Gladys Reichard facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Gladys Reichard
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Gladys Amanda Reichard circa 1935
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| Born | 17 July 1893 |
| Died | 25 July 1955 |
| Alma mater | |
| Awards | Guggenheim Fellowship |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Barnard College |
Gladys Amanda Reichard (born July 17, 1893, in Bangor, Pennsylvania; died July 25, 1955, in Flagstaff, Arizona) was an amazing American scientist. She was an anthropologist and a linguist. This means she studied human cultures and languages. Gladys is known as one of the most important women who studied Native American languages and cultures. She did this in the early 1900s.
She is especially famous for her work on three Native American languages: Wiyot, Coeur d'Alene, and Navajo. Reichard wanted to understand how languages change. She also explored how language connects to religion, culture, and daily life.
Contents
Gladys's Early Life and Studies
Gladys Reichard earned her first college degree from Swarthmore College in 1919. She got her master's degree from the same school in 1920. Soon after, she began working with the Wiyot language. This fieldwork started in 1922. She worked under the guidance of A.L. Kroeber from the University of California, Berkeley.
Gladys then went to Columbia University for her PhD. She finished her PhD in 1925. Her research focused on the grammar of the Wiyot language. Her book, Wiyot Grammar and Texts, was published in 1925.
In 1923, Reichard became an instructor at Barnard College. This was a college for women. In the same year, she started studying the Navajo language. She worked with Pliny Earle Goddard on this project. She returned to work with the Navajo people for several summers.
After Goddard passed away in 1928, Reichard spent her summers living with a Navajo family. She learned how to weave and care for sheep. She also took part in the daily life of a Navajo woman. She eventually became a fluent Navajo speaker. This deep understanding helped her create important works about their language and culture.
Coeur d'Alene Language Research
Reichard also studied the Coeur d'Alene language. She visited Tekoa, Washington, in 1927 and 1929. She worked with a small group of speakers. Three of them were from the Nicodemus family. These included Dorthy Nicodemus, Julia Antelope Nicodemus, and Lawrence Nicodemus.
Julia Nicodemus was her main helper for translation. The group also included Tom Miyal, a great storyteller. Lawrence Nicodemus later worked with Reichard at Columbia University. He created a writing system for Coeur d'Alene. He also published a dictionary and textbooks for the language.
Reichard returned to her Navajo studies in the mid-1930s. She continued this work until the early 1950s. She even started a Navajo school. There, she helped students create a practical way to write the Navajo language.
In the 1940s, she studied Navajo language, beliefs, and religious practices. This led to her two-volume study, Navaho Religion. The Bollingen Foundation published it in 1950. Many of her notes on Navajo culture and language are kept at the Museum of Northern Arizona.
Gladys Reichard became a full professor at Barnard College in 1951. She taught there until she passed away in 1955. For many years, Barnard was the only college for women with an Anthropology Department. Many women anthropologists were trained by her.
Challenges and Academic Debates
Gladys Reichard's work, especially on Navajo, sometimes caused disagreements with other scholars. These included Edward Sapir and Harry Hoijer. Because of these conflicts, her work was not always cited as much as theirs. The disagreements were about her research interests, her work style, and her being a woman in a field mostly led by men.
Reichard was interested in how language, culture, religion, and art were connected. She also paid close attention to how language varied among speakers. These interests sometimes clashed with the ideas of the "Sapir school." This group focused more on tracing language history. They also had a specific way of analyzing language structure.
Reichard was not very interested in historical language reconstruction. She also disagreed with Sapir's focus on the "phonemic principle." This principle looks at the basic sounds of a language. Reichard's notes often showed small differences in how people spoke. Sapir and his student Hoijer saw these differences as "errors." They used this to question her work. Reichard was skeptical of their approach.
Reichard's work style was very detailed and hands-on. For her Coeur d'Alene and Navajo studies, she spent a lot of time with speakers in their homes. She often worked with them to collect language data and analyze it. Adolph Bitanny, a Navajo speaker, worked with Reichard at the Hogan School she created. She wrote about this school in her book, Dezba, Woman of the Desert. In this book, she also shared how Navajo speakers felt about other schools.
Awards and Service
Gladys Reichard received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1926. This is a special award for scholars. Throughout her career, she served as secretary for several important groups. These included the American Ethnological Society and the American Folk-Lore Society. She also worked for the Linguistic Circle of New York and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Major Works
Reichard published many books and articles. They covered topics like anthropology, linguistics, religion, and art.
- 1925: Wiyot Grammar and Texts
- 1928: Social Life of the Navajo Indians with Some Attention to Minor Ceremonies.
- 1932: Melanesian Design (2 volumes)
- 1932: Spider Woman: A Story of Navajo Weavers and Chanters
- 1936: Navajo Shepherd and Weaver
- 1938: "Coeur d'Alene", in Handbook of American Indian Languages
- 1939: Dezba, Woman of the Desert
- 1939: Navajo Medicine Man: Sandpaintings and Legends of Miguelito
- 1939: Stemlist of the Coeur d'Alene Language
- 1940: Agentive and Causative Elements in Navajo (co-authored with Adolph Bitanny)
- 1944: The Story of the Navajo Hail Chant
- 1945: Composition and Symbolism of the Coeur d'Alene Verb Stem
- 1945: Linguistic Diversity Among the Navaho Indians.
- 1947: An Analysis of Coeur d'Alene Indian Myths
- 1948: Significance of Aspiration in Navaho
- 1949: The Character of the Navaho Verb Stem
- 1949: Language and Synesthesia (co-authored with Roman Jakobson and Elizabeth Werth)
- 1950: Navaho Religion: A Study of Symbolism (2 volumes)
- 1951: Navaho Grammar
- 1958-1960: A Comparison of Five Salish Languages (in 6 parts)
