1. Washington Matthews was a surgeon in the United States Army, ethnographer, and linguist known for his studies of Native American peoples, especially the Navajo.
23 Facts About Washington Matthews
1. 2.
Washington Matthews's mother having died a few years after his birth, his father took him and his brother to the United States.
3.
Washington Matthews grew up in Wisconsin and Iowa, and his father, a medical doctor, began training his son in medicine.
4.
Washington Matthews would go on to graduate from the University of Iowa in 1864 with a degree in medicine.
5.
The American Civil War was raging at the time, and Washington Matthews immediately volunteered for the Union Army upon graduating.
6.
Washington Matthews was posted at Fort Union in what is Montana in 1865.
7.
Washington Matthews would go on to serve at a series of forts in Dakota Territory until 1872: Fort Berthold, Fort Stevenson, Fort Rice, and Fort Buford.
8.
Washington Matthews was a part of General Alfred H Terry's expedition in Dakota Territory in 1867.
9.
Washington Matthews described, though less extensively, the related Mandan and Arikara peoples and languages.
10.
Washington Matthews sent his collection to Asa Gray, who named two of those new to science after him: Loeseliastrum matthewsii and Galium matthewsii.
11.
From 1884 to 1890, Matthews was posted to the Army Medical Museum in Washington, DC.
12.
John Wesley Powell of the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology suggested that Washington Matthews be assigned to Fort Wingate, near what is Gallup, New Mexico.
13.
Washington Matthews has been credited with carrying our this research with "unprecedented objectivity".
14.
In 1887, Washington Matthews published The Mountain Chant: A Navajo Ceremony which has been described as "probably the first full account of a Native American ceremony ever published".
15.
Washington Matthews was said to have been initiated into various secret Navajo rituals.
16.
Washington Matthews used wax cylinders to record ceremonial prayers and songs.
17.
Washington Matthews published a number of other books on his research amongst the Navajo, including Navaho Legends and Navaho Myths, Prayers and Songs.
18.
Washington Matthews has been credited for treating "Navajo medicine men as colleagues" and seeing his informants as individuals rather than "just sources of data".
19.
In 1895 Washington Matthews served as president of the American Folklore Society.
20.
Washington Matthews was a member of a number of other societies such as the American Anthropological Association, the National Geographic Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
21.
Washington Matthews was quoted by Charles Darwin in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals ; Washington Matthews is cited with respect to the expression of emotion and other gestures among various peoples of America: the Dakota, Tetons, Grosventres, Mandans, and Assiniboine.
22.
Washington Matthews was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, in Arlington, Virginia.
23.
Washington Matthews's papers were initially left to the University of California at Berkeley.