What they did not grasp was the latent evil of Stalinism and the fact that Soviet society was far less determinate and predictable than they thought. White’s trip to the Soviet Union had a profound influence on his thought. White was enthusiastic about the developments in Russia and spoke widely about his experiences. He wanted to let as wide an audience as humanly possible know that Russia was surpassing the United States in terms of the arts, sciences, and culture. He spoke at temples and churches about the abandonment of religion and how mansions and churches were being turned into hospitals to care for the young and old alike. He was impressed by Russian

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filmmaking, and he spoke at the American premier of the Russian Sovkino production, Czar Ivan, theTerrible. As difficult as it was for Americans to admit, he declared, the United Sates was “not leading the other nations of the world in moving pictures.The Russians have gone us one better”(Bee,November 8, 1929,suny). He was equally forceful in his assessment of the status of women in Russian society. White wrote that Russian women were not interested in fashion or struggling into corsets to enhance their appearance. Rather, they were the economic equal of men, with “political equality, ethical equality, and equality in dignity and in self-respect.” Under “Soviet law, marriage has become an institution of convenience, divorce may be had for the asking, and all children are legitimate.”White firmly believed that the“Communists have jumped a step beyond us.” He told women at the Martha Washington Club in Buffalo that trade unions insured women received time off when their children were young and, as the children grew older, provided nurseries to care for them while mothers worked. In spite of his high praise,White was under no illusion that Russia was a utopia or would become one soon. He did, however, characterize Lenin as “one of the most significant individuals in the history of civilization in the last 1,000 years—a man who not only took advantage of the opportunities granted him to use his great talents,qualities and virtues,but also made opportunities.” White maintained that “shorn of its superficialities and functioning under the dictatorship of the proletariat,” only those who displayed special abilities would be chosen to lead the Communist Party. Under the control of one party, White had no doubt that Russia would become a powerful nation, soon recognized by the United States “as a sister nation” (the quotes above come from undated newspaper clippings from the Buffalo Evening News that White used as bookmarks.) In several talks before academically inclined groups such as the Honor Club of the University of Buffalo and the Buffalo Social Science Study Club,White questioned the reasons behind his conclusion that intellectual freedom was extended to researchers in the physical and biological sciences but not the humanities. Judging from several newspaper accounts of presentations he made,White often started his speeches by asking a rhetorical question. For instance,White asked why“there was probably more opposition to the introduction of scientific methodology in the humanities today than there was in the physical and biological sciences one thousand years ago. More people are in jail today for economic and political experimentation than was ever thought of in the Middle Ages” (Bee, May 23, 1930, suny). In White’s view: “The greatest battle in the history of thought in the 20th century is

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over economic organization and political organization. But the trend is quite obvious that these sacred values are going to be swept aside in this century.Why can’t you talk about the Constitution as you do about a carburetor?You can be jailed for it. Are we, then more tolerant than our persecuting ancestors of the middle ages? Let a teacher criticize the government and see how quickly he is driving a milk wagon!What happened to those who tried to better conditions for the working class? Some of them had their heads broken, and others are serving long penitentiary sentences” (Bee, November 8, 1929, suny). The Bee, the student paper of the University of Buffalo, and the Buffalo Evening News published part of White’s addresses regarding his impression of Russia. 6 White spoke glowingly about the Soviet Union and wrote that he had met all classes and types of people. Based on his experience,White was convinced that“the Russian people,freed from the shackles of supernaturalism and economic exploitation, have the truly international point of view. The general outlook is humanistic: not, as in Europe and America, one of clan organization. . . . The economic change is terrific,though simple.The ruling classes have been driven out, and workers are in command. Their motto is, those who work will eat” (Bee, November 8, 1929, suny). Address to the AAAS

