BIOGRAPHY
Jesse Walter Fewkes, Chief of the Bureau of American Ethnology, is the son of Jesse and Susan Emeline (Jewett) Fewkes. He was born in Newton, Mass., November 14, 1850. His father and mother were born in Ipswich, Mass. On his mother’s side his American ancestry goes back to the close of the seventeenth century. He fitted for college in 1871 and entered without conditions. He was graduated from Harvard with honor in Natural History in the class of 1875 and was elected in the society of Phi Beta Kappa. When a student in the Agassiz School, at Penikese Island, Buzzards Bay, in 1873, he came under the inspiring influence of the great naturalist, Louis Agassiz. After graduation he took a post-graduate course in Natural History, receiving the degrees of A. M. and Ph. D. in zoology in 1877. From 1878 to 1880 he studied zoology at Leipzig under Rudolph Leuckart, and spent several months in Naples, Italy, and Villa Franca, on the south coast of France, under the Harris Fellowship.
In 1880 he was appointed assistant in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, and for nine years was in charge of lower invertebrata, and from 1884 to 1887 was Assistant in Charge, every summer, of Mr. Alexander Agassiz’s Newport, R. I., marine laboratory. In 1881 he made a trip with Mr. Agassiz to study marine life at Key West and Dry Tortugas, and in 1883 visited the Bermuda Islands for a similar purpose.
In the spring of 1887, as a guest of Mr. Augustus Hemenway, of Boston, he pursued scientific studies at Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, and Monterey, Calif., and in the summer of 1888 he studied in Paris and engaged in field work in marine zoology in Prof. Lacaze Duthier’s zoological station at Roscoff, Brittany.
The visit to California marked a turning point in his life, as through the influence of Mrs. Mary Hemenway, of Boston, he became profoundly interested, in ethnological problems, especially of the Pueblos. In the summer of 1889 and 1890 hevisited Zuñi, New Mexico, and in the latter year employed the phonograph in recording primitive music, a method now universally adopted by ethnologists, and in 1891 used the same instrument in recording Hopi songs. The records collected on these trips were transcribed by Mr. B. I. Gilman under the titles “Zuñi Melodies” and “Hopi Songs” and published in the Journal of American Ethnology and Archæology, Vols. II and V, a scientific publication of which Dr. Fewkes was founder and editor.
During these pioneer experiments with the phonograph among the Zuñi and Hopi he became deeply interested in primitive religion, and for four years was engaged in studies of the ritual of the latter, in the employ of the late Mrs. Mary Hemenway. In order better to appreciate Indian mythology and ritual, he was initiated into the Antelope and Flute priesthoods of the Hopi, from which relationship many secret ceremonies of this tribe were witnessed and described for the first time. The archæology of the Zuñi and Hopi also interested him, and while connected with the Hemenway Southwestern Expedition Dr. Fewkes gathered in Arizona a large collection of Indian objects which is now on exhibition in the Peabody Museum at Cambridge.
In 1892-93 Spain held an Historical Exposition at Madrid in commemoration of the fourth centenary of the discovery of America by Columbus. The Hemenway Expedition was requested by the Spanish Government to participate in this celebration, and Dr. Fewkes had charge of the Hemenway exhibit and served on the jury of awards.
Up to the year 1894 our knowledge of the Walpi Snake Dance was fragmentary; since that date a large literature on it has accumulated. The account of this startling festival published that year by Dr. Fewkes is recognized as the most exhaustive on the subject that has yet appeared. After the death of Mrs. Hemenway in 1894 the Hemenway Southwestern Expedition was given up and in 1895 Dr. Fewkes was invited to conduct archæological exploration in Arizona for the Smithsonian Institution. He moved to Washington and forseveral years engaged in field work for that Institution, during which time extensive collections were made of prehistoric pottery and other objects, the more striking specimens of which are now installed in the United States National Museum. The publication of this material marks the beginning of intensive archæological work on southwestern cliff-houses and pueblos.
At the close of the Spanish war there was a demand for more scientific literature on Porto Rico and the West Indies, which led to field work in the islands and publication of the Report on the Aborigines of Porto Rico and Neighboring Islands. In 1904 the Smithsonian Institution began an archæological survey of the Gulf coast of Mexico, the results of which appeared in “Antiquities of the Gulf Coast of Mexico.”
In the winters of 1906 and 1907 Dr. Fewkes had charge of the excavation and repair of the ruin Casa Grande in southern Arizona, an illustrated report on which was published in the Twenty-eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology. In the summers of 1908 and 1909 he excavated and repaired Spruce-tree House and Cliff Palace, and in 1915 and 1916, Sun Temple and Far View House, all situated on the Mesa Verde National Park, in southwestern Colorado. In 1909 and 1910 he visited large undescribed cliff-houses in the Navaho National Monument, northern Arizona.
In the spring of 1910 he made a visit to the Isle of Pines, Cuba, and the Grand Cayman, and in the winter of 1912 he made a trip to the Lesser Antilles, excavating Indian mounds in Trinidad. The following winter (1913) was spent in Europe, studying collections of West Indian objects in the ethnological museums in Germany and Denmark. On that visit he crossed the Mediterranean to Egypt and ascended the Nile to the first cataract; on his return he revisited Greece and southern Italy.
From a large collection of prehistoric pottery made in the Mimbres Valley near Deming, New Mexico, in 1915, he was able to show the existence in that valley of an extinct people with a characteristic ceramic art. The summers of 1917 and 1918 were devoted to field work among the prehistoric towers and castles of southwestern Colorado.
The zoological researches of Dr. Fewkes are mainly on the lower marine invertebrata, Medusæ, Echinodermata, and Vermes; his ethnological contributions deal with the Zuñi and Hopi Indians; his archæological studies cover a more extensive area, including the Southwest, the Antilles, and eastern Mexico.
Dr. Fewkes was honored in 1893 by Maria Cristina, Queen Regent of Spain, with the decoration, “Isabel la Catolica,” grade of knight; and in 1894 received from King Oscar of Sweden a gold medal, “Litteris et Artibus,” for his discoveries in anthropology. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; a Corresponding Member of the Essex Institute; Royal Anthropological Society, Florence, Italy; Société des Americanists (1907-); Berlin Society of Anthropology; Sociedad Antonio Alzarte, Mexico; Boston Society of Natural History, of which he was secretary for several years; Naturalists’ Society; President of the Anthropological Society of Washington (two terms 1909-10); President American Anthropological Association; associate editor, American Anthropologist and Bulletin of the American Geographical Society; and Vice-President (1911, 1912, 1915), Section H, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Folk-Lore Society. He was editor of the Journal of American Ethnology and Archæology, of which five volumes have been published, and has been for several years one of the committee appointed by the Overseers to visit the Peabody Museum at Harvard University, Cambridge; Member American Antiquarian Society (1914-); Member National Academy of Sciences (1914-); Ethnologist, Bureau of American Ethnology (1895-1917); Chief, Bureau of American Ethnology (1918-). He was official representative of the Smithsonian Institution at the inauguration of Dr. von Klein Smid as President of the University of Arizona, in January, 1915, from which he received the degree of LL.D. for services to anthropology.
Married at Cambridge, October 8, 1883, to Florence Gorges Eastman, who died May 3, 1888, and again married at Roxbury, April 14, 1893, to Harriet Olivia Cutler. His home is at Forest Glen, Maryland.