Matilda Coxe Stevenson

Matilda Coxe Evans was born in San Augustine, Texas, the third child out of four to Maria Matilda Coxe Evans from New Jersey and Alexander Hamilton Evans from Virginia. Her parents moved from Washington D.C. to newly annexed Texas sometime between 1846 and 1847.[1] The family then moved between Texas, Washington D.C., and Pennsylvania throughout Matilda's early years.[1] Her education varied, as well, given the gender expectations and restrictions for middle-class white women at the time. Her formal education most likely began with governesses from private schools, then transitioned to academies and seminaries for women where the goal was to prepare their students to become wives and mothers. However, Coxe Evans was able to also study science, mathematics, history, geography, and other subjects because of the developed curriculum in Philadelphia schools. She attended Miss Anabel's English, French, and German School, originally located at 1350 Pine Street in Philadelphia. When she returned to Washington, she continued her studies under her father (a lawyer) and William M. Mew, a chemist at the Army Medical Museum, since most colleges and universities were only open to men.[1] Still, Coxe Evans desired to expand her opportunities beyond the household and hoped to become a mineralogist. Her plans altered when she met James Stevenson (1840-1888),[2] a geologist and ethnologist with the US Geological Survey of the Territories.

Evans married James Stevenson on April 18, 1872 before he left for another expedition under Ferdinand V. Hayden to conduct geological surveys in Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah. By 1879, when the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) was created, Matilda Stevenson was appointed "volunteer coadjutor [sic] in ethnology" and she went with James on his BAE expeditions to the Southwest.

She spent 13 years in explorations of the Rocky Mountain region with her husband. In the 1880s, the Stevensons "formed the first husband-wife team in anthropology."[3] Matilda Coxe Stevenson's contributions often focused on women and family life, for which she "quickly developed a reputation as a vigorous and devoted scientist."[4]

In 1885, Matilda Coxe Stevenson became the first President of the Women's Anthropological Society of America.[3][5][6]

After her husband's death in 1888, she was hired by John Wesley Powell as the first woman employed by Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution, initially to organize his notes and later taking on a bigger role and leading her own research.[7] From 1890 to 1907, Stevenson did substantial individual fieldwork exploring the cave, cliff, and mesa ruins of the Zuni who resided in the Zuni River Valley in western New Mexico. She then studied all the rest of the Pueblo tribes of that state. From 1904 to 1910, she embarked on a special comparative study of the Zia, Jemez, San Juan, Cochiti, Nambe, Picarus, Tesuque, Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, Taos and Tewa Native Americans. During that time, in 1907, Matilda Stevenson purchased a ranch (Ton'yo) near San Ildefonso, which became her base for fieldwork. Stevenson died in Maryland on June 24, 1915.

Artifacts collected by Matilda and James Stevenson are in the collections of the Department of Anthropology in the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution. Papers from Stevenson are in the Institution's National Anthropological Archives.

Among Stevenson's protegés were John Peabody Harrington [8]

Stevenson was the author of:

• Zuñi and the Zuñians (1881)
• The Religious Life of the Zuñi Child (1888)
• The Sia, Zuñi Scalp Ceremonials (1890) (link is an excerpt)
• The Sia (1894)
• Zuñi Ancestral Gods and Masks (1898)
• Ethnobotany of the Zuñi Indians
• The Zuñi Indians: Their Mythology, Esoteric Fraternities, and Ceremonies (1904)

• Parezo, Nancy J. (1989). "Matilda Coxe Evans Stevenson". In Gacs, Ute; Khan, Aisha; McIntyre, Jerrie; Weinberg, Ruth (eds.). Women Anthropologists: Selected Biographies (Illini Books edition, Reprint of Westport, CT: Greenwood Press original, 1988. ed.). Urbana: University of Illinois Press. pp. 337–343. ISBN 978-0-252-06084-7. OCLC 19670310.
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). "Matilida Coxe Stevenson". New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.

• Foote, Cheryl J. (1990). "6: "Every Moment is Golden for the Ethnologist" Matilda Coxe Stevenson in New Mexico". Women of the New Mexico Frontier, 1846-1912 (1st ed.). Niwot, Colo.: University Press of Colorado. pp. 117–146. ISBN 978-0-87081-215-6.
• James, Henry Clebourne (1974). Pages from Hopi History. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press. ISBN 978-0-8165-0500-5.
  • A perspective on Stevenson's research methods in relation to the Hopi, p. 109-110.
• McBride, Jennifer. "Matilda Coxe Evans Stevenson" on the Women's Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mind and Society website
• Miller, Darlis A. (2007). Matilda Coxe Stevenson: Pioneering Anthropologist. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-8061-3832-9.

• Works by Matilda Coxe Stevenson at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Matilda Coxe Stevenson at Internet Archive