The Buffalo address excerpted above was undoubtedly an early draft of a paper he was to deliver months later at Case Western University. (It was later published as an article in New Masses.)White’s paper was much different than the others presented at the combined meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (aaas), the American Folk-Lore Society, and the American Association of Physical Anthropologists because it was overtly political.White’s paper,“An Anthropological Appraisal of the Russian Revolution,” certainly stood out in comparison to the others:“Diffusion of Culture in Central Asia” (William McGovern),“The Problem of the Sweet Potato in Polynesia” (Robert Dixon), “The Process of Invention” (Hornel Heart),“Mortuary Rites in New Ireland:TheirAffect on the Living”(Hortense Powdermaker), “The Pattern of Ceremony” (Alexander Lesser), “Linguistic Changes in the Acculturation of Swedes inTexas”(C. M. Rosenquist),“Pitch, Tone and the Saltillo in Modern and Ancient Nahuatl” (B. L. Whorf), and “Phallic Symbolism” (J. Marker). In “An Anthropological Appraisal of the Russian Revolution” (1931a), White argued that the Russian Revolution was the most significant event in modern history.Taking exception to the various ways in which the revolution

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had been discussed by political pragmatists, White argued that it was not a revolution at all but a cultural mutation resulting from centuries of cultural development. Thus for White the Russian Revolution was not a model “social experiment”—that is,planned human intervention in the social process designed to raise the welfare of people.The Russian Revolution was also not the realization of an idea created in the mind of some radical thinker, nor was it “a process of racial impoverishment, which destroyed the great civilizations of the past and which threatens to destroy our own,” as Lothrop Stoddard had argued in his book Revolt against Civilization (1922:14). For White the Russian Revolution and the political unrest shaking the world had significant implications. The root cause of radical change was not necessarily the Russian Revolution but rather evidence that the world’s social and political problems needed to be reconsidered. In White’s estimation, the Russian Revolution proved that society was evolving culturally and that the present Russian regime was advancing beyond capitalism. The significance of the Russian Revolution was that it ushered into the world a new social order that was an evolutionary development beyond capitalism. It dissolved vertical class stratification and the exploitation of the worker, characteristics of the capitalist system. In short, “Russia’s five year program may fail. Or capitalist states may set upon her and dismember her. But cultural processes grind steadily on. Feudalism fought for its life.The Pueblo Indians are fighting for their life now. Capitalism will soon be fighting for its life. It was created by the machine,and by the machine it will be destroyed.Whether the communist model for the future be Russian,Chinese,or German matters little.The essence of communism is internationalism, or world consolidation—and that is the next stage of political evolution” (White 1931a:14). White’s language in “An Anthropological Appraisal of the Russian Revolution” is provocative. During the Depression many believed that the capitalist system was collapsing worldwide, and that its foundations were under widespread attack. The Russian Revolution was only a decade old and the first five-year plan was in effect. In 1932, only one year afterWhite published this paper, Franklin Roosevelt was swept into office with his declaration that one-third of the United States was ill fed, ill clothed, ill housed, and unemployed. While White conceded that the standard of living in the Soviet Union was lower than in the United States, he maintained this had nothing to do with communism, as many political figures had argued. The Industrial Revolution had come to the Soviet Union only during the revolution and the country was feverishly industrializing and electrifying the countryside. The

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rapid development of Soviet resources would insure there was plenty for all members of society given the fact that “theirs is a social system which solves the problem of social control, and makes the social system conform to the system of production” (16). With the problems of technological and social control solved, there was no doubt in White’s mind that the Soviet Union would continue to grow in strength. In short,White maintained two great social systems existed: Soviet and capitalist. In the capitalist countries of the world industry and technology were well advanced and produced enough for all, but the economic system insured that millions were living in want and no better off than “savage hunters of the stone age.” Many people who were searching for answers to explain the current social and economic morass expressed a strong interest in various socialist and communist party organizations. Thus to White and many others interested in socialist and communist politics,this represented the future,that is,a system that placed a priority on human welfare rather than corporate profits. It is in this socioeconomic context that White’s articles under the pseudonym John Steel began to appear in theWeekly People. Before their publication,an associate editor wrote toWhite: it is with great pleasure and even with a feeling of pride that I greet you at the beginning of a new career. For I am sure your Cleveland address will prove the first step of a series which will, sooner or later, culminate your teaching career. You will then enter the world as a different kind of man; and I know from experience something of what that means. For the present I think the policy [of writing under a pseudonym] you outlined to me the other day is the best possible. Lay low, for the time being, and do your studying, your scholarly preparation. . . . Sooner or later you will be out with me and I certainly look forward to a more intimate friendship with you, that we may help each other to fight the great battle of human emancipation. [M. A. Larson toWhite, January 9, 1931, bhl-wp] It is unknown exactly how White came to write for the slp, but the organization was delighted by his 1930 aaas address, which made headlines in newspapers across the United States and the Soviet Union (the NewYork Times and Pravda carried front-page stories about it).White also received over 100 personal letters from people across the United States, both damning and praising his address. In addition, he received letters from various leftist organizations, such as the Proletarian Party of America, the League for Industrial

