Ruth Underhill Papers

Ruth Murray Underhill, University of Denver professor of anthropology and world-renowned anthropologist, was born in Ossining-on-the-Hudson, New York, on August 22, 1883 to an upper-middle class Quaker family. She graduated from Vassar College in 1905 with a bachelor's degree in comparative literature. After graduating she traveled to Europe, and studied at the London School of Economics. She worked for the Red Cross in Italy during World War I. After the war she found work in New York as a social worker in poor Italian communities. Fascinated by different cultures and societies, she decided to pursue graduate studies at Columbia University. There she met Ruth Benedict, and studied with Franz Boas, the father of American anthropology.

In the early 1930s, Underhill traveled to Arizona to conduct fieldwork for her doctoral program. There she met Chona, an elderly Tohono O'odham woman, whose biography she wrote in 1936 -- the first biography of an American Indian woman. During this work Underhill developed a life-long affection for the Tohono O'odham people and other southwestern tribes, including the Mohave and the Navajo. After receiving her Ph.D. from Columbia in 1934, she went to work for the U.S. Indian Service (later the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs). She was Assistant Supervisor of Indian Education from 1934-1942, and was Supervisor from 1942-1948. Upon her retirement, at the age of 65, she moved to Denver, Colorado and taught at the University of Denver until 1952. She remained active with the University and the Department of Anthropology until two years before her death in 1984. She was accorded many honors during her lifetime. In 1962 she received an honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Denver. The University of Colorado awarded her an honorary Doctor of Science degree in 1965. The American Anthropological Association honored her with a Special Recognition citation in 1984. She also received a Friendship Award from the White Buffalo Council of American Indians.