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=                        Washington_Matthews                         =
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                            Introduction
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Washington Matthews (June 17, 1843 - March 2, 1905) was an Irish-born
American surgeon in the United States Army, ethnographer, and linguist
known for his studies of Native American peoples, especially the
Navajo.


                      Early life and education
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Matthews was born in Killiney, near Dublin, Ireland in 1843 to Nicolas
Blayney Matthews and Anna Burke Matthews. His mother having died a few
years after his birth, his father took him and his brother to the
United States. He grew up in Wisconsin and Iowa, and his father, a
medical doctor, began training his son in medicine. He would go on to
graduate from the University of Iowa in 1864 with a degree in
medicine.

The American Civil War was raging at the time, and Matthews
immediately volunteered for the Union Army upon graduating. His first
post was as surgeon at Rock Island Barracks, Illinois, where he tended
to Confederate prisoners.


                            In the West
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Matthews was posted at Fort Union in what is now Montana in 1865. It
was there that an enduring interest in Native American peoples and
languages took root. He would go on to serve at a series of forts in
Dakota Territory until 1872: Fort Berthold, Fort Stevenson, Fort Rice,
and Fort Buford. He was a part of General Alfred H. Terry's expedition
in Dakota Territory in 1867.

While stationed at the Fort Berthold in the Dakota Territory, he
learned to speak the Hidatsa language fluently, and wrote a series of
works describing their culture and language: a description of
Hidatsa-Mandan culture, including a grammar and vocabulary of the
Hidatsa language and an ethnographic monograph of the Hidatsa. He also
described, though less extensively, the related Mandan and Arikara
peoples and languages. (Some of Matthews' work on the Mandan was lost
in a fire before being published.)

There is some evidence that Matthews married a Hidatsa woman during
this time. Her name is not known. There is also speculation and
circumstantial evidence that Matthews had a son with the woman.

In April, 1876, Matthews was sent to Camp Independence to serve as
Post Surgeon.  In ensuing months he serviced soldiers and local
civilians; he vaccinated hundreds of Native Americans of the Owens
Valley against smallpox.  During his stay in the Owens Valley he
pursued other interests, such as collecting native plants. He sent his
collection to Asa Gray, who named two of those new to science after
him:  'Loeseliastrum matthewsii' and 'Galium matthewsii'.  Camp
Independence was closed in July, 1877.

In 1877 he participated in an expedition against the Nez Perce, and
again in 1878 against the Bannock. While serving at a prison on
Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, Matthews made a study of the
Modoc language.


                        Army Medical Museum
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From 1884 to 1890, Matthews was posted to the Army Medical Museum in
Washington, DC. During this time he conducted research and wrote
several papers on physical anthropology, specifically craniometry and
anthropometry.


                          With the Navajo
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John Wesley Powell of the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American
Ethnology suggested that Matthews be assigned to Fort Wingate, near
what is now Gallup, New Mexico. It was there that Matthews came to
know the people who would become the subject of his best known work,
the Navajo.  Matthews has been credited with carrying our this
research with "unprecedented objectivity".

In 1887, 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". He was also said to have
been initiated into various secret Navajo rituals.  He also used wax
cylinders to record ceremonial prayers and songs.

Matthews also published a number of other books on his research
amongst the Navajo, including 'Navaho Legends' (1897) and 'Navaho
Myths, Prayers and Songs' (1907).

In his work he reported that the Navajo were ichthyphobic, having a
taboo on eating fish. He theorized that "Living in a desert land where
water is so scarce and so obviously important to life, [coming to
regard] water as sacred, it is an easy step for them to regard as
sacred everything that belongs to the water…. Hence it becomes a
sacrilege to kill the fish or eat its flesh."

Matthews work on the Navajo served to dispel then-current erroneous
thinking about the complexity of Navajo culture.  In an account of
Matthews's Presidential Address to the American Folklore Society in
1895 ("which was titled "The Poetry and Music of the Navahoes"), 'The
Critic' magazine wrote:

:Dr Matthews referred to Dr Leatherman's account of the Navahoes as
the one long accepted as authoritative. In it that writer has declared
that they have no traditions nor poetry, and that their songs "were
but a succession of grunts". Dr. Matthews discovered that they had a
multitude of legends, so numerous that he never hoped to collect them
all: an elaborate religion, with symbolism and allegory, which might
vie with that of the Greeks; numerous and formulated prayers and
songs, not only multitudinous, but relating to all subjects, and
composed for every circumstance of life. The songs are as full of
poetic images and figures of speech as occur in English, and are
handed down from father to son, from generation to generation.
Matthews has been credited for treating "Navajo medicine men as
colleagues" and seeing his informants as individuals rather than "just
sources of data". However, he has been criticised for the then common
practice of not crediting his informants in his published works.
However, his research has been credited with creating through "careful
and thorough fieldwork ... a monumental bequest for future generations
of the Navajo people and scholars".


                            Recognition
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In 1895 Matthews served as president of the American Folklore Society.
He 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.


                  Medical research and retirement
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Matthews was quoted by Charles Darwin in 'The Expression of the
Emotions in Man and Animals' (1872); Matthews is cited with respect to
the expression of emotion and other gestures among various peoples of
America: the Dakota, Tetons, Hidatsa, Mandan, and Assiniboine.

Matthews was retired from the Army in 1895. He was buried at Arlington
National Cemetery, in Arlington, Virginia.


                               Papers
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Matthews's papers were initially left to the University of California
at Berkeley. In 1951 they were transferred to the then Museum of
Navajo Ceremonial Art, now Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian.
In 1985, a microfilm guide to these papers was published.


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