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Democracy,the Communist Party,and the Socialist Labor Party. As one might expect, these groups heaped praise upon White. For example, the Socialist Labor Party commented:“We are so used to receiving twaddle from college professors that when a statement comes from an eminent college authority so sound and clear as that which was made by Dr. Leslie A. White, we cannot refrain from hastening to record it. . . . Dr. White pronounced the capitalist system doomed and pointed to the future social system in terms such as have previously come only from the Socialist Labor Party” (Weekly People, January 10, 1931). Apparently,Maxim Gorky’s comments in Pravda were provoked by a correspondent who accused Gorky of being“indifferent to cynicism of the present life” and rejoicing over the misery of those in the world outside the United States. Although somewhat critical, Gorky wrote: “Leslie A. White is not a Marxist and not a communist. This is made sufficiently clear by the entire manner of his expression and by the scientific phraseology which he employs. His position is that of the bourgeois evolutionary sociologist who perceives the history of society as a series of regular mutations such as the mutations known in biology. His conclusions, therefore, are all the more interesting” (Pravda, February 20, 1931, bhl-wp). 7 Conservative newspapers such as the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Michigan Chronicle blastedWhite.The latter editorialized: Declarations of a University of Michigan professor of anthropology at the session this week of the aaas are hardly worthy of the credulity they are likely to inspire. . . . Dr. Leslie A. White of our own university . . . went rather far a field to declare that the capitalist system cannot continue to exist, and that the communist regime ushered into Russia by the revolution is an evolutionary sequence of capitalist society. . . . Which is merely revelation of a Marxian complex on which the professor’s anthropological lore has made no impress, and to which certainly it has added little. Rather than being an evolutionary sequence of capitalist society,socialism has been the dream of social and economic theorists of many previous ages,and every attempt to put it into practice has proven a tremendous failure. . . . The professor had better stick to anthropology. [Michigan Chronicle, January 3, 1931] White was flooded with requests for his paper and, in many cases, he sent copies to individuals as well as groups. The Chicago Schools Journal mimeographed and widely distributed its copy. Similarly,theAmerican Civil Liberties Union printed a slightly abridged version in its official publication, the Open

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Forum (on occasion White included the Open Forum article in his vitae but never the version published by the New Masses). Although most of White’s responses to the letters he received about his address are not preserved, the duplication and wide distribution of his paper did not disturb him. In fact he seemed quite pleased by the attention his paper received. For example, he wrote to Parsons,“I have been told that I was very indiscreet in reading this paper, and I am willing to admit it. It has produced a great stir” (White to Parsons, June 13, 1931, Parsons Papers, apl). Dozens of letter writers praisingWhite for his critique of capitalist society expressed dismay that, given his political views, he would not be able to maintain his current employment. For example, R. E. Dunbar, a “fellow Marxist and alumnus of the U of M,” wrote to White:“I rather doubt your ability to hold your present position long with such honest and correct views. It makes the plutocrats furious to find out one of their own servants wavering in his acceptance of the bourgeois credo,no matter how puerile and ridiculous it may seem. . . . Under capitalism you are either a paid sophist, or an unpaid logician. In the end the latter is more satisfactory to men of courage and farsightedness” (Dunbar to White, January 8, 1931, bhl-wp). Similarly, a man from Danville, Illinois, enclosed a harsh editorial about White’s paper with the following observation:“As a working man and a Socialist of a good many years . . . I want to thank you for your courageous standing with truth. . . . When a man of your stature takes the stand you have, on the side of the oppressed, it usually means his job, with poor chance of securing another” (Fred Ziegler toWhite, January 8, 1931, bhl-wp). Archival evidence suggests White was seriously thinking about a career in socialist politics. For instance, he wrote to Harry Elmer Barnes that “it does not seem improbable that I may be weaned away from the narrow specialized pursuit of anthropology” (White to Barnes, December 20, 1929, bhl-wp). In a similar vein, he wrote to Marvin Farber that he caught “hell” for having been thrown into the arms of “anarcho-communists” (White to Farber, May 12, 1931, Farber Papers, suny). 8 He later wrote to Barnes that John Effinger, dean of Arts and Literature at the University of Michigan,“gave me holy hell on three counts: obscenity, atheism, and radicalism” (White to Barnes, July 8, 1931, bhl-wp). In recalling the incident many years later during an interview, White remarked that the publication of “An Anthropological Appraisal of the Russian Revolution” “didn’t endear me to anyone in the United States except Communists. . . . Dean [Effinger] told me I was indiscreet, and didn’t predict a long tenure for me” (Weiner 1969).

