Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin facts for kids

Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin (born April 2, 1903 – died July 10, 1988) was a famous anthropologist, a person who studies human societies and cultures. She was also a folklorist, someone who studies traditional stories and customs, and an ethnohistorian, who studies the history of cultures using both written records and oral traditions. Her important research helped Native American groups in their land claims against the US government.

Early Life and Education

Erminie was the daughter of Ermine Brooke Wheeler and Roscoe Wheeler. Her father was a mining engineer. She went to Technical High School in Oakland, California.

She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1923. After working for a newspaper in Florida, she returned to Berkeley. There, she earned a master's degree in anthropology in 1930. Her master's paper was about "Mythological Elements common to the Kowa and Five Other Plains Tribes."

Her Career and Discoveries

Erminie married Charles F. Voegelin, who was also an anthropologist. They worked together, studying different Native American peoples.

In 1933, Eli Lilly, who led a big medicine company in Indiana, started a special scholarship at Yale University. This scholarship honored Native American history. Charles Voegelin received the first scholarship, and then Erminie received it.

Studying the Tübatulabal People

In 1933, Erminie did fieldwork among the Tübatulabal people in northern California. This research led to her first book, Tübatulabal Ethnography, published in 1941. She was the first woman to earn a PhD in anthropology from Yale University in 1939. Her PhD paper was called "Shawnee Mortuary Customs." It was published five years later.

Work in the Great Lakes Region

In the 1940s, Wheeler-Voegelin worked in the upper Great Lakes area. She studied the languages and cultures of the Ottawas and Ojibwe people. These groups lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

She was an expert in Native American folklore. In 1954, she started the American Society for Ethnohistory. She was also the first editor of its journal, Ethnohistory, until 1964. She was also the first person to teach a course on Ethnohistory at an American University.

Teaching and Awards

Wheeler-Voegelin taught anthropology, history, and folklore at Indiana University, Bloomington. She started teaching there in 1943. In 1947, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship. This award helped her study the folklore and myths of American Indians and Eskimos.

In 1948, she became president of the American Folklore Society. From 1949 to 1951, she was a secretary for the American Anthropological Association. She also edited the Journal of American Folklore from 1941 to 1946. In 1950, she won the American Folklore Society's Chicago Book Prize. She was one of the first people chosen as a Fellow of the American Folklore Society in 1960.

Great Lakes-Ohio Valley Research Project

At Indiana University, Wheeler-Voegelin also led the Great Lakes-Ohio Valley Research Project. This project ran from 1956 until her retirement in 1969. The US Department of Justice paid for this project. Its goal was to find out where Native American groups lived and moved in the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley region. This research focused on the time when Europeans first arrived there.

Wheeler-Voegelin managed a team of three to five researchers. They looked through special collections in libraries across North America and Europe. They gathered information about "any mention of American Indian land use and occupancy for the Great Lakes-Ohio Valley region."

This information was used in court cases before the Indian Claims Commission. The research reports are now kept at the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology at Indiana University. They are part of the Ohio Valley-Great Lakes Ethnohistory Archive.

Later Life and Legacy

After she retired, Wheeler-Voegelin moved to Great Falls, Virginia. She lived with her daughter and son-in-law. In 1985, she gave her Shawnee field notes and her remaining professional books and papers to the Newberry Library in Chicago.

Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin passed away on July 10, 1988, due to a heart attack.

Her Lasting Impact

In 1982, the American Society for Ethnohistory created a special award. It is called the Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Prize. This prize is given for the best book-length work in the field of ethnohistory.