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White was clearly worried about his position at Michigan and how the controversy would affect his ability to secure funds for future research. In an explanatory letter to Parsons, White enclosed his paper and assured her that he did “not wish to revive Morgan” but spoke about him because of his strategic importance to American anthropology. He went on to explain that he had become impatient with the philosophy of “contemporary American anthropology (if, indeed, it could be said to possess a philosophy). It seems to me that all civilization is the field of the anthropologist. It is possible to discern trends in the development of civilization, trends that are living in the present, and which will push into the future. It seems to me that no one is so well equipped as the anthropologist to understand the present and to foresee the future. And I think he should render this service to society as best he can” (White to Parsons, June 13, 1931, Parsons Papers, apl). In terms of his position at Michigan, immediately after White was hired it became obvious that his views on not only cultural evolution but also a myriad of other issues were at odds with those of the university administration. On a relatively small campus in the 1930s it was possible for White to generate a powerful presence. 9 This was especially true because White’s two most popular classes,“The Evolution of Culture”and“The Mind of Primitive Man,” attracted as many as 300 students. According to Beardsley White’s cultural determinism undercut deeply felt convictions of people outside the field of professional anthropology. Irate parents and churchmen repeatedly pressed the administrators of the University of Michigan or state legislators to muzzle this iconoclast and were driven to greater wrath by his success in persuading students that his views were tenable (Beardsley 1976:618). White had mixed feelings regarding his position at Michigan. There was a great deal he did not like about Ann Arbor, yet he knew precious few jobs would enable him to pursue his scholarly interests and provide any measure of intellectual freedom. By intellectual freedom, White specifically meant the ability to pursue his own interests independently. But such freedom had negative consequences, foremost among them “the close atmosphere of the university community with all its gossip,its jealousies and rivalries,the restrictions upon a free teaching of social science”(White,journal,September 18,1937,bhl-wp).White tried to maintain a low profile, but the administration rarely missed an opportunity to make his life difficult:the university deniedWhite paid and unpaid sabbaticals, refused to increase his salary, turned down research requests, however small, and denied secretarial support. Throughout the 1930s White found himself in an unenviable position.

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He had the conservative University of Michigan administration against him on one side because he was too radical, and on the other side those such as Maxim Gorky and the Socialist Labor Party arguing that he was not committed enough. He wrote in his journal: I should not be surprised if I were fired. I almost expect it daily. Every now and then a student asks me in amazement “How do you get away with it?”Meaning how does the university tolerate a little plain speaking. This makes me wonder myself why they tolerate me and I too wonder when the blow will fall—for I am sure it will eventually. . . . I have made every effort to be as inconspicuous as possible. I never speak before any political or religious group. And I have written nothing provocative. In short I have tried to give them no pretext. But in my courses I have been going my own way. I am afraid that is almost too much for the “good people” to bear. I am apprehensive. [White, journal, January 1939, bhlwp] After he addressed the aaas,he ceased writing anything remotely provocative under his own name (though he did continue to write for the Weekly People under the pseudonym John Steel). Ironically, in 1939 Ellsworth Faris, one of White’s former professors from the University of Chicago, wrote that he was glad White was “safely located in a great university” (Faris to White, February 7, 1939, bhl-wp). In replyWhite wryly responded: I had never thought of a “great university” as a place where one became “safely located,” but I dare say there are some who regard it as such. Neither have I ever thought that once I had become “safely located” in this professional haven (or heaven) that I would thereafter enjoy immunity from the consequences of my own acts. We all know that universities tolerate incompetence and sloth and that they will forgive ordinary error. But will they tolerate or forgive “heresy”? Universities may be safe places,but one may well wonder if some of them—even the “greatest”—are safe to those who deviate from the faith. At any rate, I am glad they no longer burn them to death. [White to Faris, February 17, 1939, bhl-wp] Modifying his actions and concealing his writings to avoid further antagonizing the university placed White in an awkward position vis-à-vis other socialists. For example,White joined the Friends of the Soviet Union but the response from this organization was not warm, despite his enthusiasm for the

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country and his status as an active member of the Socialist Labor Party.White’s failure to commit himself entirely to the struggle for socialism infuriated those more committed. The secretary of the Friends of the Soviet Union wrote to White:“We must state frankly that if you intend to take your right place in the revolutionary drama,the first act of which has been carried out in the Russian Revolution, you must be prepared to take all the political consequences. As a professional revolutionist I know that you will never be really happy in your work until you have definitely aligned yourself with the working class severing all relations with the bourgeoisie,I am sure that your opinions will not let you rest until you act upon them or renounce them. These steps are entirely in your own control” (Joseph Ballam toWhite, February 5, 1931, bhl-wp). [79], (11) 1934 Spring Parley

Knowing his activities in the slp could jeopardize his position at Michigan, White took several precautions. Aside from using the pseudonym John Steel in all his writings published by the slp,White never spoke on behalf of the slp in Ann Arbor and did not receive any mail from the party at home or work (he used P.O. boxes in Detroit and Cleveland for socialist mailings).Yet these precautions did not mask his feelings about socialism and cultural evolution. His spoken views in the classroom alone placed him in a precarious political position at Michigan. Elizabeth Costello wrote to Harry Barnes that she was “worried aboutWhite’s position at the University,”stating thatWhite“realizes that he must keep quiet about such things as the slp if he expects to stay in that work, and he really can’t do much to help the cause by giving up work in that field. However,he says it is just a question of how long he can continue teaching and still retain his self respect. He feels terribly strong about it” (Costello to Barnes, September 10, 1931, bhl-wp). Elman Service, a student of White during the 1930s, recalled that White’s political beliefs were readily apparent during his lectures.This was not at all unusual;EricWolf recalled that intellectuals of this era,especially anthropologists, could be broken into three groups:those who went toWashington to help fdr’s New Deal, those who became academics, and those who devoted themselves to radical politics (interview with author,July 1998). In the fall of 1935 Service asked if White would allow him to give a short talk to his “Introduction to Anthropology” class to request contributions for the men and women who were going to Europe to join the Spanish Republican Forces. Service, along with other anthropologists such as John Murra and Clifton Amsbury, fought in the Spanish Civil War. 10 They were guided by political reasoning, firmly

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believing it was the last chance to stop Hitler. Service recalled that when he spoke to White’s class,White completely ignored what he had to say, to the point of rudeness. White was convinced Service was a communist and a member of the party.11 Service,in turn,thoughtWhite’s lectures“sounded like a left pamphlet,” that he was a “true believer.” For Service, a member of the American Student Union, a front for the Communist Party,White’s lectures “kind of put my teeth on edge,or at least made me want to argue with him and object to what he was saying”(Service n.d.:7). Although one would think the two men, both inclined toward and active in radical politics, would have had much in common, in reality their political affiliations drove them far apart. One incident in the 1930s highlightsWhite’s tenuous position at Michigan. Throughout the 1930s students at the University of Michigan organized a “spring parley.”This event consisted of an open forum discussion about various social problems, with faculty and student participation. A student committee advised by two faculty members drew up the plans and invited other faculty members. The invitation was a formality, because anyone who was invited was expected to participate. The three topics selected for discussion in 1934 were:“War and the Students,”“Sex and the Family,”and“Capitalism and Social Change.” In a letter to Marvin Farber White described his experience at the 1934 spring parley: “A week or so ago I participated in (by invitation, not voluntarily) the annual spring parley in which ‘the students and faculty who think’ get together and discuss war, capitalism, religion, sex etc. It was awful. I wish you could have visited one or two sessions because I doubt if you have ever witnessed anything quite as bad as it was. I couldn’t stick it out, and omitted the last two meetings”(White to Farber,March 11,1934,Farber Papers,suny). In an unpublished paper written for theWeekly People,White wrote that he had accepted an invitation to sit on a faculty panel,only after much hesitation, because he was afraid he “might get himself into further trouble by speaking too plainly.” Before the parley White was assured by two other Michigan professors that his position could not be endangered by speaking openly. In fact, at the parley Professor Preston Slosson, a historian, spoke at some length about academic freedom and maintained it was a stupid superstition that professors dare not speak out for they had nothing to fear. Given these reassurances,White thought he might be able to bring anthropology to the attention of students and further increase enrollment. White knew that class size was critically important to his long-term survival. Larger classes meant increased enrollments departmentally;“the professors are in keen competition with each other for the students trade; the professor who doesn’t get the trade

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doesn’t keep his job”(Steel,“The Modern Corporation and Private Property,” circa 1935, bhl-wp). White’s experience at the spring parley led him to conclude there was a clash of two basic points of view—materialistic and idealistic. The idealists greatly outnumbered the materialists. On the few occasions when materialism was discussed in terms of its bearing on social problems, it was quickly routed by a barrage of idealism.The dichotomy between idealism and materialism came to a head when religion was discussed—the sessionWhite was assigned to.White had made sure he was not scheduled to give a presentation,but he was expected to respond to questions—and his answers to questions concerning religion in various stages of cultural evolution shocked the audience. Many were visibly distressed by White’s materialistic viewpoint, because he “said nothing about the sanctity of human personality, or the beauty of Nazarene ideas nor the immortality of the soul.” Two students responded immediately to White’s comments, the first remarking that the religion of primitive peoples was “just magic” while modern Western religions were entirely different. The second student asked the other faculty members on the panel to provide them with the “idealistic answer.”White was not called upon to speak again. Subsequent speakers went to great lengths to point out the errors of the “anthropological bias.” The complete lack of balance between materialistic and idealistic perspectives made White realize how isolated he was, even among the faculty at Michigan. His materialistic views were an unwelcome anomaly,but what truly troubled White was that the audience was not interested in hearing an open dialogue. He concluded:“The students,through their spokesmen and through the college paper,declared that it was the parley’s purpose to discuss questions with an open mind, to entertain new points of view, to view problems from all angles. This is precisely what the group which met to discuss religion was determined not to do. They were vigorously opposed to discussing religion and the church from any point of view save one. They did not wish to view religion from ‘new angles.’They wanted no facts. As one student put it, they wanted something they could believe in and find security in” (Steel,“Notes on the Spring Parley,” circa 1934, bhl-wp). The 1934 spring parley had a major impact on White. It made him realize how different he was. Rather than questioning his own views, he grew to dislike and disrespect his fellow faculty members and social scientists in general. In a retrospective passage in his journal,White wrote:

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I have, and have had for years, a profound, if not bitter contempt a feeling of loathing and hatred. I despise the cheapness and shallowness of what passes for learning—especially in what are called the social sciences. I have nothing but contempt for the pretentious show made by petty “scholars” which they call “research.” . . . It is only rarely that I can read an article or book on social science that I can even stomach, to say nothing of respect, apart from, of course, purely factual studies. I am called intolerant. I conceal my contempt and disrespect poorly. Many people do not like me. I have made an effort to submerge my feelings in my personal contacts with people,to conceal my real thoughts and feelings lest I wound them. I do not try to make people like me. But I have often times, even in the classroom, apologized, in a sense for my ideas and ideals—to keep them from offending others excessively— and,I think,to shield myself against the potential wrath of“the furies.”It makes me sick when I think of it.To walk through the corrals of academic life, wading through the muck and dung of ignorance and